British exhibition displays a replica of the Buchenwald gate

Update Nov. 1, 2014:  One of the regular readers of my blog wrote, in a comment, that the original “Jeden das Seine” gate into the former Buchenwald concentration camp is being “restored” and a temporary gate is currently in it’s place.

In my humble opinion, the original gate should not be “restored.”  Why should the gate look like new? I think that visitors to the Buchenwald Memorial Site want to see a weathered gate, that looks like the original gate into the camp.

The Buchenwald gate is historic because it was designed by Franz Ehrich, who studied at the Bauhaus School of modern art in Weimar.  When Hitler came to power, he closed down this school, because he was in favor of classical art, not modern art, which he called “degenerate.”

I think that the history of Buchenwald should be preserved, including the gate, which should be kept in its original condition.

If a picture of an iron gate has to be shown, what about the iron gate at the exit of Goethe’s garden in Frankfurt, which is shown in the photo below.

Iron gate at the exit from Goethe’s garden in Frankfurt

Any story about Germany should mention Goethe’s oak tree, the stump of which is located at the Buchenwald Memorial site.  Goethe used to take walks in the area where the Buchenwald camp is located; he would stop and rest under an oak tree.  Germany’s greatest hero was Goethe, which should have been mentioned in the story about the British exhibit, instead of the gate into the Buchenwald camp.

The stump of the oak tree, under which Goethe rested

Continue reading my original post:

I always check my blog stats every morning to see which of my blog posts are getting the most hits. This morning, I was surprised to see that an old blog post, about the “Jedem das Seine” sign on the Buchenwald concentration camp gate, has been getting a lot of hits.  I set out to find out why.

Jedem das Seine on Buchenwald gate

I found out that it is probably because people are reading this news about a British exhibit and then searching the Internet to find out more.  I also wrote another blog post about the Jedem das Seine slogan here: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/do-the-jews-now-own-the-phrase-jedem-das-seine/

This quote is from the news story:

From a copy of the mediaeval (sic) Gutenberg bibl (sic) to Karl Marx’s Capital, an exhibition opening at the British Museum in London explores 600 years of German history frequently overshadowed by Nazi horrors.

The exhibition confronts that period head on, displaying a replica of the sign outside the Buchenwald concentration camp with the chilling slogan “Jedem das Seine” (To Each His Own).

Old photo of the Jedem das Seine gate at Buchenwald

The photo below, which I copied from the news article, shows the replica that is being displayed by the British.

Replica of the Jedem das Seine gate at Buchenwald

As shown in the old photos, the gate into the Buchenwald was black, not silver as shown in the photo.  The sign faced the prisoners inside the camp, so that the prisoners could read it.

The Buchenwald gate, with its famous sign “Jedem das Seine,” was designed by Franz Ehrlich, a prisoner who had studied with Moholy-Nagy, Klee, Kandinsky and Josef Albers at the Bauhaus in Weimar.

Ehrlich had been arrested as a Communist resistance fighter in 1935. He was sent to Buchenwald two years later. In 1937, the Buchenwald camp was still new and had few buildings. Ehrlich, who had worked with architect Walter Gropius in his Bauhaus Berlin office, volunteered to work in the joinery workshop at Buchenwald; he was assigned to design and build the entrance gate.

The sans-serif lettering of the words “Jedem das Seine” show Ehrlich’s training under Bauhaus typographer Joost Schmidt. After he was released from Buchenwald in 1939, Ehrlich stayed on and worked as a paid architect at the SS training camp and munitions factories at Buchenwald.

Buchenwald was a Class II camp for hard-core political prisoners, mainly Communists, who were considered to be harder to “rehabilitate.” Consequently, conditions in the Buchenwald camp were more severe than at Dachau and Sachsenhausen, which were Class I camps, where many prisoners were released after being brain-washed into accepting such Nazi principles as obedience and hard work. The sign over the iron gates at both Dachau and Sachsenhausen read “Arbeit Macht Frei” or Work Brings Freedom.

 

One of the 40 Most Powerful Photos Ever Taken: Jews liberated from a train at Farsleben

Jewish women and children who were liberated from a “death train” at Farsleben

The photo above was copied from this blog: http://teachinghistorymatters.com/about/

This quote, from the blog post, is about the photo of the women and children who were liberated from the train:

“A moving collection of iconic photographs from the last 100 years that demonstrate the heartbreak of loss, the tremendous power of loyalty, and the triumph of the human spirit.”

This caption is on the photo:

“Farsleben train, moment of liberation, Friday the 13th of April,1945. Two American tank commanders in Sherman light tanks and their major in a jeep liberate the train, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. Stunned survivors come to the realization that they are saved. Major Benjamin snaps the photo.”

Why am I so concerned with this photo? To me, this is not a suitable photo to convey the horror of the Holocaust.  The woman in the foreground of the photo is wearing a very fashionable outfit (perhaps from Paris) and the little girl is dressed in a warm coat with a ribbon (or a flower) in her hair.

