New film by Claude Lanzmann, soon to be released, will feature Benjamin Murmelstein, the last head of the Jewish council at Theresienstadt

Claude Lanzmann is the 87-year-old director of the famous 9 and 1/2 hour Holocaust documentary entitled Shoah, which features testimony from Holocaust survivors and Holocaust perpetrators.  The testimony, given by Benjamin Murmelstein, for that film ended up on the cutting room floor.  I previously blogged about Lanzmann’s new film here.

So why is Lanzmann doing a new film, featuring the testimony of Murmelstein, who is now dead?  Because Murmelstein revealed, in his testimony, that there was a gas chamber at Theresienstadt where the Nazis were planning to finish off the genocide of the Jews.

This quote from the news article explains it:

…. What angers [Lanzmann] is not that anyone would be making money off of images of genocide, but rather, that anyone would dare suggest that any such images [of gas chambers] exist.

“They [gas chamber images] don’t [exist],” he says categorically. “The core of the story is the gas chambers, and there is no footage from inside the gas chambers. All other sorts of footage are side things.”

Gas chamber at Theresienstadt was near this location

According to the Ghetto Museum at Theresienstadt, a homicidal gas chamber was built by the Nazis in the Spring of 1945 in a corridor of the town’s fortifications wall near the Litomerice gate, (shown in the photo above) which is right by the Bauhof building, shown in the photograph below. Click here to see a map of the Theresienstadt ghetto. The Bauhof building is number 14 on the map.

Bauhof gas chamber building is on the left and the Litomerice gate is on the right

The alleged Theresienstadt homicidal gas chamber was directly across from the Jäger (Hunter) barracks, an identical building on the opposite side of the town, which was used as a disinfection station where the prisoners and their clothing were deloused. The prisoners were disinfected by being completely submerged in a tub containing a chemical which would kill the lice on their bodies. At the same time, their clothing was disinfected by hot steam; they would have to put their clothes back on while they were still wet and then return to their barracks.

The ghetto inmates became aware of the alleged Theresienstadt homicidal gas chamber in the Bauhof building and were planning to blow it up, but the war ended just in time to save the Theresienstadt Jews from being gassed with Zyklon-B.

You can read about Lanzmann’s new film in this quote from a news article which you can read in full here:

The very first interview Claude Lanzmann recorded for his groundbreaking nine-and-a-half hour documentary “Shoah” ended up on the cutting-room floor. It was an interview he conducted almost 40 years ago in Rome with Benjamin Murmelstein, a Viennese rabbi and intellectual who served as the last head of the Jewish Council in Theresienstadt. Although the question-and-answer session went on for an entire week, generating hours upon hours of tape, Lanzmann never found an appropriate place for it.

Until now.

These outtakes from “Shoah” form the basis of Lanzmann’s soon-to-be-released film, “The Last of the Unjust” (a play on the title of Andre Schwarz-Bart’s classic French novel), a three-and-a-half hour documentary that reveals, in his words, “the height of Nazi cruelty and perversity.” Lanzmann promises that the testimony featured in his latest cinematic work is the ultimate rebuttal to the “so-called banality of evil” theory popularized by Hannah Arendt – whom he disparagingly refers to as “Frau Arendt” – by demonstrating just how corrupt and conniving a man was Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann.

Several years ago, Dr. Wolf Murmelstein, the son of Benjamin Murmelstein, sent me 6 essays that he had written in defense of his father.   You can access all of the essays written by Dr. Wolf Murmelstein on my website  here.  I also blogged about Benjamin Mermelstein and Adolf Eichmann’s plan to continue the gassing of the Jews at Theresienstadt here.

This quote from the news article about the new Lanzmann film explains why a new film, featuring the testimony of Benjamin Murmelstein is needed:

When “Shoah” was broadcast in weekly TV segments in Iran two years ago, Lanzmann took the opportunity to write an open letter to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the world’s most notorious Holocaust denier, reassuring the national leader he had nothing to fear.

“I said ‘If you want to find proof in ‘Shoah’ that the Shoah really happened, you will not find this proof. Why? Because there is not one single corpse in ‘Shoah’. And that’s because there were no corpses. People who arrived in Auschwitz were gassed within the first two hours. Their bodies were turned to ashes, and these ashes were dumped in sacks in the river or allowed to blow away in the wind.”

Benjamin Murmelstein probably mentioned the gas chamber at Theresienstadt in his testimony for the Shoah documentary, which was not used in the film.

