August 2nd is a day of remembrance for the 2,900 Roma and Sinti who were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau on that day in 1944

August 2nd has been designated as the day of remembrance for the Gypsies (Roma and Sinti) who were gassed during a single night at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944.  You can read about it in a news story here.

This quote is from the news article, cited above:

August 2 is the official day of the remembrance of Roma victims of the holocaust. On the night of August 2, 1944, around 2,900 Roma and Sinti were killed in the gas chambers of the Auschitz-Birkenau camp.

The exact number of Gypsies, who were gassed on August 2, 1944, is unknown because the Germans did not keep records, nor names, of the victims who were killed in the gas chamber.  However, there were 4 gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau on that date, and it is possible that the gassing of all the Gypsies could have been accomplished in one night.

The only problem would have been the disposal of the bodies in a timely manner, since there were no morgues, in the gas chamber buildings, to store the bodies until they could be burned in the ovens. The undressing rooms and gas chambers were located in the rooms that were called morgues on the blueprints of the gas chambers.

I previously wrote about the gassing of the Roma and Sinti here.

Why were all the Roma and Sinti gassed in only one night?  What was the big hurry to get rid of the Gypsies after they had been imprisoned in a “family camp” for seventeen months?

Is it possible that the Gypsies were all deported, in a single night, out of the “family camp” to other concentration camps?  Could that be why a tourist cannot walk down a street today, anywhere in Europe, without being accosted by a Gypsy rudely demanding money?  Is that why tourists are advised to wear their backpack in the front of their body to prevent Gypsies from stealing from them?

Woman begging for money outside a church in Strasbourg, France

Holocaust survivor brought Jewish soap and Zyklon-B crystals to school presentation

Holocaust survivor Mike Jacobs, who brought Jewish soap to school presentations, died at the age of 88, after making numerous speeches to school children; you can read about him in this recent news article in the Dallas Morning News here.

The following quote is from a news article, originally published in the April 20, 2001 edition of the Dallas Morning News. The article was republished yesterday and you can read it in full here.

Some [students] stayed after the presentation [by Mike Jacobs] and gingerly touched Holocaust relics that he brought: a bar of soap made by the Nazis from human fat, the hat that was part of his camp uniform, a jar of poison crystals used in the gas chambers.

Soap made from Jewish fat was shown as evidence at the proceedings of the Nuremberg IMT

Zyklon-B pellets shown in the Mauthausen Museum

This quote is also from the article originally published on April 20, 2001:

Born Mendel Jakubowicz in Konin, Poland, he was 14 when the Nazis took over his town. He spent his teens shuttling from ghettos to concentration camps and survived Auschwitz. More than 80 of his relatives were among the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis.

The Dallas Morning News was founded in 1885, and back in the old days, it was noted for being an outstanding newspaper.  Those days are shon vorbei.  The story of Mike Jacob’s presentation of Jewish soap and Zyklon-B pellets to American students is an example of  “all the news that is [NOT] fit to print.”

Holocaust survivor Edith Eger was pulled from a pile of corpses by an American G.I.

This quote is from the website of Dr. Edith Eger, Ph.D. at http://www.heroicjourney.com/pages/about/edieeger.htm

Almost a year to the day from when she arrived in Auschwitz, [Edith Eger] was pulled from the pile of corpses in the woods by an American GI who was there with the 71st Infantry to liberate the Gunskirchen Larger camp. He saw her hand move. She weighed 60 pounds and had a broken back, but she was alive!

On January 18, 1945, Jewish prisoners were marched out of Auschwitz and taken to various camps, including Mauthausen where a tent camp was set up for the Hungarian Jews. Gunskirchen was a sub-camp of the Mauthausen Class III camp in Austria, where prisoners were sent to work in factories.

Entrance into Ebensee, a camp similar to Gunskirchen in Austria

You can read about the liberation of Gunskirchen, and see many photos of the dead and dying prisoners, on this website:

http://www.remember.org/mooney/full_version.html

On the website, cited above, there are many photos of corpses lying on the ground when the Americans arrived.

