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

How Holocaust remembrance 24/7, 365 days a year affects people today.

Today I read in the news that some people in Greece are becoming fed up with the Holocaust. This quote is from the news article, which you can read in full here:

ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — The Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party questioned the country marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, calling it “unacceptable.”

In the Greek Parliament last week, Golden Dawn lawmaker Ioannis Lagos asked the Education and Interior ministers why state institutions and schools commemorate the remembrance day, which is marked on Jan. 27 each year — the day in 1945 that Soviet forces liberated the Auschwitz death camp.

“We have received complaints that on this day, in Greek schools, texts are read which praise the Jews and at the same time portray them as heroes,” Lagos said. “Given that at the same time Greek children are completely ignorant of important moments in Greek history and of the real holocausts and heroes of the Greeks, we find it unacceptable that they are taught about the Jewish Holocaust in detail.”

I previously blogged about Holocaust Remembrance Day here.

To give you an idea of how Holocaust education affects people today, I will quote from an essay written by ROBERT HALFON, MP FOR HARLOW, after a trip to Auschwitz.  Halfon starts out by explaining how he came to hate the German people at a very young age.

Quote from the Harlow Star online newspaper:

It was all because I had watched a series about the Nazi Holocaust on television. Suddenly the German adult who had befriended me became an enemy who (sic) I started to hate.

[...]

As a Jew who had relatives in another concentration camp (Bergen Belsen), I have grown up with the Holocaust always in my cultural background. I have read about it, watched films about it, heard about it and visited the Holocaust Museum in Israel, known as Yad Vashem, on a number of occasions.

[...]

If one thing Auschwitz teaches you it is not to hate Germans . . . or anyone else for that matter. If not checked, hatred grows and grows.

From demonisation to marginalisation to extermination,that is the story of genocide – not just during the Second World War but the world over.

That is why I know I was so stupid in my behaviour to that German lady as a child and why I have learnt my lesson ever since. We can’t visit the sins of the fathers on the sins of the children.

We must learn from the past but not live in it.

Unfortunately a guided tour of Auschwitz DOES teach hatred.  Halfon’s essay is very well written; it is like poetry, but, unfortunately, his essay contains nothing but hatred.

This quote is from the essay written by Halfon:

Auschwitz I is where the Devil’s sign ‘Arbeit Nacht (sic) Frei’ (Work makes you free) is. As we walked around and went into the huts where artefacts (sic) were displayed, there is a sense that the Nazis ran it as if it were a series of conveyer belts in a factory.

Did anyone ever explain to Halfon and the British students, on their one-day trip, why the Auschwitz main camp has an “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign over the gate, but this sign is not on the gate into the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp? I previously blogged about the sign at Auschwitz here.

Continuing the quote from Halfon’s article:

Prisoners arrived, had their possessions taken away, their hair cut and then many were sent to the gas chambers. In one hut we saw rooms full of human hair which the Nazis used to make textiles, rows of suitcases, piles of spectacles, even hundreds of false legs and arms that were seized.

Then you come out of the huts, walk close to a gas chamber and you have another shock. Right opposite is the house of the camp commandant, Rudolf Hoess. A nice house that would have fitted well into a suburban setting, it is hard to believe that this man, lived there with his family whilst mass murder was being committed on his doorstep.

The organisation (sic) of the camp was extraordinary. With all morality gone, evil had become a science.

The house of the commandant, Rudolf Hoess, is not exactly OPPOSITE the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp.  The building that is opposite the gas chamber is the SS hospital.

Auschwitz gas chamber in the foreground with SS hospital in the background

Roof of Auschwitz gas chamber with SS hospital in the background

To any reasonable person, the fact that the SS hospital was across the street from the alleged gas chamber, should be a clue that the alleged gas chamber building did NOT house a homicidal gas chamber.  The house where the Commandant lived was down the street from the so-called gas chamber at Auschwitz. The house is shown in the photo below; notice that the building OPPOSITE it is NOT the gas chamber building.

The Commandant’s house at Auschwitz

The quote from Halfon’s essay continues below:

It was a very cold day when we visited Auschwitz. The temperature dipped to -5 degrees and it snowed constantly. But when we arrived at Auschwitz Birkenau I felt a much deeper chill right inside. I shuddered as if I had had a fright. This was the place where the Nazis killed 1.5 million Jews.

The figure of 1.5 million was made up by Lech Walesa.  The number of Jews who died at Auschwitz is unknown, but the current estimate is 1.1 million.  Some estimates now go as low as 900,000. You can read about how the numbers at Auschwitz have changed here.

Continuing the quote from the essay by Halfon:

Strangely for me, the part of Birkenau that had most effect was standing on the railway platform. The Nazis had to ensure the trains ran on time to Auschwitz from almost every destination in Europe. From Corfu to the Netherlands, Jews were squashed in cattle trucks without food or water and, taken to this railway platform.

When they got out of the train, they were put in ‘selection’. The fitter, healthier looking ones became prisoners for slave labour, the others taken to the gas chambers having been told they were going to have showers.

When they walked into the shower huts, gas came through the roofs. The dead bodies were then taken by other prisoners to giant ovens where they were burned.

The “shower huts”? “Gas came through the roofs”?  No, the story told about Auschwitz-Birkenau is that the prisoners went into an underground undressing room, took off their clothes, and then proceeded into gas chambers which had NO SHOWER PIPES and NO HOLES in the roof, through which to input the Zyklon-B gas pellets.

