Band of Brothers Ep.9

Respectfully, The Boy in The Striped Pajamas is a movie that I and many other Jewish people (DISCLAIMER: obviously I don't speak for all Jewish people) consider to be Nazi humanization porn at worst and at BEST it's a problematic film that can and has had a negative impact for certain people within the Jewish community. The film minimizes both Jewish people and the Holocaust writ large (the whole plot literally centers around the camp commandant and his family), the perpetrators rather than the victims are focused on and the whole movie is spent trying to get us to feel bad for the people who perpetrated everything in the first place. Please know, I mean no offense and am not really directing this rant @ you... and this is not meant to be rude or disrespectful. I am bringing it up to give them another perspective I have heard echoed from all but one of the people in my particular section of the Jewish community. There are some very very good movies out there about this time period but Boy in the Striped Pajamas is something to be gone into with a bit more nuance and understanding than is probably appropriate for a regular reaction video.

Lina Distadio

You should watch Schindler's List.

WalkingTaako

Man on man. When they came across the concentration camp, it broke my heart. Was not expecting this series to touch base on that. I didn't read through all the comments, only glanced. Schindler’s List, yes, watch. But know it is very difficult and heavy to do so. I feel it should be mandatory for everyone all over the world to watch though. Other movies would be The Boy in the Striped Pajamas or Life is Beautiful (a favorite of mine. Italian, so it does have subtitles).

Bonnie Smith

When you say “I’m very disappointed that neither of you knew anything about the holocaust.” That comes across as extremely condescending and scolding. That’s why you’re being “attacked”, if you can call it that. Not sure why you had to make it a racial thing though. It’s a humanity problem, not just “white people”. Be better, man. Didn’t this episode teach you to keep hate out of your heart?

Michael King

The Japanese were cruel and violent towards POWs NOT because they lacked resources; they raped the resources of every country they occupied. They were barbaric because they considered the POWs as inferior to them, as well as shameful for surrendering.

Catherine LW

Ddid the Germans know about the camps... It'd be hard for a lot of Germans to truthfully claim they knew NOTHING. The scale of mass murder would have been impossible to hide from some of the local towns. It's not like there were just a couple camps, they were all over the place. All of the train rails connecting everything... they knew. Knowing doesn't mean they could/wanted to do anything to stop it though. There were likely plenty of Germans who were fine with it, and those who objected didn't really have any power to stop it. Hell, they'd be thrown into the camp if the wrong person heard them complaining. As for America... we had gotten reports from Russians who were the 1st to stumble upon a camp, but US leaders and even soldiers on the ground assumed the Russians were being 'over dramatic' about what they were reporting back. The shock our troops had in this episode was pretty accurate to what really happened. It's also true that some Germans were forced to go into the camps and see everything up close. Theres a long, but great YT video about this from Simon Whistler and 'Today I Found Out' >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTCCfHdvINE

dabbingcannasseur

Kevin, I’m thinking they thought it was a POW camp at first because there were only men there.

Catherine LW

No... I was not trying to shame anyone. Saying you are disappointed about something is completely different than belittling them. I said I was disappointed that they didn't know what type of camp it was because they didn't get the full impact of what the story is trying to convey. I then explained the difference between the 2 different typer of prisoner camps. Then quoted the name of the episode. How you turn it into shaming someone is beyond me but hey... that's on you. You have a good night also

Kevin

That’s not what I was saying. You are free to voice your opinions. Just don’t expect all “likes” and replies that agree with what you say. I’m worried that not enough people know about The Holocaust, but I’m not trying to shame people who don’t know more about it. That’s how I read your original comment. You were basically trying to shame Asia and BJ for not knowing more than they do. It’s not like they are Holocaust deniers. I’ve said all I’m going to say on the subject. Have a nice night.

