other people’s blogs….or how I learned about Dachau and Auschwitz

This morning, having nothing better to do, I decided to check out other people’s blogs.  I use wordpress to do my blog and I used their software to find other blogs.  WordPress directed me to blogs that I might find interesting, based on my own history of blog posting.  That’s how I found this blog post entitled Dachau and My Heavy Heart with this statement:

In truth, one concentration camp is no different from another.  If there were any significant differences between Dachau and Auschwitz, it had to be the numbers who never walked out of the camps.  But a death is a death; it doesn’t make it less painful for me just because the numbers are fewer in Dachau.

My first thought was to scoff at this, but then I realized that this blogger is right.  The significant difference between Dachau and Auschwitz is the numbers.  The first report, released by the American liberators, gave the number of deaths at Dachau as 238,000, while the first estimate of the number of deaths at Auschwitz, given by the Soviet liberators, was 4 million.

“But a death is a death,” as this blogger correctly noted.  There was one big typhus epidemic at Dachau which started in December 1944 and quickly got out of control.  There were two typhus epidemics at Auschwitz, but when the Soviet liberators arrived, there was no epidemic in progress.   How many of the deaths at Dachau and Auschwitz were caused by typhus?

January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27th, I am posting some of the photos that I took in 1998 and in 2005 at Auschwitz, the main extermination camp of the Holocaust. Auschwitz was liberated on January 27th, 1945 by soldiers of the Soviet Union.

Ruins of Krema II gas chamber at Auschwitz II, aka Birkenau

Early morning photo of the ruins of Krema III at Birkenau

The Germans marched 60,000 prisoners out of the three camps in the Auschwitz complex on January 18, 1945.  They came back twice, on January 20th and again on January 26th, to blow up the gas chambers in order to destroy the evidence.  

“scuppering” …. the new word of the day …. as in “fresh evidence of mass graves at Treblinka, scuppering the claims of Holocaust deniers”

I read this headline today in the Mail Online, a British newspaper:

British archaeologist destroys Holocaust deniers’ argument with mass grave find at Treblinka

The lead of the story is this quote:  “A British forensic archaeologist has unearthed fresh evidence to prove the existence of mass graves at the Nazi death camp Treblinka – scuppering the claims of Holocaust deniers who say it was merely a transit camp.”

I had a third-grade teacher who taught me to look up every word, that I didn’t know the meaning of, in the dictionary.  So I went directly to an online dictionary and learned that “scuppering” can be used to mean destroy or ruin.  I think a better word might be “demolish.”  But have the arguments of the Holocaust deniers been “scuppered?”  I don’t think so.

The spot where Jews disembarked from the trains to Treblinka

A lot of good comments about this subject have been posted on my previous blog about the “fresh evidence” at Treblinka here.

This article in the Mail Online states that “a lack of physical evidence in the area has been exploited by Holocaust deniers.”  The whole article seems to me to be gloating over the scuppering of Holocaust deniers, instead of just giving the facts, as a newspaper article should. 

More Holocaust education needed: one in five young Germans has never heard of Auschwitz

Today, the British newspaper Mail Online is reporting this startling news:

ONE-FIFTH of young Germans have never heard of Auschwitz, survey reveals

Does this mean one-fifth of young “ethnic Germans” (Volksdeutsche) have never heard of Auschwitz, or does it mean one-fifth of all young citizens of Germany have never heard of Auschwitz?

It is hard for me to believe that anyone in Germany has never heard of Auschwitz  — unless they are recent immigrants from Africa or the Middle East.  Did the people asking the survey question pronounce the word Auschwitz correctly? If the surveyers used the British or the American pronunciation of the word, the ethnic Germans might not have known what they were talking about.

According to the article in the Mail Online, “Twenty one per cent of people aged between 18 and 30 quizzed about the most notorious Nazi extermination camp had not heard of it, the survey revealed.”   How was the question posed:  Did the survey people ask “What was the most notorious Nazi extermination camp?”  

Good news! Mass graves found at Treblinka extermination camp

The BBC broadcast a program yesterday entitled The Hidden Graves of the Holocaust, which was about new information regarding the mass graves at Treblinka, one of the three Operation Reinhard camps.  I didn’t see the program, but I read about it here.  The article starts off with this quote:

Any doubts about the existence of mass graves at the Treblinka death camp in Poland are being laid to rest by the first survey of the site using tools that see below the ground, writes forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls.

