r/MadeMeSmile • u/RoyalChris • Feb 25 '25

Wholesome Moments Nicholas Winton helped 669 Jewish children escape the Nazis and his efforts went unrecognised for 50 years. Then, in 1988, while sitting as a member of a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he had rescued, who were now adults.

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u/faunaVibrissae Feb 25 '25

Those people are either supremely uninformed or they secretly support it. I can't imagine being like that.

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u/ComradeDizzleRizzle Feb 25 '25

It's almost always the second answer.

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u/Lopsided-Weather6469 Feb 26 '25

Or they are in denial.

My grandmother was born in 1920; even though she first hand witnessed the Nazi regime she was a holocaust denier.

She actually hated the Nazis for sending her two brothers and her husband to war (one of her brothers died, the other two men were severely wounded), but still she claimed the holocaust didn't happen or at least was greatly exaggerated.

She simply refused to acknowledge that people were capable of perpetrating something like this.

One day she told me how she witnessed her Jewish neighbours, including a girl her age whom she used to play with as a kid, being taken away from their home by authorities, never to be seen again.

I asked her what she thought happened to them, but she refused to give me a clear answer.

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u/bamatrek Feb 26 '25

It is absolutely insane what your brain will make or let you ignore to protect itself from horrifying realities. I'm disgusted by that, but also have to recognize that it's a design feature of the human brain. It's easy as an outsider to see the horror that causes and denounce it, but it's really more complicated that people like to believe.

It has some really hard to face truths about living in a human society when you realize how subconsciously people do choose willful ignorance.

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u/bigfootsdemise Feb 26 '25

Wow. Thank you for the insight.

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u/slartibortfast Feb 26 '25

Even back then. Winton would have saved thousands more but FDR actively refused them. The greatest president.

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u/Primary_Mycologist95 Feb 26 '25

I am not american. One of the strongest senses of cognitive dissonance I've felt was walking around the war museum in Saigon. If you've not been, it would be... confronting for the average person to say the least. Three american tourists (a mother and two teenage daughters) were walking around ahead of me and I overheard them saying how much of what is on display must not be real, as in made up, just like all that holocaust stuff from ww2.

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u/gdj11 Feb 27 '25

I think gullible is the word

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u/ncnotebook Feb 26 '25

they secretly support it

I don't know. If it was that common, I feel you'd hear more about people supporting the Holocaust. I don't think I've ever heard that once, among the multitude of conspiracy theories and odd claims. Whether online, in person, or second-hand.

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u/RedFoxinSF Feb 26 '25

I worked for a Jewish caterer in Maryland in the 1990s. At one point, a warehouse assistant came up to the front desk to chat with me and a couple salespeople. Someone made a crack about one of the owners being demanding, which they could be, but then this warehouse assistant said with a sly smile, "You know, I don't think they gassed enough of them." We were all horrified and let him know. He became sullen and slunk off. Holocaust supporters exist, they just don't usually come right out and say it.

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u/ncnotebook Feb 27 '25 edited Feb 27 '25

Holocaust supporters exist, they just don't usually come right out and say it.

I should mention that I know they exist. But in online places where people say similarly-fucked up stuff, it seems to be dwarfed by those simply questioning it.

Maybe it's more nuanced than that. A lot of deniers don't deny the whole thing, but part of it; maybe many of them don't explicitly support what they believed actually did happen. I know Mel Gibson asked Winona Ryder if she was an oven-dodger, which I guess could count.

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u/faunaVibrissae Feb 26 '25

It's common enough that most of America is in support of it and elected officials who openly support it. If I could get out, I would.

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u/RedFoxinSF Feb 26 '25

There are definitely some US scumbags -- and I don't blame for you for wanting to leave -- but I would not say most of America supports the Holocaust. Check this out, if you'd like: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48112-increasing-numbers-of-americans-say-antisemitism-is-a-serious-problem