The photo below shows the ruins of Krema II, one of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Ruins of Krema II gas chamber have no holes in the roof for inputting the gas

The hole that is visible in the photo above is a hole in the roof of Krema II through which at least three Holocaust revisionists have descended and found no evidence of gassing, and no evidence of holes that might have been closed up before the building was blown up.  No holes, no Holocaust!

The trips, taken by the British to Auschwitz, are nothing but propaganda, designed to promote nothing but hatred, and people the world over are getting sick of it. Enough already!

“When Rudolf Hoess stood trial at Nuremberg…”

In an article which you can read in full here, I read the following information:

When Rudolf Hoess stood trial at Nuremberg, he concluded his testimony by saying he was not a sadistic man and that he had never sanctioned the extermination of the Jews.  He was even proud of how much more humane the gassing process was at Auschwitz compared to Treblinka.

You can read the testimony of Rudolf Hoess at Nuremberg here.

Why was Rudolf Hoess put on trial at Nuremberg?  What were the charges against him?  Was Hoess convicted at Nuremberg?

The article which claims that Rudolf Hoess was put on trial at Nuremberg starts off with this quote:

An Eco-Fascist Gassing Experiment with Diesel Fumes at the EPA
By Mark Musser

It has been recently revealed that the EPA has far surpassed the dark humor of blowing up kids and people on film that global warming scare-mongers promoted a few years back.  In real life, the EPA has been conducting human experiments on people by piping diesel fumes from a running truck mixed with air into their lungs at a North Carolina university.  The agency has ginned up yet another green crusade — the lethal dangers of diesel fumes.  They even had a gas chamber set up to accommodate the environmental research project that shockingly recalls the death camps in Poland.

My readers have probably deduced by now that Rudolf Hoess was not on trial at Nuremberg; he was a defense witness for Ernst Kaltenbrunner.  Hoess was questioned on the witness stand about statements which he had made in his confession, which was read in court by Col. Amen.

The following is the testimony of Rudolf Hoess at Nuremberg:

Testimony on Monday, April 15, 1946
Morning Session

DR. KAUFFMANN: With the agreement of the Tribunal, I now call the witness Hoess.
[The witness Hoess took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: Stand up. Will you state your name?
RUDOLF FRANZ FERDINAND HOESS (Witness): Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess.

[...]

COL. AMEN: [quoting from the affidavit given by Hoess prior to the trial]

“5. On 1 December 1943 1 became Chief of Amt 1 in Amt Group D of the WVHA, and in that office was responsible for co-ordinating all matters arising between RSHA and concentration camps under the administration of WVHA. I held this position until the end of the war. Pohl, as Chief of WVHA, and Kaltenbrunner, as Chief of RSHA, often conferred personally and frequently communicated orally and in writing concerning concentration camps. . . .”
You have already told us about the lengthy report which you took to Kaltenbrunner in Berlin, so I will omit the remainder of Paragraph 5.
“6. The ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time, there were already in the General Government three other extermination camps: Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek. These camps were under the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD. I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations. The camp commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one-half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used [carbon] monoxide gas, and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyklon B, which was a crystallized prussic acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one-half hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special Kommandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses.”
Is that all true and correct, Witness?
HOESS: Yes.
COL. AMEN: Incidentally, what was done with the gold which was taken from the teeth of the corpses, do you know?
HOESS: Yes.
COL. AMEN: Will you tell the Tribunal?
HOESS: This gold was melted down and brought to the Chief Medical Office of the SS at Berlin.
COL. AMEN:  [quoting from the affidavit given by Hoess]
“7 Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chamber [in the main Auschwitz camp] to accommodate 2,000 people at one time whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each. The way we selected our victims was as follows: We had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under the clothes, but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz.”
Is that all true and correct, Witness?
HOESS: Yes.
COL. AMEN: Now, I will omit Paragraphs 8 and 9, which have to do with the medical experiments as to which you have already testified.
“10. Rudolf Mildner was the chief of the Gestapo at Katowice . . . from approximately March 1941 until September 1943. As such, he frequently sent prisoners to Auschwitz for incarceration or execution. He visited Auschwitz on several occasions. The Gestapo court, the SS Standgericht, which tried persons accused of various crimes, such as escaping prisoners of war, et cetera, frequently met within Auschwitz, and Mildner often attended the trial of such persons, who usually were executed in Auschwitz following their sentence. I showed Mildner through the extermination plant at Auschwitz and he was directly interested in it since he had to send the Jews from his territory for execution at Auschwitz.
“I understand English as it is written above. The above statements are true; this declaration is made by me voluntarily and without compulsion; after reading over the statement I have signed and executed the same at Nuremberg, Germany, on the fifth day of April 1946.”
Now I ask you, Witness, is everything which I have read to you true to your own knowledge?
HOESS: Yes.

Note that Hoess made a mistake when he said that the three Operation Reinhard camps were Belzec, Treblinka and Wolzek.  The third one was actually named Sobibor.

Note that Hoess said that the gas chamber at the Auschwitz main camp could gas 2,000 people at one time. If 2,000 people were put into the gas chamber at the main camp, there would have been no need for gas.  The victims would have died as the result of being crushed to death.  The gas chamber room was not large enough to accomodate 2,000 people.

Note that Hoess said that the gas was dropped into the gas chamber through “a small opening.”  According to the official Holocaust story, which you must believe in order to avoid going to prison for up to five years, there were four openings through which the gas pellets were dropped into the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp.  The four openings have been reconstructed, so that the 1.5 million tourists who visit Auschwitz each year can see them.