Was there really a gas chamber at Theresienstadt?  There was a typhus epidemic at Theresienstadt in the last days of the camp and thousands of prisoners were dying.  I have no doubt that a Gaskammer was set up, to stop the epidemic, and Zyklon-B was used to disinfect the clothing of the prisoners.  It must have alarmed the prisoners when they learned that a Gaskammer was being used in the Bauhof building near the Litomerice gate into the camp.

Theresienstadt was one of the last camps to be liberated.  Prisoners from other camps were sent there to prevent them from being released for fear that they would attack the civilian German population during the last days of World War II.  Some of the survivors of the trains, that were sent to Theresienstadt in the last days of the war, believed that they were being sent there to be killed.

In a recent talk which she gave to college students, Ela Weissberger mentioned a gas chamber at Theresienstadt.  This quote is from the news story about her talk:

Weissberger, now in her eighties, spoke about her three and a half years at Terezin and in spite of its emphasis on art, Terezin was still a site of despair and death. Weissberger told of a shooting gallery that still bears the blood of innocent victims and a brewery converted into a gas chamber under the guise of showers. All the while Terezin was hailed as a model concentration camp, covered by an elaborate veneer of propaganda as the world averted their eyes.

The photo below shows the old brewery building at Theresienstadt.

Old brewery at Theresienstadt was converted into a Gaskammer for disinfecting prisoner clothing

I have a section about Theresienstadt on my website, which you can read here.

What’s worse than a Holocaust denier? A Republican!!! (Holocaust denier David Cole has outed himself and he’s a Republican)

It has been all over the news recently that David Cole, who went into hiding years ago after his life was threatened, has surfaced as David Stein and it has become known that he is a Republican.  You can read the news about David Stein here.

Back in 1992, a young David Cole went to the Auschwitz main camp and hired a guide to show him the famous Auschwitz gas chamber.  He videotaped his visit and recorded the tour guide saying that the gas chamber was original.

I had a similar experience when I visited the Auschwitz main camp in 1998 with a Polish guide who spoke perfect English.  She also told me that the gas chamber was original.  I didn’t dare ask too many questions because it was obvious to me that she was suspicious that I was a non-believer because I wasn’t showing enough emotion to suit her.

The two YouTube videos below show David Cole on his trip to Auschwitz in 1992.

This video includes David Cole’s interview with Dr. Piper at Auschwitz

A new Holocaust exhibit has just opened in the creepy morgue of the Mauthausen concentration camp

Today is March 5th, the anniversary of the official liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz, Austria, so of course, I searched the news to see if there is a big celebration going on. Sure enough, I found this news article with the headline Austria Faces Past in Nazi Camp’s New Museum.

This quote is from the news article:

….a new visitor centre open to the public from Monday that tells the dark story of Austria’s main “KZ” and its subcamps between 1938 and 1945. [...]

The two new permanent exhibitions, housed in the original buildings, recreate this not only with the interviews but also dozens of original objects that speak volumes about life — and death — at Mauthausen.  [...]

Another new installation at Mauthausen is the “Room of Names”, where the 81,007 people documented to have died there are inscribed on horizontal glass panels in the camp’s chilly — and chilling — former mortuary.

Excuse me …. I cannot think of anything worse than putting a “Room of Names” in the smelly, creepy morgue room at Mauthausen.  Did the creators of this exhibit somehow clean up the morgue and get the smell out, so that visitors can read the names of the people who died in the camp?

The photo below shows the Mauthausen hospital on the left and the green bunker building, where the gas chamber and the morgue are located, on the right.

Hospital on the left and Bunker on the right

The photo below, which I took on my trip to Mauthausen in 2003, shows the entrance to the Leichen Raum  (corpse room in English) which is located in the basement of the bunker. In the background, on the left, you can see the execution spot where prisoners were hanged.

Sign on the wall in the bunker directs visitors to morgue room at Mauthausen concentration camp

May 2003 photo of Mauthausen morgue

The photo above was taken with flash; the morgue was almost completely dark when I walked through it in 2003.

The only reason that I went through this creepy room was to follow the water pipe which goes through the wall of the morgue into the hallway and then into the gas chamber, thus proving that the gas chamber is actually a shower room.

Water pipe goes through wall of morgue into the Mauthausen gas chamber

Of course, the gas chamber at Mauthausen could have been a multi-purpose room where the prisoners could take a shower, or be gassed to death with Zyklon-B.  The walls of the shower room do not show any blue stains from Zyklon-B use, but those clever Nazis could have scrubbed the tile walls clean.

