The “accidental slaughter” of German soldiers at Dachau was “an unintended massacre”?

I previously blogged about the movie Shutter Island and the scenes of Dachau in these 3 posts:

https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/shutter-island-scene-shows-dachau-massacre/

https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/shutter-island-dachau-flashbacks/

https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/the-liberation-of-dachau-scene-in-shutter-island/

I am blogging about the movie again because I was horrified when I read an article today on this website:

“As an American soldier during WWII, DiCaprio’s character is forced into some horrific scenes. These eventually lead to the accidental slaughter of a hundred SS officers. The unintended massacre plagues DiCaprio with guilt; but not too much: he still stands idly by while a Nazi commander botches a suicide attempt and bleeds to death, fully conscious.”

Waffen-SS soldiers surrendering at Dachau

Waffen-SS soldiers, who had come from the battlefield, still wearing their camouflage uniforms, to surrender the Dachau concentration camp, are shown in the photo above with their hands in the air. This scene was re-enacted in the movie Shutter Island.

The shooting of disarmed German soldiers during the liberation of Dachau was investigated by the Office of the Inspector General of the Seventh Army. Their report was finished on June 8, 1945 but was marked Secret. The report did not say anything about “the unintended massacre” of German soldiers, nor anything about German soldiers  being “accidentally slaughtered.”

German soldiers executed by American liberators of Dachau

A Waffen-SS soldier named Hans Linberger  survived the shooting at the wall, shown in the photo above.  He had been wounded in battle on the eastern front and, after a long hospital stay, he had arrived at the Dachau SS garrison on March 9, 1945 as a member of a Reserve Company. On April 9, 1945, the men of the Reserve Company were put into the hospital that was right next to the scene of the shooting. They had been so severely wounded that they were no longer fit for combat; Linberger had been wounded in battle four times and had lost an arm.

Hans Linberger was dragged out of the hospital and lined up against the wall to be executed, although he had absolutely nothing to do with the Dachau concentration camp that was next door to the SS garrison.

The photograph above is a still photo, taken by T/4 Arland B. Musser, 163rd Signal Photographic Company, US Seventh Army, on April 29, 1945, the day that the Dachau concentration camp was liberated. It shows 60 Waffen-SS soldiers on the ground, some wounded, some playing dead, and 17 dead, according to Flint Whitlock, historian for the 45th Thunderbird Division, who got this information from Lt. Col. Felix Sparks, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Division of the US Seventh Army, the first unit to arrive at the Dachau camp.

In his book entitled Surrender of the Dachau Concentration Camp 29 April 1945, Col. John H. Linden of the 42nd Infantry Division identified the men in the photo above as follows:

“The second American soldier from the left is Bryant, whose first name is unknown, but whose nickname was “Bird Eye.” The third soldier from the left is Martin J. Sedler, and the man who is kneeling is William C. Curtain. All three of these men were with M Company of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment. The soldier at the extreme right is Pfc. John Lee of I Company.

The buildings in the background are inside the Dachau SS garrison where Waffen-SS troops were quartered; the building on the right is a hospital where a Reserve Company of crippled Waffen-SS soldiers, previously wounded in action, were quartered. The Waffen-SS was the elite volunteer Army which included many divisions from other countries, as well as German soldiers.

According to Col. John H. Linden’s account of the liberation of Dachau, T/3 Henry F. Gerzen, 163 Signal Photographic Company, was filming the shooting with a movie camera. A few frames of this movie, which survived the cover-up of the Dachau massacre, show Lt. Col. Felix Sparks firing his pistol into the air to stop the action shown in the photo above, which allegedly took place around noon.

In 1989, Lt. Col. Sparks wrote an account of the role of the 45th Infantry Division in the liberation of Dachau. His description of what happened at the wall, shown in the photo above, is as follows:

As I watched, about fifty German troops were brought in from various directions. A machine gun squad from Company I was guarding the prisoners. After watching for a few minutes, I started for the confinement area (the concentration camp), after taking directions from one of my soldiers. After I had walked away for a short distance, I heard the machine gun guarding the prisoners open fire. I immediately ran back to the gun and kicked the gunner off the gun with my boot. I then grabbed him by the collar and said: “What the hell are you doing?” He was a young private about 19 years old (Private William C. Curtin) and was crying hysterically. His reply to me was: “Colonel, they were trying to get away.” I doubt that they were, but in any event he killed about twelve of the prisoners and wounded several more. I placed a noncom on the gun and headed towards the confinement area.

The very first incident during which German Waffen-SS soldiers were killed at Dachau was perpetrated by 45th Infantry Division soldiers in the  3rd Battalion, 157th Regiment, I company, under the command of Lt. William P. Walsh; this shooting took place inside the SS garrison at Dachau before any Americans had reached the concentration camp.

According to Lt. Walsh, one of the men of I company shot a handsome SS officer because he had tried to make a break to escape, after he had surrendered. The name of this German soldier is unknown.

Then four more Waffen-SS soldiers in the Dachau garrison emerged with their hands up and surrendered to the men of I company.  Lt. Walsh herded the four SS soldiers into an empty railroad boxcar inside the camp and “emptied his pistol” into them, according to his own account.

There is considerable disagreement about what time the photo above was taken. According to Col. Howard A. Buechner, a medical officer in the 45th Division, the photo was taken at around 2:45 p.m. during a second action when 346 SS soldiers were allegedly killed. In his book, The Hour of the Avenger, Col. Buechner wrote that a second machine gun was located to the right, but out of camera range.

Lt. Jack Bushyhead was in charge of the second machine gun, which Col. Buechner says was set up on top of a bicycle shed. However, Lt. Col. Felix Sparks, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Regiment, has stated that the photo above depicts a shooting which occurred around noon and resulted in 17 deaths, according to his story.

This was not the only shooting that took place during the liberation of Dachau.  There were also SS guards in Tower B who had come down from the tower and surrendered, but were then killed in cold blood by the American liberators.

Tower B where SS guards at Dachau were shot

A dead SS guard at Dachau is pulled out of the moat

After the soldiers in Tower B were shot with their hands in the air, their dead bodies were then thrown into the moat on the west side of the camp, and the American liberators continued to shoot at them.

The U.S. Seventh Army IG report of the shooting of unarmed prisoners at Dachau has since been made public and a copy of it was reproduced in Col. John H. Linden’s book entitled Surrender of the Dachau Concentration Camp 29 April 1945.

