What do British students learn “from the horrors of Auschwitz”?

I have blogged several times in the past about the one-day student trips to Auschwitz, sponsored by the HET.  I highly disapprove of these propaganda trips.

Today I read about yet another student trip in a news article at http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Learning-horrors-Auschwitz/story-20883729-detail/story.html

This quote is from the news article:

We walked the 1,000 steps from the entrance [into Auschwitz-Birkenau] to what’s left of the [Krema II and Krema III] gas chambers. Two huge underground buildings where thousands were led to believe they could take a shower. Edyta [the Jewish tour guide] explained that each chamber could hold 2,000 people, who were killed in just 15 minutes. Their bodies were then mass cremated or burned in a nearby forest and used as fertiliser around the camp.

What does “mass cremated” mean? Were there huge cremation ovens at Auschwitz where the bodies were “mass cremated”?  Before the Auschwitz camp was abandoned by the Germans, the cremation ovens were lifted out of the Birkenau crematoria and taken to Germany to be used in other camps.

A cremation oven, used at Dachau, to burn one body at a time

The ruins of Krema V gas chamber with forest in background

Apparently, even with mass cremation, the Nazis had to resort to burning the bodies in “a nearby forest.”  What about the danger of starting a forest fire, which could have burned the whole countryside for miles around?

And using the ashes of the Jews for “fertiliser”?  There were farms, just outside the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where fertilizer was used, but I doubt that Heinrich Himmler, who had a degree in Agriculture, would have used the ashes of Jews for fertilizer.

The news article continues with this quote:

Earlier in the day we were taken to a synagogue in the small town of Oswiecim, better known by its German name of Auschwitz. […]

Rabbi Marcus showed students some Jewish prayer books and explained that once they became unusable they were ceremoniously buried in cemeteries along with religious scrolls. Hearing that helped me put it all into perspective; to a Jewish person, a book is worthy of a burial. To a Nazi, a Jewish person was not even worthy of that.

There were 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.  Did the Jews really expect the Nazis to bury each body in an individual grave?

The news article continues with this quote:

Throughout the day, educators had urged students to try to remember the individual people who lost their lives at Auschwitz, and the last part of the tour was dedicated to just that.

As Edyta [the tour guide] explained, the room [in the Sauna building]  where Jews were sent to register was where they were stripped of their identities. “When they left this room they stopped being a person, a human being. They became a number. They became a nothing.” But now that very room is used to remember the human beings behind the numbers.

Wedding and baby photos line the walls. Pictures of families, first days at school – I even spotted two teenage girls in what looked like an early selfie.

These smiling happy people were a far cry from the earlier uniformed photos lining the walls [in buildings in the main Auschwitz camp].

The quote above refers to the photos which have been put up in the Sauna building, where incoming Jews were brought to take a shower and have their heads shaved to get rid of any lice, which could have started a typhus epidemic.  Why did the Nazis save all those photos, which were brought to the camp, by the Jews?

Display of photos in the Sauna building at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Sign over the room at Auschwitz where Jews were disinfected to kill head lice

Sign over the entrance to the shower room in the Sauna at Auschwitz

A display table inside the Sauna building at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Instead of telling the British students the truth, that the Germans tried to save lives by giving the Jews showers and shaving the hair off their heads, the students were told that the Sauna building was where the Jews were “stripped of their identities,” and where they “stopped being a human being.”

Did the guide explain that the Jews believe that Jews are the only human beings, and that the non-Jewish “goyim” are animals, not human beings?

The Jews “became a number” when they entered Auschwitz. What if the Germans had not given each Jew a unique number? How many Jews, who had the exact same name, were in Auschwitz?  Each prisoner was given a unique number which identified them and distinguished them from other prisoners with the same name.

Did the tour guide explain to the students that the Jews had the habit of killing children and leaving their bodies to be found? The Jews did not bury the bodies of non-Jewish children because they believed that these children were not human, and only human beings should be buried.

A blog post, written by another blogger, explains it. You can read this blog post at

A dark anniversary in Poland

This quote from the blog, cited above, tells about how Jews were killed in Poland, after World War II, because of a ritual murder:

On July 4, 1946, 42 Jews who had survived the Nazis were butchered by their own countrymen:

The pogrom followed a series of violent anti-Semitic incidents in the Kielce region and elsewhere in Poland after 1945, which claimed about 2,000 Jewish victims. The local violence was directed at former Jewish residents of Kielce who had survived the camps or hidden in the forests until the liberation of Poland from Nazi rule; it occurred at a time of intense anti-Semitic hatred, when rumors were rampant that masses of Jews would soon return to Poland from the USSR to reclaim their houses and belongings.
The more immediate cause was the ritual murder myth, which had been widely disseminated by the Catholic Church in between-the-wars Poland and was still believed by many lower-class Poles.
Rumors had begun to spread in June 1946 that Jews on Planty Avenue in Kielce were killing Polish children and drinking their blood or using it to make matzot. One Jewish eyewitness who survived the pogrom remembered: “At about nine o’clock, on 4 July, crowds started to surround the building. I heard voices from the crowd: ‘You Jews have killed 14 of our children! Mothers and fathers unite to kill all the Jews!’”