Door into Mauthausen gas chamber with water pipe going from morgue into hallway and then into the gas chamber

Same door in the open position

The photo above shows the door on the south wall of the gas chamber in the open position. To the right of the door is a water pipe that goes through the morgue and into the gas chamber. Note the sparkling clean white tile on the wall of the gas chamber.  How did those clever Nazis get the blue stains out of the grout?

In my personal opinion, it was a big mistake to turn the Mauthausen morgue into Museum space.  This is no way to honor the prisoners who died at Mauthausen.  Taking tourists into the former morgue only calls attention to the water pipes going into the gas chamber, something you don’t want to know if you are a True Believer.

Two doors into the Mauthausen gas chamber

The photo above shows the two doors into the interior of the Mauthausen gas chamber.  The west wall of the gas chamber is on the right; visitors can go through this door into the gas chamber without going through the former morgue, which has the new exhibit.

The door on the left, in the photo, is on the south wall of the gas chamber.  The gassing apparatus, which was behind the south wall, was removed by the SS men when they left the camp a few days before the camp was liberated. The south wall was put back into original condition by the SS and no traces of the gassing apparatus can be seen today.

On the south wall  is a sign (not shown in the photo) in several languages which describes how the gas chamber functioned. Next to it on the wall is a private memorial to one of the prisoners who was gassed here.

The Mauthausen gas chamber ceiling is 7.8 feet high and the white ceramic tile on the walls only goes part of the way up the wall. The floor is glazed brick. The door on the right leads to the corpse room, a single crematory oven, the autopsy room and the execution spot. The door on the left opens into a hallway in which a poster, showing a can of Zyklon-B is displayed.

Mauthausen was not a “death camp” where Jews were sent to be killed.  You can read about the history of the Jews at Mauthausen on my website here.

I think it is time for the Holocaustians to give up on the Mauthausen gas chamber, which only promotes Holocaust denial.  In my opinion, the morgue should have been left in its original state.

A Holocaust picture book for 5th graders is desperately needed

American children begin their Holocaust education in the 5th grade.  Typically, a Holocaust survivor comes into a 5th grade classroom and tells the gullible children a story about how he or she escaped the gas chamber at Auschwitz, or how they survived the gas chamber selections at Auschwitz, and then escaped the gas chamber at Bergen-Belsen the day before the camp was liberated.

What is needed is a picture book so that the children can visualize a gas chamber.

A real gas chamber in Jefferson City, MO that was used for execution

A man sitting inside a real gas chamber

Holocaust revisionist Germar Rudolf inside a disinfection chamber at Auschwitz that has blue stains on the wall

Alleged gas chamber at Auschwitz has no blue Zyklon-B stains on the walls

Blue Zyklon-B stains on the outside wall of an Auschwitz-Birkenau disinfection building

Inside the ruins of a gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau that has no  heavy blue stains from Zyklon-B use

Inside of Auschwitz-Birkenau alleged gas chamber shows no heavy Zyklon-B stains

The 5th grade students should be told that men risked a long prison sentence to go inside the ruins of the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau to take samples from the walls and test these samples to show that there was no evidence that Zyklon-B had been used in these alleged gas chambers to kill millions of Jews.

Gas chamber expert Fred Leuchter climbed down into alleged gas chamber at Birkenau and found no evidence of gassing

After the children have been prepared, by looking at a picture book of the alleged Auschwitz gas chambers, they can then make up their minds about the truth of the stories told by the survivors.  At least, the children should be prepared to ask intelligent questions of the survivors who claim that they escaped the Auschwitz gas chamber.

Another revisionist who climbed down into the alleged gas chamber in Krema II at Birkenau

You can read a typical story here of a Holocaust survivor, who survived, while millions of others were sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. She recently spoke to High School students in Wichita, Kansas who gave her a standing ovation, but apparently asked no questions.  This quote is from her story:

One by one, and in groups, so many other children she knew in the Terezin [Theresienstadt] camp got sent off to the gas chambers, to places like Auschwitz.

Why didn’t one of the students ask her why the Nazis left witnesses behind at Theresienstadt, including young children who would live to be 82 years old, and tell the world about the Auschwitz gas chambers 68 years later?

What’s wrong with the caption on this photo which shows the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum?

Photo shows the interior of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The caption on the above photo, which is on this website, is this:

Visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum pass under this gate, a cast taken from the original entrance to the Auschwitz death camp, inscribed with the ironic phrase Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes One Free).(Photo: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)

The slogan “Arbeit macht Frei” was NOT put on the entrance of any of the death camps, which according to the Holocaustianity religion, were Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz II (Birkenau). The Auschwitz I camp, which has the Arbeit macht Frei sign was not a “death camp.”