Note that Hoess said that the length of time that it took for the victims to die in the Auschwitz gas chamber was 3 to 15 minutes, “depending on climatic conditions.”   This was because the gas chamber had no way to heat it to 78.3 degrees, the temperature at which the gas was released.  In cold weather, it took longer for the body heat of the victims to heat the chamber to 78.3 degrees.

Why did Rudolf Hoess make so many mistakes in his affidavit which was read in court?  Who actually wrote his confession for him?  If Hoess wrote his confession himself, why did he make so many mistakes?

BTW, Hoess was put on trial in Poland.  He was convicted and hanged near the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp.

Can the Holocaust be saved? Even the Jews are now denying it

I had never heard of Micha Kat until I came across a blog post on the Balder Blog, written on October 23, 2011, which you can read in full here.

This quote is from the Balder Blog:

Rumors say that Micha Kat has fled Holland, where so called ‘holocaust denial’ is a punishable thought crime, and has taken up residency in Laos

	Micha Kat – Born 1963

Micha Kat: Our society is in the proces (sic) of crashing, because its foundations have shown themselves to be completely rotten. One of these rotten foundations is the history surrounding the ‘Holocaust’. If we want to attack the system as a whole, we can do this best and most effectively by directing our efforts to this foundation, which is seen as the most ‘holy’ and the most ‘sacrosanct’. The Holocaust. Source

Micha Kat and the Holocaust Hoax (by Micha Kat)

This infamous holocaust lie must be exposed in order to also smash the other lies; the benevolent European Union, the life threatening ‘pandemics’, the saving of Greece ‘for your own good’, and the illusion of trustworthiness of the government and the main stream media..

My father had a Jewish mother, and my mother a Jewish father. A deadly cocktail; even if I officially [Halacha - Jewish law] am not Jewish, all my growing up and education was focussed (sic) on our Jewish identity, and especially on Israel, where my mother has lived for many years, and where much of her family still lives.

End quote from Balder Blog

There are a few obvious errors in the Balder blog post, but the gist of the article is that Micha Kat, born in 1963, is denying the Holocaust. He may or may not be Jewish, depending on how you define the word Jew.

Scroll way down on the Balder blog post and you will see the video of David Cole as he confronts a tour guide in the gas chamber of the main Auschwitz camp.  This is the first time that I have been able to see the entire documentary made by David Cole in 1992.  In 1994, David Cole had to go into hiding, in fear for his life, and has never been heard from since.

When I went to Auschwitz, for the first time, in 1998, I arranged my tour through a tour company in New York city.  My guide for the Auschwitz main camp was a very young Jewish woman, who was not very assertive — much like the guide that David Cole had in 1992.

In 1998, the entrance to the gas chamber in the main camp was through the door that was constructed by the Germans when they converted the “gas chamber” into a bomb shelter.  The door is shown in my 1998 photo below.

Door into Auschwitz gas chamber constructed when the room was converted into a bomb shelter by the Nazis

Before we went into the gas chamber through the air raid shelter door, I started to climb up onto the roof.  The guide said to me, “You can’t go up there!”  I said, “Sure you can.  Look, there is a path up to the top.”  As a result, I got the photos, which I took on the roof, shown below.

My 1998 photo of the roof of the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp

Roof of the gas chamber in Auschwitz, with the SS hospital that was directly across the street

As I was walking around the main Auschwitz camp in 1998, I sensed that my tour guide was very nervous because she was suspicious of me.  Like David Cole, whom I had never heard of at that time, I was asking questions and I was not showing the proper emotion during a tour of the most sacred place on earth.

In 1998, there was no sign anywhere which said that photos were forbidden at Auschwitz.  The first photo of the gas chamber, that I took in 1998, is shown below.

My 1998 photo of the doorway into Auschwitz gas chamber from the oven room

I took the photo above after I had observed that the doorway had no signs of any door being there and it was not lined up with the tracks in front of the ovens; obviously this was not the original doorway from the oven room into the gas chamber. Note that the photo shows a tour group inside the gas chamber.

After I took the photo above, the tour guide told me not to take any more photos because she said that it is disrespectful to take photos inside the gas chamber where so many people died.   I ignored her and took a photo of the back wall of the gas chamber, which you can see below.  The tour guide glared at me with an expression of “How dare you disrespect such a sacred place.”  I took this photo because I couldn’t contain myself after seeing a glass panel in the back door of the gas chamber.

My 1998 photo of the back wall of the Auschwitz gas chamber

I asked my tour guide “What kept the prisoners from breaking the glass in the door and letting all the poison gas out of the gas chamber?”  She told me, with a straight face, that there was a guard outside the door, with a gun, ready to shoot anyone who tried to break the glass.

We started walking out of the door shown in the photo above, and when the tour guide had her back turned, I spun around, and holding the camera in one hand, I took the photo below.  This was one of the first published photos of the gas chamber in the main camp.  A similar photo is shown on the Balder Blog.  You can’t take this same photo now because there is always a flower arrangement on the floor.

My 1998 photo of the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp

Note the marks on the floor in the photo above, which show where there were walls around several little rooms in the chamber when it was used as a air raid shelter.  In the face of this evidence, my tour guide assured me that the gas chamber was original, not a reconstruction.

The following quote is from the blog post on the Balder Blog:

In which camp was Uncle Ernie gassed?

	Most often published ‘Auschwitz-foto’ [originates from Buchenwald - Balder]

Get me right please: I don’t say that all these stories are 100% lies, but that there was ‘something which was twisted’. Strange. If even things like that are wrapped in such mystery, how then couldn’t it be with the big story; the Holocaust; the ‘planned industrialized extermination’ of European Jewry?