Regular readers of my blog know that I have complained many times about photos that are unsuitable for a Holocaust story.  For example, this blog post: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/beware-of-illustrating-news-articles-with-photos-that-promote-holocaust-denial/

The photo below, which shows women in a barracks at Bergen-Belsen after the camp was turned over to the British, would be much better, to illustrate the Holocaust.  The women are nicely dressed, but I don’t see anyone wearing Paris fashions.

Jewish women peeling potatoes at Bergen-Belsen

The photo below is the iconic photo of Bergen-Belsen.  This is the photo that should be among the 40 best photos ever taken.

Dying man at the Bergen-Belsen exchange camp after the camp was turned over to the British in April 1945

Nowhere on the blog, which shows the photo at the top of my blog post, does it say that these people were prisoners who were put on this train at Bergen-Belsen.  Nor does the author tell us WHY these Jews were put on a train in the very last days of World War II.

I previously blogged about the “death train” that was liberated by American soldiers at Farsleben, near Magdeburg, Germany.   https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/death-trains-and-death-marches-the-last-ditch-effort-by-the-nazis-to-complete-the-genocide-of-the-jews/

The text, which accompanies the photo at the top of my blog post, should have explained that these people were Hungarian Jews from the STAR CAMP at the Bergen-Belsen EXCHANGE CAMP.  I previously blogged about the Star Camp at https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/star-camp-at-bergen-belsen/

The text below is from my scrapbookpages.com website:

Between April 6th and April 11th, the Hungarian Jews were evacuated from Bergen-Belsen on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, who was planning to use them as bargaining chips in his negotiations with the Allies. The Jews in the Star Camp and also in the Neutrals Camp were also evacuated, along with the Hungarians, in three trains which held altogether about 7,000 Jews who were considered “exchange Jews.”

One of these three trains arrived with 1712 people on April 21, 1945 in the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Two weeks later the Theresienstadt Ghetto was turned over to the Red Cross, just before Russian troops arrived. The other two trains never made it to Theresienstadt because they had to keep making detours due to frequent Allied air attacks, according to Eberhard Kolb who wrote the book Bergen-Belsen from 1943 to 1945.

One of the three trains finally stopped on April 13th near Magdeburg in northern Germany; the guards ran away and the Jews on the train were liberated by American troops. The third train halted on April 23, 1945 near the village of Tröbitz in the Niederlausitz region; they were liberated by Russian troops after the guards escaped.

Update October 30, 2014:

The Jews, who were on the three trains, were “exchange Jews” who had been held at Bergen-Belsen for potential exchange for German-American and German citizens who were prisoners in internment camps in America.

The initial plan for the Bergen-Belsen exchange camp had been to detain as many as 30,000 Jews for exchange with the Allies for German citizens being held in Internment, but as it turned out, there were only 358 of the Jews at Bergen-Belsen who obtained their freedom through a genuine exchange for other prisoners.

The most well-known exchange group consisted of 222 Jews who were selected in April 1944 from approximately 1300 holders of certificates for Palestine. This group finally left for Istanbul via Vienna and Budapest on June 30, 1944 and reached Haifa on July 10, 1944.

The second group that was exchanged consisted of 136 Jews who left Bergen-Belsen on January 21, 1945 and arrived in Switzerland on January 25, 1945. A total of 301 Bergen-Belsen inmates, who were citizens of South American or Central American countries, had left the camp on the 21st of January, but 165 of them were taken to civil internment camps at Biberach and Ravensburg.

There were German citizens, who had been kidnapped in South American countries, and brought to internment camps for Germans in the USA.  The German government was trying to exchange the Jews, imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen, for these German citizens.  http://www.gaic.info/internment_camp.html

 

 

War memorials in honor of German soldiers who fought in two World Wars

War memorial, in the town of Dachau, to the German soldiers who fought in World War One

Today I am responding to a comment made by a reader of my blog, who wrote that there are no war memorials to the German soldiers who fought in the two World Wars.  However, there is now a war memorial to German and Austrian soldiers who deserted during war time; they are the real heroes: http://www.dw.de/austria-inaugurates-memorial-to-wehrmacht-deserters-killed-by-the-nazis/a-18019168

The photo, at the top of this page, shows a war memorial in the town of Dachau, which has a statue of St. Sebastion on the top.

I have not seen very many war memorials to the German soldiers who fought in World War II, but there are many monuments in Germany in honor of the German soldiers who fought in the First World War.  The photo at the top of this page was taken in the town of Dachau; this monument is in honor of the soldiers who fought and died in World War I.

This website has numerous photos of monuments to German soldiers: http://www.thirdreichruins.com/memorials.htm

The grave of German soldiers who fought against the Communists in 1919

The photograph above shows the final resting place of four men of the Freikorps Görlitz, a militia group which fought the Red Army of the Communists. The names on the grave stone, shown above, are 2nd Lieutenant Bertram, Muskateer Labuke, Private Hauk, and Gunner Hilbig.