Map shows the six death camps of the Holocaust

The map in the photo above is from the web page on “death camps” on Wikipedia.

I tried to explain the meaning of the Arbeit Macht Frei sign in a previous post which you can read here.

In the photo of the interior of the USHMM, notice the photo on the wall underneath the letters AR in the sign.  That photo is shown below.

Photo on the wall of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

The caption underneath the photo above reads: “On May 14, 1946, Rudolf Hoess, the former commandant of Auschwitz, signed a declaration stating that during his tenure in office, 2 million Jews had been gassed at Auschwitz and another 500,000 killed in other ways. Hoess overestimated the number of Jews gassed by about 1 million.”

The Auschwitz-Museum now claims that only 1.1 million people died in the three Auschwitz camps and that 900,000 of these people were Jewish. The number of Jews who died of all causes at Auschwitz is now estimated at 900,000 which means that less than 900,000 were killed in the gas chambers.  Others died in the two typhus epidemics at Auschwitz.

It is time for the USHMM to pay more attention to the captions on photos.

Bill O’Reilly’s comments about Nazi Germany and religion

I have long suspected that Bill O’Reilly does not know the meaning of the German word “Angst.”  He typically uses the word Angst when it is clear that he means “anger.”

On his show last night, Bill said “Angst” and Fox news anchor Megyn Kelly answered, using the word “anger,” making it clear that Bill meant anger when he used the word “Angst.”

But that was not the only mistake that Bill made on his TV show last night.  He said something about Nazi Germany and religion.  This morning, I searched and searched to find the exact quote, but couldn’t find it.  Was that part of Bill’s commentary cut out of the transcript because someone on the Fox News staff recognized that Bill had made a mistake?

The gist of what Bill said about Hitler and Nazi Germany was that Hitler was against religion.  That is not correct.  Hitler was baptized a Catholic and he never apostatized, although he never went to church in his later years.  Catholic priests were put into concentration camps, mostly at Dachau, but not because of their religion.  Jews were “persecuted” but not because of race or religion.

This quote is from Wikipedia on the “National Socialist Program” [Nazi program]:

18.00 We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.

Here is another translation of Number 18 in the 25 points of the Nazi party:

18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.

Hitler believed that the Jews were working to the injury of the common welfare because they were working for the interests of International Jewry, not for the interests of Germany.   I explained all this in a previous post, which you can read here.  I also wrote two previous posts about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which you can read here and here.  Bonhoeffer was arrested because he was a traitor to his country, not because of his religion.

the four reconstructed holes in the ceiling of the Auschwitz main camp gas chamber

On my website, I show photos of three of the reconstructed holes in the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber. I have found a photo of the fourth hole in one of the boxes of photos that I took on my trip to Auschwitz in 2005.  The photo of the fourth hole is shown below.  I am not positive, but I believe that some Holocaust historians have shown a photo of this hole and claimed that this is a hole in the roof of Krema II at Birkenau, where no such hole exists.

One of the four reconstructed holes in the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber

Photo of the ceiling of the gas chamber in the Auschwitz main camp

The photo above shows the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber; the hole in the ceiling is to the right of the ceiling beam, but not shown.  Notice the fingernail scratch marks on the wall of the gas chamber, near the ceiling.  I never realized that the Jews were so tall.

When Soviet troops arrived to liberate the three Auschwitz camps on January 27, 1945 they found that all of the gas chambers in the Auscwhitz II camp (Birkenau) had been blown up, and the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp had been converted into a bomb shelter.  The converted gas chamber had no holes in the roof, so the Soviets reconstructed the holes to make the bomb shelter into a gas chamber.  For the next 50 years, gullible tourists were told that the Auschwitz gas chamber was original.

One of the four reconstructed holes in the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber

Reconstructed hole in the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber

Reconstructed hole in the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber

The photo below shows a reconstructed hole in the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber that looks like a vent.  Obviously a gas chamber needs a vent.

Vent hole in the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber

According to gas chamber expert Fred Leuchter, a homicidal gas chamber needs a 40 ft. vent pipe.  The Soviets did not include a vent pipe on the roof of the gas chamber in their reconstruction.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum now admits that the gas chamber in the main camp is a reconstruction, so you won’t go to prison if you deny that this gas chamber is original.

Out of respect for the Jews who died in the gas chamber in the main camp, tourists should refrain from making remarks such as “More people died in the backseat of Ted Kennedy’s car than died in the alleged Auschwitz gas chamber.”  David Irving was sentenced to 3 years in prison in Austria for making this remark.

