Found this recently. Submitting without commentary.
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“What I am about to tell you is something you’ve probably never heard or read in history books,” she likes to tell audiences. I am a witness to history.”
“I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We voted him in.”
“I wasn’t old enough to vote in 1938. I was eleven. But, I remember. We elected him by a landslide – 98 percent of the vote.”
“Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force. No so. In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25 percent inflation and 25 percent bank loan interest rates.”
“Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs. My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.”
“We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933.” she recalls. “We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living.”
“Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group – Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone in Germany was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria. We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back.”
“Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler. We were overjoyed, and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.”
“After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.”
“Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family. Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been required to give up for marriage.”
“Then we lost religious education for kids.”
“Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school.. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler, March 13, 1938, I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang ‘Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,’ and had physical education.”
“Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail.”
“And then things got worse.”
“The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free. We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.”
“My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination.”
“I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing. Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time, unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler. It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.”
“Then food rationing began.”
“In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death. Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.”
“Soon after this, the draft was implemented.”
“It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps. During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys. They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines.”
“When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat.”
“Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service. When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers.”
“You could take your children ages four weeks old to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, seven days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.”
“Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna..”
“After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full.”
“If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.”
“As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80 percent of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families.”
“All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.”
“We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.”
“We had consumer protection, too”
“We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, and then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.”
“In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps. The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated. So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work.”
“I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van. I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months. They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness. As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.’
“Then they took our guns”
“Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long afterwards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.”
“No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.”
“Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria. Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.”
“This is my eye-witness account.”
“It’s true. Those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity. America is truly is the greatest country in the world. Don’t let freedom slip away.”
“After America, there is no place to go.”
Stucky says:
Another “survival” story ….. a holy fucking medical fucking miracle story.
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Man Cut in Half Lives to Walk Again
With all surviving odds against him, Peng Shulin’s body was cut in half by a large transport truck in 1995, leaving his doctors shocked and amazed by his survival. Not only is it a miracle that he has lived to tell the tale, he’s now learning to walk again.
It took a team of more than 20 doctors working feverishly to save his life.
Skin was grafted from his head to close his torso up, but his lower body could not be saved — leaving him to ‘stand’ a full 2 feet 6 inches (78 centimeters) in height.
After being bedridden for years, doctors in China didn’t have very much hope that he would ever be able to lead any form of a normal life again, reports Metro.
Peng began exercising his arms and building his strength up to carry out daily routine chores, empowering him to do things such as washing his face and brushing his teeth.
When doctors at the China Rehabilitation Research Centre in Beijing found out about Peng’s quandary, they teamed together to devise a program to get him walking once more.
They came up with an ingenious way to allow him to walk on his own merit by creating a sophisticated ‘egg cup-like’ casing to hold his body with two bionic legs attached to it.
With the aid of his uniquely adapted legs and resized walking frame, Peng has been taking his first steps around the centre.
Peng is thrilled with his device, and the opportunity it affords him to learn to walk again.
http://www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/man-cut-in-half-lives-to-walk-again/offbeat-news
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14th January 2013 at 10:49 am
Yojimbo says:
Excellent. This should be required reading for all students.
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14th January 2013 at 10:49 am
Jimi d says:
This article should be printed and mass mailed to as many people as possible so that a ‘hard copy’ exists for future reference to all who doubt that a similar fate cannot happen in the 21st century here in the USA. We are well down the road toward total control and total loss of freedoms. Just ask Naomi Wolf. All it will take for the final closure of our society is a financial crisis combined with a ‘bank holiday’ or another terrorist attack. Frightening times indeed.
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14th January 2013 at 11:06 am
majormocambo says:
Stucky, the story sounds a bit contrived to support someone’s agenda now days. Its like one of the chain emails my mom gets that tells them to send it to their ten best friends. Just saying.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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14th January 2013 at 2:02 pm
AWD says:
Great story Stuck.
Almost everything the Nazis did, the liberal progressives are doing now. They must have gotten the playbook. They are seizing power, and instead of making people work, they are controlling the populous by allowing them not to work and still have everything completely paid for. Better slavery by not having to work. Hence, they their only job is reproduce and vote. It’s working marvelously. As long as we can borrow more money to pay for it, and tax people with jobs out of existence.
