Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Another quarrel with reality and history
Leftists seem to believe that if you don't think about it, it will go away
A tourist attraction popular with children has sparked fury by displaying a model railway version of Auschwitz complete with cattle trucks, labourers' huts and barbed wire.
A Holocaust survivor was among those to criticise Birmingham's Wonderful World of Trains and Planes for the 'crass' miniature railway set of the infamous concentration camp.
The static train set is a dark addition to the intricate village green, mountain and woodland rail layouts at the venue, which is popular with children and model enthusiasts.
The detailed model of Auschwitz, where at least 1.3million people were slaughtered during the Second World War, shows a train entering the Nazi death camp.
The model of the camp where around a million Jews were murdered is situated next to a 1930s seaside scene and Swinging Sixties London in the tourist attraction.
The exhibit claims it 'will take you on a journey of adventure past, present and future'.
Mala Tribich, a survivor of both Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps who now gives talks on the traumatic experiences, also criticised the model railway.
The 84-year-old said: 'What are they trying to say? They used trains in wartime and trains played a very big part in the Holocaust, they could not have done what they did without trains.
'They were moving millions of people, but then you have to show the whole exhibition in a different context. As it is, it is useless, frivolous, even.'
Visitor to the attraction Simon Hardy said: 'It's just unthinking and crass. Totally bizarre, those are the only words for it.
Peter Smith, managing director of Birmingham's Wonderful World of Trains and Planes, defended the piece and said it had proven popular with visitors.
He said: 'It's gone down very well. I have seen people in tears as they realise that without the trains the Holocaust would not have happened.
SOURCE
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3 comments:
Sanitize history, lose the opportunity to learn from it and you get to relive it and learn the hard way. This concept is beyond the "I'm offended by everything" crowd.
It is nonsense to say that without trains the Holocaust would not have happened. The Nazis would have simply used trucks or busses.
Trucks and buses could not have moved as many people as trains did, the logistics are much more complicated. At the least, the Nazis would have had to kill the Jews wherever they lived, in the open, and the propagandists would not have been able to hide the Holocaust as they did at the time, which in turn would have engendered an earlier response against it.
Socialists love control, it's what they're all about. Cars and trucks are controlled by the driver, not the state. No surprise that Germany's National Socialists preferred trains and were ready to use them for the worst.
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