These men were killed near the village of Pellheim, just outside the town of Dachau, on April 30, 1919. They were engaged in a battle against the Communists who had set up a Soviet government in the state of Bavaria, after overthrowing the imperial government, under their Jewish leader Kurt Eisner, on November 7, 1918.

War memorial to the German soldiers who fought in World War I

The photo above was taken, by an American soldier in 1945,  just outside the Dachau concentration camp.  It shows the “death train” in the background.

St. Blaise chapel in Rothenburg ob der Tauber

The photo above was taken in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. It shows St. Blaise chapel which is in honor of the German soldiers who fought and died in two World World wars.

German war memorial inside St. Blaise chapel at Rothenburg ob der Tauber

A war memorial window in St. Blaise chapel honors German soldiers who died in both World Wars

War memorial in town of Mauthausen honors German soldiers, who were killed in both World Wars

New Memorial to German and Austrian soldiers who deserted during war time and were executed

What is the world coming to?  Now we have monuments to soldiers who were executed because they were deserters during a war. Can anyone, who is reading this, think of anything more stupid than this?

How long before the Austrians decide that this monument is not adequate to demonize the German soldiers in World War II?  Maybe they can put up a 4.7 acre monument, like the one in Berlin, which is inadequate, according to this article in the New York Times:  http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-inadequacy-of-berlins-memorial-to-the-murdered-jews-of-europe

 

Jews now saying that the country responsible for the Holocaust is “better than Israel.”

According to a news article which you can read in full here,

A Facebook campaign which emerged earlier this month, urging frugal Israelis to emigrate has caused an unprecedented level of controversy over the role of economics in public opinion in Israel, as well as the strength – or weakness – of Zionism among younger Israelis.

[…]

However, an official tally indicates that emigration appears to be at the lowest rates in recent history, with liberal estimates stating that just 15,000-18,000 Israelis are living in Germany today.

Why would Jews ever want to live in Germany, the country that perpetrated the Holocaust, murdering 6 million Jews, who had never done them any harm?

My photo of the roof over the Potsdammer Platz in Berlin

Five-acre Jewish Memorial in the foreground hides the Potsdammer Platz, on the right, in the background

According to Eliyus Paz, the head of the World Bnei Akiva in Germany, as quoted in the news article:

“People who are coming to Berlin are, more than they are saying, ‘Germany is cheap,’ they are saying ‘We have something against Israel,'” Paz stated, adding that they are “mocking Israel” by saying that the country responsible for the Holocaust is “better than Israel.”

“the country responsible for the Holocaust is better than Israel.”  What a revolting development this is!

Regarding the Facebook page which urges Jews to live in Germany, this quote is from the article:

Much controversy has been raised over a Facebook page urging Israelis to move to Berlin, with some saying the page is “anti-Zionist.”

I can’t give you the URL of the Facebook page.  You need a Facebook page of your own in order to access the pages of other people.

It is not just Berlin, but other cities in Germany, that are attracting Jews.  New synagogues are being built in Germany, including the new synagogue in Munich, which is shown in my photo below.

Synagogue in Munich, Germany is a modern building

Read more about the Synagogue in the photo at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Munich/Synagogue/

Why does this concern me?  Are the Jews now saying that the Germans, who killed 6 million Jews, are better than the Israelis?  I’ve never been to Israel, unfortunately.  I wanted to go there, years ago, but a Jewish person advised me that it was too dangerous  for a non-Jew to go there.

Read more about young Jews going to Berlin in this article in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/waves-of-young-israelis-find-a-home-in-the-former-nazi-capital/2014/10/21/7ecd02bf-70fa-4b9f-b226-c4be22049a2f_story.html

 

Helena Rubenstein — another Jewish success story

Helena Rubenstein is in the news today, in a story which you can read in full here. What’s this got to do with anything? you ask.

Helena Rubenstein was born poor — and ugly — yet she became fabulously wealthy and her name became a household word around the world.

How did she do it?  I think that it was because she was born a Jew and, as one of the Chosen people, she thought highly of herself.  She was a human being, not a lowly goy.  What’s not to like?

The greatest crime in world history was the Holocaust, which was perpetrated by the Nazis.  It started when Adolf Hitler instilled pride in the German people. The Jews were affronted by this because only Jews are human. According to the Jews, the Germans were evil because they had been persuaded, by Hitler, to think of themselves as superior people, e.g. the Herrenfolk (Master race).

The Kazimierz Jewish quarter in Krakow where  Schindler’s List was filmed

This quote is from the news article about Helena Rubenstein:

Four-foot-ten and squat—“built like an icebox,” in the words of one acquaintance—with a strong nose and an iron jaw, Helena Rubinstein was an unlikely ambassador for beauty. Which may have worked to her advantage: If she could transform herself by force of will into a paragon of good taste and high style, so could her clients. In clothes by the finest Paris couturiers and jewelry fit for a maharani, she cut a striking figure. Her dark hair pulled into a tight chignon, her eyes traced in black, her mouth accentuated by lipstick, she proved that it wasn’t what you were born with that counted but what you did with it.