Elie Wiesel wants everyone to just shut up about the Auschwitz gas chambers.

Quote from Elie Wiesel about the Auschwitz gas chambers

Holocaust survivor was standing in line for the gas chamber on the day that Dachau was liberated.

Today, the United States Holocaust Museum is celebrating its 20th anniversary. You can read about it online here.

This quote is from the news article about the USHMM:

For 20 years, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has reminded visitors of atrocity, grief and survival.

On Monday, nearly 4,000 supporters joined 843 Holocaust survivors and 130 veterans to celebrate its 20th anniversary and hear speeches from President Bill Clinton and museum founding chairman Elie Wiesel.  Under a large tent outside the museum, just south of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., survivors talked with American soldiers who liberated concentration camps, sharing their stories.

Ernest Gross, who survived the Dachau concentration camp, searched for years to find a camp liberator. He found one in Don Greenbaum of Philadelphia. The two traveled to Washington to attend the ceremony together.

“I was transported from Camp 7 to Dachau to be gassed and to go into the ovens,” Gross told ABC News just before the ceremony, from his seat next to Greenbaum.

“I was standing in line, and I was close enough that I was able to see the ovens, and all of a sudden I see the German soldiers are throwing their weapons down,” Gross said.  “I didn’t know why I turned around, and I saw the American Army liberating the camp, and for 67 years I looked for somebody who liberated me to thank him.”

The USHMM website has a page about Ernest Gross, which mentions that he was a prisoner in the Kaufering VII sub-camp of Dachau.  In the last days of the war, the prisoners in the eleven Kaufering camps were evacuated to the Dachau main camp, except for Kaufering IV which was the camp for sick prisoners.

Now we know why the prisoners were brought from the Kaufering sub-camps to the main camp.  It was not to allow them to be liberated by the American Army which was on its way to Dachau.  No, Ernst Gross and the rest of the Kaufering prisoners were brought to the main camp to be killed in the gas chamber.  Ernst was saved in the nick of time.

April 29, 1945 — the day that the Dachau concentration camp was liberated — stories of two survivors

Belief in the “death march” as a means of killing Jews is required in the Holocaustianity religion, so don’t even think of denying this, unless you want your future career to be permanently vitiated.

Death march OUT of Dachau in the last days of World War II

The photo above shows Jews being marched OUT of Dachau in order to prevent them from attacking civilians, since they would soon be liberated from Dachau.  Sorry, but I don’t have any photos that show a death march TO Dachau.

In his best-selling book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen wrote this on page 367 in Chapter 14, entitled “Marching to What End?”

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.

Goldhagen was referring to the death marches out of Auschwitz in the final days of the war, but this definition also applies to another death march out of Auschwitz, which began in July 1944 and ended at Dachau on August 6, 1944.

Two of the famous survivors of this death march were Max Mannheimer and Sol Teichman.

This quote is from an article which you can read in full here:

One of my closest friends here in Los Angeles is Mr. Sol Teichman, a prominent citizen, businessman, philanthropist, and a Holocaust survivor.

Born on September 9, 1927, in the Hungarian town of Munkacs, Sol’s family were (sic) prominent and prosperous grain, bean and walnut merchants. The family lived in a lovely home in a quiet cul-de-sac and were known in the tight-knit Jewish community for their piety, charity, and close ties to the Belzer and Munkacs Hasidic dynasties.

Of course, the Nazi death grip descended on the Jews of Hungary, and by 1943, the Teichman home and business had been confiscated. The Jews of Munkacs were cruelly herded into a ghetto and then shipped in cattle cars to Auschwitz.

Sol, 17 years old, and his brother Steve, 14, survived the death camp, only to be sent on a death march to Dachau in August 1944.

This quote is from this website:

Shortly after Sol’s Bar Mitzvah in 1940, his father was taken away to a Hungarian labor camp. On the second day of Passover,1944, all the Jews of Munkacz were given one hour to vacate their homes and were herded into ghettos.

In June, they were transported to Auschwitz. That was the last time that Sol Teichman saw his mother, sister and three of his brothers. [...]  As the end of the war approached, the Nazis forced many of their Jewish prisoners to participate in their infamous death march to Dachau. Sol and his brother Steve began the march. But Steve’s strength gave out so Sol carried him for the rest of the journey. Of the 6,000 who started the march, only about 600 survived, Sol and his brother among them.

