Ernest Leitz saved lives

[farlymac]

From the beginning of mankind, it has been whomever got the upper hand in dealing with those they don't like, or lusting after their territory that have been the oppressors.

Tribes leaving Africa for better places are replaced by following tribes with higher war skills. The Neanderthals were supplanted by later groups, as some of the supplants were then later run over by someone else.

On our own continent, wars and oppression didn't start when the Europeans arrived on the scene, but with the native peoples themselves thousands of years before. It's just that the Westward migrants had a more efficient way of dealing with those that got in the way with their advanced weaponry.

As we "Americans" started to live the dream of "Manifest Destiny", the Native peoples of not only our continent, but of the Pacific Islands (especially Hawaii and the Philippines) suffered for it.

But along the way, there are always those who have empathy for the oppressed, and do what they can to provide safety and support. Unfortunately it's usually too little, and not well coordinated among the empathizers. You always hear or read tales of those who belonged to some radical society that was pushing out or suppressing the local folks, but secretly took care of them. Sometimes it's the only way to be able to determine when it is safe to move people from one place to another, or where to keep them hidden.

I have no idea how much of Herrs Schindler, Leitz, and many others efforts to save lives of the oppressed during WWII is real, or exaggerated by the story tellers (something Hollywood is good at). But whether they saved one person, or thousands of people, they did the right thing under the circumstances, regardless of their political affiliation.

You only have to hear the survivors tell what a great thing it was that this was done for them by someone who risked their own life to save theirs. We need more clandestine helpers every day, because just as it is the human condition to be the apex ruler of everything they see, it is also our capacity for compassion that tampers the fevered fires of destiny.

PF

 

[noisycheese]

Communists are same as Nazis. Countries were invaded, tens of millions were killed, people flee countries just as from Nazis.
Yet, nobody questioning soviet artist and scientists and else for been commies.
Nobody question Picasso for taking money from communists., either.

Hear, hear.

...I may like Ernst Leitz's cameras but I certainly do not like his politics. It is quite simple. Ernst Leitz was a Nazi....

@Pioneer,
It is quite simple - with regard to fascist socialist police states that are armed to the teeth and have stripped the people of any and all means of resistance: You either do what they tell you with a big toothy grin on your face, or they kill you and your family.

If they tell you to join the Nazi party, you join - and gladly - or you get to watch them dismember your spouse and children in front of you.

If anyone can offer solid proof that Ernst Leitz actually supported, endorsed, advocated or actually believed in the abomination of Naziism, please do so. Until such time, history records the fact that Leitz saved 73 lives, Jewish and otherwise while risking his own life in the process.


The takeaways are obvious:
Actions speak louder than words.
History cannot be denied.

 

[flagellum]

It is worth noting that punishments for people who refused to collaborate with the Nazis was hardly as harsh as is often thought. You might lose Nazi business or face political trouble, but there are no recorded trends of Germans refusing to collaborate and facing death or deportation (read:death) as a result. Even soldiers ordered to commit atrocities could abstain with little more than career repercussions. There was even one commander in the east who wrote to Hitler personally, criticizing the brutality and Mass killings. He was simply reassigned - no need to kill dissenters when you can simply find a careerist or diehard Nazi willing to do the job.

It is likely, I believe, that Leitz joined to preserve his business, not to stave off deportation to a camp. Motivations for saving that business (whether selfish or wanting to save his employees) are unclear, but the penalties for Germans who did not want to support the Nazis were fairly inconsequential.

 

[flagellum]

Similar figure from Siemens.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe

They made a movie about him. One impressive scene was people got shielded under 卐 flag from Japanese air raids.

Unfortunately Siemens as a firm also made extensive use of concentration camp slave labor during the war. Not sure if that was ever the case case with Leitz.

 

[Keith]

As a side comment I watched the superb German movie 'Downfall' last night on Netflix ... I've seen it before and it's the movie that that very clever Nikon/Hitler clip was made from.

I have to rate that as one of the finest films I've ever seen.

 

[Bill Clark]

My wife had a recent client (she died); who, with her sister, lived through Nazi Germany as a Jew during WWII. She wrote this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Hiding-Open-Holocaust-Sabina-Zimering/dp/0878391711

At least click on the link and read the reviews.

If you’re interested in WWII and Germany please consider reading it. It is a biography of her and her sisters experiences during WWII. It maybe available at your community library as it is available at the library here.

Both sisters end up here in Minneapolis with virtually nothing but were determined to succeed. One sister became a M. D. The orher, with her husband, invested wisely here in Minneapolis.

My Mom’s grand parents came to the U.S. from Germany. When I came back from Viet Nam, our family had a get together. My Uncle Wayne, my Mom’s brother, and I visited for a short while. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Here he is, German heritage, killing Germans. He is one of the few POW’s who was captured by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, escaped and made it back to the American side.

My wife and I took time to visit the memorial in Germany, last October, for what happened at the Battle of the Bulge. I didn’t realize it but General Patton is buried there.