Helena Rubenstein after she transformed herself into a beauty

Rubinstein was ahead of her era, not only “the first self-made woman magnate of modern times,” as Klein contends (in 1928 she sold her business to Lehmann Brothers for more than $7 million, then, after the stock market crashed, bought it back at a fraction of the price) but also a visionary who understood the power of what is now known as “building a brand” long before business schools taught marketing. She had a seemingly infallible instinct for what women would buy and how to present it to them. “I could have made a fortune selling paper clips!” she claimed, and one suspects that she was right, though the self-aggrandizement that worked to her benefit as a high priestess of beauty might not have dovetailed so conveniently with her business interests had she gone into office supplies.

Her story starts in Krakow, in the Jewish ghetto called Kazimierz, which was shown in the movie entitled Schindler’s List. 

Helena Rubenstein began by lying about her birthplace.  She was actually born in the house shown in the first photo below, but she claimed that she was born in the house shown in the second photo below.  Her birthplace has been restored, but the other house had not been restored when I visited Krakow in 1998.

The birthplace of Helena Rubenstein

The house where Helena Rubenstein claimed that she was born

I personally think that the first house, where Rubenstein was actually born, is better than the house that she claimed as her birthplace.  Maybe she wanted to emphasize her humble beginning, which would make her rise to power more interesting.

You can read more about Kazimierz on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Poland/Kazimierz/Kazimierz02.html

 

Was General Patton an anti-Semite? Yes, “the worst, Jerry, the worst”

On my previous post about Bill O’Reilly’s latest book, entitled Killing Patton, I included a photo of the Jewish survivors of Buchenwald attending a religious service. I have pulled that photo out, and placed it on my new post today, instead.

Jewish prisoners at Buchenwald attend a religious service after the camp was liberated

The following quote from this website explains that General Patton was highly critical of the Jews at this religious service:

Patton’s initial impressions of the Jews were not improved when he attended a Jewish religious service at Eisenhower’s insistence. His diary entry for September 17, 1945, reads in part:

“This happened to be the feast of Yom Kippur, so they were all collected in a large, wooden building, which they called a synagogue. It behooved General Eisenhower to make a speech to them. We entered the synagogue, which was packed with the greatest stinking bunch of humanity I have ever seen. When we got about halfway up, the head rabbi, who was dressed in a fur hat similar to that worn by Henry VIII of England and in a surplice heavily embroidered and very filthy, came down and met the General . . . The smell was so terrible that I almost fainted and actually about three hours later lost my lunch as the result of remembering it.”

These experiences and a great many others firmly convinced Patton that the Jews were an especially unsavory variety of creature and hardly deserving of all the official concern the American government was bestowing on them.

This incident proves that General Patton was an anti-Semite, the worst thing that a person can be:  “the worst, Jerry, the worst.”

Bill O’Reilly’s new book has been condemned by the Jews because it does not point out that General Patton was an anti-Semite.  This review of the book makes it perfectly clear that O’Reilly, who is Catholic, committed a mortal sin by not writing that Patton was a rabid anti-Semite.

This quote from this website confirms that General Patton was definitely an anti-Semite:

Most of the Jews swarming over Germany immediately after the war came from Poland and Russia, and Patton found their personal habits shockingly uncivilized.

He was disgusted by their behavior in the camps for Displaced Persons (DP’s) which the Americans built for them and even more disgusted by the way they behaved when they were housed in German hospitals and private homes. He observed with horror that “these people do not understand toilets and refuse to use them except as repositories for tin cans, garbage, and refuse . . . They decline, where practicable, to use latrines, preferring to relieve themselves on the floor.”

He described in his diary one DP camp,

“where, although room existed, the Jews were crowded together to an appalling extent, and in practically every room there was a pile of garbage in one corner which was also used as a latrine. The Jews were only forced to desist from their nastiness and clean up the mess by the threat of the butt ends of rifles. Of course, I know the expression ‘lost tribes of Israel’ applied to the tribes which disappeared — not to the tribe of Judah from which the current sons of bitches are descended. However, it is my personal opinion that this too is a lost tribe — lost to all decency.”

When I was a child, my family lived next door to a black family, named Patton.  I was always curious about how they had gotten the name Patton.  Did the family of General Patton have slaves?  It’s possible.

On the personal website of Patton at http://www.generalpatton.com I found this quote:

[Patton’s] ancestors had fought in the Revolutionary War, the Mexican War and the Civil War, and he grew up listening to stories of their brave and successful endeavors. He attended the Virginia Military Institute for one year and went on to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point on June 11, 1909. He was then commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the 15th cavalry Regiment.

One thing that Bill O’Reilly’s book Killing Patton did not point out is that General Patton was an upper class person, from way back, and this could have caused him to be critical of the behavior of the Jews in the DP camps.

