View of Birkenau gatehouse from outside the camp
The photo above shows the entrance to the Birkenau camp, taken from the outside of the camp. Not a very dramatic shot, is it? If you want a dramatic shot of the tracks leading into the camp, you have to photograph the gate house from the inside of the camp and pretend that it is the outside; the gate house looks the same on both sides.
Photo frequently used for outside of Birkenau camp
Someone asked me where the ashes of the 1.1 million people who were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau are located. I had to look it up because I really don’t know. At Birkenau, there is no huge memorial that holds the ashes, as at Sobibor and Majdanek.
I found an article on this web site which mentions the “Field of Ashes” at Birkenau. So where is the Field of Ashes? A news article in the N.Y. Times on December 13, 1997 mentions “a large swath of land, known as the field of ashes, that stretches behind the gas chambers at the Birkenau camp.”
The “large swath of land” must be where the “little white house” was formerly located; the house was one of the two little houses that were used as as gas chambers while Krema II and Krema III were under construction.
Remains of "the little white house" at Birkenau
The photo above shows a “swath of land” which is behind the Birkenau camp. Note the mound on the right. Is this the Field of Ashes? (more…)
The decision to build a new crematorium at Dachau was made in April 1942. An order was issued from Berlin on July 23, 1942 to begin construction of Baracke X, the new crematorium, at a cost of 150,000 Reichsmark.
When was construction of the building, as seen today, completed? Did Baracke X look the same as it does now when American soldiers liberated the camp on April 29, 1945? There have been persistent rumors that the new crematorium was built or modified after the Americans arrived.
Baracke X, the new crematorium at Dachau
A reader of this blog recently sent me an e-mail with two links to the web site of David Irving here and here. These pages on Irving’s web site were put up in 1999. Each page has a letter written by someone who claimed that the Baracke X building was not completely finished in April 1945 and that the construction was completed later by German POWs being held in the former camp. (more…)
The title of my blog post today is from the subject line of an e-mail that I got from a follower of my blog. My first thought was: Which chimneys at Auschwitz? According to the official account of the Holocaust, all the crematoria at the Auschwitz II camp at Birkenau were destroyed by the Germans just before the Soviet soldiers liberated the camp on January 27, 1945 and there were no chimneys still in existence. So how did the Soviet liberators determine that there was 18 inches of fat inside the chimneys?
Ruins of Krema II, Feb. 1945
My e-mail correspondent sent me a link to an article in the Daily Mail here which mentions a new book about the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz.
Here is a quote which I copied from the Daily Mail article:
The insanity was worse when the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau were reached. Most of the inmates had been marched away, but some remained. The sight of them was shattering.
“I had seen many innocent people killed. I had seen hanged people and burned people,” wrote one hardened company commander, “but I was still unprepared for Auschwitz.”
Another Red Army soldier recalled “emaciated, brutally tortured people wrapped in rags. Most were unable to stand, but lay on plank beds or sat propped up against the wall. It was a vision of hell”.
Horror after horror revealed itself – mounds of corpses; the children’s barracks, with just two survivors; warehouses stuffed with a million men’s suits and women’s dresses; the 18-inch layer of fat caking the inside of the chimneys.
“I could not comprehend how a human mind could conceive of this,” said a sergeant after seeing inside a “shower room”.
This devastating evidence of the massacre and torture of their people spurred on the Russian Army. Another witness told his comrades: “Show the German bastards no mercy. Smash them to pulp.” (more…)
On his TV show today, Glenn Beck said to his guest Rick Santorum:
“I’m going over to Poland in a couple of weeks on something that’s a venture that I’m doing. I am not doing a special on Auschwitz per se — I’m visiting Auschwitz, but I’m talking about the town which is just a few miles outside of the gate.”
Beck plans to broadcast from Oświęcim, the Polish town formerly known as Auschwitz. He wants to “figure out” what happened at the Nazi extermination camp. He wants to know “How did this happen?”
It is common for tourists to blame the Germans in the town of Dachau for not doing anything to stop what went on in the Dachau concentration camp. Now, it seems that Glenn Beck is thinking the same thing about the people in the town of Auschwitz. (more…)
On February 18, 2011, the New York Times published an article written by Michael Kimmelman with the headline “Auschwitz Shifts From Memorializing to Teaching.” The article has this sentence: “All or nearly all visitors will be shepherded by guides to field questions and keep crowds moving.” I’m glad that I got to see Auschwitz when it was still possible to tour the camp without a guide.
Piotr Cywinski, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, was quoted as saying this:
“To me the whole educational system regarding the Holocaust, which really got under way during the 1990s, served its purpose in terms of supplying facts and information. But there is another level of education, a level of awareness about the meaning of those facts. It’s not enough to cry. Empathy is noble, but it’s not enough.”
This is the theme to which officials here return often. Auschwitz, they say, must find ways to engage young people (some 850,000 students came last year), so they leave feeling what the director called “responsibility to the present.”
As I understand it, this means that students learn at Auschwitz that they must take responsibility for stopping genocide in the present day. What this also means is that the days of investigators going to Auschwitz and taking samples from the walls of buildings is now in the past. Visitors must stay on the beaten path and listen to their tour guide. They cannot poke around on their own and discover things.
I got into a discussion recently with a young student who is a music major. It started with Stravinsky and ended with Richard Wagner. After the student told me that one of his college professors said that Wagner was anti-Semitic, I decided to end the conversation because this is not something that should be discussed in polite society.