Here are four paragraphs from the report which pertain to the shooting of the guards at Tower B:

11. After entry into the camp, personnel of the 42nd Division discovered the presence of guards, presumed to be SS men, in a tower to the left of the main gate of the inmate stockade. This tower was attacked by Tec 3 Henry J. Wells 39271327, Headquarters Military Intelligence Service, ETO, covered and aided by a party under Lt. Col. Walter J. Fellenz, 0-23055, 222 Infantry. No fire was delivered against them by the guards in the tower. A number of Germans were taken prisoner; after they were taken, and within a few feet of the tower, from which they were taken, they were shot and killed.

12. Considerable confusion exists in the testimony as to the particulars of this shooting; however Wells, German interrogator for the 222 Infantry, states that he had lined these Germans up in double rank, preparatory to moving them out; that he saw no threatening gesture; but that he shot into them after some other American soldiers, whose identities are unknown, started shooting them.

13. Lt. Colonel Fellenz was entering the door of the tower at the time of this shooting, took no part in it and testified that he could not have stopped it.

18. It is obvious that the Americans present when the guards were shot at the tower labored under much excitement. However Wells could speak German fluently, he knew no shots had been fired at him in his attack on the tower, he had these prisoners lined up, he saw no threatening gesture or act. It is felt that his shooting into them was entirely unwarranted; the whole incident smacks of execution similar to the other incidents described in this report.”

None of the American soldiers that killed the guards, who had surrendered at Dachau, were ever put on trial for violating the Geneva Convention. The regular guards and staff members had left the camp the night before, so they were not there for the massacre. The guards and staff members, who were captured after the camp was liberated, were prosecuted by an American Military Tribunal.  It wasn’t really a “trial,” because the men on trial were presumed to be guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around.

All of the guards and staff members of the Dachau camp were convicted of participating in a “common design” to violate the Laws and Usages of War under the Geneva Convention of 1929.

Some people have such hatred for the German people that they will go to any length to excuse the actions of the American soldiers at the liberation of Dachau, even though the German soldiers who were killed were not the regular guards in the camp.

Here is a quote from an e-mail that I received recently regarding the Dachau massacre:

I’m Jew (ich bin ein Jude), and it gave me a great deal of pleasure to see photos of German SS soldiers/guards murdered by American soldiers and liberated inmates.  How come you’re not happy?  Cheer up, people 🙂

Famous photo of Dachau Gaskammer

Photo of Dachau Gaskammer, April 30, 1945

Gaskammer is the German word for gas chamber. This word was used by the Germans during World War II to mean a room where clothing was deloused with a poison gas called Zyklon-B; the Germans were trying to save lives by killing the lice that spreads typhus.  The doors and the interior of the disinfection chambers have been repainted, but a few of the tour guides at Dachau still tell visitors that these rooms were used to kill people.

The photo above was taken by an American soldier in the Army Signal Corps, named Sidney Blau. The caption which the US Army put on this photo was as follows:

Gas chambers, conveniently located to the crematory, are examined by a soldier of the U.S. Seventh Army. These chambers were used by Nazi guards for killing prisoners of the infamous Dachau concentration camp.

Note that the caption says the gas chambers were used for “killing prisoners” without specifying that they were killing Jews. Note the plural (gas chambers) in the caption on the photo.  There were four identical chambers at the south end of  the Baracke X building, shown below.

South end of Baracke X building at Dachau

Three of the four doors into the rooms where clothing was disinfected

Pretend that you are Sidney Blau and you have been sent to Dachau on April 30, 1945, the day after the camp was liberated, to take photos for the Army Signal Corps. You see four doors with the word “Gaszeit” which means gas time.  Each door has a skull and crossbones with the word Gas.

Outside the Baracke X building, you see clothing hung up on hangers.  On one side of the building, you see huge piles of prison uniforms.

Clothing hung on hangers outside Dachau Gaskammer

Piles of prisoners' clothes near the Baracke X building

What conclusion would you have come to?  Would you have concluded that these rooms were homicidal gas chambers where prisoners were killed?  Would you have thought that it was stupid for the Germans to put a skull and crossbones and the word Gas on the door so that the prisoners would balk at entering the room?  Would you have thought that it was cruel to make the prisoners hang their clothes neatly on a hanger before they were killed?

What about the bars on the ceiling of each Gaskammer?  Would you have thought that they hung the prisoners from the bars to torture them before they were gassed?

Bars on the ceiling of Gaskammer for hanging clothes

If you were Sidney Blau, would you have noticed that there were no floor drains in the four rooms with the word Gaszeit on the door?  When a person dies, all their body fluids are released; the floor would have been covered with filth after each gassing.  Yet, for some reason, the floor drains were outside of each  Gaskammer.

Did they deliberately avoid putting a drain in the Gaskammer so that the poison gas would not get into the sewer system and poison the whole camp?

Was Sidney Blau ordered to take this particular photo or was he just told to take photos?  Did he take a photo of the shower room door after the prisoners told the Americans that the shower room was really a gas chamber?  The door into the shower room, which has never been repainted, would not have been a dramatic shot, like the famous photo at the top of this page.

Door into the shower room in the Baracke X building

The Official Army Report published after the camp was liberated had these words:

“…the new crematorium was completed in May 1944, and the gas chambers, a total of five, were used for the executions and the disposals of the bodies.”

Actually, the new crematorium was completed in May 1943.

The five gas chambers, mentioned in the Official Army Report, included the shower room and the four chambers where the clothing was deloused.  Did anyone stop to think about why there were four identical gas chambers and one that was totally different?

Shower room with one of the six floor drains shown in the center of the photo

The following quote is from the Report of the Atrocities Committed at Dachau Concentration Camp, signed by Col. David Chavez, Jr., JAGD, 7 May 1945 :

“The new building had a gas chamber for executions… the gas chamber was labeled “shower room” over the entrance and was a large room with airtight doors and double glassed lights, sealed and gas proof. The ceiling was studded with dummy shower heads. A small observation peephole, double glassed and hermetically sealed was used to observe the conditions of the victims. There were grates in the floor. Hydrogen cyanide was mixed in the room below, and rose into the gas chamber and out the top vents.”

“… a gas chamber?” What about the four rooms with the word Gas on the door?  “… grates in the floor?”  Were these dummy floor drains, like the “dummy shower heads”?   “… the top vents”?  How come they didn’t mention the vents on the east wall of the shower room?

Vents on east wall of Dachau shower room

Visitors to the Dachau Memorial Site are told that the poison gas was poured onto the floor of the shower room through these vents on the east wall. Zyklon-B gas comes in the form of small pellets about the size of peas.