 

Holocaust Denier Fredrick Töben and changes to Racial Discrimination Act in Australia

Under a proposed new law in Australia, Holocaust Denier Fredrick Töben, a citizen of Australia, could not be prosecuted for “Holocaust Denial,” according to a news article, which you can read at http://www.jewishnews.net.au/new-legislation-deeply-flawed/34495

Fredrick Töben has the title “Holocaust Denier” because, many years ago, he went to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, and actually descended into the Krema II gas chamber, which is 5 feet underground.  What was he thinking!!!

Fredrick Töben descending into the Krema II gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Notice that he is wearing a suit and tie. Töben is obviously trying to be respectful as he descends into the “Holy of Holies,” as the Krema II gas chamber was called by Robert Jan van Pelt.

Fredrick Töben inspects a wall inside the Krema II gas chamber

In the photo above, Töben has his hand on a wall inside the Krema II gas chamber, as he points out that there are no blue stains, caused by Zyklon-B gas, inside the Krema II gas chamber.

According to Germar Rudolf, who is an expert on these matters, the walls of a homicidal gas chamber should have heavy blue stains. But what does he know?

The Holocaustians say that it takes more Zyklon-B gas to kill lice than it does to kill humans, so the walls of the homicidal gas chamber should not have heavy blue stains.

Germar Rudolf inside Krema II, taking samples from the wall of the alleged gas chamber

Germar Rudolf inspecting blue stains on the outside wall of a disinfection building at Auschwitz-Birkenau

The photo above shows the OUTSIDE wall of a building at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was used for disinfecting the clothing of the prisoners. Zyklon-B causes heavy blue stains, but only when it is used to kill lice, according to the Holocaustians.  I blogged about this locked building, which the Auschwitz Museum will not let tourists see, at:

What tour guides at Auschwitz-Birkenau won’t show you…

So what does this have to do with anything?

Currently, Fredrick Töben is in the news, as the Australians grapple with the laws of “racial discrimination.”

You can read about it in this news article:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/legal-expert-weighs-in-debate-anti-discrimination-debate/5345922

This quote is from the website, cited above:

Attorney General George Brandis and Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek have clashed over whether holocaust deniers will benefit from government’s proposed changes to anti-discrimination laws.

Mr Brandis and Ms Plibersek both cited the case of Holocaust denier Frederick Tobin, who was ordered by the Federal Court to remove material from his website in 2008.

Mr Brandis defended the government’s decision to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act by removing the words, to ‘offend, insult or humiliate’. Under the changes, the term ‘intimidate’ would be retained and a new provision against racial ‘vilification’ will be introduced.

So who is Fredrick Töben?  The following quote is from Wikipedia:

In 1994 he established the Adelaide Institute, which he directed until 2009. Töben and his associates at the Adelaide Institute have denied “being Holocaust deniers” in interviews conducted by Australian media, claiming they cannot deny that which never happened.[12]

On 10 October 2000, the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission ruled that the Adelaide Institute should remove website material the Commission considered racial hate speech. On 17 September 2002, the Federal Court of Australia affirmed on appeal the application of Australian anti-racial hatred laws against speech on Töben’s website. It did not, however, force Töben to apologise. The ruling in Toben v Jones (2003) 129 FCR 515, was one of the first applications of Australian anti-racial hatred laws to speech against religious groups.[13][14][15]

[…]

In 1998 Töben was imprisoned for nine months at Mannheim Prison for breaching Germany’s Holocaust Law, Section 130, that prohibits anyone from “defaming the dead”.[16]

 

What was the purpose of the death marches out of the concentration camps?

Last night, during a conversation with a teen-aged visitor to my home, the subject of the “death marches” out of the Nazi concentration camps came up.  My young visitor had noticed that, on my library shelf, I have a copy of a huge book which gives the several versions of the Anne Frank diary side by side.

The sight of this book prompted my young visitor to mention that she had studied the Anne Frank Diary in school, and that a Holocaust survivor, who had a number tattooed on the inside of her left arm, had recently given a talk at her school.

At this point, I told her that the tattoo was an indication that the survivor had been a prisoner at Auschwitz, because the Auschwitz camp was the only place where the prisoners were tattooed.  This was news to her; the Holocaust survivor had not mentioned this.

Then my young visitor told me that the Holocaust survivor, who spoke at her school, had said that she had been taken on a march out of Auschwitz.  On the march, she had been forced to walk for miles, barefoot through the snow.  When the march ended, the prisoners were allowed to escape, running through the snow, into the arms of soldiers who liberated them.

The story of marching barefoot through the snow resonated with me because many other survivors of Auschwitz have told stories about how the German soldiers, who led the marches out of Auschwitz, walked ahead of the prisoners, tramping down the two feet of snow, so that the women and children could walk better.  The women and children were given a head start, so that they would not have to keep up with the men, who could walk faster.

I have also heard stories about how the women were taken to the clothing warehouses, known as Canada, where they were allowed to select a nice pair of boots for the march.

This is the first time that I have heard that the prisoners were marched barefoot out of Auschwitz.  The women were wearing shoes, while they were prisoners at Auschwitz, but according to this survivor, they were apparently told to take off their shoes so that they could march barefoot through the snow.

Some Holocaust survivors say that the purpose of a “death march” was to kill the prisoners by marching them to death.  Holocaust deniers say that the purpose was to take the prisoners to other camps, where they could be put to work.

I decided to look it up on Wikipedia, where I found a page entitled Death marches (Holocaust).