 

 

Update on my comments about Bill O’Reilly’s latest book, Killing Patton

I have almost finished reading Bill O’Reilly’s new book, entitled Killing Patton.  I previously blogged here about my complaints regarding the book.  I was quite critical in my original post.  After reading the book more thoroughly, I can now understand why there are so many good reviews of the book.

One of the best parts of the book centers around the story of General Anthony McAuliffe saying “Nuts” to the Germans who wanted him to surrender during the fighting around Bastogne.  In the book, there is a photo of General Patton conferring with General McAuliffe.  This was America’s finest hour.

On page 47 in the book Killing Patton, the famous slapping incident is mentioned, although it is not pointed out that the slapped soldier, whose name was Pvt. Charles H. Kuhl, was Jewish. According to the book: “Patton thinks nothing of it. […] In the German army, such men are not slapped. They are forced to their knees and a bullet is shot through their brain.”

Many people believe that Patton was killed by Jews, as revenge for the slapping of a Jewish soldier. You can read about the claim that Patton was killed by Jews on this website: http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=594

Many people who are reading this book, will remember the famous movie about Patton, which begins with Patton making a speech on a stage.  This quote is from this website:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066206/trivia

In reality, George S. Patton slapped and berated two soldiers in Sicily: Private Charles Kuhl on August 3, 1943 and Private Paul Bennett on August 10. Although it has been suggested Patton was sleep deprived, he wrote an entry in his diary after slapping Kuhl, unrepentant in his actions or opinion that Kuhl was a coward. Patton was ordered by Supreme Commander Eisenhower to apologize privately to the soldiers and hospital staff present. Also, in reality the slapping incidents were kept secret from the public for months before the story was broken by reporter Drew Pearson, causing scandal not only for Patton’s conduct, but accusations of cover-up on the part of the Army.

On page 97 of Killing Patton, we read this startling information: “[Joachim Peiper] was an eye-witness to the first gassing of Jewish civilians, including women and children.”  Unfortunately, the location of the first gassing of Jewish civilians is not mentioned in the book.  I checked with Wikipedia and learned this: “In January 1941, Peiper accompanied Himmler when he inspected Ravensbrück and Dachau concentration camps.[27] In March 1941, together with Karl Wolff and Fritz Bracht, they visited Auschwitz.[28].”

According to many Holocaust historians, the first gassing of the Jews took place at the Chelmno camp: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005194

Now, one of my biggest complaints, about O’Reilly’s book, is about the footnotes.  There is a lot of important information in the footnotes, but you cannot find some of this information by looking through the index.

For example, in my original post about the book,  I said that the word Gleiwitz was not in the index.  However, the word Gleiwitz is mentioned on page 180 in a footnote. Why is this important?  Gleiwitz was one of the places to which the Auschwitz prisoners were marched, so that they could be put on trains and taken to camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald.

On page 186 in the book, there is some information about the Germans working on an atomic bomb near the Ohrdruf sub-camp of Buchenwald.  This information is too important to be put into a footnote.

On page 243 in the book, we find this: “Hitler had once dreamed of establishing Berlin as the world’s most cosmopolitan city, even though its citizens have long considered him to be an unsophtisticate bore.  […] To spite its inhabitants, Hitler had planned to rename the city Germania during the postwar rebuilding, thus wiping Berlin off the map forever.”

I wrote a much different story about Germania on this page of my website:  http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Sachsenhausen/ConcentrationCamp/BrickFactory.html

I don’t like the fact that footnotes were used in the book to give important information, and then not included in the index.  For example, there is a footnote on page 252, which includes this information: “An estimated eighty thousand Russians died in the battle of Berlin.  […] …it is estimated that between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand citizens of Berlin were killed.”

In the book, there is way too much attention on the subject of Auschwitz. There are two whole chapters on this subject.  Chapter 15 is about a “German SS guard named Frank Wunsch” who falls in love with a Jewish woman, who is a prisoner in the camp. How is this remotely related to the story of killing Patton?

On page 177 in O’Reilly’s new book, it is mentioned that there were 3 dozen (36) watch towers at Auschwitz?  Could we see a photo of the watch towers please?

I blogged about the watch towers at Auschwitz, which were not there until after the camp was liberated:  https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/new-book-of-photos-shows-auschwitz-then-and-now/

It might have made sense if there were two chapters in the book, telling about the Dachau concentration camp, instead of two chapters about Auschwitz.

At the proceedings against the Waffen-SS soldiers, who were accused of the Malmedy Massacre during the Battle of the Bulge, which were held in a building inside the former SS training camp at Dachau, any mention by the defense that American soldiers had killed German POWs, was ordered stricken from the record by the judges of the American Military Tribunal.  This information is more important than the fact that an SS soldier at Auschwitz fell in love with a Jewish girl.

After the Dachau camp was voluntarily surrendered to American soldiers under a white flag of truce, SS soldiers in the training camp next door to the concentration camp were lined up and shot by the Americans.  When these American soldiers were Court Martialed, General Patton tore up the papers and burned them in his waste basket.

