the Lessons from Auschwitz project

I am writing about the Lessons from Auschwitz project again today because I learned this from an article that was published by The Jewish Chronicle Online on Feb. 17, 2012:

Before the Nazis came, Jews accounted for almost two-thirds of Oswiecim’s then 12,000 population. Not a single Jew lives there now.

A student who has taken a trip sponsored by the Lessons from Auschwitz project commented on a previous post on my blog, disputing my statement that there is currently no Jewish community in Oswiecim.

This quote is also from the article in the JC Online website:

A disbelieving hush descends on the Home Counties sixth-formers touring the Auschwitz memorial and museum as they enter a room housing a mountainous display of human hair – equivalent to that shorn from 40,000 women, their Polish guide explains quietly.

What else did the Polish guide explain quietly to the students?  Maybe she said something like this:

Notice that the hair is decomposing.  Human hair does not decompose.  This hair has been treated with chemicals to kill any lice that may have been in the hair.  The hair was shorn from the heads of all the prisoners, women and men alike, the moment that they arrived at Auschwitz, so as not to bring in lice that spreads typhus.  In spite of all the precautions that were taken by the Germans, there were two typhus epidemics at the Birkenau camp which caused thousands of deaths.  But it was nothing like the epidemic during World War I, in which 4 million people died from typhus in Poland.

Did the Polish guide really say that to the students?  No, of course not.  Students are led to believe that the hair was shorn from the women in order to humiliate them and to obtain hair that the Germans could use to make cloth.

Women had their hair shorn off upon arrival at Birkenau

Cloth was made from the hair of Auschwitz prisoners

This quote is from the JC Online article:

The 183 students and two dozen teachers are halfway through a day trip organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust as part of its Lessons from Auschwitz project. On the preceding Sunday, they had gathered in London to hear an emotive address from survivor Susan Pollack, whose extended family was all but wiped out in the Holocaust.   [...]

The latest group takes participation in Lessons from Auschwitz beyond the 15,000 mark. The final elements of the programme – which is supported by the government and the Welsh and Scottish administrations – are a post-trip seminar and taking what they have learned into their schools and beyond.

I googled Susan Pollack and found this website which gives the story of Susan Pollack:

The family was first held in the Vac ghetto and Monor internment camp before moving, in May 1944, to Auschwitz, in the last transport of Hungarians. “Day after day in a dark, closed wagon, no hygiene, no food or water, people dying. There was not a breath of fresh air.’   [...]

Susan was transferred to the Gubben slave labour camp and finally force-marched to Bergen-Belsen in the winter of 1944-45. “On liberation, I was virtually a corpse, unable to walk, and would soon have died.”

Note that Susan Pollack was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau and then transferred.  Birkenau was a transit camp, as well as a death camp.  That explains why there are so many Holocaust survivors alive today.  There was a typhus epidemic at Bergen-Belsen in the last months of the war and Susan may have been “virtually a corpse” because she had typhus.

My review of The Artist

I would never have gone to see The Artist, if it had not won five academy awards including awards for best picture and best actor.  Who wants to see a French, black and white, silent film?  Not me!

The film is actually a silent film about the making of silent films.  A very interesting concept.

The Artist won the award for Best Original Music Score.  I usually don’t pay any attention to the musical score in a movie since I know nothing about music.  Since this is a silent movie, one can’t help but notice the music; I liked the music very much.

French actor Jean Dujardin won the award for best male actor.  What was so good about his performance?  I would say that he deserved the award because of his very subtle performance — he didn’t over play the part. His acting is not like the acting in the real silent movies; he didn’t do the typical mugging for the camera.  Instead, he plays the part of a very charming, old-time silent screen, “matinee idol” very well.  As I watched him on the screen, I kept thinking of the line:  “Oozing charm from every pore, he oiled his way across the floor.”

Dujardin also does some tap dancing in the movie.  He is no Fred Astaire but he did very well.

Dujardin’s part in the movie seems to be modeled on actor John Gilbert, who was a big star in silent films, but didn’t make the transition to talkies.

