This made me so sad.

If you really want to learn what happened to the Jews in WWII; visit Auschwitz Concentration camp. It is located very near Krakow, in south Poland. I have visited this place twice and will not go back. There are people who don't believe in the mass extermination of the Jewish race. I suppose their thinking is along the line of the "Flat Earth Society." They should go there. If you can't go there; you can always read the following:

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/auschwitz
 
Among the very first memories I have, below 2 years old, were our neighbors, friends & relatives crying, wailing, weeping, even screaming and ripping clothes and some self-harm, about the Holocaust. I have been wondering lately how my life would have been different in a more joyous situation. My first realization was that there are people who want me dead. As a very young child it was quite bewildering.
 
Pepper said:
Among the very first memories I have, below 2 years old, were our neighbors, friends & relatives crying, wailing, weeping, even screaming and ripping clothes and some self-harm, about the Holocaust. I have been wondering lately how my life would have been different in a more joyous situation. My first realization was that there are people who want me dead. As a very young child it was quite bewildering.
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I can relate .. @Pepper
 
I had read about the Holocaust and was deeply saddened by all that I had learned but one day shortly after I had graduated from nursing school and started my first job an old doctor came in to visit his patients.
I went with him and noticed that he had numbers on the inside of his wrist. I guess he saw that I had seen them and later on back at the nurses station he told us first hand what those concentration camps were like.
We were in tears as he told us his story. I don't think any of us will ever forget his words.
There are no books that can adequately describe those horrific events that he told us about first hand.
 
Pepper said:
Among the very first memories I have, below 2 years old, were our neighbors, friends & relatives crying, wailing, weeping, even screaming and ripping clothes and some self-harm, about the Holocaust. I have been wondering lately how my life would have been different in a more joyous situation. My first realization was that there are people who want me dead. As a very young child it was quite bewildering.
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When i was in middle school i knew a girl whose family had changed their name (from Goldberg to Gold) because of how pervasive and powerful the Bund movement was here in the USA. It was pro-fascist, anti-Semitic and actually delayed our entry into WWII.

Many Americans are fond of blaming 'those awful Germans'
while unaware or in denial about our own evils. We are after all human, and some of us are capable of rationalizing atrocities.
 
The well known Poet, who I like, Carolyn Forche, wrote a poem titled Theresienstadt, can't find the text online, but even with the absent reader, it speaks for itself.
 
Irwin said:
Not to make light of Nazi atrocities, but I don't think those are actually wedding rings since they're all exactly the same size and shape. My guess is they were used for manufacturing.
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Wedding rings tend to be the same shape and I am very interested as to how you can judge size from that photo. Just what sort of manufacture are you talking about?
 
Pepper said:
Among the very first memories I have, below 2 years old, were our neighbors, friends & relatives crying, wailing, weeping, even screaming and ripping clothes and some self-harm, about the Holocaust. I have been wondering lately how my life would have been different in a more joyous situation. My first realization was that there are people who want me dead. As a very young child it was quite bewildering.
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I am so very sorry that you have had to deal with something like this. No child should have to is bear this.
 
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Purwell said:
Wedding rings tend to be the same shape and I am very interested as to how you can judge size from that photo. Just what sort of manufacture are you talking about?
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Men's wedding bands tend to be wider than what's in that photo and women's wedding rings almost always have a mount for a gem. They look more like grommets.
 
Irwin said:
Not to make light of Nazi atrocities, but I don't think those are actually wedding rings since they're all exactly the same size and shape. My guess is they were used for manufacturing.
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I was thinking the same thing. When I looked at the picture my first thought was, how strange...did everyone wear the exact same ring back then? I don't know, maybe they did?
 
Irwin said:
Not to make light of Nazi atrocities, but I don't think those are actually wedding rings since they're all exactly the same size and shape. My guess is they were used for manufacturing.
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You think this was staged for propaganda purposes? It's possible as surely the rings and gold teeth were intended to be melted down, not kept as souvenirs.
 
Lavinia said:
You think this was staged for propaganda purposes? It's possible as surely the rings and gold teeth were intended to be melted down, not kept as souvenirs.
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Determing the validity might be easier if we could seen who that is handling the rings. The photo is dated 1945, when the camps were being liberated. Things get melted down in batches usually. This could have been a batch they hadn't gotten to yet.

Tho yes it could be another way to send the message about the extent of the horrors home. i know that Ike instructed a photographer to take lots of photos, because as he said "There will be those who will deny this all happened."
 
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Snopes.com states that the picture is genuine and that those are rings.

Traditionally, Jewish wedding bands were simple circlets of gold or silver, with no gemstones. Only the brides received rings. It was not customary for grooms to receive rings.

By the time that people reached the concentration camps, they would have sold or had taken from them anything of real value, such as heavy rings or rings with gemstones. What would be left would be the simple bands. That's what you are seeing.

The Nazis helped hang themselves by their obsessive need to photograph the camps and the activities. The leaders felt that all this would be "greatly admired" in the future, so they wanted lots of proof of what they had done. Fortunately, it allowed the Allies to more accurately prosecute those who were responsible for the atrocities as there was much proof of what had happened.

I pray we have learned our lessons well......
 

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