The delousing chambers had a fancy machine that was used to input gas pellets. Why didn’t they use one of these machines in the shower room?

Device to put gas pellets into delousing rooms at Dachau

If I had been an Army photographer, assigned to take photos at Dachau on April 30, 1945, I would probably have been just as gullible as Sidney Blau. I would have believed the prisoners who came forward and led me to the gas chambers.  After all, the British had been broadcasting information about the Germans gassing the Jews since June 1942.

Whatever happened to Hitler’s tree in Poland?

A good friend of mine sent me this link to a newspaper article about a tree in Jaslo, Poland that was planted in honor of Hitler’s birthday during the German occupation in World War II:

The article is dated July 7, 2009 and I have not been able to find any later news about the tree. If the tree was cut down, surely there would have been some news about it.  On the other hand, if the tree is still there, wouldn’t Elie Wiesel and Abe Foxman of the ADL be there demanding that the tree be removed?

The following quote is from the web site that published the article:

Jaslo – An oak tree planted in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II to mark Adolf Hitler’s birthday may soon face the axe if the local mayor has her way.

Authorities in Jaslo in rural southeastern Poland discovered the origins of the tree when plans were lodged to fell it to make way for a traffic roundabout.

“We obtained information that this is no ordinary tree but was put here to mark Adolf Hitler’s birthday,” said Jaslo’s mayor, Maria Kurowska. “So should I try to improve our town’s communications or should I allow a memorial to that criminal to remain standing? The choice is simple for me.”

Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, triggering World War Two and beginning more than five years of occupation. Six million Poles died, including almost all of the country’s three million Jewish citizens.

Not everybody in this town of 38 000 shared Kurowska’s view that the tree must go.

“It was 1942 when the Germans brought a seedling of an oak here and planted it in the centre of the town with all honours, an army orchestra and salutes,” said Kazimierz Polak, who was present at the planting ceremony as a child 67 years ago.

“My father told me then that it was Hitler’s birthday and we found out later the seedling had come from Braunau am Inn (in Austria) where Hitler was born,” Polak said.

“It’s a historic curiosity. What is the oak really guilty of? It’s not the tree’s fault that it was planted here to honour the biggest criminal and enemy of Poland.”

I have some suggestions for what to do with the tree:

1.  Rename the tree “Goethe’s oak.”

Hitler is the most hated person in the world and nobody wants a tree that honors him, but what about Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?  If there is one good German, it’s gotta be Goethe.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - what's not to love?

Goethe lived in Weimar, Germany and he had a favorite oak tree that he used to sit under.  Goethe’s Oak was hit by an American bomb because it just happened to be in the middle of the Buchenwald concentration camp that was built in 1937.  America bombed the Buchenwald camp because of the factories there; they were not trying to kill Goethe’s Oak.

The stump of Goethe’s Oak has been preserved, but it is slowly rotting away and will soon be nothing but dust.  Goethe needs a new oak, so why not give him an oak tree in Poland?

The stump of the Goethe Eiche inside Buchenwald camp

2.  Let Hitler’s oak tree live,  but put a stone marker in front of it.

According to the newspaper article, the oak tree in honor of Hitler came from the town of Braunau am Inn in Austria, where Hitler was born.  I visited Braunau am Inn a few years ago and I asked several of the locals to show me the house where he was born.  They all claimed that they didn’t know the location of the house.  Finally, I went into a book store and asked for a map that would show the location of Hitler’s birthplace.  I was told that no such map existed.

So I just started walking down the main street of the town until I saw a huge granite rock in front of an unidentified building.  I immediately recognized that beautiful golden granite: it was from the quarry at Mauthausen, a concentration camp in Austria.

There were a few other tourists, carrying cameras and gawking at everything, but none of them were paying any attention to the building with the granite rock in front of it.  I walked across the street and began photographing the rock and the building behind it.  People began to stare at me, and then they started smiling.  Then a couple of people actually applauded.  They seemed to be thinking: finally, a person who has the courage to take a picture of the house where Hitler was born.

Anyway, the point of all this is that everyone ignores the house where Hitler was born and it is not identified, but there is that rock, which has a message.

"For peace, freedom and democracy, never again Fascism, millions of dead admonish"

Stone marker in front of Hitler's birthplace in Braunau am Inn

So why not let Hitler’s Oak live, but put up a “never again” stone like the stone in front of Hitler’s birthplace.

Sing right out for Grandma’s lye soap

In 1952, there was a comedy skit that had the line “It’s in the book!” and a song called “Grandma’s Lye Soap.”

The lyrics went something like this:

Sing right out for Grandma’s lye soap,
The finest soap in the land
Good for everything in the home,
And for your face.
The secret was in the scrubbing,
It wouldn’t suds and it wouldn’t foam.

I was reminded of this song the other day, when I read that Eva Kor, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, said that she finally figured out why the soap at Auschwitz “wouldn’t suds.”  It was because it was made from the fat of the Jews who had been murdered.

My grandma actually made “Grandma’s lye soap” which she used for everything in the home, and for her face. I have used “Grandma’s lye soap” a time or two myself, so I know for a fact that it “wouldn’t suds.”

Back in the old days, a lot of Americans made their own soap. First you save the ashes from your wood burning stove. Then you butcher a hog and save the fat.

To make soap, you pour water over the ashes and allow it to seep through some holes and collect at the bottom of a barrel. The lye, which is needed to make the soap, is leached into the water.

Then you boil a lot of hog fat in a large black kettle, under a tree in the front yard.  That way, any neighbors passing by will stop to chat and the time will pass more quickly.

After the lye water is added, the boiling can take up to 24 hours. Eventually the lye and hog fat mixture will turn into soap, which is light brown in color.  The soap is broken into large chunks, not poured into a mold to make bars of soap.

Did the Nazis actually make soap out of Jewish fat?  Well, Eva Kor believes it and so do a lot of other people. But was it ever proved in court?  Yes, at the Nuremberg IMT, the Soviet Union submitted evidence and testimony about human soap making.

Human soap introduced as evidence at Nuremberg IMT

At Nuremberg, the Constitution of the International Military Tribunal included the following:

V. POWERS OF THE TRIBUNAL AND CONDUCT OF THE TRIAL

[….]

Article 21. The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof.

The making of human soap by the Germans was common knowledge that did not require any proof, so the Soviet Union was not required to furnish a forensic report along with the soap. The Nuremberg tribunal “took judicial notice” that the Germans had made soap out of the Jews.

