Eugen Kogon and his famous book entitled “Der SS-Staat”

The subject of Eugen Kogon, and his famous book entitled Der SS-Staat has come up in the comments section of my blog, so I am going to tell you what I know about him.

Eugen Kogon testified at the trial of the Buchenwald SS men in the Dachau trials

One of the most famous inmates of Buchenwald was 43-year-old Dr. Eugen Kogon, an Austrian Social Democrat and political activist, who was a prisoner in the Buchenwald camp from September 1939 to April 1945.

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 entitled The Theory and Practice of Hell, which was a rewrite of the Buchenwald Report and one of the first books about the alleged Nazi atrocities in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

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

Kogon’s testimony was contradicted by Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen, who was the main witness for the defense in the Buchenwald case. Morgen also testified at the Nuremberg IMT in August 1946, before the Buchenwald case came to trial at Dachau.

At Nuremberg, Morgen testified on 7 August 1946 regarding the conditions at Buchenwald. In response to questions from the prosecutor at Nuremberg, Morgen 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.

Jan Karski, the man who first told the world about the Holocaust

Jan Karski

You can read about Jan Karski, the man who first told the world about the Holocaust, in a recent news article here.

I blogged about Jan Karski in this previous blog post:

Bob Dylan and Jan Karski to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom

This quote is from the news article, cited above:

Begin quote:

Karski, who was a courier for the Polish Underground State, is known as “the man who wanted to stop the Holocaust,” Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka, president of the Educational Foundation of Jan Karski, which is organising the exhibition ‘Jan Karski. A mission for the future,’ said.

“Jan Karski is unfortunately a still little-known figure…it turns out that many people do not know who he was. And yet his character and his mission during the war are still today an example. The values presented by Karski – morality, a sense of mission, courage – are still valid,” Junczyk-Ziomecka said.

“When he fell into the hands of the Gestapo and tortured, he was afraid he could not bear the pain and would start exposing colleagues from the Polish Underground State and considered suicide. He was a believer and for Catholics that is a mortal sin. His attitude, as Adam Rotfeld once wrote, symbolises the best face of Polish patriotism,” Junczyk-Ziomecka added.

Tuesday’s opening of the exhibition is at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, after a lecture by Maciej Sadowski.

End quote

– See more at: http://www.thenews.pl/1/11/Artykul/218414,Jan-Karski-photos-on-show-at-Singers-Warsaw-Festival#sthash.vPdizwNd.dpuf

Yes, the Holocaust happened; just ask Dr. Wolf Murmelstein

“Yes, the Holocaust happened.”

The title of my blog post today is a line from the letter which I received this morning from Dr. Wolf Murmelstein, the son of Dr. Benjamin Murmelstein, the last Jewish “elder” of Theresienstadt.

Yes, the Holocaust happened, and little nine-year-old Wolf was there, right in the middle of it.

This quote is from a letter written to me by Dr. Murmelstein, who is still mentally suffering from his childhood ordeal.

Begin Quote from Dr. Wolf Murmelstein’s letter to me:

Yes, the Holocaust happened. The Gas Chambers in the Death Camps were operating, the mass shootings were taking place (mainly in Russia and Ukraine), the Ghettos (including Theresienstadt) were places of starvation and disease; they were the anti-chambers to the Death Camps.

And no one who is commenting here [on this blog] — the fault-finding commentators — can answer this question: In what direction, and how did the large East, Central and South European Jewish communities disappear in the years from 1939 to 1945?

Asking your blog readers to think better about the Shoah, the Holocaust matter, I am

Sincerely yours,

Wolf Murmelstein.

Gate into the walled ghetto formerly known as Theresienstadt

Here is the full text of the letter which I received today from Dr. Wolf Murmelstein:

Begin quote:
My parents and myself survived at Theresienstadt for the simple reason that Eichmann, after the INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS visit of April 6, 1945 had no possibility, any more, of liquidating the so-called ‘Model Ghetto.”