Julie A

Oh... I get it now. Voice a different opinion respectfully and its ok that your disrespected and told you are not allowed to respond to a reaction that you are paying for. Sign of the times... smh

Kevin

This was a very powerful episode! One thing I always noticed, and am surprised the editors let slip past is that in the opening scene..April 11, 1945...then at the end of the episode where it cuts back to that same scene and Nixon tells the guys that Hitler is dead. Hitler actually killed himself on April 30th, not April 11th. It's hard to imagine the horrors the prisoners in those camps had to endure...unreal!

William Thorpe

You can feel disappointed but you don’t necessarily have to voice it. It’s your issue.

Julie A

I never said there was a solution. All I said was I was disappointed and it seems I've been attacked ever since. Can someone not feel disappointment over something?

Kevin

What is your solution to so many people under 40 not knowing about the Holocaust? Btw, it was Whoopi Goldberg, not Oprah.

Julie A

So I'm confused by your comment, especially telling me to grow up. I would say that since you are the one being disrespectful that you should be the one that needs to grow up. Then you list the disappointing reasons a person might not know of the genocide of the Jewish people by the hands of the Nazi's. I guess Oprah was correct when she said that the Holocaust was just white people problems.

Kevin

Grow up. The reason less and less people are going to know about that in the future, is because of certain political figures in various states don’t want those things taught in school anymore. Many even deny that it ever happened, or that “it wasn’t THAT bad”. And these two do live in Texas. Only way it could be worse in that department is if they lived in Florida. That is TRULY disappointing. The whitewashing of history.

Michael King

This is the most impactful episode of the series for me. When serving in the Army (in the 80's) I had the opportunity to visit the Dachau camp. Standing there in the middle of the camp you could feel the weight of what happened there. This is the third time seeing this episode and it still brings back that feeling and tears to the eyes

Doug Elbon

Listen... I'm not here to fight and I don't feel I was disrespectful in my comment. I did watch the end. And I also watched the reaction.

Kevin

Maybe you should watch everything they addressed it in their end commentary.

Movie Troll

I'm sorry but I am very disappointed that neither one of you knew about Conentration Camps. These camps are not filled with POW soldiers. These camps were filled with Jews. Their only crime was being a Jew. "This is why we fight"

Kevin

After the two of you wrap this series up, you could pick up Generation Kill for a quick 8 episode romp.

tkitez

If you ever get a chance to visit Amsterdam, make sure you take a tour of Anne Franks house, you can see exactly where she hid in the attic behind the false book shelf, it's been kept as a museum exactly as it was when she was there.

CALIXYUKON

Holocaust Remembrance Day is April 18…seems like a perfect time to review it

Noah Segal

This episode is always hard to watch, thank you again for reacting and shedding some light on what happened in the shadows of World War Two.

Nicholas Stansell

Thanks again for the reaction. Love your videos

jason

That bit when that man kissed that soldier… that always gets me really bad. I can’t even imagine. No one can. Thank God we stopped Hitler’s mission. Thank God. We must never, ever forget this history and continue educating each generation about this war.

Pink Martini AZ

The Pacific is so good. I hope they watch that one too.

Pink Martini AZ

You guys should REALLY watch the film, Night and Fog by Alain Resnais. It's a haunting documentary about concentration camps and happens to be the first film ever to discuss it. It will educate you.

Jimmie V

You need to watch Schindler's List. It's about the Jewish deathcamps and one German man who saved hundreds of them. It's a classic Stephen Spielberg.

Ed Pawley

Like others have mentioned, y’all should do a reaction to Schindler’s List. It was a juggernaut not only at the Box Office ($322 million in 1993 dollars against a budget of $22 million), but also during Awards Season - it was nominated for 12 Oscars and won 7 (Best Picture, Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Original Score (John Williams), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Production Design; the other Oscar nominations were for Best Actor (Liam Neeson), Supporting Actor (Ben Kingsley), Costume Design, Makeup & Hair, and Sound Mixing), along with 3 Golden Globes, 5 BAFTAS (UK equivalent of the Oscars), and a slew of other awards across the globe. From a cinematic and artistic viewpoint, it is considered one of the greatest films to grace the silver screen; that being said, its greatness is exceeded only by its importance in WWII History, in Jewish History and particularly that of The jShoah (The Holocaust) as well as its place in the Human Experience.

