Growing up with a Jewish father, I'd heard a lot about this Holocaust thing:
-"The Holocaust was a terrible injustice laid upon our people."
-"Jokes about the Holocaust will not be tolerated under my roof!!!"
-"Get down from there, or the Holocaust will get'cha!!"
Considering my father's general lack of otherworldly knowledge, or more specifically, anything not involving 1950's Porche engines or getting ripped off at Best Buy, it was easy to dismiss the Holocaust as just more of his wheezing hot air; especially when you consider that renowned scholars like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mel Gibson have staunchly denied that it ever took place at all.
But no matter your opinion on the matter, you've really got to hand it to the Jews. A couple of weeks ago, I visited Auchwitz and Birkenau, about 90 minutes outside Krakow... to the tune of 80 Polish zloty (~$29). On the bus ride to the site, they air a DVD replete with interviews and video footage from the various camps, with an ominous sounding narrator. This I expected. "For sale in the bookshop for 55 zloty" was a bit less foreseeable. I'm beginning to recognize a pattern here. Nice. Only the Jews could turn a "horrible tragedy" into a big, fat, cash machine. I'm already suspicious.
Knowing the Jews own Hollywood (after all, if you can produce a Hasidic Jew reggae star, you can do pretty much anything), I'm thinking this DVD was shot with some grainy photography and a group of money (not food) hungry extras trying to break into the biz. After all, I have friends who would happily starve and trod around barefoot for a few weeks for a shot to meet Spielberg, so why should these guys be any different?
The real surprises came from within the camp, however. That's when you really get an understanding of how far the Jews are willing to go to sell this story. I mean, each camp, especially Birkenau, is absurdly big. Like, amusement park big. There are pictures of prisoners on the walls of the barracks, but there damn sure aren't six million of them. Their excuse? They say after some time, they stopped taking pictures of the prisoners because after awhile, it became too expensive. Who but a Jew would dream up an excuse like that? This place sure looks big enough to hang six million pictures someplace. And 80 zloty for my visit buys more than a few rolls of film, so what the fuck?
There's a Death Wall memorial outside Block 11 where apparently thousands or millions of Jews were executed. But if you look closely near the bottom (not visible in photo) you can actually see places where people have engraved their initials. True. I'm not sure if they're all the craftsmen who were so proud of the work they performed on the Death Wall or what, but there are in fact inscriptions on the Death Wall. I lost a little respect for the Jews here. Heads are going to roll in quality control (puns that rhyme!!!) when word of this gets out.
Next they show us a room in Block 11 where there are a series of beds, apparently meant to sleep as many as 16 Jews in each one. Now, I left my tape measure at home, but I know I'm pretty skinny, and there's no way more than four of me are fitting on one of these beds. Jews are supposed to be better at math than this...
By now immensely skeptical, I ask our guide how she could possibly talk about these terrible atrocities day in and day out. She gave an Oscar-worthy performance about how her grandmother's brothers were executed for smuggling food. For a moment, I suspended my disbelief and actually got choked up. Remember at the end of Gladiator when Lucilla looks at Maximus as he lay dying and says "Go to them." Remember that? I almost said that. Man, that would have been amazing. Years from now I'm going to wish I said that.
So, if I had to rate Auchwitz/Birkenau, I'd give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. Set design was pretty shoddy, and the plot seems like it has a few holes in it, but the acting and the overall expanse of the scene layout is very impressive. Worth seeing in the "theatre," but for a mere 55 zloty, you may as well get the DVD.
-"The Holocaust was a terrible injustice laid upon our people."
-"Jokes about the Holocaust will not be tolerated under my roof!!!"
-"Get down from there, or the Holocaust will get'cha!!"
Considering my father's general lack of otherworldly knowledge, or more specifically, anything not involving 1950's Porche engines or getting ripped off at Best Buy, it was easy to dismiss the Holocaust as just more of his wheezing hot air; especially when you consider that renowned scholars like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mel Gibson have staunchly denied that it ever took place at all.
But no matter your opinion on the matter, you've really got to hand it to the Jews. A couple of weeks ago, I visited Auchwitz and Birkenau, about 90 minutes outside Krakow... to the tune of 80 Polish zloty (~$29). On the bus ride to the site, they air a DVD replete with interviews and video footage from the various camps, with an ominous sounding narrator. This I expected. "For sale in the bookshop for 55 zloty" was a bit less foreseeable. I'm beginning to recognize a pattern here. Nice. Only the Jews could turn a "horrible tragedy" into a big, fat, cash machine. I'm already suspicious.
Knowing the Jews own Hollywood (after all, if you can produce a Hasidic Jew reggae star, you can do pretty much anything), I'm thinking this DVD was shot with some grainy photography and a group of money (not food) hungry extras trying to break into the biz. After all, I have friends who would happily starve and trod around barefoot for a few weeks for a shot to meet Spielberg, so why should these guys be any different?
The real surprises came from within the camp, however. That's when you really get an understanding of how far the Jews are willing to go to sell this story. I mean, each camp, especially Birkenau, is absurdly big. Like, amusement park big. There are pictures of prisoners on the walls of the barracks, but there damn sure aren't six million of them. Their excuse? They say after some time, they stopped taking pictures of the prisoners because after awhile, it became too expensive. Who but a Jew would dream up an excuse like that? This place sure looks big enough to hang six million pictures someplace. And 80 zloty for my visit buys more than a few rolls of film, so what the fuck?
There's a Death Wall memorial outside Block 11 where apparently thousands or millions of Jews were executed. But if you look closely near the bottom (not visible in photo) you can actually see places where people have engraved their initials. True. I'm not sure if they're all the craftsmen who were so proud of the work they performed on the Death Wall or what, but there are in fact inscriptions on the Death Wall. I lost a little respect for the Jews here. Heads are going to roll in quality control (puns that rhyme!!!) when word of this gets out.
Next they show us a room in Block 11 where there are a series of beds, apparently meant to sleep as many as 16 Jews in each one. Now, I left my tape measure at home, but I know I'm pretty skinny, and there's no way more than four of me are fitting on one of these beds. Jews are supposed to be better at math than this...
By now immensely skeptical, I ask our guide how she could possibly talk about these terrible atrocities day in and day out. She gave an Oscar-worthy performance about how her grandmother's brothers were executed for smuggling food. For a moment, I suspended my disbelief and actually got choked up. Remember at the end of Gladiator when Lucilla looks at Maximus as he lay dying and says "Go to them." Remember that? I almost said that. Man, that would have been amazing. Years from now I'm going to wish I said that.
So, if I had to rate Auchwitz/Birkenau, I'd give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. Set design was pretty shoddy, and the plot seems like it has a few holes in it, but the acting and the overall expanse of the scene layout is very impressive. Worth seeing in the "theatre," but for a mere 55 zloty, you may as well get the DVD.
1 comment:
I love it! As hilarious as a commentary about a terrible tragedy could ever be...I give it a 5 out of 5...
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