In the movie, the leading man, George Valentin, played by Jean Dujardin, falls in love with the leading woman, Peppy Miller, played by Bérénice Bejo. This actually happened when John Gilbert fell in love with Greta Garbo in a movie script, and also fell in love with her in real life.  Allegedly John Gilbert didn’t make it in the talkies because he had a high voice.  This is not part of the plot of The Artist.

There were many good performances in this picture, especially the part of Peppy Miller played by Bérénice Bejo.  John Goodman does a good job of playing a studio boss.  The dog named Uggy steals the show.

I went to see The Artist in an old-time movie theater which used to show silent movies.  The theater had the original seats from the 1920s and the theater looked like the theater that is shown in the movie.  The orchestra pit in this old theater is now used for seating of people in wheel chairs.

The Artist is not a completely silent movie. There is some sound and of course, there is music playing most of the time. During the sections where the film is completely silent, one could hear the rustle of popcorn bags and the clearing of throats.  About ten minutes into the movie, someone started snoring very loudly.  Mercifully, someone woke him up, but about 20 minutes later, he started snoring again and was escorted out of the theater.
In addition to the man who could not stay awake during this movie, there were two men who walked out while the movie was playing.  The entrance to the theater was in the front, so everyone could see the long walk out of the theater. Very disconcerting, to say the least.

Mark Bridges won an award for best costumes in The Artist.  The costumes were from the 1920s, of course.  I didn’t pay much attention to the costumes, but I liked the fact that a lot of old stuff from the 1920s was shown. There was an old Speed Graphic camera with a vintage flash gun.  Also, some old microphones and recording equipment, an old refrigerator, and a lot of old cars.  Everything was authentic 1920s, right down to the handle on a casement window.  Anyone who loves antiques will enjoy this movie.

I think that The Artist is a picture that will mainly appeal to older people.  Young people will probably not enjoy it and might even walk out, as two people did when I saw the movie.  Shame on them!

Has the gallows, on which Rudolf Hoess was hanged at Auschwitz, been moved?

I’ve been reading more here about the recent trip to Auschwitz made by British students on a Holocaust Education Trust tour.  I was intrigued by the following information in the article written by Mike Pyle, a reporter who accompanied the students on the trip:

We stood outside the house of Rudolf Hoss, (sic) effectively the manager of the camp, where he lived with his family just a few hundred yards from Block 11.

Outside it stands the gallows he was hanged from in 1947. Our HET educator for the day, Nicole Sarsby, challenged us to think of how this man was able to bring up his family in such circumstances.

The name of the first Commandant of Auschwitz was Rudolf Hoess. (In German the name is spelled Höß or Höss.) Hoess was an officer in the SS; he had received his training at Dachau and had then been assigned to the Sachsenhausen camp before becoming the Commandant of Auschwitz in May 1940.  You can read here about the numerous statements made by Rudolf Hoess in which he confessed that millions of Jews were gassed at Auschwitz.

The house where Rudolf Hoess lived is shown in the two photos below.

The rear of the house where Rudolf Hoess lived with his family at Auschwitz

The front of the house where Rudolf Hoess lived at Auschwitz

The house where Rudolf Hoess formerly lived with his wife and children is now occupied by new residents.  I took the photo above in October 2005.  I wonder what the current residents think about the hundreds of British students parading past their home, gawking at the reconstruction of the gallows where Rudolf Hoess was hanged.  Note that I took the photo from across the street, so as not to invade the privacy of the current occupants.  

British students do not learn even the most basic facts on their trips to Auschwitz

I was surprised at the great interest in my post yesterday about the student trips to Auschwitz which are funded by the Holocaust Educational Trust.  I am very much against the practice of sending 16-year-old students on a whirlwind tour of a historical place, where they do not learn even the most basic facts.  As I pointed out in my post yesterday, the students are told that Auschwitz was re-named by the Nazis when they took over the town during World War II.

Old castle in Auschwitz, a town founded by the Germans in 1270

The most basic fact about Auschwitz is that the town was founded by Germans in the year 1270.  The British students are not taught this on their one-day trips.

