Proof that the dying victims inside the Auschwitz gas chamber scratched the walls with their fingernails

There seems to be an inordinate amount of interest in the fingernail scratches on the walls of the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp, judging by the number of visitors to my blog posts about the scratches.  But is there any proof that the scratches were made by the victims, and not by tourists in recent years?  Did the victims really scratch “Never Again” and a Star of David on the walls of the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp as they were dying?

I set out to do a search to find some proof that the scratches were made by the dying Jews.  I found the proof in a documentary entitled Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State.  In Episode 1 of this documentary, the scratches were confirmed by the testimony of Dario Gabbai, a Jew who worked as a Sonderkommando, removing the bodies from one of the gas chambers at the Auschwitz II camp, aka Birkenau.

In the YouTube video below, you can see a scene, at 1:34 minutes into the video, that depicts the Wannsee Conference where “The Final Solution” was planned by the Nazis. It is pointed out in the video that “The Final Solution” was the name that the Nazis gave to “the extermination of the Jews.”

The following quote is from the transcript of the documentary, Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State:

As the war developed Nazi decision makers conceived one of the most infamous policies in all history. What they called the ‘Final Solution’—the extermination of the Jews. And at Auschwitz they journeyed down the long and crooked road to mass murder to create this—the building which symbolised (sic) their crime—a factory of death.

Dario Gabbai—Jewish prisoner, Auschwitz 1944-45: “They were, the people screaming—all the people, you know—they didn’t know what to do, scratching the walls, crying until the gas took effect. If I close my eyes, the only thing I see is standing up—women with children in, in their hands, there.”

So who is Dario Gabbai?  This quote is from the Wikipedia entry for him:

David Dario Gabbai (born 1922) is a Greek Sephardi Jew and Holocaust survivor, notable for his role as a member of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz. He was deported to the camp in March 1944 and put to work in one of the crematoria at Birkenau, where he was forced to assist in the burning of the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews that arrived during the spring and summer of that year.

Gabbai remained at Auschwitz until its evacuation in January 1945. He was liberated from Ebensee concentration camp in Austria by the United States Army, and has publicly spoken about what he witnessed and experienced during the Holocaust.

Why was Dario Gabbai allowed to live, after he had witnessed the gassing of the Jews many times?  The policy of the Nazis was to kill the Sonderkommando Jews, who had witnessed the gassing, after 3 months on the job.  But for some strange reason, the Nazis allowed the last group of Sonderkommando Jews to live; they were marched out of the camp on January 18, 1945 and put on trains to Germany and Austria, where they lived until they were liberated by the American Army.

You can watch the first episode of the documentary on the YouTube video below.  At 1:51 minutes in the video, you can see the entrance into what is supposed to resemble the Krema II, or the Krema III, gas chamber, both of which were 5 feet underground.  At 2:00 minutes, you will hear the voice of Dario Gabbai as he describes what happened to the Jews in the gas chamber; note that he mentions, at 2:13 minutes, that they scratched the walls.  Krema II and Krema III were blown up in January 1945 and the evidence of the scratching in these two gas chambers can no longer be seen. Only the scratching on the walls of the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp remains.

Of course, Dario was not in the gas chamber with the Jews as they were dying, but he went into the gas chamber afterwards and carried out the dead bodies to take them up on the elevator to the cremation ovens.  How do we know that Dario, or one of the other Sonderdommando Jews, didn’t put the scratches on the walls?  We just have to trust the testimony of Dario.  Would a Jew lie?

 

the death of Shlomo Venezia, a former Jewish Sonderkommando at Auschwitz

A regular reader of my blog alerted me to an article about the recent death of Shlomo Venezia which you can read in full here.

This quote is from the article about the death of Shlomo Venezia:

October 2, 2012

ROME (JTA) – Shlomo Venezia, a Holocaust survivor who wrote about his experiences in an Auschwitz Sonderkommando unit and spent years bearing personal testimony to the Shoah, has died.

Venezia, who was born in Salonika (Thessaloniki), Greece, died Sept. 30 [2012] in Rome at the age of 88.

Deported to Auschwitz [on April 11] 1944, he was one of the few survivors of the notorious Sonderkommando units – teams of prisoners forced to move and cremate the bodies of those killed in the gas chambers. His mother and two sisters were killed in Auschwitz. He wrote about his experiences in a memoir, “Sonderkommando Auschwitz,” published in 2007.

Venezia was very active speaking about the Holocaust at schools, public events and in the media, and he accompanied Italian student groups on study trips to Auschwitz.

What was not mentioned in the article about his death is that he was in the last group of Sonderkommandos who worked at Auschwitz-Birkenau, removing the bodies from the gas chambers and putting them into the crematoria where the bodies were burned.  Unlike all the previous Sonderkommando Jews, the Jews in last group were allowed to live.