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14th January 2013 at 2:17 pm
Ron says:
Take away the jew killing and our government reminds me of nazi germanys.We did go to the other side of the planet to kill arabs(brown folks)muslims. But hey its ok they are terrorist.
I sure am glad we spend billions on to fight terrorist,I imagine many cant sleep at night thinking about some arab with a rusty ak47 wanting to kill them.
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14th January 2013 at 2:54 pm
budz4u says:
Where did this story come from? I would love to share but to whom do I give credit to?
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14th January 2013 at 3:19 pm
card802 says:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars/2011/04/she-survived-hitler-and-wants-to-warn-america.html
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14th January 2013 at 4:39 pm
AKAnon says:
Sorry, like Major Mocambo, I’m not buyin’ it. The story may well be an accurate recounting of events, and I appreciate the intent, but I don’t buy it as a first-person account. “By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.” Does the average Austrian woman born in 1927 use the expression “we had been had” in a serious article?
Hot debate. What do you think?
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14th January 2013 at 4:44 pm
card802 says:
My mom, who is 78 years old says at the end of any open ended sentence that is slightly sexual.
“That’s what she said.” And she laughs and laughs.
They didn’t talk that way in 1934 either.
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14th January 2013 at 4:48 pm
card802 says:
She did tell me an old joke once about Thomas Edison and his light bulb.
“How many mice does it take to screw in an Edison light bulb?
Two, but don’t ask me how they got in there.”
My other favorite is:
“Why haven’t they discovered a cure for aids?
Because they can’t teach mice how to buttfuck.”
Yeah, 1934.
She slays me.
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14th January 2013 at 4:53 pm
Administrator says:
She appears to be legit. The libs were trying to discredit her, but her story looks true. Google her name.
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14th January 2013 at 5:05 pm
Stucky says:
AKAnon / Major Mocambo
You guys are too jaded. Check out card802′s link.
As far as language she used that doesn’t sound “German” …. that what happens when you live in a new country long enough. About 13 years after we moved to America, my uncle from Austria visited us. He was SHOCKED at my parent’s Americanized German.
I think the article is 100% legit.
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14th January 2013 at 5:23 pm
Hollow man says:
My dumb ass thinks that is what is occuring in the United States right now.
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14th January 2013 at 10:58 pm
Makati1 says:
Legit or not, it is an interesting story. But, the ending is in the present tense, and that is not the USofA today. Look around you. Where do you see ‘freedom’?
You never totally own your home. Try to not pay property taxes for a few years and find out who owns it. You need a license to do almost anything that you need to do to live here. You are all but strip searched if you want to travel by air and that is coming to the bus and train stations near you soon.
Try to work and not pay income taxes. (Under the table income will be the next target as they get the system up and running that will be to tie your apparent (taxed) income to your buying habits. Do they ask your zip code at the department stores when you pay cash? Sometimes your phone number also. And you are photographed by at least one camera. Your cell phone can be tracked. Can you buy gold without giving your name? (I have not bought gold for decades so I am not sure about this one.) Guns? Ammunition? Certain fertilizers? Can you keep your kid out of school if you want to? I don’t mean for illness or ‘home schooling’ but for extended travel?
Try buying a car with cash in amounts over $10,000. Try to take more than $10,000. out of the country without reporting it. Try going to Canada or Mexico without a passport. There was a time, not too long ago that an American could cross both borders without showing ID. Ditto for foreign travel.
I could go on and on … Americans are NOT free.
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14th January 2013 at 11:04 pm
Bullock says:
I am reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It is hard to put down because I can relate to what is being said. Truly sad times we live in. And most of the population has not a clue and thinks I am a nut case for saying anything.
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14th January 2013 at 8:59 pm
Administrator says:
Bullock
I read that book when I was a teenager for fun. Shirer is a great writer.
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14th January 2013 at 9:26 pm
Nobama says:
You read it “For fun”
Is that some kind of fucking sick joke?
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14th January 2013 at 2:17 am