The conclusion, that our survival proves that the Holocaust never took place, is very offensive.

Indeed, we have relatives who survived Auschwitz and the Death Marches, and relatives that we do not even know where, when and how they were murdered. We remember friends who left and never returned. Comments, that say they emigrated and changed names, are offensive and very stupid.

Mr. Berg and Mr. Leuchter simply do not acknowledge that, in USA prisons, the Gas Chambers can murder one or two victims at a single execution, but German Holocaust Technology solved the problem of mass murder in Gas Chambers by employing Zyclon B, which is lethal for lice, as well as lethal for human beings — even in rooms not sufficiently aired after “disinfection” or “murder”.

As the Nazis had been able to keep secret the details and designs of Gas Chambers employing Zyklon B, they had been kept secret; simple. Besides, Death Camps had been located far away from important cities; Auschwitz had been an exception for logistic reasons.

I started asking about what had occurred, and how it had occurred, some time after Liberation, when I was nine years old. I learned that events had to be studied while considering general historical background.

So I went on studying the Shoah – Holocaust – and history linked with the general, economic and social history of Europe.

I was 14 when I read [Eugene] Kogon about Buchenwald and 16 when I read the memories of Schacht about the German Economic problems during and after WWI and so on.

[“Der SS-Staat,” is a book written in 1946 by Eugen Kogon, an Austrian Social Democrat who was sent, as a prisoner, to Buchenwald because he was a political activist. This book is a rewrite of the Buchenwald Report, compiled by the US Army from interviews with the survivors.]

About Theresienstadt, Jewish emigration and Eichmann, I was able to speak with my Father about this for 40 years.

So I can answer many questions [about the Holocaust] on this blog according to my best knowledge.

When I am asked for forensic proof, such as autopsies of Death Camp victims, I can only say that I am fed up with all the fault finders and trouble makers, who have had their fun torturing survivors by questioning them, using well known police techniques, which often obtain confessions from persons who then turn out to be innocent; this often happens twenty years after they have been murdered in the Gas Chamber of a place of lawful executions.

Clearly, I would like to see many careless journalists, “historians”, and writers in the deepest hell, because their careless writing and talking about a tragedy is helpful … for the [Holocaust] deniers.

Political Zionism came about as the result of racism and antisemitism “fin de siecle” of the nineteenth century when Theodore Herzl reported to the Vienna NEUE FREIE PRESSE about the Dreyfus case. For European Jews it had been hard to emigrate to Palestine/Israel. But for many survivors, Israel had been the only possible solution as they could not return to Poland, Hungary, etc.

Norway is obsessing over the Gypsies who were gassed in the Holcocaust

Recently, my blog has been getting an inordinate number of hits from Norway. What could be going on in Norway?  I set out to find out why hundreds of people in Norway have been reading my blog in recent days.

I did a search and found this news article: http://www.socialworkhelper.com/2015/08/04/black-hole-european-history-prevents-full-understanding-present/

Gypsies being marched out of Norway, to be taken to the gas chamber (click on photo to enlarge)

The following quote is from the news article, cited above:

A couple of days ago, we commemorated the liquidation 71 years ago of the so-called “Gypsy family camp” at Auschwitz-Birkenau. On 2 August 1944, 2 897 persons were taken to the gas chambers and exterminated. Only a few months earlier, on 16 May 1944, the detainees of the “Gypsy camp” had refused to obey the orders of the SS soldiers who had come to kill them. Knowledge about both the Roma uprising and the liquidation of the “Gypsy camp” remains limited in European societies today.

Oh no!  The Gypsies had refused to obey the orders of the SS soldiers who had come to kill them!  What did the SS soldiers say to the Gypsies? Maybe they said something like “lie down and die, you thieving scum” but the Gypsies refused.  They insisted on being properly “exterminated” in a gas chamber.

