Jeroen wrote <<I do not have to visit a concentration camp to know what happened. I have *seen* the footage of Jews being brought together at railway stations and put on trains bound for places like Auschwitz. I have seen the footage of those deportations and the reports of what happened to those people once they arrived in the concentration camps. So, how exactly am I wrong? There were no deportations? There were deportations but not by train? The Jews were not forced to go but went voluntarily? For clarity, I must point out that while you make a distinction between concentration camps and death camps, over here *both* types are usually referred to as "concentration camps".>>
Ilana There *is* distinction between concentration camps and death camps - they were build for different purposes and they *do* look differently. Jews (and Gypsies, and mentally ill) were taken, mostly, to death camp - group of people goes in, murdered, possessions sorted, gold removed, burned - ready for the next group. In concentration camps people lived (if you can call it life), sometimes surviving for several years. POWs camp in "King Rat" is closer to concentration camp. As for "deportation" word - you, probably, right - I need to check dictionary. As far as I remember it's moving people from one point to other forcibly - What is going on at the destination point does not matter. Ilana << which brings unconnected question - what *do* you do in your country at 9-May?>> Jeroen <<Nothing special, since it is not some kind of special day to us. What *should* we be doing on May 9th, then?>> Ilana I brought this date with me from Soviet Union and learned quick enough, that all that I learned there about "what everybody does" has to be referred as "what somebody does" or as "what is done only in Soviet Union. So I don't say that you *should* do anything at 9 May. In Soviet Union (and now in what left of it) this date is The Victory Day - the end of WWII. During this day (and some weeks before and after) there are WWII movies on TV and cinemas (not all of them 50 years old), there are concerts of WWII songs (again not all of them 50 years old), veterans of WWII are relating their memories. On day itself there is Silence Minute for the memory of all 30 million (yes, I know - it's SU number), there are ceremonies in places of remembrance (sp) - Grave of Unidentified Soldier, Army cemeteries and various memorials on the places where ghettos were, at mass graves, where Jews were slaughtered (according to SU brotherhood of nations policy the plaque (sp) says, usually, "Soviet citizens" and not "Jews"), at, what used to be, concentration or death camps (yes, not all Jews were moved by trains - sometimes they (and other prisoners) were marched to the place of their death). So I was there - near giant flower beds at Rumbula and Bikernieku, where there are no names - only lists - here are buried such and such amount of grownups, such and such amount of children, and I was in Salaspils - you enter it under big wall on which in several languages is written "beyound this wall the land is weeping" - and saw the lake that prisoners were made to dig with spoons, and the 8 like road which they walked caring strachers full of sand, and what used to be kids barrack, where, according to documents that were found, blood was taken from children that were pronounced "race pure" for the German wounded and the wall where prisoners were shot. There is small museum there with pictures and documents - tiny in relation to Jerusalem's Yad va-Shem - frightening neverless. Salaspils was concentration camp - with crematorium (there is black marble the now and something inside it makes beating heart sounds), but no gas chambers and plenty of barracks and places "to give prisoners something to do". Death camps, as you, I saw only via somebody else's eyes in books, in movies, in documentaries, talking to two of cousins' kids who went on marsh of Life to Poland. Death camps *are* built differently. Ilana