Instead of two chapters on Auschwitz, which have absolutely nothing to do with General Patton, O’Reilly could have included a chapter on Buchenwald, which was one of the camps that Patton visited.  I wrote about Patton’s visit to Buchenwald on April 15, 1945, four days after the camp had been liberated : http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Buchenwald/Liberation8.html

Liberated Jews at Buchenwald relieved themselves on the ground

After the Buchenwald prisoners were liberated, they were moved from the prisoner’s barracks to the nicer SS barracks, next door to the concentration camp. General Patton was appalled when he saw the Jews relieving themselves on the ground outside the SS barracks.  Is this what caused Patton to turn against the Jews?

Robert Abzug wrote about the reaction of the American liberators to the prisoners:

The following quote is from Abzug’s book entitled Inside the Vicious Heart:

Despite what they knew about what their wards had undergone, some Americans never ceased to wonder why, even after food had been made readily abundant, the survivors pushed and shoved their way to the soup kettle or bread basket. Others were appalled to find some indifferent to nudity and personal cleanliness. Nor was it readily understood why many were slow to volunteer for work, even though it might help the condition of the camp.

Prisoner at the Buchenwald concentration camp,  who was indifferent to nudity

This quote is from my website page about Patton at Buchenwald:

In his book, General Patton wrote with great insensitivity that “The inmates looked like feebly animated mummies and seemed to be of the same level of intelligence.”

Harry Peters, a Jewish soldier from Chicago, who was with Patton’s Third Army, told his nephew, Phil Cohen, that “Patton was more concerned with saving the Lipizanner Horses in Austria than the Jews left in the camp.” According to Cohen, “Patton had to be ordered to go to the concentration camps because he considered the horses more valuable.” Cohen wrote in an e-mail to me that his uncle, Harry Peters, had told him that “Patton admired the SS because he said they were the real fighting men. When they caught an SS, they were ordered to place them in separate camps as Patton wanted to train them to fight the Russians.” Because he spoke Yiddish, Peters was assigned to interview the Buchenwald survivors about war crimes committed in the camp. Peters lived for only 6 years after the war and had nightmares about the Buchenwald camp each night, according to his nephew, Phil Cohen.

Other critics of the book complain about the fact that O’Reilly did not mention that Patton was anti-Semitic.  For example, this review:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-patton-antisemitism-ignored-1002-20141001-story.html

This quote is from the website, cited above:

It’s fortunate that Bill O’Reilly’s latest book, “Killing Patton,” was written by him and not someone else. If not, O’Reilly would have taken the poor person apart, criticizing the book for its chaotic structure, its considerable padding and its repellent admiration of a war-loving martinet who fought the Nazis and really never understood why.

George S. Patton stood almost shoulder to shoulder with them in his anti-Semitism — not that O’Reilly seems to have noticed or, for that matter, mentioned it in his book.

In his book, O’Reilly mentioned Miklós Horthy on page 324.  He mentioned that Horthy was freed on May 5, 1945.  Everyone knows that Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945.  So why was Horthy not freed until May 5th?  Horthy was one of the prominent Dachau prisoners who were taken to the South Tyrol, for their own safety before the camp was liberated. You can read the whole story on Wikipedia here.

At the very end of the book, sources for the book are given, including the Topography of Terror Museum in Berlin.  I never got to see this museum because it was not opened until May 2010.  I did take a photo of the future location of the Museum, which is shown below.

The location of the future Topography of Terror Museum

The photo above shows the site of the former Gestapo building, which is now the location of the Topography of Terror exhibit. The building in the background is Goering’s Luftfahrtministerium. On the left side, in the background, notice the mound of grass-covered rubble left by the bombing of Berlin in World War II.

The visit to the Topography of Terror museum might be the source of all the incorrect information on Auschwitz, which is included in the book.

On page 256 of the book, O’Reilly describes the death of Eva Braun, who killed herself in Hitler’s Berlin bunker. O’Reilly can’t help himself:  he has to bring in the Nazi gas chambers one more time.  He wrote this about Eva Braun’s death: “Sadly, it is a death far quicker than that suffered by millions of Jews her new husband sent to the gas chambers.”

Could we have some proof of the existence of gas chambers in the Nazi camps, please?  This is a book about Patton, entitled “Killing Patton” but it should be entitled “Killing Jews”.

P.S.  Before I started watching Bill O’Reilly on his show called “The Factor,” I was watching him on a TV show called “Inside Edition,” which was on from 1989 to 1995.  The first episode of the Seinfeld show was on July 5, 1989.  I saw this first episode because it followed the Inside Edition show. I immediately became a fan of the Seinfeld show, and I still watch re-runs of the show.  I have also been a fan of Bill O’Reilly since 1989.  I’m sorry to be so critical of his latest book.

World War II war criminal Martin Bartesch is back in the news

Martin Bartesch, a notorious Nazi war criminal, who was briefly at the Mauthausen concentration camp for three whole weeks, during Wold War II, is back in the news; you can read all about it here.