When I visited the Memorial Site at Buchenwald, I was told that the Germans made soap in the basement of this building. However, it was not claimed to be human soap.

Soap was made in the basement of this building at Buchenwald

Arbeit Macht Frei – what does it stand for? (updated)

Arbeit Macht Frei sign at Auschwitz I (main camp) Photo Credit: José Ángel López

The following quote is from an article in Live Action News, which you can read in full here:

“As abortion apologists celebrated Roe v. Wade’s 40th anniversary with Orwellian odes to “choice” and creepily cavalier videos, pro-lifers mark the occasion in a more grave fashion. Virginia Republican State Senator Dick Black took to the Senate floor and forcefully condemned the past four decades’ worth of massacre:

When I hear discussions about this, I hear very mild comments about choice and reproductive rights and things of this sort. But I recall back to the days of Nazi Germany, there was a place called Auschwitz. And over the gates of Auschwitz was a sign, and the sign said “arbeit macht frei,” which means roughly “your labors will make you free.” People who went behind those doors never returned. Their labors didn’t make them free. And I’m reminded that we refer to our clinics as “women’s health clinics” and we talk about women’s reproductive rights and so forth. And somehow in all of our discussion, we forget the fact that in each of these decisions lies the life of a little boy or a little girl. You know it’s quite easy –and from where we look back on history, we say “Why didn’t the Germans do something? Why didn’t they rise up? Why didn’t they take action?” But they were helpless before their government just as we are helpless before our government.

The words “arbeit macht frei” were on the gate into the main Auschwitz camp, but not on the gate into the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, also known as Auschwitz II.

Senator Dick Black can be forgiven for not knowing that the main Auschwitz camp was not a “death camp” where prisoners entered and were never seen again.  The words “arbeit macht frei” have been twisted into a slogan that now means that Jews were gassed during the Holocaust.

Senator Dick Black will not be reading this, but I am going to attempt to educate him anyway.

The plan to establish a concentration camp at Auschwitz was first announced by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler on April 27, 1940.

The first Commandant of Auschwitz was Rudolf Hoess; he was the one who put the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign over the gate into the main Auschwitz camp. Translated into English, the words mean “Work will set you free.” In his autobiography, Hoess explained that this expression means that work liberates one in the spiritual sense, not that the prisoners literally had a chance of being released if they worked hard. However, according to Franciszek Piper, the former director of the Auschwitz Museum, the camp records show that around 1,500 prisoners were actually released from the Auschwitz main camp.

Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, the main camp, was originally opened on June 14, 1940, as just another concentration camp, in the former Polish military garrison in Zazole, a district of the town of Auschwitz.  Throughout its existence, the Nazis called the main Auschwitz camp a concentration camp, not an extermination camp or Vernichtungslager. The term “extermination camp” was coined by the Allies and initially, it applied to all the Nazi camps.

At first, the Auschwitz main camp, known as the Stammlager, was only a camp for Polish political prisoners, including some Jews, and also German common criminals, who assisted the Nazis in supervising the other prisoners. The first transport to the main Auschwitz camp consisted of 728 Polish inmates of the Gestapo prison at Tarnow, Poland. They were mostly university students, including a few Jews, who had joined the Polish Resistance. The Polish Army had never surrendered to the Germans and no Armistice had ever been signed. The Poles continued to fight during World War II, but as insurgents or illegal combatants, not as soldiers on the battlefield. When captured, the Polish resistance fighters were sent to Auschwitz or other concentration camps such as Buchenwald and Dachau.

Continue reading my original post:

The iron sign with the words “Arbeit macht Frei”  at the Auschwitz main camp was stolen on Dec. 18, 2009.  Within 70 hours, the sign had been found and five suspects were in custody.  During the 70 hours that the sign was gone, the news went around the world, as people everywhere were outraged.

“Arbeit Macht Frei” translates into English as “Work makes (one) free.”  These words have become the slogan of the Holocaust, as people the world over now interpret these words to mean that the Nazis  cruelly taunted the Jews when they entered Auschwitz  because there was no freedom for them, no matter how hard they worked.  The only way out was “through the chimney.”

In the words of Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization:

“The fact is that the ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign has become the defining symbol of the Holocaust because everyone knew that this was not a place where work makes you free, but it was the place where millions of men, women, and children were brought for one purpose only — to be murdered.”

Arbeit Macht Frei gate at Auschwitz 1 with Block 24 in background

Auschwitz I  was not a death camp.  The building in the background of the photo above had a library, a museum for the artwork done by the prisoners, a concert hall, and a brothel which was called “the Puff.”

Gatehouse at Auschwiz II (Birkenau) – the death camp

The photo above shows the gate into the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) death camp.  Notice that it does not have the Arbeit Macht Frei sign. It was at Birkenau that more than a million Jews were killed, mainly in gas chambers, beginning in February 1942.

The “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign over the gate at the Auschwitz I camp was put there in 1940 by the first Commandant, Rudolf Höss. In January 1941, the Auschwitz I camp was designated a Class I camp, where prisoners had a chance to be released. According to the director of the Auschwitz Museum, there were around 1,500 political prisoners released from Auschwitz I. Only Class I camps had the “Arbeit Macht Frei” slogan over the gate.

Gross-Rosen was a Class I concentration camp that had the sign Arbeit Macht Frei over the entrance gate

Other Class I camps included Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg and Gross-Rosen. Buchenwald was a Class II camp and Mauthausen was a Class III camp; neither of these camps had the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign. The six death camps (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek and Auschwtiz II, also known as Birkenau) did not have the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” on the gate into the camp.

“Arbeit Macht Frei” sign at the Dachau gate house

Dachau was a camp for political prisoners who had a good chance of being released.  There was a special badge for prisoners who had been released and then re-arrested, which means that there were numerous prisoners that were given their freedom after they had been “rehabilitated.”

According to Wikipedia:

“The expression (Arbeit macht Frei) comes from the title of an 1873 novel by German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach, in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour. It was adopted in 1928 by the Weimar government as a slogan extolling the effects of their desired policy of large-scale public works programmes to end unemployment, and perhaps mocking the Medieval saying “Stadtluft macht frei” (“City air brings freedom”). It was continued in this usage by the NSDAP (Nazi Party) when it came to power in 1933.”

The idea of a gatehouse was not invented by the Nazis.  There were many walled German towns that had several gates into the town.  The old walled town of Dachau had three gates, each with a gatehouse. A model of one of these gates, the Freisinger Tor, is shown in the photo below.