This morning I read an account, written by a student who had just returned from a trip to Auschwitz.  This quote is from the student’s article:

We had briefly touched on the subject in our earlier years of education, but the overriding feeling was that we were not entirely sure what to expect; how can censored lessons serve to prepare you for the stark reality of a camp which was purpose-built to murder millions?

Note the mention of “censored lessons.”  To what is this student referring?  The students have CENSORED LESSONS to prepare them “for the stark reality of a camp which was purpose-built to murder millions”?  What camp was purpose-built to murder millions”? Was this student referring to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a camp that was “purpose-built to murder millions”?

The main Auschwitz camp was built in 1916 and the Birkenau camp was built in October 1941 to house Russian prisoners of war.  This quote is from a Jewish website:

Himmler visited Auschwitz in March 1941 and commanded its enlargement to hold 30,000 prisoners. Himmler also ordered the construction of a second camp for 100,000 inmates on the site of the village of Brzezinka (Birkenau), roughly 4 km from the main camp. This massive camp was intended to be filled with captured Russian POWs who would provide the slave labor to build the SS ‘utopia’ in Upper Silesia. The chemical giant I G Farben expressed an interest in utilizing this labor force, too. Extensive construction work began in October 1941, under terrible conditions and with massive loss of life. About 10,000 Russian POWs died in the process.

The British students are not told the most basic fact about Birkenau, which is that it was built to house Soviet Prisoners of War.  Instead, they are taught that Birkenau was purpose-built to murder millions.   

“An assault on difference is really an assault on all of humanity” What British students are taught about Auschwitz

The BBC online news had an article yesterday about British students visiting Auschwitz; it included a recording of several tour guides taking turns in the indoctrination of the students.  This quote is from the article:

Sixth-formers from across Wales have paid a visit to Auschwitz as part of a project to educate people about the horrors of war.

More than a million people were killed by the Nazis at the concentration camp in present day Poland.

Students visiting the site with the Holocaust Education Trust told BBC Wales what they thought.

The recording starts off with a tour guide in Krakow telling the students that they are first going to make a 30 to 40 minute stop in the town of Oświęcim, not Auschwitz; she tells the students that Oświęcim was RENAMED AUSCHWITZ BY THE NAZIS during the war.

Then we hear another tour guide telling the students that Auschwitz “used to play two roles.”  It was a “place of imprisonment” and also a “top secret place of mass extermination” with gas chambers.  The students are told that Auschwitz had “a well-organized production line” for “mass murder.”

Most of the tour guides were women.  At the end of the recording, we hear a man who says that the Jews were targeted for no reason other than being who they are.  He asks “Why were they targeted?” and answers his own question: “The Jews were targeted because they were different.”  His last words are “An assault on difference is really an assault on all of humanity.”

What did the students learn from this trip?  They learned how to pronounce the words Oświęcim and Auschwitz correctly from people who speak Polish.  Other than that, they learned that it was “so cold” in Poland and that the Jews were “stripped before going into the gas chamber,” implying that the victims suffered from the cold because there was no heat in the gas chamber. The gas that was used (Zyklon-B) had to be heated to 78.3 degrees before the poison was released, so this was an obvious blunder on the part of the tour guide.

The students learned from the tour guides that the main Auschwitz camp was located in “former Polish military barracks.”  But were they told why the Auschwitz buildings were originally built?  Were they told that Auschwitz was the largest railroad hub in Europe?  All railroad lines in Europe went to Auschwitz which is why this town was selected for a migrant worker camp way back in 1916. The migrant workers lived in what later became the Auschwitz I camp, and went from there to farms all over Europe to harvest the crops.

The students were told that 50% of the people in the town of Auschwitz were Jewish before the war and now there are no Jews in the town.  Of course, they were not told that Auschwitz was a town in which liquor was produced and shipped to America during Prohibition and also a place that was known as a hub for human trafficking, or “white slavery” as it was called back then (Source: Hitler’s Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man, written by  Dr. Brigitte Hamann, German-Austian historian, in 1999).

The town of Auschwitz was originally built by the Germans in 1270.  It was renamed Oświęcim by the Poles when this area was given to Poland after World War One.