This quote is from the website of Edie Eger:

Edie’s story began in Kassa, Hungary where she grew up with her parents and older sisters, Magda and Klara. In May of 1944 at the age of 16 her life changed forever. Edie was sent by the Germans to Auschwitz concentration camp along with her parents and sister Magda. […]

…the guards [at Auschwitz] found out from other inmates that Edie had been a ballerina in Hungry. They told Dr. Mengele, who liked to be entertained by the inmates. He sent for Edie to dance for him. As Edie was onstage dancing for Dr. Mengele, she saw the black smoke from the gas chamber, which likely contained the ashes of her mother, drift upward toward heaven.

How terribly insensitive of Dr. Mengele!  He had 16-year-old Edie dancing on a stage that was outside where she could see the black smoke coming from the gas chamber building, which likely contained the ashes of her mother.  Edie was 16 years old, so she had not been selected for the gas chamber, which was the fate of the prisoners under the age of 15 or over the age of 45.

But it gets worse!

This quote is from Edie’s website:

Edie said as she continued to dance, “Dr. Mengele discussed with the guards who should die next. I prayed. Not for myself, but for Dr. Mengele, so he would not have to kill me. It was then that I began to pity the Nazis; they were more imprisoned than I. Somehow I would survive, but they would always have to live with what they had done.”

Edie and her sister Magda were close to death many times. Whenever they showered, they never knew if they would receive water or gas. They had to carry ammunitions for the Nazis on the infamous “death march.” They were used as human shields on top of a train full of ammunitions. The Nazis thought that the allies would not drop bombs on a train carrying prisoners, but they were wrong. The bombs killed others around them, but Edie and her sister survived.

From June 1944 to May 1945 Edie and Magda were moved from camp to camp, eventually ending up in Gunskirchen Larger camp. They were becoming exhausted and emaciated with hunger. Edie became so weak that she went in and out of consciousness. Even her sister’s vigilance as a caretaker couldn’t revive Edie. She was unconscious when guards thought she was dead and they tossed her in a mass grave in the woods behind the camp.

According to Holocaust historian Martin Gilbert, in his book entitled Holocaust, the last death marches of the war began on May 1, 1945 as the American Army approached; prisoners from the main camp at Mauthausen and the sub-camps at Gusen and St. Valentin were marched to Gunskirchen and Ebensee. Hundreds of them died from exhaustion, or were shot because they couldn’t keep up, or as they attempted to escape. When American troops in the 80th Infantry Division arrived on May 4, 1945, there were around 60,000 prisoners from 25 different countries at Ebensee.

I don’t have much information about Gunskirchen, but you can read about Ebensee, a similar sub-camp of Mauthausen, on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Mauthausen/KZMauthausen/Subcamps/Ebensee01.html

I previously blogged about Dr. Edith Eger here. She first told the story that she was saved from the gas chamber by turning cartwheels to distract the guards.

You can read more about Dr. Eger’s ordeal in The Budapest Times newspaper here.

This quote is from The Budapest Times:

Many in the audience suppressed tears as Eger told the story of her survival. She was the youngest daughter of a Jewish tailor in Budapest, and she was transported to Auschwitz just as she turned 16. Her sister, a talented violinist, managed to hide and avoid deportation.
Their father, a stubborn man, was shot upon arrival at the concentration camp because he refused to shave his head. The remaining two children were ripped from their mother’s arms still on the ramp leading off the train, and she continued her way to the gas chamber.
Edith and her sister Magda were saved only by luck and instinct. The talented Edith entertained Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death”, with private ballet presentations, and in return she got a piece of bread and more time to live.
“I did what the victims of violence often do: I dissociated,” Eger said of her encounter with Mengele. “I imagined that the music is from Tchaikovsky and I am dancing on the stage of the Budapest Opera in the role of Julia.”.