This quote about Max Mannheimer is from Wikipedia:

In October 1943, Mannheimer and his younger brother, Edger were sent to the Warsaw Ghetto to clear rubble.[4] In July 1944, he was sent on a death march to Dachau, arriving on August 6, 1944. After three weeks in quarantine, he was sent to Allach, a Dachau subcamp where he worked at a BMW factory. At the beginning of 1945, he and his brother were sent to Mühldorf subcamp, which was evacuated by train on April 28, 1945. The train was liberated by American troops on April 30, 1945 in Seeshaupt. In the end, only Mannheimer and his brother Edgar survived.[1][3]

Now for Sol Teichman’s story, which is a real tear-jerker:

Quoted from this website:

Here is an excerpt from Sol’s privately printed memoir, The Long Journey Home, in which he describes hell on earth.

The Crimson Lake

It was a death march, and I was terrified at each and every step. My body was convulsed with excruciating muscle spasms. Everywhere was the sharp crack of rifle fire as the Germans picked off one Jew after another. Was I going to be murdered next?  I had no idea where we were going or for how long we were going to march. Would we be on this road for one day, two days, a week, a month, or did the Germans plan on marching us until we were all dead? Not knowing was torture, just as the Germans planned.

If a prisoner tried to step aside to relieve himself, he was shot, bayoneted or beaten to death with the heavy butt of a rifle.

On the first night of the march my brother Steve lost heart.

“I don’t want to go on. I don’t want to live,” he said.

I looked at my brother and I knew in the depths of my soul that there was no choice. And so, though Steve was bigger and heavier than me, I leaned over, draped him over my back and carried my brother.

All I could do was place one foot in front of the other, one breath and then another.

We marched for days and nights without food or water. The heat was unbearable. My bones felt crushed, pulverized. Every breath was torture, my lungs felt as if they were exploding from unbearable pressure. But I knew that if I stopped, if I collapsed, the Germans would shoot us, beat us to death, or let their attack dogs rip us from limb to limb. And so I staggered onward.

One day, in the distance, we spied a lake.  I think it was T’sha B’Av night. Many of the men on the march started running towards the water, desperate to get a drink of water. As I staggered closer to the lake I saw that the water was a strange color.

And then I realized that the lake was red.

The Germans were shooting hundreds of Jews by the shores of the lake—and the water turned to blood.

We stood and stared at the crimson lake. I could not, would not, drink the bloody water.

We lay down, tried to sleep, and then in the middle of the night a tremendous thunderstorm exploded. Rain poured from the sky.

I stood in the middle of the field, opened my mouth and savored the sharp needles of rain dripping down my throat. The thunderstorm was miraculous and provided just enough water to relieve my overwhelming thirst.

Shivering in the rain and mud, I snatched bits of fitful sleep.

In the middle of the night I awoke and watched in dismay as starved prisoners, crazed by empty bellies, shoved tufts of grass—black dirt clinging to the roots—into their mouths, chewed and swallowed.

In the inky darkness, someone whispered that nearby was a meadow filled with wild potatoes. Steve wanted to sneak into the field and eat the raw potatoes, but I wouldn’t let him. I knew that they would make us sick. Taking advantage of the night because the German guards couldn’t see what was going on, some Jews did sneak off and pick the potatoes. They devoured the raw potatoes in quick, starving bites. But soon they doubled over with agonizing cramps and diarrhea, and then, a few hours later, they died. Those who didn’t die, those who were too sick to move, were shot to death by the Germans.

Later, I discovered that, carrying Steve on my back, I had marched for four days and covered approximately seventy miles. But at the time, not knowing how long or how far I traveled, time seemed to vanish and distances seemed endless as I pushed onward, day after day under the oppressive heat, my back bent like a bow. My throat was parched from thirst; the sun beat down and my skin was burned raw. I was dizzy from exhaustion, hunger and fear. Every bone in my body was throbbing. I felt like a marching skeleton. Thousands were murdered along that road. My fellow Jewish prisoners were beaten to death with wooden clubs and iron bars. Some Jews welcomed death for life had become endless torture, unendurable.

Four uncles and several cousins died on this death march.

In a daze, I realized that we had reached a valley. There we camped for the night. The next day we continued a short distance to a railhead and were loaded on cattle cars bound for Dachau.

When we started the march we were about 6,000 Jews, arriving at Dachau there were only about 600 survivors.

You can see color photos of the survivors of Dachau on this website.

Grandson of a Nazi war criminal takes a tour of the Dachau Memorial Site

A very interesting article about Dachau, written fairly recently, by Jeaneane Payne, can be read here on the online Knoxville Daily Sun.  One surprising fact that I learned from this article is the information in this quote:

“Germans today prefer to use the term ‘death camps’ as opposed to concentration camps because the only purpose of the camps was to kill people in an industrialized way,” stated [the grandson of an SS man]. [...]