Why am I nitpicking about these small details?  Because the students should be taught HISTORY, not propaganda and hatred of the German people.  They should not be told that the Jews were targeted because they were “different.”  They should be required to read “Mein Kampf” before getting on a plane to Poland.  They should learn about HOW the Jews were different and why Hitler thought that the Jews caused Germany to lose World War One.  They should learn that Auschwitz was in Silesia, a province that Germany lost after World War One.

Bishop Richard Williamson’s Holocaust denial conviction thrown out

A court in Nuremberg overturned the conviction of Bishop Richard Williamson for Holocaust denial on Wednesday, but a new indictment is expected in about five weeks.  Although the guilty verdict was set aside on a technicality, Bishop Williamson can be tried again for the same offense.  The Higher Regional Court of Nuremberg threw out the original conviction because a lower court failed to specify when and how Bishop Williamson’s remarks were broadcast to the public.  You can read more about it here.

Bishop Williamson, who is not a German citizen, was originally charged with a crime because of remarks that he made in Germany during an interview with a Swedish broadcaster who put a video of the interview on the Internet where it could be seen in Germany.  The interview took place in Regensburg, Germany in 2008 and was shown on Swedish television.  Bishop Williamson gave permission for the interview to be shown in Sweden, which does not have a Holocaust denial law, but he did not give permission for it to be shown in Germany.

In 2010, a court in Regensburg found Bishop Williamson guilty of inciting hate and fined him around $14,000.  The fine was later reduced to around $9,000. The higher court in Nuremberg has now ruled that the Regensburg court failed to meet the formal prerequisites for prosecution.

Bishop Williamson might have to face trial again, but what will happen to the Swedish guy who set him up?  Nothing, of course.  It is not a crime in Germany for someone to set up a person to be arrested for Holocaust denial.

Let this be a lesson to all you people living in a free country somewhere.  If you go to Germany, don’t even say the word Jew, or you might be arrested and thrown into prison for five years.  You never know if someone might be recording your remarks and setting you up to be tried as a criminal.

Is the spirit of Anne Frank hiding in an attic in Mormon spirit prison?

It was reported today by Haaretz that the Huffington Post claims that “Holocaust victim Anne Frank was baptized posthumously by a Mormon.”  According to Mormon belief, the spirit of a person who is baptized after death has the option to accept or reject Mormon baptism. I previously blogged about Mormon heaven here.

There is no way that the spirit of Anne Frank will accept Mormon baptism.  When tourists visit the famous building where Anne hid in the attic during World War II, the first thing they see is a photo of Anne at the age of 13 and this famous quote from her diary, which she wrote on April 9, 1944:

“One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we will be people again, and not just Jews! We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. But then, we’ll want to be.”

I am sure that the spirit of Anne Frank is hiding somewhere in a spirit attic in spirit prison, so that she will not be dragged into Mormon heaven against her will.   Anne could never spend eternity with the Mormons — she will always be a Jew.

Photo of Anne Frank at the age of 13

I previously blogged here about what Anne Frank might have written if she had continued writing her diary after her hiding place was found.  I have written a detailed description of Anne’s hiding place on my website here.

What really happened at Bergen-Belsen? Can you say “typhus”?

Graph shows the number of deaths at Bergen-Belsen in the last 5 months of World War II

The photo above shows a graph that was displayed at Bergen-Belsen around fifty years ago. It shows that there were 350 deaths at Bergen-Belsen in December 1944; 800 to 1000 deaths in January 1945; 6,000 to 7,000 deaths in February 1945; 18,168 deaths in March 1945 and 18,365 deaths in April 1945.  What caused the number of deaths at Bergen-Belsen to increase so dramatically in the last months of World War II?  Daniel Jonah Goldhagen famously  wrote in his best-selling book entitled Hitler’s Willing Executioners: “Finally, the fidelity of the Germans to their genocidal enterprise was so great as seeming to defy comprehension. Their world was disintegrating around them, yet they persisted in genocidal killing until the end.”