Marker denotes former location of Freisinger Tor at Dachau

Gatehouse in Braunau am Inn (Hitler’s birthplace)

It used to be very common for houses in Germany to have writing over the door into the building.

A house in the town of Geseke in Germany has writing over the door

When the Nazis built gatehouses at the entrances to the concentration camps and put slogans on the gates, their intention was not to insult or taunt the Jews – they were just carrying on an old German tradition.

Arbeit Macht Frei sign at Theresienstadt

An interior gate in the Small Fortress at Theresienstadt, shown in the background of the photograph above, has black letters on a white band over the arch which read “Arbeit Macht Frei.”

I took the photo above when I was on a group tour; two Jewish members of our group, who were from Israel, were quite upset when they saw these words displayed inside the prison, but the guide explained that there were actually some prisoners who were released from the Small Fortress. According to a booklet that I purchased at the Museum, there were 5,600 prisoners released from the Small Fortress, which was a Gestapo prison for political prisoners and captured partisans.

According to Rudolf Höss, who was an adjutant at Sachsenhausen before he became the first Commandant of Auschwitz, “Arbeit Macht Frei” means that works liberates one in the spiritual sense. Höss was himself a prisoner at one time and he complained about having to sit all alone in a prison cell without having any work to occupy his time. When the Sachsenhausen camp was turned into a Communist prison for German citizens, the Arbeit Macht Frei sign was removed and the prisoners did not work.

Arbeit Macht Frei sign at Sachsenhausen camp

Gatehouse at Dachau concentration camp

The gatehouse at Dachau was built in 1936, the same year that the gatehouse at Sachsenhausen was built.  The Arbeit Macht Frei sign was first put up at a temporary camp in an old brewery at Oranienburg, which was later rebuilt as Sachsenhausen.

Arbeit Macht Frei sign on Dachau gate

According to the staff at the Dachau Memorial Site, the Arbeit Macht Frei sign on the Dachau gate is a reproduction; the original was allegedly stolen by one of the American liberators of Dachau.  After all the prisoners were released from Dachau, the former concentration camp was used as a prison for German war criminals for 3 years and then as a refugee camp until 1965, when the sign was restored on the gate just before the Memorial Site opened.

Tours of Dachau always start at the Arbeit Macht Frei gate where the guides tell visitors that this sign was very offensive to the prisoners who had to walk through the gate twice a day on their way to and from the factories where they worked.  The guides tell visitors that the official policy at Dachau was “extermination through work.”

Alfred Naujocks and the start of World War II

Who started World War II?  Well duh!  Germany started World War II, of course.  How could anyone not know that?  It was proved at Nuremberg, for Christ’s sakes.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the Nuremberg trials:

The first and best known of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried 22 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany. Testimony was given from November 21, 1945 to October 1, 1946.

Note the date that testimony began: November 21, 1945

One of the charges against the “major war criminals” was Crimes against Peace, a new crime that had been made up by the Allies. The most serious Crime against Peace committed by the German war criminals was the unprovoked attack on Poland on September 1, 1939.

On the day of the attack, Hitler had gone on the radio in Berlin at 8 a.m. and said, “Since 5:45 a.m., we’ve been shooting back.”

What in the hell was he talking about?  Shooting back?  It was the Germans who fired the first shots.  Or was it?  This was something that had to be cleared up before the Nuremberg trial began.

Alfred Naujocks – German traitor in World War II

On November 20, 1945, a German traitor named Alfred Naujocks signed an affidavit in which he told all about how he had helped to perpetrate a fake attack on a radio station in Gleiwitz, a town on the German border with Poland. According to Naujocks, the Germans had staged this fake attack in order to have an excuse for starting World War II.

Naujocks had turned himself in to the Allies in October 1944. He was held in prison as a potential war criminal until World War II ended; then he was released.  Apparently no one thought about getting his story in writing in a sworn affidavit until just the day before testimony in the trial began.  Considering that Naujocks was a traitor who defected and went over to the side of the enemy, how much is his affidavit worth? Did he even write this affidavit himself?

There were 21 similar border incidents the night before the Germans attacked Poland, according to Wikipedia.  Were these incidents all faked?

The German people are famous for planning everything carefully; they leave nothing to chance.  You see, the Nazis anticipated that, in case they lost the war, the Allies might make up an ex post facto law called Crimes against Peace, so they wanted to be prepared to  prove that it was really Poland that had started the war by attacking a radio station the night before.

That’s why the Germans faked an attack by dressing up an inmate from a Nazi concentration camp in civilian clothes and planting his dead body outside the radio station while several Germans, dressed in Polish uniforms, went inside the station and terrorized the staff before one of them made a 3 minute speech in Polish over the radio.  The concentration camp prisoner had first been given a lethal injection to make sure that he didn’t survive, and was then shot several times.

Sorry, but I don’t buy this preposterous story.

What was the dead guy’s name? Is there a record of him being registered at any of the concentration camps? The attackers were wearing Polish uniforms, so why didn’t the Germans put a Polish uniform on the dead guy? Was this just an innocent bystander who was killed by real Polish soldiers when they attacked the radio station?

Of course, Naujocks never took the witness stand at Nuremberg, so he was never cross examined by the defense.  There were only 33 witnesses for the prosecution at the IMT; most of the testimony was by affidavit only, giving the defense no chance to cross examine.

The following quote is from the Nuremberg transcripts on December 20, 1945 when the Naujocks affidavit was read in court by prosecution attorney, Col. Story. Notice the date of the affidavit signed by Naujocks – November 20, 1945 – the day before testimony at the war crimes trial started.

COL. STOREY:

I now offer in evidence Document 2751-PS, which is Exhibit USA-482. It is an affidavit of Alfred Helmut Naujocks, dated November 20, 1945. This affidavit particularly refers to the actual occurrences in connection with the Polish border incident. I believe it was referred to by the Witness Lahousen when he was on the stand:

“I, Alfred Helmut Naujocks, being first duly sworn, depose and state as follows:

“1. I was a member of the SS from 1931 to 19 October 1944 and a member of the SD from its creation in 1934 to January 1941. I served as a member of the Waffen-SS from February 1941 until the middle of 1942. Later I served in the Economics Department of the Military Administration of Belgium from September 1942 to September 1944. I surrendered to the Allies on 19 October 1944.