A group of Gypsies waiting to be gassed at the Belzec extermination camp

For all the readers of my blog in Norway, here is what actually happened:

At Auschwitz-Birkenau, a “Gypsy family camp” was set up in wooden barracks in Section BIIe in the Birkenau camp in February 1943.

According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, the Gypsy camp was in existence for only seventeen months and most of the Gypsies perished.

The following quote is from the web site of the USHMM:

In a decree dated December 16, 1942, Himmler ordered the deportation of Gypsies and part-Gypsies to Auschwitz-Birkenau. At least 23,000 Gypsies were brought there, the first group arriving from Germany in February 1943. Most of the Gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau came from Germany or territories annexed to the Reich including Bohemia and Moravia. Police also deported small numbers of Gypsies from Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway.

[The two states of Bohemia and Moravia, which are now in the Czech Republic, were part of a German Protectorate from 1938 to 1945; they were not annexed into the Greater German Reich.]

The following quote about the gassing of the Gypsies is from the web site of the USHMM:

They (the Gypsies) were killed by gassing or died from starvation, exhaustion from hard labor, and disease (including typhus, smallpox, and the rare, leprosy-like condition called Noma.) Others, including many children, died as the result of cruel medical experiments performed by Dr. Josef Mengele and other SS physicians. The Gypsy camp was liquidated on the night of August 2-3, 1944, when 2,897 Sinti and Roma men, women, and children were killed in the gas chamber. Some 1,400 surviving men and women were transferred to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps for forced labor.

According to a guidebook sold by the Auschwitz Museum in 2005, there were 20,943 Roma (Gypsies) who were gassed in the Krema V gas chamber; their bodies were burned in the pits adjacent to Krema V.

Rudolf Hoess wrote in his autobiography, entitled Death Dealer, that many of the Gypsy children suffered from an illness called “Noma,” which reminded him of leprosy.

Gypsy children suffering from a disease called “Noma.”

According to Rudolf Hoess, Heinrich Himmler inspected the Gypsy camp on his visit in July 1942. Hoess wrote in his autobiography entitled Death Dealer:

Himmler inspected everything thoroughly. He saw the over-crowded barracks, the inadequate hygienic conditions, the overflowing infirmaries and the sick in the isolation ward. […] Himmler saw everything in detail, as it really was. Then he ordered me to gas them. Those who were still able to work were to be selected, just as with the Jews.

In his date book, Heinrich Himmler noted that, on his visit to Auschwitz in July 1942, he inspected the main camp, the farm at Auschwitz and the Monowitz factories, where photographs were taken of him. He did not mention that he visited Birkenau.

Danuta Czech wrote in her book entitled Kalendarium that 1,408 Gypsies who were able to work were transferred to the main Auschwitz camp and housed in Blocks 10 and 11 on May 23, 1944. They were later sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where there is a memorial sculpture in commemoration of the Roma.

The selection of the Gypsies for the gas chamber took two years, according to Commandant Rudolf Hoess. Regarding the liquidation of the Gypsy Family Camp on August 2, 1944, Hoess wrote the following:

By August 1944 there were only about four thousand Gypsies left and these had to go into the gas chambers. Until that time they did not know what fate was in store for them. Only as they were marched barrack after barrack to Crematory I did they figure out what was going on.

When Hoess wrote that the Gypsies were marched to Crematory 1, he was undoubtedly referring to Krema II, which was a short distance from the Gypsy camp. Crematory 1, or Krema I in German, was in the main Auschwitz camp, three kilometers from Birkenau. By August 1944, Krema I was no longer in operation as a gas chamber.

Both the USHMM and the Auschwitz Museum say that the number of Gypsies gassed on August 2, 1942 was 2,897, not “four thousand” as Hoess stated. However, according to the article below, the number of 4,000 given by Hoess might actually be closer to the correct number of Gypsies who were gassed.