The Nazis had tried to keep it a secret that the Jews were being gassed, so the previous Sonderkommando Jews, who had worked in the gas chambers, had been killed periodically and replaced by a new group of Jews that had newly arrived.  For some strange, unexplained reason, the last 100 Sonderkommando Jews were allowed to live and they joined the “death march” out of Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 18, 1945.  Some Holocaust historians believe that the purpose of the “death march” out of Auschwitz-Birkenau was to kill the Jews by marching them to death.

In one of the books that he wrote, Shlomo explained that he “managed to slip into the columns of deportees being led away to other camps…”  So that’s what happened.  Shlomo didn’t believe that the Auschwitz prisoners were being marched to death, so he sneaked into a column of marching prisoners. The fact that he believed that the purpose of the march was NOT to kill the prisoners makes him a “Holocaust denier.”

This quote is from page 187 of Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz, written by Shlomo Venezia:

On January 18, when the general evacuation of the Auschwitz complex took place, most of the Sonderkommando men who were still alive (including twenty-five Greeks) managed to slip into the columns of deportees being led away to the other camps within the Reich.  By do doing, they managed to avoid certain death.  Some of them, generally Polish Jews, succeeded in escaping when what was later called “the death march” set off.

In May 1945, at the end of the war, slightly more than ninety men of the Sonderkommando of Birkeanau were still alive.

Another Sonderkommando Jew, who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, was Dario Gabbai; he is one of the Holocaust survivors who is featured in Steven Spielberg’s documentary “The Last Days.”

This quote (the words of Gabbai) is from the book entitled “The Last Days” which tells the stories of the survivors who are featured in the documentary film with the same name:

When the Red Army was approaching, the Germans marched us to Austria; of the thousands who were on the march, only a few hundred survived, including ninety-six Sonderkommando.  There was one good morning when we woke up to an unexpected silence — all the Germans had gone and the Americans came a few hours later.  That was on May 6, 1945 and I weighed just sixty-seven pounds.

According to Holocaust historians, it was the custom to kill the Jews in the Sonderkommando squads periodically and replace them with new workers. This was done so as to eliminate any witnesses to the gas chambers.  But for some unknown reason, the Nazis allowed the last 100 Sonderkommando Jews to live.  According to Gabbai, the plan of the Nazis had been to take the Auschwitz survivors to a cave in Austria and blow them up. (Ernst Kaltenbrunner denied this during his testimony at the Nuremberg IMT.)  This plan was foiled when the Americans liberated the Mauthausen camp on May 5, 1945. General Eisenhower ordered that the liberation should be re-enacted on May 6, 1945 so that photos could be taken.

The Nazi plan to blow up Jews in a cave in Austria….as told by Dario Gabbai

This morning I was reading about Dario Gabbai, one of the surviving Sonderkommando Jews at Auschwitz, who was marched out of the camp in January 1945 and eventually ended up in a sub-camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.  Several years ago Gabbai gave a talk to students which you can read about here.

Gabbai was a Greek Jew who was transported on a train to Auschwitz-Birkenau in March 1944.  At Birkenau, he was assigned to the Sonderkommando squad which removed the bodies from the gas chambers and carried them to the ovens to be burned.  His suffering as a Sonderkommando ended in January 1945 when he was sent on a “death march” out of the Auschwitz camp to the German border and then taken by train to Austria, where he probably ended up at either the Gusen I or Gusen II sub-camp of Mauthausen.

This quote is from the article about Gabbai’s talk to the students:  (I have highlighted the important points in bold faced type.)

To try and hide the horrors of what they had done, the Germans tried to destroy any evidence.

Weighing 67 pounds and in weather 23 degrees below zero, Gabbai and the others were led on a walk to Austria. He claims he stayed alive by thinking of his town. The plan was to get them all into a cave and kill them in an explosion, but the Germans abandoned them in fear of being caught by the liberation troops.

Dario Gabbai is one of the Holocaust survivors who is featured in Steven Speilberg’s documentary “The Last Days.”

This quote (the words of Gabbai) is from the book entitled “The Last Days” which tells the stories of the survivors who are featured in the documentary film with the same name:

When the Red Army was approaching, the Germans marched us to Austria; of the thousands who were on the march, only a few hundred survived, including ninety-six Sonderkommando.  There was one good morning when we woke up to an unexpected silence — all the Germans had gone and the Americans came a few hours later.  That was on May 6, 1945 and I weighed just sixty-seven pounds.

According to Holocaust historians, it was the custom to kill the Jews in the Sonderkommando squads periodically and replace them with new workers.  But for some unknown reason, the Nazis allowed the last 100 Sonderkommando Jews to live.  Their plan was to take them to a cave in Austria and blow them up.