[This young man’s] grandfather was a Nazi war criminal, an SS agent stationed at Dachau. As I was planning my trip to Germany to visit my daughter and son-in-law, [he] asked if he could travel to Dachau from Southwest Germany with us. [...]

His grandfather was a volunteer in the SS. “He was proud of his involvement with the SS,” [his grandson] said. “He never showed remorse for his actions.”

After the war, the SS was declared to be a criminal organization by the Allies at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, so every man in the SS was a war criminal, regardless of his behavior during World War II.  You can read about it on this website.  The grandfather of this young man could have personally saved the lives of many Jews at Dachau, yet he would still have been a war criminal simply because he was in a military unit that had been declared (ex-post-facto) by the enemy to be a criminal organization.

This quote is from the article by Ms. Payne:

After touring the main facilities, we decided to go as a group to visit the crematorium knowing this would be the most difficult part for each of us, particularly for [the grandson of an SS man] who knew his grandfather had a part in the effort by the SS of placing so many innocent people in the ovens.

The crematorium had been built at the backside of the camp, out of view and out of hearing range of the screams of many thousands of people as they were being place[d] into the ovens. It was adjacent to the gas chamber which had been disguised as “showers”.

Cremation ovens at Dachau concentration camp

View of the inside of one of the Dachau ovens

Dr. Francizek Blaha was a prisoner, who worked at the Dachau crematorium, performing autopsies. The following quote is from the affidavit of Dr. Blaha, given to American interrogators on 3 May 1945, and presented at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal in November 1945:

Sometimes prisoners were killed only because they had dysentery or vomited and gave the nurses too much trouble. Mental patients were liquidated by being led to the gas chamber and injected there or shot. Shooting was a common method of execution. Prisoners could be shot just outside the crematorium and carried in. I have seen people pushed into the ovens while they were still breathing and making sounds, although if they were too much alive they were usually hit on the head first.

Could this be the origin of the claim that prisoners were burned alive in the ovens at Dachau?  Are tour guides now telling visitors that people were burned alive at Dachau?

According to Marcus J. Smith, a U.S. Army doctor, who wrote a book called The Harrowing of Hell about the days immediately following the liberation of the camp, the ovens at Dachau were used by the American military to cremate the bodies found in the camp, including the bodies of some of the Waffen-SS soldiers who were killed when the camp was liberated.

Smith wrote that, around May 6, 1945, the disposal of the bodies in the camp began:

It is time to dispose of the bodies. Some are carried to the gravel pits. Then the furnaces of the crematorium are stoked and reignited. By increasing the work day for the operators from four to ten hours, 710 corpses are cremated in the next four days. Too slow! A top-level decision is made to bury the dead.

Dachau prisoners who loaded the dead bodies into the ovens pose for a photo

The old photo above show crematory workers demonstrating how they dragged the dead bodies out of the morgue, loaded them onto a stretcher and then shoved them into the cremation ovens. Posed photographs, such as the photo shown above, were offered for sale to American soldiers who visited the museum set up in Baracke X by the US Army after the liberation of Dachau.

According to Marcus J. Smith, the chief of the Dachau crematorium crew was Ludvik “a heavy, powerfully muscled Czech who has labored in the crematorium for a long time.” Smith wrote that Ludvik sent him a letter in which he complained that his team of 10 people were not being treated as well as they had been by the SS. Ludvik wrote in this letter: “We feel that after our liberation, at least the same standard of living should be maintained. But our position is worse than then as to food, drinks and tobacco.”

Could it be that Ludvik and his fellow prisoners shoved Jews into the ovens alive?  Or did the SS men come into the crematorium at night and burn a few Jews alive, just for fun?  Is this why the SS was declared to be a criminal organization by the Allies ex post facto (after the fact)?  The grandsons of the SS men should not be tortured by being told that SS men burned people alive in the ovens at Dachau.  For shame!

Smith wrote that, because the cremation efforts were too slow, the bodies were buried by German civilians “at the American commander’s request.” The corpses were taken on carts to the burial site on a hill called Leitenberg where the bodies were transferred to a bulldozed excavation, according to Smith. He wrote that “Eventually 2,400 bodies were buried.” That would mean that there was a total of 3,110 bodies in the camp, including those of the prisoners who died between April 29th and May 6th after the liberation. There were allegedly 2,310 bodies on the death train that arrived in the camp on April 27, 1945, which would have to be included in this total. There were 2,226 prisoners who died in the month of May 1945 after the liberation of the camp; they were buried in a cemetery in the town of Dachau.