Regarding the gassing of the Gypsies, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli wrote the following:

Annihilation time had come for the 4,500 inhabitants of the Gypsy Camp. The measures taken were the same as those taken for the liquidation of the Czech Camp. All the barracks were quarantined. SS guards, leading their police dogs, invaded the Gypsy quarters and chased the inhabitants outside, where they were made to line up. Rations of bread and salami were distributed. The gypsies were made to believe that they were being shipped to another camp, and they swallowed the story. A very easy and efficacious way of calming their fears. No one thought of the crematoriums, for then why would rations of food have been distributed?

This strategy on the part of the SS was dictated neither by pity nor a regard for those condemned to death, but merely by their desire to expedite a large group of people, without any unnecessary incidents or delays, to the gas chambers, guarded by a relatively small patrol. The strategy worked to perfection. Everything went off as planned. Throughout the night the chimneys of number one and two crematoriums sent flames roaring skyward, so that the entire camp was lighted with a sinister glow.

If Dr. Nyiszli’s story is correct, the method of calming the fears of the Gypsies amounted to a tremendous waste of bread and salami. Or was the “salami” actually what Americans call Thuringer, a type of smoked, semi-dry German sausage similar to our summer sausage? It is doubtful that the Nazis imported salami for the Auschwitz prisoners.

Note that Dr. Nyiszli, who worked in the “crematoriums” performing autopsies for Dr. Josef Mengele, referred to “number one and two crematoriums” but he obviously meant Krema II and Krema III at Birkenau, not Krema I, which was at the main camp.

The total number of Gypsies killed in the Holocaust is unknown. Numbers vary, from 220,00 estimated by the USHMM, to an estimated 500,000.

One of the three Operation Reinhard camps, Belzec was allegedly the first camp to begin the gassing of Jews and Gypsies in March 1942.

Gypsies were forced to work in the Dachau camp, but for some reason, they were not gassed at Dachau

The headline on the newspaper obituary of Dennis Avey contains the word “controversially”

Is controversially even a word?  The story of Dennis Avey’s wartime experience, when he allegedly spent two nights in a concentration camp, is so controversial that it might have needed a new word to describe it.  I would have used the word “allegedly” in describing Avey’s alleged trip into the concentration camp at Monowitz, aka Auschwitz III.

Read the full story at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11828297/Denis-Avey-Auschwitz-witness-obituary.html

Handout photo of Dennis Avey issued by Hodder and Stoughton Photo credit: Dave Poole/Hodder and Stoughton/PA Wire

I have written several blog posts under the tag Dennis Avey: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/dennis-avey/

Another topic for discussion: the aftermath of World War II

Wolf Murmelstein, a regular reader of this blog, has submitted a letter with some information for a new topic of discussion.

The following words were written by Wolf Murmelstein:
Dear furtherglory, Hermie and other readers of this blog!

In various comments here, the question of the post WWII and Holocaust trials has arisen; I want to reply to all of these comments.

From personal experience, and from historical research, I will admit that some of those [post-war] trials were driven by political rivalries for positions, or to prevent some really informed person from giving evidence concerning many wrong doings, which occurred during World War II: For example: denunciations by careless talk, appropriations of Jewish owned assets, etc..

Another chapter [of history] refers to the interest of  the Communist Parties in weakening the middle class in the countries where they rose to power. This was said by Clement Gottwald on April 10, 1945 in a speech to party activists at Kosice. On that day, at Theresienstadt, we were still in danger of being shot in a mass shooting.

So in the East, as well as in the West, the Communist Parties enlisted former Nazis and Fascists to testify. By this means, many of the former Nazis could avoid being put on trial for wrongdoing, as long as they obeyed [Communist] party orders.

Where there had not been any political interest, many accusations leading to judiciary investigations had been found baseless. The accusations were due to hysteria and the persecution complex of traumatized persons. By stating this, the judge could avoid the start of procedures for slander.

In many trials, the statements of the defendants would have been precious historical documents.

I am quoting from memory, but I could find many other examples besides what is quoted below:

Herr Oskar Groening had been employed in the sorting of money and jewels, taken from the victims. By doing this, he avoided being sent to the battlefront in the East.