The most often published ‘Auschwitz photo’. Evidence for Holocaust and gas chambers? Just think about the comparable photo of the ‘Serbian concentration camp’ Omarska, which was spread by the NATO propaganda machine, and which is known to be a propaganda hoax. [images right -->]

As a child I read everything about the war. The five small volumes written by Lou de Jong on the occasion of a TV series at that point in time, I literally knew by heart. The books in my parent’s library contained numbers from standard works. But there was also something wrong there. Something which didn’t add up. I already had seen that through as a kid. It was all about the gas chambers.

End quote from Balder Blog

The Balder Blog has made a correction on the photo directly above, explaining that the photo of the prisoners in a concentration barrack “originates from Buchenwald.”  This is the famous photo which allegedly shows Elie Wiesel as one of the prisoners in barrack #56 at Buchenwald.  Now there is a whole website devoted to Elie Wiesel.  The title of the website is Elie Wiesel Cons the World.  As far as I know, the owner of the website has not gone into hiding, like David Cole.  You can watch a video about Elie Wiesel on the Elie Wiesel Cons the World web site here.

So what is going on here?  Will the whole Holocaust story soon be revealed as a giant hoax, as believed by the Holocaust deniers?

Already, the Holocaust numbers are dwindling down:  From 4 million deaths at Auschwitz, claimed by the Soviets at the Nuremberg IMT, the official number is now down to 1.1 million deaths, of which around 900,000 were Jews.  The numbers at Majdanek are now officially down to 78,000 deaths, of which 59,000 were Jews. The number of deaths at Majdanek was claimed to be 1.5 million by the Soviets at Nuremberg.

Only Dachau is holding the line:  The number of deaths at Dachau has now been inflated by 10,000 — which the tour guides justify by the fact that, as we all know, the Nazis didn’t keep accurate records.  The tour guides at Dachau now tell visitors that the gas chamber there was used, although not for “mass gassing.”

Update 1:22 p.m.

When I was a Freshman in High School in 1948, the students were given a small pamphlet to take home.  We were supposed to study this pamphlet and be prepared for a class discussion the next day.  I remember this very clearly.

The pamphlet was all about how President Harry Truman was the first national leader to recognize Israel as a country.  It was so sad to read about the poor Jews, who had no country of their own.  The main point of the pamphlet, however, was that it was Harry Truman, the first president of the United States from Missouri, who had been the first to recognize the country of Israel.  The Holocaust was not discussed, not in the pamphlet, nor in the classroom.  We were not told why the Jews needed a country of their own.

The students in my high school were so proud that it was a man from Missouri who was the first one to come to the defense of the Jews and recognize Israel as their country.  The point that I am trying to make here is that the Holocaust was not discussed immediately after World War II — not in my High School classes, nor in my classes at the University of Missouri.  The Holocaust did not become a popular subject until some time in the 1970s.  Now it is the number one topic of the day.  There is something about the Holocaust in the news every day.   Americans are suffering from Holocaust fatigue.  The Jews have overplayed their hand and now the Holocaust is becoming a joke.

On his trip to Poland, should Mitt Romney visit Auschwitz?

Update, 07/31/12: Mitt Romney visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw today. This is exactly the place that I would have suggested that he visit if he had asked my advice. He also visited the site of the new Holocaust Museum in Warsaw, which will open in 2013.

A post card photo of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is shown below, along with an old photo showing the bomb damage to this place during World War II.

Tomb of Unknown Soldier in Warsaw

Bomb damage to Tomb of Unknown Soldier

When I visited Poland for the first time in 1998, I stayed in Warsaw for a couple of days and the first place I went was to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  You can read about it on my website here.

Update, 07/30/12:

According to Fox News, Mitt Romney has arrived in Poland and is now in Warsaw.  He was shown on the Fox TV news as he and his wife shook hands with Lech Walesa.  Some footage of the square in old town Warsaw was shown.  I recognized some of the buildings that I photographed in 1998.

Old Town in Warsaw, Poland

Since he is in Warsaw today and only plans to stay in Poland for two days, he will probably not go to Auschwitz.

Old Town Warsaw

I think that Romney’s decision to go to Warsaw, and not Krakow and Auschwitz, was a smart move on his part.  He’s got my vote!

Continue reading my original blog post:

According to Fox News, Mitt Romney is doing very well on his visit to Israel, making some points with Jewish voters.  His next stop will be Poland.  But why is Romney going to Poland?  Why not Germany?  America might need some help from Germany if the country goes any farther into debt. Obama has visited Germany several times, including a visit to the Buchenwald Memorial Site.

Why doesn’t Romney just go to Chicago, where the largest number of Polish-American voters are located?  Oh, wait a minute! Chicago is Obama’s old stamping ground. And it’s not the Polish-American vote that he is after, it is the Jewish vote.

The best city to visit in Poland, in my humble opinion, is Krakow, which has some beautiful historic sites.  Krakow is only 35 miles from Auschwitz, which brings up the big question — will Romney go to Auschwitz?

This quote is from an article on this website:

While Romney’s political intentions in both Britain (the Olympics) and Israel are clear, the reason for his visit to Poland is still somewhat obscure. In fact, the central reason for Romney’s plan to visit Poland has been kept totally under wraps to date.

It now seems likely that Romney’s visit to Poland is simply part B of his plan to challenge President Obama’s record on US support for Israel and the foreign policy of the Middle East.  By visiting Auschwitz, Romney may hope to upstage President Obama and his commitment to peace in the Middle East.  By politicizing the Holocaust, Romney and his mastermind, Sheldon Adelson, would appear to be launching their plan to manufacturing a deep schism within the American Jewish community that could influence the outcome of the November election.