This quote is from Wikipedia:

Death marches (Todesmärsche in German) refer to the forcible movements of prisoners in Nazi Germany. They occurred at various points during the Holocaust, including in 1939 in the Lublin province of Poland, in 1942 in Ukraine, and between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 from Nazi concentration camps and prisoner of war camps near the front, to camps inside Germany away from front lines and Allied forces to remove evidence from concentration camps and to prevent the repatriation

The photo below is on the page entitled “Deach marches.” The caption on the photo is this:

Dachau concentration camp inmates on a death march, April 1945, photographed walking through a German village, heading in the direction of Wolfratshausen, Bavaria.

Were the prisoners, shown in the photo above, really marched out of the Dachau camp to “to remove evidence from concentration camps and to prevent the repatriation”? In the photo, it appears that the prisoners are walking through the rain, wearing shoes and some kind of rain gear.

Would marching the prisoners out of Dachau remove the evidence of the Dachau gas chamber?  Wouldn’t it have been easier to blow up the gas chamber inside the Dachau camp?

Why take a chance on one of these prisoners escaping the march, and living to tell about the gas chamber and other atrocities committed at Dachau?

Other sources, including my website, claim that these prisoners were marched out of Dachau to prevent them from killing Germany civilians in the vicinity of the town of Dachau.

Holocaust deniers claim that prisoners were marched out of Auschwitz, not for the purpose of killing them by marching them to death, but for the purpose of taking them to camps in Germany to work.

I wrote about the prisoners being marched out of Dachau on this page of my website:  http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/LiberationDay2A.html

 

Holocaust survivor in Australia speaks out against changes in free speech laws

The following quote is from an article, which you can read in full at

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/545399/20140328/racial-discrimination-act-tony-abbott-holocaust-moshe.htm#.UzWQ4V7Y1Ph

Holocaust Survivor Moshe Fiszman pleads [with Australia’s] leader to abandon his proposed changes [in the Free Speech law], saying that he would be taking away [the Jew’s] freedom in doing so.

[…]

[Australian Prime Minister] Mr Abbott claimed that the changes are necessary to remove the restrictions on “free speech,” and that they also include strong prohibitions on racial vilification.

Mr Fiszman, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor who spent the Second World War in Nazi concentration camps, begged to differ.

He penned an open letter to the PM, asking him to abandon his plans to change the RDA [Racial Discrimination Act].

[Moshe Fiszman said] “You might think you are increasing freedom, but let me assure you that you will be taking away the freedom of communities such as mine [the Jewish community]. The freedom to live without hatred and without lies being told about us [the Jews],” he wrote.

“That is why every single ethnic community is against this change. Some 39 communities have protested against it. Australia is a beautiful country because, like the United States, we are all migrants – not minorities. But if this law gets up, we will be made to feel like minorities.

“You might think you are increasing freedom, but this change will hurt disadvantages, underprivileged groups, like the Aborigines who regularly visit the Jewish Holocaust Museum.”

He continued, “I came to this country because it was the furthest away from Europe I could get. Also, I had four years behind bars as a refugee after the war because nobody wanted me, so I had plenty of time to check out what Australia was made of. I researched its constitution and so forth, and I liked it.

[…]

“What do they want to change this law for? If you start playing around with it, where will it end up? Who is it giving the freedom to? They want the right-wing loonies to have a free rein so they can write and say whatever they like and get away with it scot-free. Holocaust deniers like the Adelaide Institute.”

Mr Fiszman was the only member of his family to survive after suffering in various Nazi concentration camps, including the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau.

“This is my opinion as a survivor, the opinion of a man who went through living hell for five-and-a-half years, on death row for 24 hours a day. I am dead against it. Don’t let them touch the freedom of the people in the country.

After I read the news article, I did some  research on Moshe Fiszman and found a website which gives the following information about Moshe, obtained in an interview:

http://www.arturszulc.se/anslagstavlan/mellan-himmel-jord/a-interview-with-moshe-fiszman-holocaust-survivor

The following information is from the website, cited above:

What happened to your family? And where you put into a camp? What camp?

In August 1942 the Jewish population (including my family of five people) nearly 24 000 people men, woman, children, babies, pregnant woman, old people, were cramped in cattle trucks over 100 per truck, no food, water or toilet, and what we found out later, taken to a place called Treblinka, and gassed to death, their bodies burned, and the ashes used as fertilizer.

3 000 Jews, including myself, were given striped clothing, and were declared as prisoners of the K/Z. Majdanek.

In July 1944 we were death marched to Tomaszow Mazowiecki for six days. From there to Auschwitz- Birkenau were I was selected to live a while longer. There after I was taken to Natzweiler-Struthof (my prisoner number 25627), from there to Vaihingen am Enz, were we left a mass grave of  1600 prisoners. In March 1945 marched to Dachau (my prisoner number 150321), and finally all Jewish prisoners marched in to the Austrian Alps and by miracle freed.

I survived. What actually what did I survive? I had no family, no home and no country to go back to, I was alone in a cursed country.

You spent almost two years in Majdanek. How does one survive such an ordeal? What kept you going?

Hope.
And the will not to allow the savages to turn out the light on the Jewish people and their history.

[…]

You managed to survive. What happened after the War? How did you end up in Australia?

I was lucky, for five and a half years of starvation and maltreatment, to be found by a front line unit of the 7th U S Army in the mountains of Austria. Lived as a refuge for four years in UNNRA camps, finally Australia was ready to accept me as a migrant.

From this interview, and Moshe’s description of his survival in the Holocaust, we learn that Moshe Fiszman is the living proof of what Holocaust deniers claim.