What? Edie’s father “refused to shave his head”?  I didn’t know that the Jews had to shave their own heads at Auschwitz.  The hair was shaved from the heads of the prisoners in order to control the lice that spreads typhus.

Hungarian women walking toward the women’s camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau after they were given a shower and their heads were shaved

The photo above shows Hungarian women walking into the women’s section on the south side of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp after they have had a shower and a change of clothes. Behind them is a transport train and in the background on the left is one of the camp guards. The woman with dark hair in the center of the photo is Ella Hart Gutmann who is in the outside row facing inward. Next to her is Lida Hausler Leibovics; both women were from Uzhgorod. Their heads have been shaved in an attempt to control the lice that spreads typhus.

What is the point of all this?  When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade — or you write books — or you turn your ordeal into a lucrative career in Psychology — and laugh all the way to the bank.  Along the way, you sprinkle in a few lies, such as the one about Dr. Mengele discussing which prisoners he was going to kill next. This happened while you were dancing and watching the smoke come out of the chimney while your mother’s body was burning. Oh, the humanity!

Anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe

According to a news article in the The Telegraph, which you can read in full here: Anti-Semitism is on the march, as Europe braces for violence against the Jews.

Pro-Palestinian protestors burned an Israeli flag in Berlin

This quote is from the news article:

European cities are braced for violent clashes this weekend as people take to the streets to protest against Israeli military operations in Gaza.

Thousands of police are being deployed in cities across Europe with Berlin alone deploying 1,500 police officers in a response and authorities in Paris have sought to ban outright marches planned for this weekend.

The protests have triggered warnings that the spectre of anti-Semitism has returned to haunt Europe.

Protesters have attacked synagogues, smashed the windows of Jewish-owned business and torched others, in scenes [in France] disturbingly reminiscent of the 1938 Kristallnacht [in Germany]. The marchers have chanted “Jews to the gas chambers”, and Jewish people have been attacked on the streets of Berlin.

[…] A number of openly anti-Jewish Facebook groups have sprung up in the last three weeks and incidences of users posting anti-semitic messages have increased.

The number of times the phrase “dirty Jew” was posted on Twitter, for example, has gone up six-fold since Operation Protective Edge was launched, according to an analysis of data.

In the week before, there was an average of four tweets a day which included the offensive term, which went up to around 60 in the weeks after. Only a handful of them were used “innocently”.

The word Judiada, which in Spanish literally translates as Jewry but is used as a derogatory term, was tweeted almost 120 times the day Israel began its ground invasion. This compares with an average of 20 times a day in the month of June.

Israeli public figures have also been attacked, including the model Bar Refaeli, who has had people posting comments on her Instagram saying: “Times like these make u wanna wonder and wonder and wonder: why…why didn’t hitler finish what he started?” Under a photo of her playing with her dog, one wrote: “#riphitler”.

You can read another article about the anti-Semitism in Europe here.

Anti-Semitism violence in Europe

In the photo above, “A French riot police officer looks at burning barricades in Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris, on July 20, 2014, after clashes over Gaza. Source: AFP”

 

Why does the Majdanek death camp get no respect?

This morning, I read an article in the Epoch Times about the Majdanek death camp in the city of Lublin in Poland.  The article is entitled The Forgotten Concentration Camp in Poland Left Off the “Holocaust Tourism” Circuit.  What a revolting deveopment this is !!!

Double barbed-wire fence around Majdanek

This quote is from the article:

Today the anniversary of the liberation of Majdanek passes almost unnoticed, unlike that of the liberation of Auschwitz, fully six months later in January 1945, which has been adopted in Britain as Holocaust Memorial Day. In history books, in film and on television, the discovery of the concentration camps in Germany by Allied troops in April 1945 is recognised as a pivotal moment in world history, when humankind had to re-assess its understanding of what one set of people might do to another, after which, in Adorno’s words, it would be barbaric to write poetry.