[...]

On the other hand, if Romney visits Poland and does not visit Auschwitz – his campaign to divide the US Jewish community will be in tatters.  Therefore, it seems likely that the real reason for Romney’s visit to Poland will be part of the Adelson plan to capture a  higher proportion of the Jewish vote for the Republicans.

However, by playing the Holocaust card so clumsily and so politically, Romney would run the risk of setting off a tidal wave of criticism from the Jewish community – a firestorm that could boomerang and become incandescent in the USA.

On Romney’s trip to London, he made some remarks which offended the British. There is a grave danger that the same thing could happen in Poland.  Romney is probably not an expert on the Holocaust, and he could make a gaffe, like Obama did, by calling Auschwitz a “Polish death camp.”

If Romney does go to Auschwitz, his first stop will be the Auschwitz main camp, where every visiting official leaves flowers at the famous “Black Wall,” aka the Death Wall.  As he lays his wreath of flowers at the wall, Romney must be careful to say something in honor of the Polish political prisoners who lived and died in the main camp.  If he mentions only the Jews, the Polish people will be offended and his trip to Poland could turn into a disaster.

Recently Ziad al-Bandak, advisor for Christian relations to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, laid a bouquet of red and white flowers at the Auschwitz Death Wall. (Red and White are the colors of the Polish flag.) A photo of Ziad al-Bandak at the Death Wall is shown below.

http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/news/palestinian-official-visits-auschwitz-death-camp_8421

If Romney goes to Poland, his next stop at the Auschwitz main camp will be the famous gas chamber.  I would suggest that he be completely silent as he stands inside the gas chamber.  This is a place where it is easy to make a stupid remark, which could be interpreted as “Holocaust denial.”  This would be the kiss of death for his election campaign.

For example, a person might say something stupid like “How could this be a gas chamber when it is not air tight, and it has a glass window in the door?”

The crematorium, that is right next to the gas chamber in the main camp, would be his next place to lay a bouquet of flowers.  The photo below shows Laura Bush doing this honor at Auschwitz.

Laura Bush puts a bouquet of flowers in the Auschwitz main camp crematorium

The next place for an official visit is the International Monument at the Birkenau camp.  The walk to the Monument is over a mile long, so Romney should be prepared.  Romney should be aware that it is easy to make a stupid remark, which would offend the Jews and end his career forever.

The photo below shows Attorney General Eric Holder putting flowers on the steps of the International Monument. (Click on the photo to enlarge)

Eric Holder at the International Monument at Auschwitz Photo credit: ttp://www.justice.gov/css-gallery/gallery-auschwitz.html#6

Flowers placed at the International Monument

The English language plaque at Birkenau

The plaques at the International Monument say that one and a half million people died at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This estimate was made by Lech Walesa.  The current estimate, given by the Auschwitz Museum is 1.1 million, of which 900,000 were Jews.

If Romney goes to Birkenau, he should be careful not to say something stupid like “What happened to the 4 million who died, according to the testimony given at the Nuremberg IMT?”

What I am trying to say here is that Romney should do some last minute study of Holocaust history on his flight to Poland, so that he doesn’t make any stupid mistakes.  My best advice would be to go to Warsaw, and not to Krakow and Auschwitz.

French Holocaust denier dies

This morning I read a news story, which was published on June 15, 2012 on the online Times Live.  The headline is “French Holocaust denialist philosopher dies”.

What was his name?  Doesn’t matter — he was a Holocaust denier, and that’s all you need to know.  You can read the article here and rejoice over his death.

What attracted me to this news article was the photo which accompanied it.  The caption on the photo was this:

Commemorators walk into what used to be a gas chamber in a crematorium at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz Birkenau.
Image by: YVES HERMAN / REUTERS

Shouldn’t there be a photo of the man who died?  Instead of a photo of what is purported to be a gas chamber in the Auschwitz main camp?

I immediately recognized the photo that accompanied the news article.  It is a photo of a WASHROOM which tourists enter today, believing that what they are entering is part of a gas chamber.

My photos of the washroom are shown below.

Door into a washroom that is purported to be part of the Auschwitz gas chamber

The cover of a drain hole in the washroom with drains for two toilets in the background

Drains for two toilets in the Auschwitz washroom

Blueprint of the building where the Auschwitz gas chamber was located

The location of the gas chamber is shown on the right side, at the bottom of the blueprint.  On the other side of the gas chamber wall was the oven room.  Wouldn’t that have been dangerous?  The heat of the ovens might have caused an explosion when the gas was put into the chamber!

On the other hand, the Zyklon-B pellets had to be heated before the gas was released, so maybe this was an innovative design.  There was no other way to heat the pellets in the gas chamber in the main camp.

The two rooms to the left of the gas chamber on the blueprint are the washroom and the “laying out room” where autopsies were done.  The “laying out” room is shown in the photo below; note the door from the “laying out” room which opens into the washroom.

Does this design suggest to anyone else that this whole set-up was a morgue that was located right next to the cremation ovens?  It does to me, but what do I know?

Door into the laying out room with the door into the washroom in the background

I have not read any of Roger Garaudy’s books, so I don’t know what he denied.  Did he walk into the laying out room, and then proceed into the washroom? Did he exclaim: “Hey look, there were two toilets in the gas chamber.”?  Or did he enter the building through the door at the other end of the gas chamber, which was not there when the gas chamber was in operation?

