#politics Spoiler.. Sebbies father was 14, not a big war hero, and the people fighting the communists in his story were nazi aligned. Anyone ever hear of the Budapest ghetto? Yeah. That.
probably because you were nazis.. moral of the story, Sebastian, is to stop being a nazi.
@AnnetteTRemain I don't know this guy but my mom was there too at roughly 14 years old. My grandfather was imprisoned during the revolt, my grandmother was sent to the countryside, and my mom and aunt fled to Vienna. I do know that there were still some far right factions and Nazi sympathizers but they were a tiny minority after 11 years. The saddest part about that period is that it may have been for nothing. Hungary eventually returned to fascism under Orban. The lessons are forgotten...
@hallmarc Sorry I am referring to WWII in Budapest. Sebastian likes to tell the story that it was revolution for freedom then. They can't gloss over what was happening when soviet army invaded Budapest in WWII.
@hallmarc They can't gloss over the ugliness of what happened in WWII. Just like Americans can't gloss over indian wars, slavery, eugenices, american bund, klan, etc. It is what it is. Sebastian romanticizes the part about fighting for Axis.
@AnnetteTRemain didn't know about his history but just read some of it. As with everything, Hungarian history during that time is complicated. For example, there's something to be said about Horthy's govt resisting deportations all the way until 1944. That in fact probably saved part of my family (and smarts on my grandfather and great grandmother's part). We know that Hungary primarily joined the Axis to regain territory and prestige lost in WWI. But fascism was already afoot. /1
@AnnetteTRemain it's impossible to know what would have happened had Hungary tried to remain neutral or join the allies. It was extremely perilous for eastern countries. One thing I do know is that all of my relatives who survived stated that the Soviet allied govt was unequivocally worse than the Nazis (counterintuitive I know). They stripped the country of most of its private businesses and terrorized the population on a regular basis. My grandfather was picked up twice and held for days.
@hallmarc @AnnetteTRemain Indeed. I had a cousin whose wife and children were shot by the Nazis in front of him, who was imprisoned in a concentration camp, escaped only to be captured by the Russians, and said the same--that the Russians were worse than the Nazis.
@Notokay How were the Russians worse when the nazis shot his wife and children in front of him and had him in concentration camp? I had family purged by Stalin and a friends grandfather spent time in a Russian prison which was bad but still doesn't equal the nazis or Japanese ultranationalists. @hallmarc
@Notokay Russia collaborated with Germany in beginning with splitting up Poland, killed a lot of their workers, terrible gulags, and did some purging of which some of my family was purged but they did not target people for worldwide extinction, put civs/ pows in research centers to test surgical procedures, mass rape, spray children and cities with biological weapons to experiment, frost studies on prisoners, etc. Sign me up for being delivered in cattle car to Siberia to freeze. @hallmarc
I heard after this cousin passed that he had indeed been subject to Mengele's experiments because he had been a twin. If he said the Russians were worse in his experience, I believe him. I am well aware of the scope of the Shoah. I had other cousins who were burned alive in a bunker in Belarus. I cannot enumerate how much family I lost on all sides.
@Notokay I can't believe him. I trust that you do but I don't. Not one bit. I can't see how someone can have their family murdered, survive medical experiments of Mengele, then somehow wind up Russian pow -and- think Russian prison camp was worse. And I have known people whose grandfather went to Russian prison camp. I'd rather be in hands of them than nazis or ultranationalist shinto anyday. @hallmarc
@Notokay @AnnetteTRemain not that it's a competition but more than half my grandparents friends and family in their generation were killed by the Nazis, including my grandfather's cousin who was gunned down with her baby and his mother who launched herself at the man in grief and rage. My grandfather himself twice escaped attempts to send him to camps, once by bribing an officer with a worthless briefcase, crawling out a bathroom window, and jumping under a personnel truck. He died of cancer.
@hallmarc I had family purged by Stalin. Doesn't make nazis ok. It's not a choice. I get it that individual citizens had decisions made for them by whomever got into power. I guess where I am going with this is they were purging jews not just fighting communists.
@hallmarc All of our history is complicated including US. Many of them were fascist just like many of ours were then and are today. Yes lots of people died opposing groups in power and some capitulated to save themselves or their families. Tale as old as time. That is partly how victims were created was people protecting themselves and not their neighbor.
@AnnetteTRemain and there is the little matter of 12M+ directly killed by Stalin through executions, famine, and Gulag conditions. Probably 25M+ via war-related policies and the indirect consequences of his paranoid governance.
@hallmarc True on all. Stalin lived longer than Hitler. I'd still rather face soviet soldier than gestapo or imperial soldiers.
@hallmarc Here is my reasoning... the soviet soldier would view me as a human being. Sure he might shoot me or send me to Gulag or reeducation camp but he wouldn't view me as a bug. Gestapo and Ultranationalist Shinto viewed anyone not in their elite group as bugs.
@hallmarc It is sad we all lost so much in prior generations to have to learn for ourselves.
@AnnetteTRemain or are you talking about during the war?