The photo below is at the top of the article. (Click on the photo to enlarge)

Monument at the Majdanek memorial site

Monument at Majdanek is very close to a major road that goes past the camp

In the photo above, you can see several guard towers and another monument on the far left side. Suddenly coming upon this huge monument is like coming upon Stonehenge as you are driving down the road.  In my humble opinion, this eyesore should be torn down.

Monument which covers the ashes of prisoners killed at Majdanek

The ashes under the huge dome, shown in the photo above, were recovered from a compost pile in the camp. For all we know, these ashes were put on the snow-covered paths inside the camp, and then put on the compost pile, after being removed when the snow had melted.

Close-up of the dome which covers the ashes at Majdanek

The words on the dome, translated into English, mean “Let our fate be a warning to you.”

The Majdanek camp, which was called Maidanek by the Germans, was the very first Nazi camp, of any kind, to be liberated by the Allies; it was liberated on July 23, 1944. Most of the prisoners had been marched out of the camp and taken to other camps that were not yet in a war zone.  Only a few crippled Russian POWs, who had defected to the side of the Germans, had been left behind; they are shown in the photo below.

Russian POWs who had defected were left behind at Majdanek

As the very first Nazi camp to be liberated, one would expect the remains of the camp to be the first one on the list of camps to be visited by today’s tourists.  All of the gas chambers at Majdanek are still intact and there are many barrack buildings still standing.  So why does Majdanek get no respect?  I think that it is because the number of Jewish deaths at Majdanek has now been officially downgraded to 59,000. The official number of all the deaths at Majdanek has been downgraded to 78,000.  The Soviet liberators initially reported that 1.5 million people had been killed at Majdanek; this was the number of deaths that the Nazis were charged with at the Nuremberg IMT.

You can read about the Majdanek death camp on my website here.

Several barracks buildings are filled with artifacts in a museum

Majdanek was opened to Polish tourists soon after it was liberated

Guard tower at Majdanek camp

Famous photos of SS guards herding Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz—NOT!

The photo below accompanies a recent news article in the LA Times. The article is about John Breyer, the Nazi war criminal who died before he could be put on trial, at the age of 89, for the crime of helping to herd 216,000 Jews, from 158 trains, to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944.

This quote is from the news article:  “Even though [Breyer] was assigned to the Death’s Head guard battalion at Auschwitz, he said he refused to kill anyone, so he served as a perimeter guard, far from the killing.  He says that he never shepherded prisoners from the trains to the gas chambers.”

Breyer was given a choice? When he was assigned to be a guard at Auschwitz, he was asked if he would be willing to kill Jews?  Was he asked if he would be willing to herd 216,000 Jews to the gas chamber, and he said “No.”?

Photos of the Jews arriving on trains at Auschwitz-Birkenau show that Breyer is correct in implying that there were no armed guards forcing the Jews to walk to the gas chambers.

Notice that the photo above, which shows Jews who have just arrived on a train at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, does not include SS guards herding the Jews along, at gun point.

A train load of Jews that have just arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp (Click to enlarge)

In the photo above, the Krema II gas chamber building is shown in the background.

I have tried to find some photos that show SS soldiers, like John Breyer, herding the Jews from 158 trains toward the four gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but I have been unable to find any such photos. The photo above shows hundreds of Jews who have just arrived on a train.  Note the Kapos, the Jewish helpers, who are wearing striped uniforms; there are one or two SS men in the photo, but they are not pointing guns at the Jews.

SS men directing Jews toward the gas chamber, while Kapos stand by to help on the left

The photo below shows some Jews shuffling along, carrying their bundles.  They are obviously on the way to one of the gas chambers.  Where else could they be going? Auschwitz-Birkenau was a death camp, where all the Jews from 158 trains were immediately herded into gas chambers, according to all the recent news articles about the John Breyer case.