Door that was claimed to be the entrance into the Auschwitz gas chamber in 1998

My photo above shows the entrance which was used for tourists when I visited in 1998.  I was told that this was the door through which the victims entered.  At that time, the staff at Auschwitz was denying that the gas chamber was a reconstruction, done by the Soviet Union in 1947.

My 1998 photo below shows the door into the washroom in the closed position.  In 1998, the tour guides were telling visitors that this was the back door of the gas chamber.

Door into the washroom through which tourists enter the Auschwitz gas chamber today

This door opens inward, which would have made it hard to enter after the gassing when all the bodies were piled up against it. Of course, the gas chamber could have been entered through the door into the oven room.  The door that is shown in the previous photo was not there when the gas chamber was in operation.

Note the glass window in the door.  How did the Nazis prevent the victims from breaking the window?  Even with the window intact, the gas chamber was not air tight because of the keyhole in the door.  Of course, they could have put a piece of tape over the keyhole.

the grandson of Rudolf Hoess is still bothered by the shame associated with his family name

Rainer Hoess recently visited the Auschwitz main camp, where his father, the son of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoess, was raised in a house that was only a few yards from the gas chamber. You can see a video here which shows the garden of the Commandant’s house where the children of Rudolf Hoess played.  Rainer Hoess was particularly disgusted by the sight of the fancy wrought iron gate that opened from the garden into the Auschwitz main camp; he referred to it as the “gate into hell.”

This quote is from the article which shows the video:

When he was a child Rainer Hoess was shown a family heirloom.

He remembers his mother lifting the heavy lid of the fireproof chest with a large swastika on the lid, revealing bundles of family photos.

They featured his father as a young child playing with his brothers and sisters, in the garden of their grand family home.

The photos show a pool with a slide and a sand pit – an idyllic family setting – but one that was separated from the gas chambers of Auschwitz by just a few yards.

It was where his grandmother told the children to wash the strawberries they picked because they smelled of ash from the concentration camp ovens.

How far was the Commandant’s house from the gas chamber?  The aerial map of the Auschwitz main camp shows the location of the house, which is shown on the extreme left in the photo below.

Map of Auschwitz main camp shows the Commandant’s house on the far left

The photo below shows the street that runs along the outside of the original camp. Organized tours start on this street, then turn right at the first intersection and go through the Arbeit Macht Frei gate, which is to the right, but out of camera range in this shot. This street goes straight ahead to the gas chamber, and the former Political Section, which are to the right at the next intersection. The SS hospital, which is across from the gas chamber, can be seen on the right; it is the light-colored, two-story building.

Entrance road into the Auschwitz main camp

The SS hospital, on the left, was across the street from the gas chamber on the right

I took the photo above early in the morning in October 2005 before the tour groups entered this part of the camp.  The street shown in the photo continues on to the rear of the house where Hoess lived.  The photo below shows the rear of the house.

The rear of the house where Rudolf Hoess lived

In the photo above, the garden is on the left side of the house, but not shown in the photo.

The front of the house where Rudolf Hoess lived

The garden, where the wrought iron gate is located, is on the right side of the photo above.  On the left side, but not shown in the photo, is the fence around the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Why would the Commandant live so close to the gas chamber?  Why not?  The SS hospital was even closer to the gas chamber than the Commandant’s house, and the SS Political Department was on the other side of the gas chamber, as shown in the photo below.

The SS Political Department was located right next to the gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz

The photo above shows the gallows where Rudolf Hoess was hanged. On the left is the reconstructed chimney of the crematorium; on the right is the building where the SS Political Department was located.

What does all this have to do with anything?  It shows you how callous the SS men were.  It didn’t bother them that Jews were being gassed, 900 at a time, in the gas chamber that was right in the center of where they lived and worked and recovered when they were wounded or sick.  It didn’t bother the Commandant that his children had to wash the ashes off the strawberries from the garden before eating them.

How do we know that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz?  We know it because Rudolf Hoess confessed after he was almost tortured to death by the British.  You can read his confessions on my website here.

The shower heads in the gas chamber in the Auschwitz main camp

I love to read the news articles about the young people who travel from the UK to Auschwitz for a one-day guided tour.  This morning I read a newspaper account about a group of Sheffield sixth form students brought to Auschwitz by the Holocaust Educational Trust.  The article was written by Rachel Clegg, a reporter who traveled with the students to Auschwitz and apparently accompanied them on their tour.

This quote is from the article, headlined “Stark lessons of Auschwitz,” which you can read in full here:

By January 1942, the Nazis had started killing hundreds of people at a time in the gas chambers. Today the gas chamber block at Auschwitz 1 stands empty, although the holes where the ‘shower heads’ emitted the deadly gas are still visible.

It is not clear to me whether the group was told by a tour guide that the “deadly gas” came through  “shower heads,” or whether this detail was added by the reporter.  There are reconstructed holes in the ceiling of the Auschwitz main camp gas chamber, but these are not holes for shower heads.  The deadly Zyklon-B gas pellets were poured through large holes on the ceiling, according to the official Holocaust story. These holes were reconstructed by the Soviets after they liberated Auschwitz and found that the holes had been closed up when the gas chamber was converted into a bomb shelter by the Germans.

For over 50 years, the staff at Auschwitz told visitors that the Auschwitz main camp gas chamber was original.  Now it is admitted that the gas chamber is a reconstruction, but I am not sure if the students are told this.

The problem is that there are so many visitors to Auschwitz today that no one is allowed to walk around in the gas chamber and get a good look at the holes, as I was able to do in 2005.  The photo below shows what visitors now see when they go inside the gas chamber.