If I could go back in time and continue this discussion, I would say to the student: “Define anti-Semitic.” In Wagner’s day, the term anti-Semite had a different meaning than it has today. Back then, an anti-Semite was a person who wanted the Jews to assimilate into German society, rather than have their own “state-within-a-state.” It was all tied up with the “Jewish Question.” (more…)
Elie Wiesel, the world’s best known Holocaust survivor, who was a prisoner at both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, famously wrote, regarding the “stories” in his books: “Some events do take place but are not true; others are—although they never occurred.” Elie Wiesel was a Talmud scholar at 15 when he was sent to Auschwitz. At 16 and 1/2, he was one of “the boys of Buchenwald,” the orphan boys who were protected by the other prisoners in the camp.
Now there is a web site, called “Elie Wiesel Cons the World, at http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com, which is devoted to the events in Elie’s life that are true — although they never occurred. This web site claims that Elie Wiesel’s time as a prisoner at Buchenwald did not occur. This could be one of those events that are true, even if it never occurred. Like Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account that was hacked, although this never occurred, as Weiner admitted today when he resigned from Congress.
According to the Elie Wiesel Cons the World web site, there is a new book that has been in the works for six years, which is supposed to be all about the orphan boys at Buchenwald. So what has happened to the book? You can read all about it here. I previously blogged about Ben Helfgott, a Buchenwald survivor, here.
Update, June 19, 2011:
In reading some of my old posts, I noticed a comment, written by Ken Waltzer on Nov. 14, 2010 at 6:57 a.m. Here is the comment:
For the skeptics and know-nothings who have written in suggesting Eli Wiesel was not in the camps, that Night is purely fiction, you are all dead wrong. The Red Cross International Tracing Service Archives documents for Lazar Wiesel and his father prove beyond any doubt that Lazar and his father arrived from Buna to Buchenwald January 26, 1945, that his father soon died a few days later, and that Lazar Wiesel was then moved to block 66, the children’s block in the little camp in Buchenwald. THese documents are backed up by military interviews with others from Sighet who were also in block 66, and by the list of Buchenwald boys sent thereafter to France. All of this is public domain.
Wishful thinking by Holocaust deniers will not make their fantasies true. While Wiesel took liberties in writing Night as a literary masterpiece, Night is rooted in the foundation of Wiesel’s experience in the camps. The Buchenwald experience, particularly, runs closely to what is related in Night.
On the same date, Nov. 14, 2010, at 10:34 a.m., Ken Waltzer made a comment on this post by Carolyn Yeager:
Carolyn Yeager wrote:
Lazar Wiesel, born Sept. 4, 1913 arrived at the camp on January 26, 1945, along with his brother Abram, born Oct. 10, 1900, in a large transport from Auschwitz. They both have Buchenwald registration (or entry) numbers.
After the liberation in April, a questionnaire is filled out by a Lázár Wiesel who accents his name in the Hungarian style, giving a birth date of Oct. 4, 1928, and this Lazar is listed on the “childrens” transport to France in July. Neither of these Lazar Wiesel’s fit Elie Wiesel with his birth date of Sept. 30, 1928, and now we find his signature doesn’t match either.
Ken Waltzer commented:
Contrary to Carolyn Yeager’s wishful thinking, Eli Wiesel was indeed the Lazar Wiesel who was admitted to Buchenwald on January 26, 1945, who was subsequently shifted to block 66, and who was interviewed by military authorities before being permitted to leave Buchenwald to go with other Buchenwald orphans to France. Furthermore, there is not a shadow of a doubt about this, although the Buchenwald records do erroneously contain — on some pieces — the birth date of 1913 rather than 1928. A forthcoming paper resolves the “riddle of Lazar” and indicates that Miklos Gruner’s Stolen Identity is a set of false charges and attack on Wiesel without any foundation. ~~ by kenwaltzer
Has Ken Waltzer finally figured out that there were three separate people involved in this controversy and all three are named Wiesel. One of the three was in the orphan’s barrack, but it was not Elie Wiesel. Is that why his book has not been published?
In a trial, there is an opening statement given by both sides, then testimony given by both sides, followed by closing statements given by both the defense and the prosecution. In the opening statement, the lawyers tell the jury what they are going to prove. In the closing statements, both sides sum up what they have actually proved. The last thing the jury or judges hear is the closing statements; this is where the lawyers have their best chance to influence the decision in the case.
Sir Hartley Shawcross is famous for his powerful closing statement at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. This quote is from his closing statement:
…. on the lowest computation 12 million men, women, and children, are done to death. Not in battle, not in passion, but in the cold, calculated, deliberate attempt to destroy nations and races, to disintegrate the traditions, the institutions, and the very existence of free and ancient states. Twelve million murders. Two-thirds of the Jews in Europe exterminated, more than 6 million of them on the killers’ own figures. Murder conducted like some mass production industry in the gas chambers and the ovens of Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Maidanek, and Oranienburg.
Oranienburg is a reference to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp which is located in the city of Oranienburg, near Berlin. Maidanek is the German name for the camp that is now better known as Majdanek. Dachau, Buchenwald and Mauthausen were liberated by American soldiers, while Auschwitz and Oranienburg were liberated by the Soviet Union. Treblinka had been abandoned before the Soviet soldiers found it. (more…)
Yesterday, I saw the new movie “Midnight in Paris.” This is the best movie that I’ve seen in a long time. It includes many characters who were famous writers and artists in the 1920′s. They gathered at the home of Gertrude Stein, who is also a character, along with her partner Alice B. Toklas who is briefly mentioned. (Remember the famous brownies baked by Alice.)
One of the characters is Man Ray (real name Emmanuel Radnitzky), who was a famous photographer in the 1920′s. In 1929, Man Ray met Lee Miller, a fashion model from New York who became his student and later his lover and an excellent photographer in her own right.
Lee Miller is famous for her photos taken during World War II, and especially for her well-known photo of a German soldier at Dachau, who was found floating in the canal, after he was killed during the Dachau massacre. You can see Lee Miller’s photo here.