Original Cyn

Just a shout out to you Old Drill Sgt.

shawn boyce

Great watch with y'all, really heavy stuff to discover

SlavicGold

Your compassion shows . Great reaction. This was a tough one .

Michael Yoder

I went to college in Pennsylvania and I rented an apartment with two other students from an elderly Polish Jewish couple. Mr. M had a number tattoo on his wrist, having escaped from Auschwitz, rest his soul. He lived in the Warsaw Ghetto until the Nazis rounded him up with the other Jews held there. I highly recommend The Pianist, a true story of a fight for survival for a Polish Jew who was a classical pianist.

Catherine LW

Probably time to watch Schindler's List. The gravity and depravity of the Nazi extermination of the Jews and other "undersirables" is far beyond these scenes. Only a few movies matter to the meaningfulness of life and until you have seen them, you are lacking in certain depths. Schindler's List for those who have not been immersed in WWII/Holocaust history over their lives is required viewing.

IRLEPL

I second The Pacific. Few people know about the Japanese atrocities that even horrified Nazi observers in Asia.

Catherine LW

Also Nazis were a political party that was popular because of lies during a time of hardship. The German army and civilians mostly were not aware of the camps or that they were that bad because they were turned away if they got too close only the SS were held accountable for their service and actions for their loyalty to Hitler. Everyone else were just doing their job and hoping for the best. Great channel guys!

Domenic Kalaski

This is a good preparation for Schindler's List if you can handle it. Reading about things like this just isn't good enough. You have to see it. The US soldiers didn't know what they were seeing. The great tragedy is that now everyone knows what they're seeing, because it keeps happening. Right now China has a million of one of their ethnic minorities locked up in camps to be 're-educated'. We all know what that really means. Putin has just been indited by the International Criminal Court for war crimes the Russians are committing in Ukraine. It never ends.

Mr Jackpots

No one knew about the camps until they were stumbled upon. And military POW camps weren’t like that for the most part. The US and British POWs were treated good compared to that. Japan on the other hand did treat POWs terribly like that because they needed the labor and didn’t have the resources to feed their army and the POWs, and they were also told that we treated them worse if captured.

Domenic Kalaski

I went to Hebrew day school and a classmates’ mother had been a child in the holocaust. We all wondered why her mom walked with a severe limp and were told that they did “medical experiments” on the young kids. When I was young in the 1970’s I saw many old men (where I lived in South Carolina) who had been in concentration camps. I remember asking my mom why so many old men in the checkout lines at our grocery store had numbers tattooed on their arms. We read The Diary of Anne Frank in middle school, but none of our teachers went into great detail about the holocaust. Maybe we were too young? It had only happened a little over 30 years earlier.

Julie A

You mentioned The Diary of Anne Frank. After someone informed on the Frank family and they were captured, Anne, her sister, and their mother died in one of these camps. The Nazis considered Jews, Slavic people, and pretty much all minorities to be subhuman and good only for slave labor, to be worked to death on starvation rations and killed when they were too weak to keep working. For a more in-depth look at this side of the war, an extremely good movie is Schindler's List. It's based on real people and a real camp. In the Pacific, the Japanese were doing the same thing to Allied POWs and civilians of any nationality except Japanese. The mini-series The Pacific is very good, also about real people, Marines who fought there. For a documentary series if you ever feel like reacting to one of those, The War by Ken Burns is a great series about World War II. He followed people from four American towns through the war, with interviews with them decades later when he made the series. Ken Burns also made a mini-series about the Civil War and one about the Vietnam War, along with others about baseball, jazz music, the Dust Bowl in the Great Plains during the Depression, and the history of cancer treatment.

Jim Finley

Like this show, Schindler’s List is a movie everyone should see at least once. Learning our history is so important…especially today when so many people have started popping up saying it never happened.

Mary Merry Berry

nice diary of anne frank reference, respect.