Herr [John] Demjanuk stated in Munich Court [in Germany] that he had had only one choice: Enlisting in the SS auxiliary or starving to death.

At the Auschwitz trial, it was stated by a defendant that selection started only after the [transport] train with the police escort had left the “station”; clearly this was done for better secrecy.

At the Nuernberg [IMT] trial, Papen had been acquitted, but two years later, he was sentenced by a German court for his high responsibility for the Nazi rise to power.

This subject deserves better analysis and research.

Hope that this letter will be offered for discussion.

Sincerely yours,

Wolf Murmelstein.

Did Fred Leuchter actually go to Auschwitz?

Fred Leuchter, the man who climbed down into a gas chamber at Auschwitz

One of the new readers of my blog made a comment in which he claimed that Fred Leuchter never even went to Auschwitz, much less climbed down into a gas chamber.

Fred Leuchter climbing out of the gas chamber No. 2 at Auschwitz

Fred Leuchter has been demonized and driven out of polite society because he climbed down into a gas chamber, but claimed that it was not a gas chamber.

Bill O’Reilly educated his 3 million viewers last night about Mengele, the notorious Nazi Doctor

Update 9:25 am: I have found another blog which talks about Bill  O’Reilly’s show last night:  https://saynsumthn.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/planned-parenthood-defender-nomiki-konst-no-clue-who-mengele-is-while-discussing-baby-parts-harvesting-on-oreilly/

Continue reading my original blog post:

I wrote about Bill O’Reilly on a previous blog post, which you can read here.  If you don’t know who Bill O’Reilly is, I can’t help you.

On some nights, Bill O’Reilly has 3 million viewers. On a bad night, he has over 2 million viewers. If you have never seen his news commentary TV show, you are out of the loop, and there is no hope for you.

Last night O’Reilly educated his viewers, and one of his guests, about Mengele. One of his guests, Monika Crowley, knew who Dr. Mengele was, but the other guest, whose name I have forgotten, had never heard of him.  [I had never heard of her, but I know all about Dr. Josef Mengele.]

Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous “Doctor of Death” at Auschwitz, doesn’t get the title of Dr. because he sent Jews to their deaths in the gas chamber. If you refer to him as DOCTOR Mengele, as I am doing right now, you will be instantly exposed as a Holocaust denier.

On his show, O’Reilly explained to his uninformed guest, whose name I don’t remember, that Mengele “was a Nazi Doctor who performed experiments on children and babies.”

Then he went on to say that “Mengele did experiments in utero, not just on babies that were born.”

The part about doing experiments on babies in utero was news to me. I have studied the Holocaust extensively, but I have never heard that story.

You can read all about Dr. Josef Mengele on my website  at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/History/Articles/Selection.html

I have blogged about Dr. Mengele on several blog posts, including this one:

What color were Dr. Josef Mengele’s eyes?

Crazy mixed up newspaper article trivializes the Holocaust

Richard Cohen is a famous newspaper man, who writes for the Washington Post newspaper.  If he were a cub reporter, he would probably have been fired by now, for writing a crazy mixed up article which you can read in full here. 

The article includes several photos, including the photo below, which was taken at Ebensee, a sub-camp of Mauthausen.

Prisoners at the Ebensee subcamp of Mauthausen

Cohen went to Dachau, but his article includes a photo taken at Ebensee.

For some reason, the photo that is shown in the news article looks as if it has been badly photo-shopped.  Why is a photo, taken at Ebensee in Austria, being shown to illustrate a story about Dachau?  Is it because the prisoners at Dachau were in fairly good condition, considering the typhus epidemic in the camp, when it was liberated? A photo of skinny legs was needed, so the Ebensee photo was added, but the location was not identified.

The prisoners, shown in the photo above, were marched out of other camps and taken to Ebensee in Austria for their own safety.