The view of the Auschwitz main camp gas chamber that tourists see today

The photo above shows what tourists see today when they go inside the Auschwitz gas chamber.  In my 2005 photo below, you can see one of the holes in the ceiling on the left side.

Hole in the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber can be seen on the left side

My photo of Auschwitz gas chamber in 2005 shows no holes for shower heads on the ceiling

On the left side of the photo above, you can see part of a vent hole on the ceiling.  A close-up of the vent hole is shown in the photo below.

Vent hole in the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber

View of Auschwitz gas chamber, looking toward the entrance added when the chamber was converted into a bomb shelter

The photo above clearly shows that there were no shower heads in the Auschwitz main camp gas chamber.  There are no holes where the shower heads would have been located.

There are four reconstructed holes in the ceiling of the Auschwitz gas chamber, two on each side.

Photo of Auschwitz gas chamber shows a hole in the ceiling on the right side

Reconstructed hole in the ceiling of Auschwitz gas chamber

Hole in ceiling of gas chamber

The two photos above show the holes in the ceiling on the left side.  The photo below is a close-up of one of the reconstructed holes in the ceiling on the right side. On the roof of the building, the holes are covered with a wooden lid, which you can see in the photo below.

Hole in ceiling of gas chamber on right side

According to Franciszek Piper, the former director of the Auschwitz Museum, the Zyklon-B gas pellets were poured through the holes on the roof by one SS man who opened the lids of the holes on the roof of the building, one at a time. The pellets were just poured onto the heads of the victims, not into a wire basket from which they could be retrieved, as the manufacturer recommended.  This resulted in a big waste of money because the pellets were designed by the manufacturer to be re-used.  The pellets could not be retrieved from the floor of the Auschwitz main camp gas chamber because they would have been mixed with the bodily fluids expelled by the victims as they died.

The photo below shows the openings for the holes on the roof.  I took this photo in 1998.  Today, tourists are forbidden to climb up on the roof.

Openings for the holes on the roof of the Auschwitz gas chamber

The photograph above shows the roof of the Auschwitz gas chamber and crematorium building in the Auschwitz main camp as it looked in October 1998. On the right, you can see a red brick chimney of the type used for a stove. Behind it is another larger chimney over the area where the crematory ovens were located; there were two of these chimneys, but one is out of camera range in this photo. At the far end of the roof, there is another chimney which is not located over the gas chamber area.

One of the reconstructed holes is shown in the foreground on the left in the photo above; the other three holes are behind it. The reconstructed holes are covered by wooden lids, just like the original holes; the lids can be lifted up today, just as they were by the SS men who poured the gas pellets into the gas chamber.

Jean Claude Pressac wrote in his book “Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers” that there were originally three holes in a straight line on the roof of the gas chamber. According to the book entitled “Auschwitz 1270 to the Present,” by Robert Jan van Pelt and Deborah Dwork, the Nazis had “punched three square portholes through the morgue roof and covered them with tightly fitting wooden lids.”

The original holes for the gas pellets were closed up when the room was converted into a bomb shelter by the Nazis in 1944, although this was not mentioned in the construction plans.  The holes on the roof today are reconstructions; there are four holes, not three, as in the original construction.

Student trip to Auschwitz sponsored by the Holocaust Education Trust

I like to read newspaper accounts of the student trips from the UK to Auschwitz.  I always learn something new.

In a recent article in the Westminster Chronicle, which you can read here, I learned this startling new information:

We stopped at the point [in Auschwitz-Birkenau] where the men were separated from the women and children, and where the prisoners who were deemed unfit to work were taken straight to the main gas chambers. All that remains of the [gas] chambers is a pile of rubble, as they were demolished when the camp was liberated.

The gas chambers were demolished WHEN the camp was liberated?  According to the official Holocaust history, after the Nazis abandoned Auschwitz on Jan. 18, 1945, they came back to the camp twice to blow up the gas chambers in order to destroy the evidence before the Soviet liberators arrived.

Did something get lost in translation?  Did a tour guide at Birkenau really tell the British students that the Soviets demolished the gas chambers WHEN THE CAMP WAS LIBERATED?  That’s Holocaust denial — punishable by 5 years in prison in 16 countries!!!

But wait!  There’s more.  This quote from the article tells how the buildings in the main Auschwitz camp were built:

We were met by a guide who walked with us through the main entrance and into some of the buildings constructed by slave labour.

Read any history book about Auschwitz and you will learn that the buildings in the main camp were originally built for migratory farm workers, who stayed there between jobs in the seasonal work on large German estates. This farm labor exchange was built in a district of the town of Auschwitz, called Zazole, in 1916. Auschwitz was then in Galicia, a province in the Austro-Hungarian sector of the former country of Poland, which had been divided between the Russians, Austrians and Prussians (Germans) in 1795. At the time that the concentration camp was opened in Auschwitz, this area had been incorporated into the Greater German Reich; it was not part of German-occupied Poland.

Did the Germans use slave labor in 1916?  If they did, it is news to me.  This quote from the article gives more new information about Auschwitz:

First comes a display of hair cuttings from women who had their heads shaved, their hair used on an industrial scale to weave material for guards’ uniforms.

So that’s why the hair was cut from the heads of the women.  It was used to make hair shirts for the Auschwitz guards!

Apparently the tour guides do not tell the students that the heads of the prisoners were shaved in an attempt to get rid of the lice that spreads typhus.

Prosthetic limbs and crutches on display at Auschwitz

A display case in Room 5 of Block 5, pictured above, is filled with the artificial legs and crutches which were brought to the Auschwitz camp by incoming prisoners. My tour guide in 1998 explained that the wounded Polish war veterans from World War I accounted for most of this huge collection.