Jews walking to the gas chamber at Auschwitz

This photo is the most famous of the “walking to the gas chamber” photos

Jews walking toward the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Notice in the photo above that all the Jews, from a train that has just arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, are walking toward the entrance into the undressing room of Krema III, but there are no SS guards in sight.

Walking to the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau

In these photos, where are the SS men, like John Breyer, who forced the Jews to walk to the gas chambers?

The photo below shows a man, who is wearing a striped uniform and a striped cap.  This man is a Kapo, a Jewish prisoner, whose job it was to assist the Jews arriving at the Auschwitz death camp.  The Holocaust survivors, who are alive today, were told by a Kapo, at the train, to lie about their age, because everyone under the age of 15 was automatically sent to the gas chamber.

A Kapo standing beside a train that has just arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Visitors today, who take a tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau, are first taken to the “quarantine barracks” near the entrance into the camp. Why did they need to “quarantine” in-coming prisoners?  Who cares if any of the incoming prisoners had any disease that might cause an epidemic in the camp?  All the prisoners were scheduled to be gassed upon arrival, according to the prosecutors of elderly men like John Breyer.

My 2005 photo below shows one of the barracks in the quarantine camp.  Obviously these barracks were never used because the Jews were immediately herded into the gas chamber by men like war criminal John Breyer.

My 2005 photo of barracks in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp

Tourists at Auschwitz-Birkenau should not be taken first to the “quarantine barracks.”  This is a way of promoting Holocaust denial.  Prisoners did not need to be held in quarantine in a “death camp,” where they were taken immediately from the train to the gas chamber.

Miko Peled, son of a famous Israeli general, explains the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians

With all of the fighting going on now between the Jews and the Palestinians, the conflict might be hard for Americans to understand.  So I am putting up a video which shows Miko Peled explaining the origins of the state of Israel and the history of the Palestinians.

One important point that Peled makes in his speech is that the current Jewish residents of Israel are not the descendents of King David and the original Jews who lived in Israel many years ago.  This is something that you don’t often hear on present-day news shows about the conflict in the Middle East.

The video is quite long, but please watch it until the 47 minute mark, at which point Peled finishes his speech.  Then you can watch the second video, which is a joke.

 

 

 

Philip Riteman is still educating students about the Holocaust

This morning, I read in a CBS news story that Holocaust survivor Philip Riteman is still out on the lecture circuit, educating young students in Canada about the horrors of the Holocaust.

This quote is from the news article:

One of the last living Holocaust survivors in Atlantic Canada continues to tell his story, and says he worries the horrors he experienced could happen again.

It took four decades for Auschwitz survivor Philip Riteman to begin speaking about what he went through after he was captured by the Nazis when he was 14 years old.

Philip Riteman, Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau

The news article is very short, but it does give a hint that Philip’s story is worth some in-depth study.  I recognized his name, when I read the news article, and I remembered that I wrote about him extensively on my website scrapbookpages.com many years ago: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/PhilipRiteman.html

One of the interesting things about Philip’s story is that he was liberated on May 2, 1945 by American troops. This date identifies him as one of the prisoners who were marched out of the Dachau main camp toward the mountains of Austria in April 1945, just before the main Dachau camp was liberated..

The following information is from my scrapbookpages website:

Acting upon Hitler’s orders, the Commandant of Dachau, Wilhelm Eduard Weiter, made an attempt to evacuate the Dachau main camp before the American liberators arrived. On April 26th, 1945, Weiter left the Dachau main camp with a transport of prisoners bound for Schloss Itter, a subcamp of Dachu in Austria. Weiter allegedly committed suicide when the prisoners on the march were liberated by the Allies, but the truth is that he was probably shot by the Americans.