The photo below shows Martesch in a photo belonging to his daughter Ann Bresnen of Chicago, copied from this website: http://billingsgazette.com/martin-bartesch/image_6d8e8030-f7ff-5f2f-a2b9-cb36fe256816.html#ixzz3Gi2KE6Rs

Photo of Martin Bartesch

My photo of the Mauthausen concentration camp (Click on the photo to enlarge)

My photo of the entrance into the Mauthausen concentration camp (Click on the photo to enlarge)

This quote is from the news story:

OSIJEK, Croatia (AP) – Dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards collected millions of dollars in U.S. Social Security benefits after being forced out of the United States, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The payments, underwritten by American taxpayers, flowed through a legal loophole that gave the U.S. Justice Department leverage to persuade Nazi suspects to leave the U.S. If they agreed to go, or simply fled before deportation, they could keep their Social Security, according to interviews and internal U.S. government records.

[…]

Austrian authorities were furious upon learning after the fact about a deal made with Martin Bartesch, a former SS guard at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. In 1987, Bartesch landed, unannounced, at the airport in Vienna. Two days later, under the terms of the deal, his U.S. citizenship was revoked.

The Romanian-born Bartesch, who had emigrated to the U.S. in 1955, was suddenly stateless and Austria’s problem. Bartesch continued to receive Social Security benefits until he died in 1989.

I previously blogged about Martin Bartesch on this blog post:  https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/the-sad-case-of-martin-bartesch-the-infamous-mauthausen-war-criminal/

What was the war crime committed by Martin Bartesch?  His crime was that he spoke German and he had been born of an ethnic German mother.

This speech, made by Heinrich Himmler at Munich, on Nov. 8, 1938, explains it:

“Furthermore, Czechoslovakia has become anti-Semitic, all the Balkans are anti-Semitic, the whole of Palestine is engaged in a desperate struggle against the Jews, so that some day there will be no place in the world left for the Jew. He says to himself, this danger will only be removed if the source, if the originating country of anti-Semitism, if Germany is burnt out and destroyed (ausgebrannt und vernichtet). Be clear about it, in the battle which will decide if we are defeated, there will be no reservation remaining for the Germans, all will be starved out and butchered. That will face everyone, be he now an enthusiastic supporter of the Third Reich or not – it will suffice that he speaks German and had a German mother.”

Martin Bartesch emigrated to America after World War II was over.  He received Social Security payments, but he agreed to leave the USA on the condition that he would continue to receive his Social Security payments.

Germany then and now — like night and day

German Reichstag building in Berlin (Click to enlarge)

The photo above was used to illustrate a news article about Jews leaving Israel and coming to Germany to live.  The photo below was taken in 2002 when I visited Berlin.

My 2002 photo of Reichstag building in Berlin

The headline of the article is

German Jews Start Campaign Flaunting European Life and Calling for Israelis to Return

There were, at most, 585,000 Jews in Nazi Germany. Only a few managed to escape the Holocaust and wound up in the new Jewish state of Israel in 1948. Now, their descendants in Israeli want to “return” to Germany, their homeland.

I previously blogged about the German Jews who were killed in the Holocaust at https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/how-many-german-jews-were-killed-in-the-holocaust/

This quote is from the Associated Press news story, cited above:

MOSCOW, Ocotber 16 (RIA Novosti) – A new online campaign started by young German Jews has their Israeli brethren up in arms, as they have been using social media to boast about their safety and their lower cost of living in the former Nazi state, reports AP.

The protest started a few weeks ago when a 25-year-old former Israeli soldier posted a picture on Instagram of a chocolate bar receipt purchased in Berlin. The price was one-third of the cost in Israel and he also bragged about his safety in the German capital. His picture went viral, spawning a Facebook page garnering over 17,000 “likes”, reports the AP.

Many of the youth involved in the campaign wish they could live in Israel, yet the fear of constant attack and extremely high living costs prevent them from moving there. One protestor said to the AP, “My aim is to educate the Israeli government. They need to make Israel a more attractive place for young people.”

However, in the 59 years since the end of World War II, Germany has changed dramatically; where once Nazi eagles flew high above and the government sought to cleanse the population of Jews and other undesirable races, Germany is now the model representative of the European community, a place diverse in its nature and the driving force of Europe.

Many Jews have left war-torn Israel for a better life in Europe, returning to their pre-war roots in search of peace, higher wages and other social benefits, such as unemployment stipends and free university education. According to the AP, there are between 3,000 and 30,000 Jews living in Berlin. “I like how people in Berlin are so non-judgmental and take me as I am,” said Levy to the AP.

My 2002 photo below shows what looks like a bike rack in front of the Reichstag building, but I was informed that these slabs of black marble in front of the Reichstag have the names of the 96 members of the Reichstag who were murdered by the Nazis; it was dedicated in September 1992.

Slabs of black marble were put up in front of the Reichstag building in Germany in 1992

When the Jews return to Germany, you can expect more Jewish art, like the black slabs shown in the photo above.