This quote from the news article has a different explanation for this display:

Then there were prosthetic limbs, crutches and sticks taken from disabled prisoners who had been taken straight to the gas chambers, along with piles of glasses worn by the men and women, suitcases bearing the names of prisoners, and children’s shoes and clothes.

So disabled prisoners were brought to Auschwitz to be gassed?  I thought disabled people were sent to Hartheim Castle in Austria to be gassed.

This quote from the news article is about the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp:

We continued on, deep in thought, to the most sinister of all the buildings, the gas chamber.

It was a little like a factory inside – just a bare room with a hole in the ceiling. You would have no idea what happened in there without knowing the background. Or at least until you see the crematoriums and their large furnaces, built to dispose of the bodies of thousands of people.

You can read about the gas chamber in the main camp on my website here, and you can read about the four holes in the ceiling here.

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

I don’t think the students should be taken to see the gas chamber. To see the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp is to become a Holocaust denier.

In the gas chamber in the main camp, there is no way to heat the Zyklon-B pellets to release the gas and no way to vent the gas from the room.  There is no container in which to put the pellets, and it would have been a problem to retrieve the pellets from the floor after the gassing.  The gas chamber is right next to the crematory room and there would have been danger of an explosion.

For years, the guides at Auschwitz told tourists that the gas chamber was original.  Now, at least, they admit that it is a reconstruction, done by the Soviets.

Should Germany’s national soccer team visit Auschwitz?

An article in the online German publication Der Spiegel makes a case for why Germany’s National Team should NOT visit Auschwitz when they go to Poland this summer to play in the European Football Championship.  I agree, but not for the reasons given by Henryk M. Broder who wrote the article.

The photo below was included in the article with the following words under the picture:

The German national football team during a training session in February: “The young players don’t bear the blame, but they do bear the responsibility.”

Germany's National Football Team

Why do these young Germans “bear the responsibility” for Auschwitz?  Will every German citizen bear responsibility for Auschwitz until the end of time?

You can read here about how the prisoners played soccer at Auschwitz-Birkenau when the death camp was in operation.

Here’s why I don’t think these German men should visit Auschwitz:

When you go to Auschwitz: Seeing is unbelieving.  Unless a person has had a good Holocaust education, he is very likely to say something stupid, or even worse, to burst out laughing at the wrong time and place.

For example, let’s say they are taken on a tour of Birkenau, the Auschwitz II extermination camp.  The first stop on the tour is the Gate of Death — the gatehouse with a tower on top of it.  Tourists can climb up to the top of it and look out over the vast expanse of 425 acres of land.  A visitor might say something like “Why was the camp so huge when most of the Jews were gassed immediately upon arrival?”  or “Why so many barracks in an extermination camp?”

The first thing that I said, when I looked out over the former Birkenau camp, was “Who lived in all these barracks?” Before going to Auschwitz, I had seen the Treblinka death camp and was astounded by how small it was. The number of Jews gassed at each of these camps was nearly the same. Two extermination camps, one tiny and one huge; it doesn’t make sense, but what do I know?

But before going to the Auschwitz II camp, visitors usually start their tour at the Auschwitz main camp, where they are taken to see the gas chamber.  On my first visit to Auschwitz, the tour guides were still telling people that the Auschwitz gas chamber was original, not a Soviet reconstruction.  Allegedly, there were 900 people gassed at one time, but the first thing I noticed, even before I went into the gas chamber, was that there was no place for the victims to remove their clothes, and no place to put the clothes.

I learned later, from Filip Müller’s book that the victims went inside with their clothes on and even took their suitcases with them into the gas chamber.  (Filip famously wrote that he ate a piece of cheese that he found in a suitcase inside the gas chamber.)

A visitor to the main Auschwitz camp might notice the glass window in the door into the gas chamber.  The visitor might ask, as I did, how the Jews were prevented from breaking the glass.  My tour guide told me that a German SS man stood outside the door, ready to shoot anyone who broke the glass and let the Zyklon-B gas out of the room.

By the time I got to Majdanek on my first tour of Poland, I was saying to myself “Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh.”  In spite of this, I lost it and burst out laughing when I read the sign outside the Majdanek gas chamber which said that the victims were given a shower before they went inside the gas chamber, so as to warm up their bodies to make the poison gas work faster.  I quickly recovered and turned the laugh into a cough.  After that, I was more careful and didn’t say anything about the window in the Majdanek gas chamber.  My point here is that you can’t be too careful when visiting a Holocaust site; you have to maintain a respectful demeanor.  Especially, a German citizen must be very careful so as not to get arrested and thrown into prison for five years because of some stupid remark.

Visitors to the main Auschwitz camp are taken to see the exhibits in the former barracks buildings.  Tourists are always horrified by the huge case of rotting hair, cut from the heads of the prisoners, and the displays of suitcases and artificial legs.  Not me!  I was fascinated by the casement windows with double paned windows and the porcelain covered stoves.  There was nothing like that in the house where I lived as a child.

Double-paned casement window in Auschwitz building

Porcelain covered stove in Auschwitz barrack

The article in Der Spiegel ends with this quote:

Showing solidarity for dead Jews is a cheap exercise. The people who were murdered can’t be killed again, nor can they be rescued retroactively. But in case someone does feel something resembling “responsibility” — and there’s nothing wrong with that, in principle — then he would be better off declaring his solidarity with those who are alive today — and would like to stay that way.

Read an article here about mass tourism at Auschwitz.