“2. On or about 10 August 1939 the Chief of the Sipo and SD, Heydrich, personally ordered me to simulate an attack on the radio station near Gleiwitz, near the Polish border, and to make it appear that the attacking force consisted of Poles. Heydrich said: ‘Actual proof of these attacks of the Poles is needed for the foreign press, as well as for German propaganda purposes.’ I was directed to go to Gleiwitz with five or six SD men and wait there until I received a code word from Heydrich indicating that the attack should take place.

My instructions were to seize the radio station and to hold it long enough to permit a Polish-speaking German, who would be put at my disposal, to broadcast a speech in Polish. Heydrich told me that this speech should state that the time had come for the conflict between the Germans and the Poles and that the Poles should get together and strike down any Germans from whom they met resistance. Heydrich also told me at this time that he expected an attack on Poland by Germany in a few days.

“3. I went to Gleiwitz and waited there a fortnight. Then I requested permission of Heydrich to return to Berlin but was told to stay in Gleiwitz. Between the 25th and 31st of August I went to see Heinrich Muller, head of the Gestapo, who was then nearby at Oppeln. In my presence Muller discussed with a man named Mehlhorn plans for another border incident, in which it should be made to appear that Polish soldiers were attacking German troops …. Germans in the approximate strength of a company were to be used. Muller stated that he had 12 or 13 condemned criminals who were to be dressed in Polish uniforms and left dead on the ground at the scene of the incident to show that they had been killed while attacking. For this purpose they were to be given fatal injections by a doctor employed by Heydrich. Then they were also to be given gunshot wounds. After the assault members of the press and other persons were to be taken to the spot of the incident. A police report was subsequently to be prepared.

“4. Muller told me that he had an order from Heydrich to make one of those criminals available to me for the action at Gleiwitz. The code name by which he referred to these criminals was ‘Canned Goods.’

“5. The incident at Gleiwitz in which I participated was carried out on the evening preceding the German attack on Poland. As I recall, war broke out on the 1st of September 1939. At noon on the 31st of August I received by telephone from Heydrich the code word for the attack which was to take place at 8 o’clock that evening. Heydrich said, ‘In order to carry out this attack, report to Muller for “Canned Goods.”‘ I did this and gave Muller instructions to deliver the man near the radio station. I received this man and had him laid down at the entrance to the station. He was alive, but he was completely unconscious. I tried to open his eyes. I could not recognize by his eyes that he was alive, only by his breathing. I did not see the shot wounds, but a lot of blood was smeared across his face. He was in civilian clothes.

“6. We seized the radio station as ordered, broadcast a speech of 3 to 4 minutes over an emergency transmitter, fired some pistol shots, and left.”

And then “sworn to and subscribed to before Lieutenant Martin”.

—————————————-

The following quote is from the transcripts of the Nuremberg IMT on August 27, 1946 when Dr. Hans Gawlik spoke for the defense:

DR. HANS GAWLIK (Counsel for the SD):

I shall now turn to Section B: Crimes against Peace (Statement of Evidence V of the English trial brief against the Gestapo and SD).

As a crime against peace the SD is accused of having staged so-called border incidents before the outbreak of the war to give Hitler an excuse for starting the war. The Prosecution, however, referred to only one border incident in which the SD is alleged to have participated. That is the alleged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station.

In this connection the Prosecution made reference to the affidavit of Alfred Naujocks of 20 November 1945. This is Prosecution Document 2751-PS. The deponent of Document 2751-PS, Alfred Naujocks, was heard before the Commission. On that occasion he declared that the execution of the attack on the Gleiwitz radio station was not included in the aims and purposes of Aemter III and VI.

The witness further testified that no sections of Aemter III and VI were used for the execution of that border incident in Gleiwitz and that the men who with him attacked the Gleiwitz station did not belong to the SD, Amt III.

The witness also stated that by the term “SD men” in his affidavit of 20 November 1945 he did not mean the members of any definite office of the RSHA; but common usage of the term “SD men” referred to RSHA members of all offices which were subordinate to Heydrich.

The witness further stated that he was charged with the execution of the border incident at Gleiwitz, not because he belonged to Amt VI and worked there, but that exclusively personal reasons were responsible for that decision. The witness testified that on the basis of the conversation he had had with Heydrich he had gained the impression that Heydrich would have given him that assignment even if he had not been a member of Amt VI and the SS. The order for the execution of this assignment reached the witness Naujocks not through the official channels of the chiefs of Aemter III or VI. The chiefs of Aemter III and VI had no knowledge of this action.

The members of the SD, Amt III and Amt VI, had no knowledge that the attack was carried out by Naujocks, a member of Amt VI. Particularly the members of the SD-Leitabschnitt which was in charge of Gleiwitz, and the outpost of the SD, had no knowledge of this activity and could not have had, because Naujocks had been forbidden to get in touch with any members of the SD whatsoever in that territory.

The statements of this witness have been reaffirmed by the witness Somman and through Affidavit Number SD-11, deposed by Dr. Marx.

I also submitted 215 affidavits for the office of the RSHA as well as for all territories of the SD-Leitabschnitte and the SD-Abschnitte, particularly for those situated in the regions of Katowice, Danzig, and Saxony. Those affidavits testify that the members of the SD during the critical time had no knowledge of the faked border incidents or the participation of the SD in them.

Kids choking on hot dogs

It’s all over the news:  American kids are choking to death on hot dogs.  In fact, the latest news is that hot dogs are the leading cause of choking among children in America.

Hot dog served on a bun - dangerous for kids?

I live in a metropolitan area that has a population of 1.5 million people, and there is not one German restaurant.  That’s because German food is now American food: hot dogs, franks, hamburgers, cole slaw, potato salad, chicken fried steak, apple turnovers, cheese cake, pancakes, etc. etc. etc.

Wienerwurst was the original "hot dog"

The original hot dog was a Wienerwurst – the specialty of the city of Wien (Vienna). German immigrants introduced these sausages in America.

In my day, young children didn’t choke on hot dogs, which were called Wieners or Weenies back then. The reason was, undoubtedly, because Wieners were originally made with a tough casing that could only be chewed by a child with a full set of teeth.  The casing was made out of animal gut. Today’s hot dogs are skinless and can be eaten by babies with no teeth.

When I was a child, Wieners were regularly on our menu.  Except on Sunday, when we had Frankfurters.  Maybe Frankfurters were more expensive and that’s the reason my mother served them only on Sunday. Frankfurters were usually cut with a fork, but Weiners would sometimes be eaten with the fingers, since the tough casing was hard to cut.