Photo of the body of Louis Schloss, who died at Dachau

Ms. Payne shows a photo of Louis Schloss, a prisoner who died after being punished at Dachau with this caption under the photo:

Nurembourg (sic) businessman Louis Schloss died on May 16, 1933 at Dachau as a result of a beating. To give the incident the appearance of a suicide, he was hung on a hook with suspenders. The above image was taken on May 17, 1933 under the direction of the State Prosecution Office.

It is true that Louis Schloss died in the Dachau camp after being beaten.  Here is what happened:  When the Dachau camp was first opened on March 22, 1933, the guards were police officers with the Munich police, but after only a few weeks, SS soldiers were assigned to guard duty in the camp.

The first Commandant of Dachau was SS Standartenführer Hilmar Wäckerle, who began using that title on April 19, 1933. Wäckerle was instructed by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and the acting Police Chief of Munich, to draw up a set of rules for discipline in the camp. His rules were extremely harsh and a number of prisoners died after being punished.

The deaths in the Dachau camp came to the attention of the Munich prosecutor after Sophie Handschuch made a formal complaint in 1933, demanding to know the true cause of death of her son who had been an inmate at Dachau. Other prisoners who died in the early days of the camp were Dr. Rudolf Benario, Fritz Dressel, Sepp Götz, Ernst Goldmann, Arthur Kahn, and Erwin Kahn. Karl Lehrburger and Wilhelm Aron, both Jewish, also died as a result of harsh treatment in the Dachau camp. Herbert Hunglinge committed suicide to escape the unbearable conditions in the camp.

After an investigation by the Munich police, Wäckerle was charged with murder for the deaths of Louis Schloss on May 16, Leonard Hausmann on May 17, Dr. Alfred Strauss on May 24 and Sebastian Nefzger on May 25. Dr. Strauss and Louis Schloss were both Jewish. Because of the criminal charges, Himmler was forced to relieve Wäckerle of his command, as of June 25, 1933. The charges against Wäckerle were later dropped, but he was dismissed from his job as Commandant and sent to fight on the Eastern front, where he was killed in action. Wäckerle was replaced by Theodor Eicke who became the new Commandant. Eicke was also killed in action after he was transferred to the Eastern front.

In June 1934, Eicke was given the title of Inspector General and the authority to approve all punishments in all the camps.

The following quote is from the article written by Ms. Payne:

Pole hanging was a method of torture used in interrogation as well as punishment. Victims were hung up by their wrists, swung back and forth, and beaten.

“These are the torments of hell! The whole body weight hangs from the arms that are twisted backward. And the monsters stand in front of you and laugh at your pain, ask you whether you now want to confess, slap you in the face and pull and tug at your body. When you stay silent they swing you, often they whip you at the same time.” — “The Powerful and the Helpless,” prisoner account of Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz (1940-1945 in the Dachau concentration camp) on pole hanging, 1957 (excerpt).

Fake photo of “tree hanging” is a still shot from a documentary made by the Soviet Union

Pole hanging was also called “tree hanging.”  I previously blogged about pole hanging here.  The photo shown above was taken in the second Dachau Museum, which first opened in 1965.  When the Museum was expanded in 2003, this photo was removed.  Although it was known that this was a fake photo, it was left up in the Dachau Museum for several years.
This quote is also from the article by Ms. Payne, which shows a photo of a door into a prison cell in the Dachau bunker:

During the 5 hours we spent at Dachau, the most difficult for me was viewing the prison cells. The walk down a long corridor portrayed each cell as being more deplorable than that the last.

Apparently, Ms. Payne was not told that the bunker had private cells for the privileged prisoners who were allowed to walk around around outside their cells and even to receive visitors.  There was one wing of the bunker, that has since been torn down, which housed the SS men who had broken the rules.  The night before the Dachau camp was liberated, 128 SS men were released from their prison cells in the bunker and ordered to man the guard towers, while the regular SS guards  left that night.

After Dachau was liberated, it was turned into “War Crimes Enclosure No. 1 for German war criminals”.  The cells in the bunker were used to incarcerate high ranking German prisoners. The Germans didn’t get a private cell; 5 men were placed in each cell where there was only one bed.  They had to take turns standing, sitting and sleeping.

Ms. Payne shows a photo of one of the disinfection cells with the caption “Gas chamber.”  At least, she got that right.  A disinfection cell at Dachau was called a Gaskammer or “gas chamber” in English.

Photo of disinfection cell with the caption “Gas chamber”