 

[noisycheese]

It is worth noting that punishments for people who refused to collaborate with the Nazis was hardly as harsh as is often thought. You might lose Nazi business or face political trouble, but there are no recorded trends of Germans refusing to collaborate and facing death or deportation (read:death) as a result. Even soldiers ordered to commit atrocities could abstain with little more than career repercussions. There was even one commander in the east who wrote to Hitler personally, criticizing the brutality and Mass killings. He was simply reassigned - no need to kill dissenters when you can simply find a careerist or diehard Nazi willing to do the job.

It is likely, I believe, that Leitz joined to preserve his business, not to stave off deportation to a camp. Motivations for saving that business (whether selfish or wanting to save his employees) are unclear, but the penalties for Germans who did not want to support the Nazis were fairly inconsequential.

As I said above:

If anyone can offer solid proof that Ernst Leitz actually supported, endorsed, advocated or actually believed in the abomination of Naziism, please do so.

@flagellum, since you claim that "It is worth noting that punishments for people who refused to collaborate with the Nazis was hardly as harsh as is often thought. You might lose Nazi business or face political trouble, but there are no recorded trends of Germans refusing to collaborate and facing death or deportation (read:death) as a result," I would like to invite you to provide us with some solid substantiation for that claim.

 

[flagellum]

I’m afraid I don’t have an internet-friendly source at my fingertips, though if I find one I will post here. Doris Bergen’s War and Genocide, considered one of the best overviews out there by most of the scholarly historical community, delves into this idea in detail, however. Her basic thesis is that Germans had far more chances to resist the Nazis than they actually pursued (indeed, that the Nazis were extremely afraid of public opinion turning against them, hence the outsourcing of much of their atrocities to outside Germany). All of the examples I mentioned are listed in her book, though I regretfully just returned my copy to the library. An excellent read on the contemporary scholarly thought on the Holocaust, though.

UPDATE: Here is one of the examples listed by Bergen - Johannes Blaskowitz, who commanded the Nazi forces in Poland, wrote to Hitler to formally protest the mass killings and other atrocities that were happening in the country. Instead of being deported, killed, etc., as may be the stereotype, Blaskowitz was simply reassigned to an inferior post. Bergen argues this was typical of the Nazis in Germany - the Nazis largely operated on the assumption that lethal force was not necessary if you simply need to threaten someone's career/business to get them back in line. Of course, this only applied to people deemed "Aryan" or otherwise not targeted by the Nazi ideology.

 

[kshapero]

Revisionist history is truly a wonderful thing. We can use it to turn Nazis into good guys.

This is a bunch of BS in my opinion.

This has been documented as very true. Even books written about it. OP discovered this is good but it's been a known fact for a number of years.

 

[peterm1]

It is worth noting that punishments for people who refused to collaborate with the Nazis was hardly as harsh as is often thought. You might lose Nazi business or face political trouble, but there are no recorded trends of Germans refusing to collaborate and facing death or deportation (read:death) as a result. Even soldiers ordered to commit atrocities could abstain with little more than career repercussions. There was even one commander in the east who wrote to Hitler personally, criticizing the brutality and Mass killings. He was simply reassigned - no need to kill dissenters when you can simply find a careerist or diehard Nazi willing to do the job.

It is likely, I believe, that Leitz joined to preserve his business, not to stave off deportation to a camp. Motivations for saving that business (whether selfish or wanting to save his employees) are unclear, but the penalties for Germans who did not want to support the Nazis were fairly inconsequential.

Not always so. But repercussions did seem to depend upon the surrounding circumstances - such as the nature of the offence (and helping Jews escape was very serious that could at least land the offender in concentration camp) and whether the perpetrator was himself an Aryan or not.

Even then, the punishments could be severe for quite minor offences. For example Sophie Scholl, and Aryan and a university student with her brother were guillotined by the Nazis for not much more than pinning up a few anti Nazi flyers. (Not well known but beheading was a favourite form of Nazi capital punishment for certain offences at least).

It is true though that in some circumstances the Nazis were less willing to go the full distance. This was especially the case early on when they were still not sure of how Germans would respond to some Nazi laws and they felt the need for a more "softly, softly" approach when threats and intimidation were preferred.

It is also true that in principle soldiers could refuse to kill unarmed citizens though in practice few did so due to group pressure.

In relation to joining the Nazi Party I think any German industrialist would feel pressure to do so in order to preserve his firm. In the light of Leitz's actual behaviour towards Jews, I draw no negative inference from this. (Oscar Schindler, famously, was a member of the Nazi Party also and he certainly should not be criticized for that action given he used it to save lives - to his own detriment, given he ended the war broke).

In relation to Leitz's saving of Jews, I think his motivations for that, on the other hand were perfectly clear. He did it because he was a man of conscience and it was the right thing to do. I am reinforced in this belief by the fact that he kept it a secret even long after the war (in part because he knew that it would be frowned upon by some Germans who were still pro Nazi, even then).

 

[benlees]

Click on the link on the bottom of the OP link; Gino Bartali- that dude was a hero.

 

[Huss]

Time to close down the thread.

Why? The discussion has been very civil and reasoned.

 

[kuuan]

I'd think that during these time, for any public it was either being a collaborator or.. a hero soon to be terminated, little in between. If any choice it was purely private and to be a bit of both, the one officially and the other hidden.