This quote is from my website page on Philip Riteman:

On November 10, 2005, Riteman gave a talk to College students in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; Keith Adolph took the following notes which he posted on his blog:

-Reitman went to school as a normal child in 1938
-Early on in the war it was seen as a fight against evil
-In 1939 Poland was invaded
-His father had ties to the Russian Gov’t and so they traveled to live under Russia and still it was not a good country to live in
-The Germans’ journey to Minsk took them through Reitman’s small town. For months they drove tanks through town
-They killed those in their way or caught watching them

-The Nazis approached the mayor and demanded 10 kilos of gold and 20 kilos of silver or they would level the town. They took the money and left after a time.
-They returned and surrounded the town before asking for more. This time the town could not pay.
-Days later, at 3 AM, the Nazis came to the houses and took people from their homes. They separated children from parents and marched the 3000 residents 60 km. Others (about 5000) were driven.
-During the march they killed roughly 200 residents.
-Before releasing the residents the Nazis took 14 people aside, striped them and shot them dead, letting their bodies drop into 7 graves already dug.
-The residents were then freed and reunited with the others.

-They were left in a small town that was entirely vacant.
-The village had been purged and the people were culled into a mass grave 50 x 100 and 7 feet deep
-En route they came upon a town and they were collected into a ghetto of 40,000.
-After Reitman’s group joined the ghetto, any person approaching the ghetto was shot.
The ghetto had no food.

-Nine months later the ghetto was liquidated
-The residents were told they were being taken to a farm.
-They were all collected into 120 freight cars with all they could carry.
-The trains traveled for hours – all day
-A baby starved to death on the journey
-A man dropped dead and was pushed to the wall
-The train kept going
-The train traveled for 6 nights and 7 days.
-No food, No water
-People were soiling themselves where they stood
-One man was using a spoon to catch snow drops falling outside for water
-Reitman and the others were taken to Auschwitz

-The doors were opened and everyone jumped out
-Reitman grabbed his little sister. Also in the car were his two brothers, his big sister and his parents
-The Nazis beat and pushed them onto a platform
-A woman chasing her baby was stabbed to death with a bayonet
-Reitman was told to pretend that he was 18 when the Nazis were dividing the Jews by age and gender.
-If you were 18-45 you had a chance of surviving
-Parents with their young children were taken straight to the gas chambers.

-The Nazis began to divide the men by occupation
-Reitman pretended to be a locksmith
-The intellectuals were collected (about 300 of them) and machine gunned to death. The Nazis only needed workers.
-They were ordered to strip naked and shot if they moved too slowly.
-The Jews were shaved from head to toe.
-Body searches were conducted. Those caught hiding anything, even their gold teeth were executed.

-If you spoke German in the camps, the Nazis would bring out ‘interpreters’ who beat you with sticks so that you would never speak German again.

-Hundreds of men were put into cold showers and then given striped clothes.
-They were given a bowl, no utensils.
-They were then tattooed.
-Over 2 million died at Auschwitz.
-They were made to march. If you refused, your legs were broken.
-The Jews marched better than the Nazis.
-The Nazis would lock them into their barracks each night.
-They fit 7 into each bunk.
-There were 125,000 men at Auschwitz [main camp] at this time.
-Only 20,000 were Jewish. The others were Russians, Gypsies, Blacks and so on.

-Reitman spent 2 years at Auschwitz [main camp] and then 2 years at Dachau [subcamps]. In between he spent 6 months in Birkenau [AuschwitzII] where there were 2000 men to a barrack
-Smaller camps would kill their population and then call on larger camps to replenish their numbers. This is why Reitman moved around so much.

-Reitman says he had to close his mind to survive. He was like a zombie.
-He learned to never be first or last in line. Always be in the middle.
-He lost five brothers, his parents, his grandparents. He lost nine uncles and nine aunts and many cousins.
-He was the only survivor in his whole European family.
-He could not talk about the camps or his family for forty years.