There used to be a big difference between Wieners and Frankfurters.  Wieners were long and skinny and had a mild taste – like veal.  Frankfurters were short and fat and tasted like beef. Now they are both sold as “hot dogs.”

Both Frankfurters and Wieners used to come in a long strip of casing which was tied off to make the individual sausages.  My mother purchased them from the local butcher shop which made the sausages on the premises. She would bring home the Franks or Wieners wrapped in white paper and throw them into a big pot of boiling water, still tied together.  When the casing burst open on one or two of the sausages, they were ready to serve – on a plate piled high with homemade sauerkraut, of course.  The hot dog bun is an American invention, which my German-American family never used.

In my day, I never heard of anyone choking on a Wiener or a Frankfurter.  They were not for babies or toddlers. Maybe the solution is to ban skinless hot dogs and bring back the original Wiener made with a tough casing.

School bullying in America

I’ll give you a clue as to how old I am: when I went to school, bullying was not a word.  Bully was a word, but it was always used as a noun, never as a verb.  Bullying is a gerund, and back then, school kids knew a gerund when they saw one, but the word bullying did not exist.

All through grade school and high school, I never saw a physical fight, nor even a verbal altercation.  Everyone got along with everyone else and there was never any name calling or verbal abuse, much less knife fights or pounding with fists. There were no “mean girls,” no gangs, and no one carried a gun to school; mass murder, as at Columbine, was far, far in the future.

What was the reason for this  school paradise?  In a word: diversity.  There was a complete lack of diversity.  Everyone in my school was of the same race and the same ethnicity.  I lived in a town where the people were more than 50% German-American.  The word diversity, as used today, was unknown.

Children reading in a classroom in 1940

In the 1940s, little boys typically wore overalls, or corduroy pants with suspenders, to school.  Little girls always wore dresses, never pants or shorts, in the classroom. Note the complete lack of diversity in the classroom.

Before I went to college, I had never seen anyone who was of Greek or Italian or French ethnicity, and certainly not anyone who was Asian or Hispanic. Even in my college classes, there were no Asians or Hispanics or African Americans. There were some Jews, but they had their own sororities and fraternities; they didn’t mix with the other students.

At school dances, when I went to college, there was always an intermission when all the students faced the Confederate flag, and with our hands over our hearts, we sang “Dixie.”  I kid you not. My college was in a part of Missouri known as “Little Dixie.”  Frat houses flew the Confederate flag.  Bullying was unknown on our segregated campus.

Many parts of Missouri, where I lived, were still segregated back then, including my home town.  African Americans were allowed to live in the town, but they had their own schools and churches.  Other nearby towns were “sundown” towns where a sign warned African Americans not to let the sun set on them in this town.

One time, a teacher in my high school assigned everyone to write a paper about their “nationality.” Back then, nationality was the term for ethnicity.  When asked “What is your nationality?” no one ever said “American.”  Our nationality was the country from which our ancestors had come to America.  In my school, there were only three possible answers: Germany, England or Ireland.

We didn’t need to have a Holocaust survivor to come to our school to teach us how to be tolerant and to stand up to bullies. Every kid in my school was already tolerant.  We had one student with a wooden leg, one retarded student who didn’t graduate until the age of twenty, and we even had one cretin.  No one made fun of these students or taunted them.  There were fat kids and skinny kids, but no one was rude enough to mention another student’s weight.

Staged photo of boy dipping little girl's pigtail in ink

In my grade school, the desks had ink wells, but no little boy would ever dream of dipping a little girl’s pigtail into the ink.  Every student at my school had a fountain pen, and at recess, our favorite activity was trading fountain pens.  Every day, my classmates and I would have a different fountain pen. That was the kind of amusement we had.  The photo above was obviously staged.

When I went to the home of one of my classmates for supper, I always knew that the food would be exactly like what we had at home.  Everyone in my town dressed the same, listened to the same kind of music, and attended a Christian church. Everyone had the same values and the same morals.

Race was something that we studied in our geography books. Everybody was a racist, but back then, it was considered normal thinking.  Political correctness was unknown, except at Columbia University, where it was called “cultural Marxism.”  The concept of political correctness was brought over from Germany by Jewish professors who were kicked out when Hitler came to power in 1933.

Yes, yes, I know that nationalism and racism are bad, and political correctness and  diversity are good.  Diversity is what makes America great. America is a melting pot and that explains why America is the greatest country in the world.  Without diversity, America would be like Nazi Germany: We would have Gleichschaltung* with everyone thinking and acting alike. Before you know it, we would have a Holocaust in America.  Diversity is what keeps America divided and safe from the unthinkable.

* Gleichschaltung is a German word coined by Hitler.  It is too complicated for me to explain it to you, so google it yourself.

The liberation of Dachau scene in Shutter Island

I’ve been reading hundreds of reviews of the movie Shutter Island, looking for one in which the reviewer understands the Dachau Massacre flashbacks, but so far, no luck.

For example, here is a quote from a review by Arron Mesh posted on the Willamette Week Online web site on Feb. 19 at 6:34 p.m.

As Leo gazed at the dead bodies piled like human waterfalls at Dachau, a woman seated behind me at the screening asked, “Is that the Holocaust?” Yes, ma’am.

No, ma’am, that’s not the Holocaust.  The Holocaust, with a capital H, was the state sponsored genocide of the Jews, which took place in what is now Poland, not at Dachau. And yes, I know about the Gypsies, the homosexuals, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and all the others that the Nazis considered to be inferior, but they are not counted as part of the big H.

Political prisoners at Dachau were illegal combatants

Dachau was the equivalent of Guantanamo bay.  It was a prison camp for “enemies of the state.”  The majority of the prisoners at Dachau were “political prisoners” who were there because they had been captured as illegal combatants, who were fighting in violation of the Geneva convention of 1929.

Poland never surrendered in World War II, and the Polish soldiers continued to fight as illegal combatants, instead of fighting on the battlefield.  It was perfectly legal, under the Geneva Convention of 1929, to send them to a concentration camp instead of a POW camp.

Polish prisoners celebrate Dachau liberation

According to the official report by the US Army, there were 31,432 survivors in the main Dachau camp, including 2,539 Jews. Some of the Jews had been brought to Dachau from ghettos in Lithuania.  Others had been brought to the main Dachau camp from the sub-camps just a few weeks before the liberators arrived. Some of the Jews had arrived only the day before.