1. Moshe Fiszman was sent to Treblinka, a death camp, where he was not gassed in any of the 10 gas chambers, but was sent on to the Majdanek death camp, where it was initially reported that there were 5 gas chambers.

2. Next Moshe was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where he was again not gassed in any of the alleged 5 gas chambers.

3. From Auschwitz, Moshe was sent to the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, which was mostly a camp for Resistance Fighters, although it had the obligatory gas chamber.  (Was Moshe sent to Natzweiler because he was fighting in the Polish Home Army of illegal combatants?)

4. When the Natzweiler-Struthof camp was abandoned, Moshe was sent to Dachau, which allegedly had a gas chamber, but Moshe was again not gassed. He was sent to a sub-camp of Dachau, called Mittenwald.

5.  After the American Seventh Army liberated the main Dachau camp, they went on to liberate the Mittenwald camp.  After the camp was liberated, it became a Displaced Persons camp, where Moshe stayed on until he went to Australia.

Ireland’s desperation for victims of the Holocaust

The Irish are desperate to be included among the countries that suffered at the hands of the Nazis. The Irish have recently put up a memorial to a Jewish woman who lived for a time in Ireland before she was sent to Auschwitz in 1942 and killed.

A couple of years ago, a teacher in Ireland assigned students to find the one and only Irish prisoner who had been incarcerated in the Dachau concentration camp.  I received many e-mails from Irish students who were trying to find out the name of the only Irish prisoner at Dachau.

I did some research on the subject of the only Irish prisoner at Dachau and wrote two blog posts about this:

More about the only Irish prisoner at Dachau

The only Irish prisoner at Dachau (updated)

You can read about the only Irish prisoner to be killed by the Nazis in this news article:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/memorial-to-ireland-s-only-holocaust-victim-unveiled-1.1737753

This quote is from the Irish Times article, cited above:

A memorial to Ireland’s only Holocaust victim Ettie Steinberg has been unveiled at a secondary school in Malahide, Co Dublin.

[Lynne Jackson, chair of Holocaust Education Trust Ireland] said the stone memorial to Ettie Steinberg was a way for the school to create a permanent Holocaust memorial.

Steinberg’s family were [sic] from Czechoslovakia and came to Dublin from London in 1926. In 1937 she married a Belgian man and later moved to Belgium and then Paris, where she had a son. In 1942 she and her little boy were transported to Auschwitz and killed.

In Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland , Dermot Keogh notes, “the Steinbergs in Dublin had secured visas for Ettie and her family trough [sic] the British home office in Belfast. The visas were sent immediately to Toulouse but they arrived too late. Ettie and her family had been rounded up the day before…”

I checked the timeline for Auschwitz to confirm that Jews were killed at Auschwitz in 1942 and found this on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website at

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007259

January 25, 1940
The SS decides to construct a concentration camp near Oswiecim (Auschwitz).

May 20, 1940
The first concentration camp prisoners—30 recidivist criminals from Sachsenhausen—arrive at Auschwitz concentration camp.
March 1, 1941
Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of German Police Heinrich Himmler inspects Oswiecim (Auschwitz). Because nearby factories use prisoners for forced labor, Himmler is concerned about the prisoner capacity of the camp. On this visit, he orders both the expansion of Auschwitz I camp facilities to hold 30,000 prisoners and the building of a camp near Birkenau for an expected influx of 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war. Himmler also orders that the camp supply 10,000 prisoners for forced labor to construct an I.G. Farben factory complex at Dwory, about a mile away. Himmler will make additional visits to Auschwitz in 1942, when he will witness the killing of prisoners in the gas chambers.

[…]

January 25, 1942
SS chief Heinrich Himmler informs Richard Gluecks, the Inspector of Concentration Camps, that 100,000 Jewish men and 50,000 Jewish women would be deported from Germany to Auschwitz as forced laborers.

February 15, 1942
The first transport of Jews from Bytom (Beuthen) in German-annexed Upper Silesia arrives in Auschwitz I. The SS camp authorities kill all those on the transport immediately upon arrival with Zyklon B gas.

December 31, 1942
German SS and police authorities deported approximately 175,000 Jews to Auschwitz in 1942.

Notice that the last entry in the timeline says that 175,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz in 1942, which could have included the Jews sent from France to Auschwitz in 1942.  Ettie Steinberg and her son, who were killed in Auschwitz, were in Paris in 1942, and could have been on a transport sent from Paris to Auschwitz.

This quote is from a Yad Vashem web page about the Holocaust in  France:

In July 1942 some 23,000 Jews were arrested in Paris and in the remainder of the Occupied Zone. At the initiative of Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of the Vichy regime, most of the Jewish children were deported to the East together with their parents.

So the Irish have a legitimate claim for a Holocaust Memorial.

Holocaust survivor of Buchenwald who was sent to France

In a news story, which you can read here, it was mentioned that Leo Lowy was a Jewish survivor of Buchenwald, who was sent to France after the camp was liberated. Before he was sent to Buchenwald, Lowy had been a prisoner at Auschwitz, which was the SECOND camp to which he had been sent.

The news article did not mention the first camp, to which he was sent, but it was probably the Theresienstat camp in what is now the Czech Republic, since Lowy was living in Czechoslovia at that time.

Lowy was 85 years old when he died, so he was probably born in 1929 and was 15 years old when he was sent to Theresienstadt.