“What kept you going?”
-If there is a God somewhere he will help me.
-He would have liked to have eaten one big meal and then died
-They ate one bowl of soup a day.
-If they had lost their bowl they were accused of sabotaging the Nazi Gov’t and beaten to death with sticks
-They wouldn’t waste the bullet.
-By comparison, the homeless today live in heaven. The Nazis burned them.
-If you limped, you were shot.
-Those who escaped got only 100-1000 feet and they starved to death.
-When they returned they were shot and burned by their fellow prisoners at the start of their day (5 AM)

-After 6 months in the camp Reitman found an old class mate who was in the camps because he was a Baptist.
-The boy recognized Reitman and called out to him.
-The Nazis had wanted his family’s cattle but the boy’s father would not give it to them. He was shot.
-His mother attacked the Nazis and she was hung in the town center.
-His sisters were cut and raped and shot in the heart.
-His little brother was chased into the woods and shot.
-The boy joined Reitman’s work group on a farm and was instantly hated by the Nazis.
-One day he was stripped and put into a water trough. The Nazis took steel wool and tried to take his freckles off.
-The boy died in the trough which was full of his own blood.
-Reitman and the others had to take the boy back to camp to be burned.
-He was Reitman’s best friend.

-Reitman was sent to another camp. When he arrived the barrack was full of all the dead.
-He and the others were forced to bury the bodies, but they were forbidden to pray.
-At another camp he spent a month in an airplane hanger.
-At Dachau the barracks were filled with bodies piled 7 ft high.
-When they tried to remove them the bodies came apart in their hands.
-These barracks were sunken into the ground 

[the barracks at the Kaufering IV camp were sunk into the ground – http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/KauferingIVLiberation.html ]

Barracks at Kaufering IV sub-camp of Dachau were partly underground

-They were marched for 2-3 weeks in the winter with only the snow to eat.
-Reitman estimates that 50,000 were killed for their weakness.
-They marched with tanks so that American planes would not bomb the convoys. The Jews wished they would though, just to kill the Germans.
-One night the camp was empty, not a German in sight. In the distance he could see the Americans coming, calling “You’re free!”
-This was May 2, 1945. Reitman was 18 years old and 75 lbs.

-The Americans brought food and medicine.
-Reitman had never seen bananas before, or a coloured person.
-A coloured soldier taught him to peel bananas.
-He would drink 3-4 cans of milk a day

-Reitman says he will never go back to the camps, but urges young people to visit them.
-He says he sees the camp every time he closes his eyes, even when he lived in Newfoundland.
-It would take Reitman 5 years to tell the story of his 5 years in the camps.

-He cannot forgive or forget what happened. Only God can forgive.
-Reitman says he does not hate the Germans he met after the war. He only hates the Nazis

-“I am speaking for millions who cannot speak”

-When he saw Americans he applied to go to the USA.
-The Red Cross took care of him in Europe and asked him about his history which they compared to his records held by the Nazis
-A month later he received a letter from Newfoundland from his mother’s sister.
-Then he got another letter from Newfoundland with 20 US $ in it.
-And then another from Montreal with 10 US $
-Then New York from his father’s sister and an uncle who had left Europe in 1890 and another in 1905.
-They were all relatives that he had never known to exist.
-In 1946 he was to come to Canada but the Canadian Gov’t would not allow Jews into the country.
-Newfoundland was not part of Canada at the time and they brought him right over.
-He traveled from Munich to Paris to New York to Newfoundland.
-He had never been on a boat before and he was very sea sick.
-The Newfoundland Gov’t said he was a free man. He was a Newfoundlander.

Most people would give the prize for the best Holocaust lies to Irene Zisblatt, but I think that Philip Riteman is a contender for this prize.  He at least deserves an honorable mention in the list of  Holocaust liars who have told the most egregious Holocaust lies.

From the details of his story, it is clear that Riteman was a political prisoner who was first sent to the Auschwitz main camp.   He was not among the Jews who were rounded up in order to be “exterminated” at the Auchwitz-Birkeanau camp. Riteman was marched out of the Auschwitz camp, and taken to Dachau, where he was then sent to one of the sub-camps to work.  He was brought back to the main camp, and then marched out of Dachau, on a march led by the Commandant of the camp, indicating that he was one of the prominent prisoners that the Nazis wanted to save.