Showing a photo of Ebensee, in a story about a visit to Dachau, amounts to Holocaust denial.  The prisoners were taken to Ebensee to save them, not to kill them.

You can read about Ebensee on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Mauthausen/KZMauthausen/Subcamps/Ebensee01.html

You can see what the former Dachau camp looks like today, in my recent photo below. The barracks have long since been torn down.

The former Dachau camp looks like this today. The boxes of gravel indicate where the barracks once stood. The guard tower on the left is a reconstruction. The building in the background is a church.

This quote is from Cohen’s news article:

It is August and the parking lots [at Dachau] are full. Throngs course through the [reconstructed] barracks, stroll the once-electrified perimeter  [fence], view huge photos of horror [in the Museum]  and, inevitably, drift over to the crematorium [Baracke X]. There, a father places his son — about 6, I’d guess — in front of [one of] the oven[s] and poses him for a picture.

One of several ovens at Dachau where tourists can pose for a photo

This quote is also from the news article:

In his forthcoming book, “Black Earth,” Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder titles one chapter “The Auschwitz Paradox.” That camp has become synonymous with the Holocaust itself, obscuring not only other camps (where the survival rate was nonexistent) but also the fact that most of Europe’s Jews were not killed in some industrialized, virtually robotic, fashion. They were shot close up.

“When the mass murder of Jews is limited to an exceptional place and treated as the result of impersonal procedures, then we need not confront the fact that people not very different than us murdered other people not very different than us at close quarters for no reason,” he writes. “This we generally prefer not to see.”

What is he trying to say?  It’s all Greek to me.

A letter from Dr. Wolf Murmelstein, a survivor of Theresienstadt

My photo of Brunnen Park in Theresienstadt

I am putting up a letter, that I received in e-mail today, from Dr. Wolf Murmelstein, who is one of the followers of my blog.

When I was first contacted by Dr. Murmelstein, several years ago, I knew virtually nothing about Theresienstadt — at least not from the Jewish point of view.  Over 5 years ago, I blogged about the gas chamber at Theresienstat.

This is the letter which I received this morning from Dr. Wolf Murmelstein:

Dear Futherglory!

I have been following this site for several years, and I am more and more angered because of the many doubts expressed, by your readers, on the facts that actually occurred.

After I survived Theresienstadt, I had to live with traumatized parents who were suffering from the “survivor syndrome,” remembering friends who had left and had never returned.

Especially my late Father, who tortured himself, wondering whether he, in many events where a sudden decision had to be taken, had acted in the right way or if he should have acted better.

My father had been heard only by a few researchers, as he had been defamed – and still is today – with absurd stories.

From 1938 until 1945, my father had had to face the SS men almost every day; each day could have been his last one.

In last months, when he was the Theresienstadt Elder, he always had a poison pill ready to be taken at a “certain moment”.

I myself had to stand in the face of the SS men about five times, which was a nightmare. One time I was about to be taken as a hostage.

As I have already written in another contribution, my father had gotten the first alarming information at the arrival of a group from Slovakia on December 31 1944. Then there had been the Nazi attempt to build a Gas Chamber at Theresienstadt; it had been very risky to go and face the Camp Commandant, to talk about possible mass panic among Ghetto inmates.

On the night of April 17, 1945, there had been the farce of a revolution – provoked by the Prague Eichmann office – in order to have a “legal reason” for a mass execution.

It had not been easy to face the Commandant and to remember what time it had been already. I remember only that, on the following morning, my father had had a nerve crisis.

And from April 21st onward, the arrivals of the survivors from other camps became terrible.

And now I am continuously reading more or less offensive statements expressing doubts, in a quite fault finding manner, about what occurred. Doubts about details are pretexts to deny the whole tragedy.

I would like to see the many doubting negationists pass a week in a camp, supervised by an SS sergeant, listening to all the hateful statements of the Nazi doctrine.

Would you offer your readers the opportunity to reply to this article?

Best Regards.

Wolf Murmelstein.