The most important part of the article is this quote:

A 1946 report by investigators into German crimes in Poland found “a cellar passage with the protruding remains of burnt posts, the foundations of the administration building and the old well” and here and there “the remains of burnt fence posts, pieces of barbed wire, and short sections of paved road”.

Bone fragments can still be seen on the surface of the ground, especially after rain”

They also discovered human remains as they dug into the ground, and on the surface “large quantities of ashes mixed with sand, among which are numerous human bones”.

Despite this, in a later statement they said they had discovered no mass graves.

The section on Treblinka in the German Crimes in Poland. Volume I. Published by the Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. Warsaw, 1946 can be read in full here.

At the very end of the Treblinka section of the report of the Central Commission is this quote:

The eradication of all traces of the crime by wholesale burning of corpses began after Himmler’s visit in the early spring of 1943 and lasted till the Warsaw Rising, or even later. The camp was finally closed in November, 1943.

During the investigation when the ground was levelled, no collective graves were found, and this together with the evidence given by the witnesses leads to the conclusion that almost all the remains were burnt; the German authorities having had plenty of time to do it since the camp was closed. The site of the camp was ploughed over and sown, and on it Ukrainians were settled. They fled, however, on the approach of the Red Army.

Now the mass graves, that the Polish Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland was unable to find in 1945, have been found.  And it was the BBC that reported it.  The very first report of the gas chambers where Jews were being gassed was made by the BBC in 1942.

For another opinion, watch this video:

the alleged “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign at Auschwitz III, aka Monowitz

The question of the alleged Arbeit Macht Frei sign at the Monowitz (Auschwitz III) camp came up in a recent comment on my blog.  As proof that this sign taunted the prisoners in the Monowitz camp, as well as in other Nazi camps, we have the eye-witness account written by Primo Levi, who was a prisoner at Monowitz.  I previously blogged about Primo Levi here, but I didn’t include the information that Levi mentioned the sign on page 22 of the book Survival in Auschwitz, the Nazi Assault on Humanity.

On page 19, Levi wrote this about his arrival at Auschwitz on a transport train:  “A vast platform appeared before us, lit up by reflectors.”  This is a reference to the Judenrampe, which was a large train platform, near the Birkenau camp, which was used from 1942 to May 1944. The Judenrampe was torn down when the train tracks were extended inside the Birkenau death camp, so that the prisoners could be brought to a spot within a few feet of the gas chambers in Krema II and Krema III.  (God forbid that the Jews should have to walk to the gas chambers.)

Levi’s description of his arrival at Monowitz begins on page 22:

The journey [to Monowitz from the Judenrampe] did not last more than twenty minutes.  Then the lorry [truck] stopped and we saw a large door, and above it a sign, brightly illuminated (its memory still strikes me in my dreams): Arbeit Macht Frei, work gives freedom.

We climb down, they make us enter an enormous empty room that is poorly heated.

So the sign was on a DOOR, not a gate.  It was the door to an enormous empty ROOM, not the door into a camp.  Note that he not only saw the sign on the door, he also saw it in his dreams.

Denis Avey also mentioned an Arbeit Macht Frei sign at Monowitz in his book The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz. On page 140, Avey describes the scene when he entered the Monowitz prison camp:

It was still light when we passed through the gate and I saw the sign bearing the cruel promise ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ — work sets you free.

I didn’t know that the irony of those words would scream across the decades. This was Auschwitz III–Monowitz.

Note that the sign that Denis Avey saw was on a GATE, not a door.

Rob Broomby co-wrote Denis Avey’s book.  On page 235, we learn that Rob questioned whether this sign was actually on the Monowitz gate.

This quote, written by Denis Avey, is from page 235 of the American edition of his book:

As Rob’s research continued it threw up some interesting questions about the nature of memory. He kept asking me if I was certain I had seen that Arbeit Macht Frei sign at the gates to Auschwitz III–Monowitz.  I was, but he said some experts had questioned it and nothing survives at the site today to testify one way or the other. The sign everyone knows these days is at the gates of the main camp, Auschwitz I. After more than sixty years it is that one which is emblazoned on the collective memory although many camps had them. Rob said the most influential account of life in the camp — that of survivor and writer Primo Levi — mentioned the sign at Auschwitz III more than once but the head of Research at Auschwitz wasn’t convinced.