The Reichstag building on fire on Feb. 27, 1933

This quote from Wikipedia is about the Reichstag fire:

The Reichstag fire (German: Der Reichstagsbrand) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch council communist and unemployed bricklayer who had recently arrived in Germany to fulfill his dream and to engage in political activities, was caught at the scene and after admitting starting the fire was sentenced to death. The fire was used as evidence by the Nazis that the Communists were plotting against the German government and the event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.

Reconstruction of the Reichstag building was still going on in 2002

Construction was still going on in front of the Reichstag building, where new landscaping was being installed, when I visited in May 2002. The Berlin wall formerly ran behind the Reichstag which was located on the West side of the divided city of Berlin.

 

After murdering 6 million Jews, the Germans owe the Jews a country — Medinat-Weimar

One of the regular readers of my blog made a comment in which he mentioned that the Jews want to come back to Germany and set up a new Jewish state called Medinat-Weimar.

I had to look up the word medinat. I found this definition here:

medinat yisrael
The State of Israel. Used in opposition to the commonly used Eretz Yisrael, which translates as The Land of Israel. Medinat Yisrael means the Modern State of Israel.
I live in Medinat Yisrael.

According to this news story, the Jews are not thriving in Israel, and they want to come back to Germany.

This quote is from the news story, cited above:

BERLIN (JTA) – An Israeli artist is challenging boundaries – national, political and artistic – with his project to create a Jewish state in the former East Germany.

Ronen Eidelman wants to raise questions about national identity, anti-Semitism and the complex relationship involving Germany, Jews and Israel.

Eidelman, who has been living in Germany the past year and a half, says his project reflects “the power of art to ask questions and put a mirror to society.”

[…]

While some Germans never tire of debating such topics, Eidelman’s proposal for “Medinat Weimar” apparently has touched raw nerves. One Jewish leader says he would never set foot in the new “state.” Eidelman’s university, for which the project was conceived, has distanced itself from the idea.

For most Americans, the first thing that comes to mind, when the German city of Weimar is mentioned, is the “Weimar Republic,” the name of the democratic government based on the first-ever German constitution, which was written in Weimar after the Social Democrats declared a Republic in a bloodless revolution on Nov. 9, 1918 during the Great War, now known as World War I.For most Americans, the first thing that comes to mind when the city of Weimar, Germany is mentioned is the “Weimar Republic,” the name of the democratic government based on the first-ever German constitution, which was written in Weimar after the Social Democrats declared a Republic in a bloodless revolution on Nov. 9, 1918 during the Great War, now known as World War I.

Tourists visiting the Weimar National Theater

The Deutsches Nationaltheater (German National Theater) in Weimar, Germany, shown in the photo above, was where the German National Assembly met to draw up the constitution for the new German Republic. The Weimar constitution was passed a year later on November 8, 1919.

The theater was built in 1908 and the first performance was held there on November 1, 1908. During World War II, the building was used as an armament factory, beginning in 1944.

To Americans, the Weimar Republic represents a great achievement, since from the American point of view, the Great War was fought “to make the world safe for democracy.” As it turned out, the Weimar Republic of the Social Democrats was opposed by many factions of the German people, and was doomed from the start.

Before the new government could meet to begin work on the constitution, the Communists, under the Jewish leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, had declared their own Republic in January 1919 but were forced to withdraw when a militia group of 3,000 soldiers, who had returned home after the Armistice of November 11, 1918, defeated them in bloody street fighting in Berlin.

Statues of Goethe and Schiller

Weimar was occupied by the American troops of Patton’s Third Army on April 12, 1945, the next day after they had discovered the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp. On July 3, 1945 Weimar and Buchenwald were handed over to the Russians who had been promised Eastern Germany by President Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference before the war ended. In an insensitive show of their victory in World War II, the Russian Communists buried some of their war dead in a newly created cemetery in Weimar’s Park on the Ilm, just across the river from Goethe’s famous garden house, which attracts millions of visitors from around the world, and only a stone’s throw from the house where Liszt lived.

Gate into cemetery in Weimar where Russian soldiers are buried

The cemetery has a gate with the Communist red star emblem and a side gate, shown in the photo above, with the Communist hammer and sickle symbol. Now that Weimar is no longer ruled by the Communists, the cemetery is considered out of place in a park that is associated with the beloved Goethe.

Goethe’s garden house is shown in the photo below.  Yes, I’ve been there. A German man, who was at the garden house, answering questions for tourists, taught me how to pronounce Goethe.  It sounds something like “gurd-uh”.

Goethe’s garden house in Weimar, Germany

The path to Goethe’s garden house

You can read another news story here about how the  Jews in Israel want to come back to Berlin.

Will the Jews be safe in Germany, or will they be Holocausted again?  Germany is now the safest possible place for the Jews.  The Germans are now afraid to even say the word “Jew.”  They have learned their lesson: the Jews rule.