According to Holocaust history, a total of 44,693 Jews from Theresienstadt were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. On September 8, 1943, a transport of 5,006 Czech Jews was sent to Auschwitz where they were put into a “family camp” which was liquidated six months later, when all but a few of the Czech Jews were gassed. There were 22,503 Jews from Theresienstadt who were transported to unknown destinations in the east.

At Auschwitz, Lowy was sent to the right by Dr. Josef Mengele because he claimed that he was a “carpenter” and able to work. To the left meant the gas chamber.

This quote from the news article explains why Leo Lowy’s parents were gassed:

[Lowy] was left orphaned after his parents became ill and were refused admittance to the [Auschwitz] hospital because they were Jews.

Contrary to Lowy’s story, Otto Frank,  the father of Anne Frank, was admitted to the hospital at Auschwitz, which enabled him to survive the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.  Anne Frank also survived Auschwitz-Birkenau because she was sick and was sent on the “sick transport” to Bergen-Belsen, where she subsequently died in the typhus epidemic.

This quote is also from the news article:

After the liberation [of Buchenwald] in 1945, U.S. troops took in the teenager [Leo Lowy] as their “mascot,” feeding him in exchange for chores, and brought him to France.

There were 904 children, who were in the Buchenwald camp when it was liberated, and most of them were orphans.  After the liberation of the camp, two American army chaplains, Rabbi Herschel Schacter and Rabbi Robert Marcus, contacted the offices of the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants), the Jewish children’s relief organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

Children at Buchenwald, most of whom were orphans

The OSE made arrangements to send 427 of the Buchenwald children to France, 280 to Switzerland and 250 to England. On June 2, 1945, OSE representatives arrived in Buchenwald and along with Rabbi Marcus, accompanied the transport to France. Rabbi Schacter escorted the second transport to Switzerland.

Buchenwald orphans leave the camp, on their way to France

What was it really like at Buchenwald?

In my blog post today, I am responding to a comment made by a reader of my blog, who wrote:

“What reason would have had Buchenwald inmates to lie about that Concentration Camp conditions? Do you know the work of Eugen Kogon, an austrian right wing catholic nationalist-?”

Yes, I know all about Eugen Kogon. You can read the story of Eugen Kogon on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Kogon#Works_as_co-editor

Eugen Kogon testified for the prosecution at the Buchenwald trial on April 16, 1947

One thing that Wikipedia does not mention is that Eugen Kogon’s famous book was based on The Buchenwald Report written by the Americans who liberated the camp on April 11, 1945.

Dr. Eugen Kogon was an Austrian Social Democrat and political activist, who was a prisoner at Buchenwald from September 1939 to April 1945. You can read more about Eugen Kogon at this revisionist website:

http://www.whale.to/b/eugen_kogon.html

Kogon was the main contributor to The Buchenwald Report, a 400-page book about the Buchenwald camp which was put together in only four weeks by the US Army, after conducting interviews with over 100 former prisoners at the camp.

Kogon later wrote a book called The Theory and Practice of Hell, which was a rewrite of The Buchenwald Report and one of the first books about the Nazi atrocities in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Kogon testified during the Dachau proceedings, at the American Military Tribunal, about the harsh treatment suffered by the prisoners at Buchenwald, although he himself was one of the privileged political prisoners, who actually ran the camp.

During the AMT proceedings, Kogon’s testimony was contradicted by Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen, who was the main witness for the defense in the Buchenwald case.

Dr. Morgen had also testified at the Nuremberg IMT in August 1946, before the Buchenwald case came to trial at the American Military Tribunal at Dachau.

At Nuremberg, Morgen testified on 7 August 1946 regarding the conditions at Buchenwald. In response to a question from the prosecutor at Nuremberg, Morgen had answered as follows:

Q. Did you gain the impression, and at what time, that the concentration camps were places for the extermination of human beings?

A. I did not gain this impression. A concentration camp is not a place for the extermination of human beings. I must say that my first visit to a concentration camp, namely Weimar-Buchenwald, was a great surprise to me. The camp was on wooded heights, with a wonderful view. The installations were clean and freshly painted. There were grass and flowers. The prisoners were healthy, normally fed, sun-tanned, working…

THE PRESIDENT of the Tribunal: When are you speaking of? When are you speaking of?

A. I am speaking of the beginning of my investigations in July, 1943.

Q. What crimes – you may continue – please, be more brief.

A. The installations of the camp were in good order, especially the hospital. The camp authorities, under the Commandant Pister, aimed at providing the prisoners with an existence worthy of human beings. They had regular mail service. They had a large camp library, even with foreign books. They had variety shows, motion pictures, sporting events. They even had a brothel. Nearly all the other concentration camps were similar to Buchenwald.

THE PRESIDENT: What was it they even had?

A. A brothel.

To get back to the question of why the inmates of the Buchenwald camp would lie about the conditions in the camp:

The first camp, that was ever seen by the American military, was Ohrdruf, which was a sub-camp of Buchenwald. On April 12, 1945, General George Patton visited the Ohrdruf camp, along with General Omar Bradley and General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

General Patton was the only one of the 3 generals, who then visited the main Buchenwald camp. On April 15, 1945, the day that General George S. Patton visited Buchenwald, he wrote the following in a letter to General Dwight D. Eisenhower:

“I told the press to go up there and see it, and then write as much about it as they could. I also called General Bradley last night and suggested that you send selected individuals from the upper strata of the press to look at it, so that you can build another page of the necessary evidence as to the brutality of the Germans.”