I eagerly read Goldhagen’s boring book when it first came out in 1996.  I recall that he wrote that the so-called “death marches” out of the camps were done for the purpose of killing the Jews, but in his 468 page book, the word typhus is never mentioned. Bergen-Belsen was briefly mentioned on only one page.  (If books are ever burned in Germany again, his stupid book will be the first one to be thrown into the fire.)

Today, survivors of Bergen-Belsen, like Eva Olsson, go around telling innocent 10-year-old schoolchildren in American and Canada that there was a gas chamber at Bergen-Belsen and that children were burned alive when the Germans ran out of pellets for the gas chamber.  I previously blogged about Eva Olsson here.  Olsson herself had typhus while she was at Bergen-Belsen.  As most people in the world know, Anne Frank and her sister Margo both died of typhus in the camp.

Poster in the Bergen-Belsen museum in 2002 shows the burning of the camp

I took the photo above in the Bergen-Belsen museum in May 2002; it shows the British liberators of the camp burning down all the buildings in the camp, as this was the only way to stop the typhus epidemic in the camp.

You can read more about Bergen-Belsen here.   

Carolyn Yeager analyzes the changes made by Marion Wiesel to Elie Wiesel’s “Night”

Carolyn Yeager has a blog with the title Elie Wiesel Cons the World and the sub-title A website dedicated to exposing the false testimony of the world’s most famous Holocaust survivor. Her latest article is a detailed explanation of the changes that Marion Wiesel, the wife of Elie Wiesel, made to the book Night in order to make the book into a “memoir” in which the dates in Elie’s “novel” now conform to what was actually happening in the real world.  I had not realized the significance of these changes until I read the blog post, dated February 17, 2012 by Ms. Yeager.  The book Night was changed because Oprah made it her book club selection and advertised it as a “memoir.”  I recall that Elie Wiesel had a website at that time, on which he referred to Night as a “novel.”  The changes made the “novel” into a “memoir.”  Ms. Yeager has explained all this very clearly on her website (which I call a blog).

This quote from the article written by Carolyn Yeager sums up the changes that were made to the book:

In other words, the 1955 Yiddish version, the 1958 French version, and the 1960 English version (of Night) generally agree—only the “corrected” 2006 translation (by Marion Wiesel) is different.  So, are these really errors of translation that Marion Wiesel is fixing for us?  Or are they not simply problems for Elie Wiesel?  Under close scrutiny, the Elie Wiesel narrative has huge holes which bring up embarrassing questions, and this is what Marion Wiesel’s new translation was meant to head off.

Elie Wiesel’s Nobel prize should be taken away from him and given instead to Carolyn Yeager for the amazing work that she has done in exposing him as a fraud.

Does Holocaust education inadvertently fuel anti-Semitism?

An article by Dan Fleshler in The Jewish Daily Forward with the headline “Does Education Fuel Anti-Semitism?” informs us that “a German study says Holocaust studies may increase hatred (of Jews).”  The photo below of the Jewish memorial in Berlin accompanies the article.

Jewish Memorial in the heart of Berlin, the capitol of Germany Photo Credit: Getty Images

Imagine having a 5-acre field of huge concrete blocks a few yards from the Capitol building in Washington, DC.  The photo below shows a view of the German Reichstag behind the Jewish memorial in Berlin.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe with German Reichstag in background Photo Credit: Deutsche Welle

This quote is from the article in The Jewish Daily Forward:

Focusing on the Nazi era in Germany can make different ingredients in a pre-existing stew of anti-Semitism even more toxic. Exaggerated notions of Jewish power can prompt Germans to blame Jews for unwelcome messages about the Shoah. So says Anetta Kahane, founder of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which funds and operates programs against neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism. “Some teachers think if they just describe the Holocaust it will help change the minds of students who have neo-Nazi and racist feelings. The opposite can happen. Students will say the Jews are preventing them from questioning the Holocaust in class; Jews who control the world media are not letting them talk about it.” What’s more, Kahane told me, “some teachers hold the same views. Teachers are ordinary Germans.”

Is the same thing happening in America?  Are students in American schools hearing too much about the Holocaust in the classroom?  Is the whole world suffering from Holocaust fatigue?  Enough already!