Some of the Jews at Dachau had originally been sent to Auschwitz, but had been brought back to Germany when the Auschwitz camp was abandoned.  When the Americans entered Germany in March 1945, the Germans started bringing the Jews from the sub-camps to the main Dachau camp so that they could be turned over to the Allies.

Women who were brought from the sub-camps to Dachau

The dead bodies that the American soldiers saw were prisoners who had died in a typhus epidemic that started in December 1944 and accounted for half of the deaths in the 12-year history of Dachau.

The American soldiers couldn’t understand why the Dachau camp was not in pristine condition, at a time when Germany was 8 days away from surrendering, after fighting a war for 6 years.  Every major city in Germany had been bombed; refugees were clogging the highways, trying to escape from the Soviet soldiers who were raping and pillaging their way across Germany. Food was scarce because all the men who normally produced the food were in the Army, including, by this time, old men and young boys.

Dachau had been bombed by American planes three weeks before, and there was no electricity nor running water in the camp.  There was plenty of food though, because the transportation system had broken down and Dachau was the only camp that the Red Cross could reach.  Just the day before the Americans arrived, the Red Cross had brought in 5 truck loads of food.

The Germans were doing the best they could to feed the prisoners; they were cooking over wood burning stoves and hauling drinking water into the camp.

The Germans were trying to stop the typhus epidemic — without access to vaccine and DDT which America could have sent through the Red Cross. The toilets wouldn’t flush without running water and the prisoners had not been able to take a shower for three weeks.  The barracks were terribly overcrowded because around 15,000 prisoners had recently been brought in from the sub-camps.

If the American soldiers had arrived in 1938 at Dachau, they would have been astounded at how neat and clean the camp was.  They would have complained about the Nazis being too hard on the prisoners, making them take their shoes off before entering the barracks and insisting that the prisoners keep everything in perfect order in their lockers.  Dachau was like an Army boot camp, only worse.

The political prisoners at Dachau were there to be rehabilitated and to learn the most important Nazi virtues which were painted on the roof of the main building where all the prisoners could see them.

Cross put up by the Catholic prisoners at Dachau

The German words on the roof translate into English as follows: “There is one road to freedom. Its milestones are: Obedience, Diligence, Honesty, Orderliness, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Self-Sacrifice, and Love of the Fatherland.”

The American liberators should have looked at the uniforms of the German soldiers before taking revenge because of the conditions in the camp.  Some of the German soldiers who were killed were Wehrmacht soldiers or Waffen-SS soldiers who had no responsibility for the concentration camps.

“I had myself sterilized so I would not pass on the blood of a monster”

This morning I came across a news article in a British newspaper about the children of the Nazi war criminals, which had this sentence in the headline:  “I had myself sterilized so I would not pass on the blood of a monster.”

“German monster” Hermann Goering

The person who said this was Bettina Goering, great niece of Adolf Hitler’s second in command, Hermann Goering; she spoke these words on camera in a documentary, entitled Hitler’s Children, made by Israeli director Chanoch Zeevi.

The “monsters” in the photo above are, from left to right, in the front row: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. The photo was taken at the trial of the German war criminals, known as the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.

Hitler with his god-daughter Edda Goering, daughter of Herman Goering

Of course, Hitler had no children, even though his love of children, and dogs, has been well documented. Maybe he didn’t want to pass on the monster genes that he knew he had.  Hitler’s only known relatives, who are now living in America, have never married, and they say it is because they don’t want the Hitler name to continue.

Hitler loved children and dogs

Hermann Goering was the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia, and Hitler’s designated successor. Goering set up the German secret state police, which was called the Gestapo, and he also authorized a conference to plan “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

After reading more of the news article, I learned that Bettina Goering, who now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is not really a blood relative of a Nazi monster. Bettina said that her father, Heinz Goering, was adopted by his infamous uncle, Hermann Goering, after his own father died.  Still, one can’t be too careful.  Both Bettina and her brother had themselves sterilized so that they could never breed any little monsters.

Also featured in the documentary is Niklas Frank, the son of Hans Frank, whom the news article describes as “the  Nazi governor of occupied Poland responsible for the death camps in which six million Jewish people were killed.” (Four of the Nazi death camps were in occupied Poland: Majdanek, Belzec, Treblinka,  and Sobibor.  The other two, Auschwitz and Chelmno, were in the Greater German Reich.)

Niklas says in the documentary that he “despises” his father’s past and describes his father as “a slime-hole of a Hitler fanatic.”

Monika Hertwig, daughter of Amon Goeth

The most pathetic of the children of the Nazi monsters, in my mind, is Monika Hertwig, the daughter of Amon Goeth. In the documentary, Monika describes her meeting with a man who tells her how her father shot women and babies “for sport.”

Monika was featured in another documentary, in which the house where her father allegedly shot prisoners from the balcony is shown.

Tourists at the house where Amon Goeth allegedly shot prisoners from the balcony

In 1998, I visited the house where Amon Goeth lived, which is shown in the photo above, and my tour guide told me that Amon Goeth actually shot prisoners from the top of a hill that is in between the house and the camp.  As anyone can plainly see, the camp is not visible from the balcony of Amon Goeth’s  house because of that hill.

There is a famous scene in Steven Spielberg’s movie,  Schindler’s List, in which the Commandant of Plaszow is shooting prisoners at random from his balcony. In the novel Schindler’s Ark, on which the movie is based, the author explains that Amon Goeth was allowed to shoot prisoners from his balcony because Plaszow was not at that time a concentration camp under the control of the Economic office in Oranienburg.  However, Goeth and Monika’s mother did not live in the house with the balcony while Plaszow was a labor camp, so this scene is total fiction.

Scene from the movie “Schindler’s List”

Later, in the movie, Amon Goeth is no longer there, but there is no explanation for why he is gone.  In real life, Goeth was arrested by Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen, the SS judge who investigated all the concentration camps for corruption and crimes against the prisoners. When the war ended, Goeth was awaiting trial in Morgen’s court, on a charge of stealing from the camp warehouses. Goeth was put on trial in a Polish court, but he was not charged with personally shooting anyone, nor with beating his maid.

Daughter of Amon Goeth is made into a monster with bad lighting

In 1968, after a visit to Germany, Elie Wiesel wrote these famous words in Legends of Our Time:

“Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate — healthy, virile hate — for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German.”

Should all Germans have themselves sterilized because of  “what the German personifies” and for “what persists in the German?”

Should the Germans be forbidden to adopt children because the genes of German monsters can be passed on, even to children that are not blood relatives?

You can read the whole story here.