So to answer the reader’s question: the American military wanted to “build another page of the necessary evidence as to the brutality of the Germans.”

In other words, General Patton wanted to start a propaganda campaign to demonize the German people for time and all eternity.

Patton later changed his mind about the Germans and turned against the Jews, which some people think was the reason for his untimely death.

Truck loads of Americans soldiers were brought to the Buchenwald camp several days after it was liberated on April 11, 1945

After the Buchenwald camp was liberated, truck loads of American  soldiers were brought to the camp, as shown in the photo above.

These American soldiers were astounded when the Communist prisoners in the Buchenwald camp took them to see a display table, which showed pieces of tattooed human skin, two shrunken heads, preserved human body parts, an ash tray made from a human bone, and a table lamp with a lampshade allegedly made from human skin. The shrunken heads resembled those made by primitive tribes in South America.

Display table put up at Buchenwald for the benefit of American soldiers who were brought to see the camp several days after the camp was liberated

A movie about the Buchenwald camp, directed by famed Hollywood director Billy Wilder, was made by a film crew of the Signal Corps of the US Army, shortly after the liberation of the camp; it included some footage of the display table, shown in the photo above.

In 1947, the American Military Tribunal held proceedings against 31 people associated with the Buchenwald camp. The so-called “Buchenwald trial” began with the showing of the film that had been made by Billy Wilder. The defense objected to the showing of this film, pointing out that the film had been made three or four days after the camp came under the control of the American Army, and that it did not show anything that had occurred prior to that time.

The objection was overruled and the film was shown. The defense also objected to the display of the two shrunken heads, but this objection was also overruled.

Dr. Kurte Sitte shows a shrunken head during the Buchenwald proceedings of the AMT

At the Buchenwald trial, Dr. Kurte Sitte, a 36-year-old doctor of Physics at Manchester University, who had been a political prisoner at Buchenwald since September 1939, testified that a shrunken head, which he identified in the courtroom, was the head of a Polish prisoner who had been decapitated on the order of SS Doctor Mueller at Buchenwald. Although the prisoners in all the Nazi camps had their heads shaved, this Polish prisoner had long black hair at the time he was decapitated.

American defense attorney Capt. Emmanuel Lewis objected to the admission of the shrunken head into evidence because Dr. Mueller was not on trial, but his objection was overruled. Under the rules of the American Military Tribunal, any and all evidence was admissible, whether or not it pertained to the case, because the charges against all of the accused was participating in a “common plan” to commit war crimes. There was no defense to the “common plan” charge.

In all of the Nazi concentration camps, all punishments and executions had to be cleared with the main office in Oranienburg.  An SS officer, named Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen, was in charge of investigating cruelty and black market activities in all of the camps. Col. Karl Otto Koch, the Commandant of Buchenwald, had been engaging in both of these crimes, and he was eventually arrested in August 1943 for inciting the murder of two prisoners and for embezzlement.

According to The Buchenwald Report, the murder charge against Col. Koch was based on the accusation that he had ordered the execution of hospital orderly Walter Krämer and his assistant, both of whom had treated Koch for syphilis; Koch wanted them killed so that they could not reveal his secret. According to the charges against him, Koch had falsely claimed that these two men were executed for political reasons.

Ilse Koch, the wife of the Commandant, and Dr. Waldemar Hoven were also arrested by Morgen in August 1943 for mistreatment and murder of the prisoners.

After a six-month investigation, Karl Otto Koch was condemned to death on both counts of murder and embezzlement, but his wife, Ilse Koch, was acquitted of these charges. The charge of making lampshades from human skin was withdrawn by Morgen for lack of evidence.

According to The Buchenwald Report, one week before the American liberators arrived, Col. Koch was executed by the Nazis at the German Armament Works near the camp, thus saving the Americans the trouble of putting him on trial. However, in a footnote in the book, Death Dealer, editor Steven Paskuly wrote that Koch “was shot in Buchenwald in September 1944.”

Ilse Koch’s lover, SS officer Hermann Florstedt, was later transferred to the Majdanek camp, where he became the Commandant. Florstedt was also executed by the Nazis after he was convicted in an SS Court by Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen.

After the war, Dr. Morgen was imprisoned in War Crimes Enclosure No. 1 at the former Dachau concentration camp to await his own trial as a war criminal. As a member of the SS, Dr. Morgen was automatically a war criminal because the SS had been declared a criminal organization by the Allies after the war.

Dr. Morgen was asked to sign an affidavit that his investigation had determined that Ilse Koch ordered lamp shades made from human skin, but he refused even after several beatings by the American interrogators, according to historian John Toland in his book entitled Adolf Hitler.

The Nazi concentration camps had been declared to be a criminal enterprise by the Allies. Under the ex-post-facto law of co-responsibility which was used in all the World War II war crimes trials, anyone who had worked in one of the camps in any capacity was a war criminal. The 31 accused persons in the Buchenwald trial included at least one person who represented each job title in the camp.

The relatively low number of Buchenwald war criminals might have been due to the fact that 76 of the SS staff members had been hunted down and killed by the inmates with the help of the American liberators.

It was not a war crime for American soldiers to kill German POWs because General Dwight D. Eisenhower had had the foresight in March 1945 to designate all future German POWs as Disarmed Enemy Forces in order to get around the rules of the Geneva Convention of 1929, which America had signed.