Mindbomb

It's happening right now in China to the Uyghur. Disney filmed the live action Mulan in the same province that they have the camps. Stop being a muslim and become a good communist or be sterlized (if your a woman) or worked to death (if your a man).

Jerry

At The Beginning Of The Episode Captain Nixon Returned From Jumping With 17th Airborne Division. On March 24 1945 Operation Varsity Took Place The American 17th Airborne And The British 6th Airborne Divisions Jumped On Landing Zones Across The Rhine River. It Was The Largest Airborne Operation Ever Conducted.

Old Drill Sgt.

They post GOT regularly, last two episodes was 23 hours ago. I think you should be patient. Your comment is just rude.

Monnisnah

The nazi's were doped up on pervitin pills (methamphetamine) for the blitzkrieg (lighting war) with the intention of making the world German. These camps are what the third riche had in mind for everyone without Aryan features (blonde hair , blue eyes) who couldn't prove German ancestry. Their allies eventually too. The gas chambers were made in order to kill on mass without the psychological trauma of the soldiers having to shoot everyone. This is why we fight. It is important to question everything and don't go along with political ideologies because it may lead you down this road. There are case studies on why people just went along with national socialism and why others looked the other way or denied any knowledge of the crimes against humanity that took place. Germany is still shamed by these events, to the point where they banned video games that have nazi's in them. People have forgotten history and are looking the other way now with similar atrocities around the world . Embracing socialists ideals are dooming themselves to a darker future if not similar to devastation of the 20th century. Thanks for doing this series.

shawn boyce

No words can do this episode justice except maybe speechless. Just like the soldiers were when they discovered the camp. I had to erase my former post but couldn’t erase my memory of the first time watching episode 9. ”Schindler’s List,” a movie in one of your polls, comes to mind after watching this.

Jesse

I visited one of the camps when I visited Germany, Dachau, and omg it was intense. Everyone was silent as they walked through, totally heavy. My grandfather almost was sent to a camp from Norway, but the war ended.

Kristine Friling

This is the part of WWII that is the most heartbreaking but the most important to learn about.

Kristine Friling

I also recommend Schindlers List and Life is Beautiful

Kristine Friling

Also Schindler’s List

Lori Brooks

When I was in school they showed us the old footage they captured of the fields of dead bodies. Still burnt into my mind all these years later seeing the farm equipment plow them into a giant mass grave.

Darth Brooks

You should watch The Pianist. It delves more into this side of WW2. It is also a masterpiece.

Thomas E

Based on the way they been going, tomorrow Sopranos, Thursday GoT.

Darth Brooks

To think you fight a war and at the end you find this, had to be psychologically damaging. I was graced to see and hear a survivor when I was in middle school. She survived as a child just because US forces got to the camp she was in just in time. She showed us her numbered tattoo on her wrist and described in detail her experiences and what she saw. She never learned what happened to her family.

Dan63

The Germans held all of Europe for many years, until 1944 D-Day when the allies pushed ashore in Normandy, France. They kicked their butts through the Netherlands, thenBelgium all the way to the unthinkable for them, attack on their homeland, Germany. The Germans were decimated by the Allies this late in the war, that's why so many were surrendering. That wasn't a POW camp, it was an extermination camp, those deemed unfit, Jewish people, disabled, POC, were sent to these camps late in the war, for extermination. The German citizens didn't even believe it so the allies made them tour the camps to see. There were hundreds of camps across Europe. KL Auschwitz was the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers. Over 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives at that one camp.

CALIXYUKON

I remember first watching this episode when I was in high school, and it was very hard to watch. I would also recommend watching "the Pacific" in the future. It's about the marines who fought against the Japanese during the war. Maybe not right away, though. The battle scenes are more intense than Band of Brothers.

Brandon Jarrett

Probably the hardest episode of television I’ve ever watched. My great grandfather was one of the survivors liberated in those camps. It is such a hard watch.

Rachel

Whens the next game of thrones post

Max

Michelle C