So was there an Arbeit macht Frei sign at Monowitz or not?  I would say NOT.  Primo Levi saw the sign in his dreams, and Denis Avey read about it in Primo Levi’s book.  The Arbeit Macht Frei sign was used on the gates of the Nazi camps that were classified as Class I camps. Auschwitz I was a Class I camp and it had the sign.  Monowitz was a labor camp which probably did not have the sign.  I explained all this on a previous post which you can read here.

The famous Buchenwald photo — is that Elie Wiesel or a 40-year-old man?

This morning I googled “famous photo of Elie Wiesel at Buchenwald” and the first website that came up in the search results was the website “Elie Wiesel Cons the World” which has a wealth of information about the famous Buchenwald photo, which you can read here.

Famous photo taken in Buchenwald Barracks #56

Elie Wiesel claims to be the man in the circle

Is this the face of 16-year-old Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel? Or is this the face of a 40-year-old man?

Elie Wiesel wrote in Night that he got out of his hospital bed at the Monowitz camp in Auschwitz and joined the death march out of the camp on January 18, 1945.  He also wrote that he became sick three days after the liberation of Buchenwald on April 11, 1945 and was confined to a hospital bed for 2 weeks.  Did he also get out of his hospital bed and go over to barracks #56 to get into this famous picture?  Elie Wiesel was an orphan after his father died at Buchenwald, and he was allegedly in barracks #66, the orphan’s barracks, when the camp was liberated.

“Red Tails” — or How African-Americans singlehandedly won WWII

If you are planning to see the new George Lucas film Red Tails, you better hurry, because I don’t think this flick will be in theaters very long.  I predict that it will very quickly be shot down like the Me 262 jet airplane that is shot down by Joe “Lighting” Little, a Negro pilot with the Tuskegee Airmen, who is the hero of the movie.

Black pilot shooting down a jet airplane

Before you get all upset by my use of the word “Negro,” it was pointed out in the movie that African-Americans preferred the term Negro over the term “colored” which was used by whites.  This is news to me.  I was 11 years old when this story was happening in 1944 and it is my opinion that both blacks and whites used the term “colored” which was pronounced “cull-ed.”  The word Negro was only used in a sentence which also had the word Caucasian.

The reason that I think that Red Tails will not be a big hit is because it will appeal to a very limited audience.  This is not a “date movie.”  Women will stay away from it in droves.

The basic premiss of the movie is that black people are superior to whites, but white racists in America would not allow them to fight in World War II until 1944 when black pilots were needed to win the war against the German racists.  There were other black soldiers who fought in World War II, but unlike the Tuskegee Airmen, they were commanded by white officers.  The movie is set in 1944, but filmed though a 2012 lens which shows that the African-Americans back then were no different from white people.

The movie has an all-male cast, except for one Italian girl who is the love interest in the movie.  “Lighting” spots her on a rooftop as he is flying over the pristine Italian countryside which shows no war damage.  She waves at him and he comes back later and knocks on her door.  He speaks no Italian and she speaks no English, but they manage to fall in love and get married.  Her Italian dialogue is not translated.  Only the German words in the movie have sub-titles.  What’s up with that?

The movie begins with a quote from a study done in 1925 which claimed that “blacks are inferior to whites.”  This is quickly followed by a disclaimer:  “Inspired by a true story.”  In other words, what you are about to see is not totally true, but we’re not going to tell you which part is not true. The title of the movie comes from the fact that the Tuskegee Airmen painted the tails of their planes bright red. The Me 262 jet planes are decorated with yellow paint.

Red Tails is about the all-black 332nd Fighter Squadron which was assigned to protect U.S. bombers on a bombing mission to Berlin in 1944.  Nothing is mentioned about Berlin already being bombed into a pile of rubble before 1944.  However, in 1944 Germany had Me 262 jet fighter planes in the air, so this bombing mission was different.  The Tuskegee Airmen were flying P51 planes.

Me 262 jet airplane

This movie is not about history; it is about the African-American heroes of World War II.  If this were a history movie, it would have been pointed out that the Germans delayed getting their jet planes into the air because Hitler disagreed with his generals about the best use of the jet planes.  Hitler wanted the Me 262 to be a bomber plane, not a fighter plane.  If the Germans had used the Me 262 as a fighter plane sooner, all the American planes would have been shot out of the sky and Germany would have had a better chance of winning the war.