The charges against the 31 accused war criminals in the Buchenwald trial was that they had participated in a “common design” or a “common plan” to violate the Laws and Usages of War under the Hague Convention of 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1929. These two conventions stated the rules of warfare pertaining to Enemy Prisoners of War.

Buchenwald was not a prisoner of war camp, but in the proceedings of the American Military Tribunal at Dachau, the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps were designated as detainees, who were entitled to the same treatment as POWs under the Geneva Convention of 1929. It was not until 1949, after all the Military Tribunals, conducted by the Allies, had been concluded, that a new Geneva Convention gave all detainees the same rights as POWs.

Holocaust survivor was saved by an African-American soldier who rode through the gate of the camp on a tank…

According to a Canadian newspaper article, which you can read in full here, Czechoslovakian Holocaust survivor Max Eisnen was on the “Tour for Humanity” bus tour in Canada, which was sponsored by “The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.”

This quote is from the newspaper article:

The Tour for Humanity visited Belleville for three days, visiting Harry J Clarke Public School, Quinte Secondary School and Loyalist College this past week to provide staff and students a unique educational experience.

The tour bus is a self-contained, technologically advanced educational centre that offers visual presentations detailing Canadian history, including the history of Aboriginal residential schools and the treatment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. At Loyalist College, Czechoslovakian Holocaust survivor Max Eisnen was also on hand to give a presentation on his experiences and to answer questions from students.

This quote from the Belleville newspaper article tells about Max Eisnen’s Holocaust experience:

[Max], his father and his uncle were sent [from Auschwitz] to a work camp where they worked 12 hours a day while being fed just 300 calories. After a supervisor noticed the three men eating together at lunch one day, Eisen was separated from his father and uncle, also to never see them again. He would later learn they had been chosen to undergo medical experiments for major German pharmaceutical companies. Eisen himself would only escape the gas chambers [at the work camp] by what he described as “luck,” when a Polish doctor took pity on the teenager and made him a medical assistant.

With the war winding down and the Nazi’s facing certain defeat, Eisen recalled the day he was set free [from a concentration camp]. One day he said, the guards at his new compound [probably Buchenwald] were gone, and in through the gate came an American tank with an African American soldier riding on top.

Why do I think that the camp, which was mentioned in this news story, was probably Buchenwald?

The gatehouse at Buchenwald

The gate into the Buchenwald camp, which is shown in the photo above, was not big enough for a tank to drive into the camp. Notice that the clock on the top of the gate is stopped at 3:15 p.m., the exact time that the prisoners took control of the camp, and the guards escaped in fear for their lives.

Buchenwald was liberated by white soldiers, riding on an armored tank, but a few days after the camp had been liberated, some African-American soldiers arrived, delivering some supplies to the camp. Max Eisen must have put these two stories together to come up with his story of being liberated by African-American soldiers.

I wrote about the liberation of the Buchenwald camp on this page of my website: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Buchenwald/Liberation0.html

I wrote about the African-American soldiers who came to Buchenwald at https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/african-american-soldiers-were-among-the-liberators-of-buchenwald/

This quote, regarding the liberation of Buchenwald is from my website:

The Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated on April 11, 1945 by four soldiers in the Sixth Armored Division of the US Third Army, commanded by General George S. Patton. Just before the Americans arrived, the camp had already been taken over by the Communist prisoners who had killed some of the guards and forced the rest to flee into the nearby woods.

Pfc. James Hoyt was driving the M8 armoured vehicle which brought Capt. Frederic Keffer, Tech. Sgt. Herbert Gottschalk and Sgt. Harry Ward to the Buchenwald camp that day.

The following quote is from a CNN news story on the occasion of the death of James Hoyt on August 14, 2008 at the age of 83:

“According to military records, Keffer was the officer in command of the six-wheeled armored vehicle that day. The soldiers were part of the Army’s 6th Armored Division near the camp when about 15 SS troopers were captured. It was mid-afternoon.”

Is anyone else, besides me, bothered by Holocaust survivors telling lies to young students?  There ought to be a law against this. I suggest 5 years in prison, no matter how old the “survivor” is.

World War II reprisals against partisan attacks are now considered war crimes

There were two famous reprisals, perpetrated by the Germans during World War II: the reprisal at Oradour-sur-Glane in France, and the reprisal against Italian partisans at the Ardeatine Caves in Italy.

Reprisals were legal during World War II, although a reprisal is no longer legal in today’s world.  Partisans were illegal combatants during World War II.  The Germans used legal reprisals, during World War II, as an effective way to stop the illegal fighting by partisans.

Now all that has changed; the legal reprisals, which were done by the Germans in World War II, are now called “war crimes.”  Anyone who was present during a legal reprisal can now be put on trial in a German court, as a war criminal. One of these war criminals was Erich Priebke, who was present during the legal reprisal at the Ardeatine Caves.

This quote is from the website of Pamela L. Fiedler, which you can read at http://pamelafiedler.wordpress.com/

Does society allow the lunacy of yesterday to become today’s exception and tomorrow’s routine? In my previous blog “The Eyes of Truth” I shared a link to an article written by Klaus Wiegrefe titled: “How Postwar Germany Let War Criminals Go Free.”   It outlines the spring of 1944 and the Ardeatine Caves near Rome, Italy. Taken five at a time, 335 men were herded into these caves by Nazi troops. An SS Officer by the name of Erich Priebke was the man who crossed the names off the list, before the innocent victims were forced to kneel prior to being shot. As the bodies piled up, the next group had to climb over. When the act of genocide was complete, the SS blew up the caves.