Prisoners marching out of the Dachau main camp in April 1945 pass through a German village

 

No Jews died of starvation at Auschwitz-Birkenau

I was very pleased to learn, from the website of the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum website, that all the Jews who died at Auschwitz were killed in the gas chambers.  Apparently, no one died of starvation or illness.

This quote is from the website: “Of the approximately 1.1 million Jews deported to Auschwitz, about 200 thousand were chosen in this way [for labor]. The remainder, about 900 thousand people, were killed in the gas chambers.”

What?  No Jews died of typhus at Auschwitz?  This must have been because the Nazis  forced all the Jews to take a shower immediately upon arrival, and then shaved their heads to get rid of any lice; they regularly disinfected the prisoner’s clothing with Zyklon-B gas to eliminate the lice that spreads typhus.

This quote is from the home page of the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum:

All over the world, Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror, genocide, and the Holocaust. It was established by Germans in 1940, in the suburbs of Oswiecim, a Polish city that was annexed to the Third Reich by the Nazis. [Oswiecim’s] name was changed to Auschwitz, which also became the name of Konzentrationslager Auschwitz.

The direct reason for the establishment of the camp was the fact that mass arrests of Poles were increasing beyond the capacity of existing “local” prisons. Initially, Auschwitz was to be one more concentration camp of the type that the Nazis had been setting up since the early 1930s. It functioned in this role throughout its existence, even when, beginning in 1942, it also became the largest of the death camps.

Way back in 1998, after my first visit to Auschwitz, I wrote about the town on this page of my website: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/History/Articles/AuschwitzTown.html  I updated the page, after my second visit to the town in 2005.

Catholic church in Oswiecim

Today’s students, who are taken to see the Auschwitz camps, are first taken to the town, where they are told that the town was originally a Polish town named Oswiecim, and that the name was changed to Auschwitz by the Germans.

The town of Oswiecim in 2005

I blogged here about British students on the HET tours who are first taken to Oswiecim where they are told that the town was built by the Polish people.  Not true. The town dates back to the year 1270 when it was built by the Germans.

In 2005,  when I went back to visit Auschwitz again; I took photos of the town which you can see on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Oswiecim/index.html

 

the father of Assemblywoman Cheryl R. Brown helped to liberate Auschwitz

Say what? Shocked kid listens to Obama speech in 2009

The following quote is from a news article, which you can read in full here.  The title of the article is California School’s Holocaust Denial Assignment Requires ‘Reeducating’ of Misled Youth.

Assemblywoman Cheryl R. Brown (D-San Bernardino) revealed that her own father had served during WWII and had helped to liberate the Aushwitz (sic) concentration camp in Poland. He had told her about the smell of burned bodies as a child, writes the Times. “As a result of this assignment, we must now deal with reeducating young people who have been misled by this district,” Brown told the school board.

Cheryl R. Brown, whose father helped to liberate Aushwitz in Poland

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  And black soldiers in the U.S. Army liberated Aushwitz.  This was not the Auschwitz “death camp” but a different camp, in Poland, called Aushwitz. (Note the difference in the spelling of the names of these two camps.)

This quote is also from the article:

One frustrated Pasadena-based attorney Neal Fialkow, who was also present at the board meeting, said the damage may already be done, notes the Times. Addressing the school board, he said “You’ve planted a seed of doubt… Congratulations. You’ve taken a[n] historical fact and made it a matter of opinion. What’s next, 9/11 never happened?” he posited. “Every single child now has been infected.”

What a revolting development this is!  “Every single child [in the Rialto school district] has now been infected.  Is there any hope for these children?

I blogged about the liberation of Auschwitz on this blog post: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/january-27-2013-is-international-holocaust-remembrance-day/