The movie does not mention Herman Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe, the German air force.  According to this website,  “In the early part of the war, he remarked, “If Allied planes ever bomb Berlin, you can call me Meyer.” Later on [when] they did, escorted by P-51 Mustangs, he observed, “When I saw Mustangs over Berlin, I knew the jig was up.”   It was the Tuskegee Airmen who were flying those Mustangs.  

Should Elie Wiesel come clean?

Should Elie Wiesel, the world’s most famous Holocaust survivor, come clean about his life story?  There is a whole website devoted to proving that Elie Wiesel was never a prisoner at Auschwitz or Buchenwald.  The latest article on this website is entitled “When did Elie Wiesel arrive at Auschwitz? Could he have received the number A-7713?”  You can read the article in full here.

As far as I know, Elie Wiesel has never acknowledged that Carolyn Yeager has done extensive research and has proved that he lied under oath when he claimed that he has the number A-7713 tattooed on his arm.  I think that Elie should come clean and admit that he is a fraud.  I believe that all the little kids who have read his book Night would come to his defense and forgive him.

Elie Wiesel appears to be in good health, but he is at the age where he could leave this earth any day now.  He should ensure that his legacy is protected before that happens. Who knows what will happen if he dies before coming clean and asking for forgiveness.

I blame Oprah for this debacle. In 2005, Oprah selected the “memoir” of James Frey, entitled A Million Little Pieces as her book club selection. Some people questioned the truth of the book, and Oprah came to the defense of James Frey. Two weeks after defending Frey on the Larry King show, Oprah brought Frey back onto her show and confronted him in front of a live audience. Meanwhile Frey’s “memoir” had sold 2 million copies in the three-month window between Oprah’s announcement of its selection and her confrontation of Frey before a live audience. Oprah’s next book club selection was Elie Wiesel’s Night.  At that time, the book Night was classified as fiction on Elie Wiesel’s own website.  But when Oprah selected it for her Book Club, the book became a non-fictional account of Elie Wiesel’s true story of surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Another Holocaust survivor, Herman Rosenblat, went on Oprah’s show and told the story of how he met his wife when she threw apples over the fence to him (at the age of 9) while he was in a sub-camp of Buchenwald.  After the publicity that he received from the Oprah show, Rosenblat landed a book contract.  Rosenblat was on the Oprah show twice.  The second time that he was on, I watched the show, and the minute that it was over, I e-mailed Oprah that this story could not possibly be true.  I don’t think anyone paid any attention to my e-mail, but other people also told Oprah that the Rosenblat story was fiction and his book was never published, as far as I know.

All is not lost.  Oprah no longer has a talk show, but she could go on some other talk show (I like the Dr. Drew show) and apologize to Elie Wiesel for enticing him to change the status of his book to non-fiction.  Night is a great piece of literature and Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust icon.  None of that would change if Elie Wiesel would just come clean and tell the truth.  He would be admired even more for telling the truth.  Keep in mind that nothing bad happened to Herman Rosenblat.

The Holocaust of 1298 in Germany

Today’s American students might have trouble understanding why the German people all of a sudden turned against the Jews in 1933 under the leadership of that madman Adolf Hitler.  The German Jews were completely innocent, so why were they suddenly persecuted for no reason?

Actually, the persecution of the Jews in Germany, and in other countries in Europe, had already been going on way back in the 13th century.  On June 25, 1298, in the German city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, ordinary citizens of the city committed mass murder, killing and burning their Jewish neighbors.

Memorial in Rothenburg ob der Tauber shows Jews being engulfed by flames

The photo above shows part of the Jewish memorial in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which has a sculpture that shows the Jews being engulfed by flames. The inscription on the memorial says that the Jews were burned in a fire ignited by the inhabitants of the city.  Apparently, the Jews had sought refuge at the Castle, but were attacked there by an angry mob; it is not exactly clear to me whether the Jews were killed and then burned, or burned alive.

Jews had been living in Rothenburg since 1180.  You can read about the famous Rabbi Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg ob der Tauber here.  So what happened in June 1298 that got the Germans so riled up?