What a difference 70 years makes!  A reprisal is now called an “act of genocide.”

Here is how Wikipedia describes this same reprisal:

On 23 March 1944, a column of the German 11th Company, 3rd Battalion, S.S. Police Regiment ‘Bozen’, was attacked by an ambush of Partisans while marching and singing. The attack was carried out by 16 partisans of the Communist-dominated resistance organisation Gruppo d’Azione Patriottica (“Patriotic Action Group”) or GAP. An improvised explosive device was prepared consisting of 12 kilograms of TNT packed in a steel case. This was inserted into a bag containing an additional six kilograms of TNT and TNT filled iron tubing. Although reported as having been thrown from a building, the bomb had actually been hidden in a rubbish cart, pushed into position by a Partisan disguised as a street cleaner, while others acted as lookouts. The fuse was lit when the police were forty seconds from the bomb. The blast caused the immediate deaths of 28 SS policemen and at least two civilian bystanders, one of whom, Piero Zuccheretti, was an eleven-year old boy. More would die over the next few days.

All sixteen Partisans — some of whom fired on the German column — succeeded in melting away into the crowd unscathed.[5].

In today’s world, the Partisans who fought illegally, blowing up German soldiers who were marching, are heroes. The Germans, who fought legally, on the battlefield, are the bad guys.

11-year-old boy who was selected to be a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz

At Auschwitz, the Sonderkommando Jews were selected to work in the crematoria, carrying bodies out of the gas chamber, and shoving them into the cremation ovens.  But first, the Sonderkommando Jews had to pull the gold teeth out of the mouths of their fellow Jews, after they had been gassed.  (Shouldn’t they have pulled the gold teeth out BEFORE the Jews were gassed, and their bodies were contaminated with poison gas?)

Bodies of dead Jews were put onto a trolley before being shoved into the ovens at Auschwitz

Holocaust survivor Martin Becker was selected to be one of the Sonderkommando Jews, at the age of 11; he worked in this job for 5 years before he was marched out of the Auschwitz camp.

Martin Becker is still alive, at the age of 87, and he is out on the lecture circuit, telling his story, which you can read in full at http://www.thewrap.com/martin-becker-holocaust-survivor-waxword-column

Look at my photo above, taken at Auschwitz in 2005.  It shows the trolley, on which the bodies were placed, before they were shoved into the ovens at Auschwitz. At the age of 11, Martin Becker had no trouble dragging a body out of the gas chamber and throwing it up onto a trolley car.

My 1998 photo of a trolley for putting bodies into the oven at Auschwitz

In my photo above, there are lighted candles on the trolley where the bodies would have been placed by the Sonderkommando Jews.  At the age of 11, Martin Becker was not much taller than the trolley car.  Yet, he somehow managed to do his job as a Sonderkommando, so that he would not be shoved into the oven alive.

Why did the Nazis keep Martin Becker alive for 5 long years?  Didn’t they know that he might live to the age of 87 and tell his story to the world?

This quote is from the article about Martin Becker:

Born in Karlsruhe, Germany, Martin Becker was sent to Auschwitz in 1941, as a child of 11. His parents and grandparents were marched off to the gas chambers. He was handed a pliers and ordered to pull gold from the teeth of gassed corpses, individuals — he recalled in my living room this week — who moments earlier had been alive.

Martin Becker lived and worked in this death camp [Auschwitz] for five years, forced to serve as a Sonderkommando, one of the cursed crew charged with disposing of corpses, removing valuables and putting them in the ovens.

It was terrible,” he said simply, with devastating understatement. He recalled a friend he made among the Sonderkommando, Eric, who missed some of the gold in the teeth. He was thrown in the oven by a Nazi guard, still alive. He recalled 1944, when the Hungarian Jews were shipped to their deaths in Auschwitz: “They had a lot of gold in their teeth.”  […]

The Nazis were careful to kill the Sonderkommando at regular intervals. They were witnesses to crimes, and as such, needed to be liquidated. Martin Becker said that at a key moment of liquidation, he slipped into a line of Russian children and was overlooked.  […]

How many times did Martin have to slip into a line of Russia children to escape being killed?  According to Wikipedia, the Sonderkommando Jews were killed every 4 months, and replaced by Jews who had just arrived at the camp.

This quote is from Wikipedia:

Because of their intimate knowledge of the process of Nazi mass murder, the Sonderkommando were considered Geheimnisträger — bearers of secrets — and as such, they were kept in isolation from other camp inmates, except, of course, for those about to enter the gas chambers. Since the Nazis did not want Sonderkommandos’ knowledge to reach the outside world, they followed a policy of regularly gassing almost all the Sonderkommando and replacing them with new arrivals at intervals of approximately 4 months; the first task of the new Sonderkommandos would be to dispose of their predecessors’ corpses. Therefore since the inception of the Sonderkommando through to the liquidation of the camp there existed approximately 14 generations of Sonderkommando.[1]

Was Martin Becker big for his age, when he was 11 years old? Was he a big, strapping boy, who could throw the body of a grown man onto a trolley cart?  His photo below, shows that he is shorter than the average man today, but maybe he has shrunk with age.

Martin Becker was a Sonderkommando Jew at Auschwitz