Why Auschwitz was picked as the location for a concentration camp?

A few days ago, one of the regular readers of my blog asked a question regarding the following sarcastic statement that I had written:

“The truth is that, with their “utterly twisted and deformed mind[s],” the Auschwitz main camp was originally built by the Germans as a camp for migrant workers. From Auschwitz, the workers could get on a train and travel to any place in Europe. Auschwitz was literally a major “cross road” of Europe.”

The reader’s question was this: “I’m not sure, are you joking with the above statement? Auschwitz I was a concentration camp for Poles deemed by the Germans to be a threat.”

I have a section on the town of Auschwitz on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Oswiecim/index.html

Here is the real story regarding the origin of the town of Auschwitz and the beginning of the Auschwitz main camp:

The area of Europe that was inhabited by the German tribes in the Middle Ages became the Holy Roman Empire in the year 800 and by 1270, the Empire had expanded to include the area known as Upper Silesia, where Auschwitz is located. In 1457, Auschwitz became part of the Kingdom of Poland and it was then known by the Polish name Oswiecim.

Most of Silesia was annexed to the German state of Prussia in 1742, except for four duchies. The duchy of Auschwitz was annexed to Galicia, a province which was given to Austria when Poland lost its independence in 1772 and the country was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria.

Western Galicia soon became known as The Corner of Three Empires: Russia, Prussia and Austria. The town known as Auschwitz, or Oswiecim or Oshpitzin, became a prime location for Jewish traders or merchants during the time that Galicia was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

When railroad lines were built in the 19th century, the little town of Auschwitz, at the junction of three empires, became the crossroads of Europe. There were 44 train lines coming into Auschwitz, making it at one time a larger railroad hub than Penn Station in New York City.

It was because Auschwitz was such an important railroad junction that a camp for migrant workers was built in a suburb of the town in 1916; seasonal farm workers from all over Europe were sent from Auschwitz to the large German estates. The migrant worker camp, with its beautiful brick barracks buildings, was the place that eventually became the Auschwitz I concentration camp.

In 1919, Poland became an independent country again and Auschwitz became a Polish town called Oswiecim. The former migrant worker camp was used as a garrison by the Polish Army.

The Auschwitz main camp originally had 20 brick barracks buildings; 14 of them were single story buildings and 6 were two stories high. When this camp was converted into the Auschwitz concentration camp, a second story was added to the 14 single story buildings and 8 new two-story buildings were added, making a total of 28 barracks buildings. Between 13,000 and 16,000 concentration camp prisoners were crowded into these 28 buildings where they slept in three-tiered bunks. At one point, in 1942, there were 20,000 prisoners at the Auschwitz main camp.

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and the town of Oswiecim was captured on September 6th. Following the conquest of Poland, the name of the town reverted back to Auschwitz.

The city of Krakow, located 37 miles from Auschwitz, became the capital of German-occupied Poland, known as the General Government. It is important to note that, during the time that Auschwitz was allegedly a killing center, it was in the Greater German Reich, not in occupied Poland. The Polish people are incensed when Auschwitz is described as a concentration camp in Poland.

Auschwitz was located literally at the junction of the Greater German Reich and occupied Poland; it was also in the heart of “The Black Triangle,” an industrial area with large coal deposits, which is why it was such an important location for the Nazis.

My 2005 photo above shows a display in the Jewish center in town of Auschwitz

The photo above shows a display of objects in the Auschwitz Jewish Center, which is next door to the Synagogue in the town of Auschwitz. Prominently mentioned in this Center are the Haberfeld and Hennenberg families who were engaged in distilling and selling liquor. During prohabition in America, the Jews were engaged in bringing liquor into American through Canada.

According to a brochure which I obtained from the Jewish Center, Jews first settled in Oswiecim 500 years ago. By 1939, over half of the population of Oswiecim was Jewish.

This quote is from the brochure: “For several centuries, Jews prospered as traders, merchants, professionals and manufacturers, and were entrusted with tax collection and the administration of the lands of the Polish nobility.”

Today, there were no more Jews left in Oswiecim. The last surviving Jew, Shimshon Klueger, died in 2000. Klueger is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Osweicim.

When I visited the Jewish Center in 2005, a movie was being shown on a TV screen in a small back room. In the movie, several survivors, who were children in 1939, told about what it was like in Oswiecim before the German invasion of Poland.

There was a “large Jewish presence in Auschwitz,” according to one survivor. All of the survivors said that they now live in Israel or the United States, but none of them mentioned anything about how they managed to survive the Holocaust.

In the movie, one woman survivor said that the Jewish children in Oswiecim were all “organized.” There were many organizations for Jewish children, and she had joined the Zionist movement as a child. Another survivor said that she had a home tutor so that she could learn German. Her father had told her that she would be able to go any place in Europe if she could speak German.

One survivor said that the Jewish houses in Oswiecim had no running water, no electricity, no central heating nor air conditioning, and no inside toilets, but the Jews had “culture.”

Another survivor said that the Jews were not rich, but they had a “rich Jewish life.” One survivor described the life in Oswiecim before the war as “a life of dignity.”

The important point, made in this movie, is that the rich life of the Jews in Poland is now gone: the Nazis not only killed the Jews, they destroyed their rich, dignified way of life in Europe. But it’s all good: The Jews have their rich, dignified way of life in America, and they have made millions off their books and movies about the Holocaust.

 

 

How students today completely misunderstand the Holocaust

Photo of Auschwitz main camp taken by student on recent trip

My 1998 photo of kitchen building in Auschwitz main camp

Notice that my 1998 photo above shows the same scene as the student photo, but the student did not mention the antique sentry box that is located near the camp kitchens.

This quote from the news article is what the student wrote about her visit to the kitchen buildings:

Begin quote

Of the many barracks we visited, one stands out in my mind — the kitchen house where Jewish musicians would play for the amusement of the SS men. I could easily imagine the musicians, their trembling lips on a trumpet, their skeletal fingers dancing a bow on the violin, creating music, a solitary remnant of beauty in a living hell. “

End quote

Nice writing, but the trip to the main Auschwitz camp, which is a historic place, was completely lost on this student because all she could think about was how the Jews were murdered by the Nazis. She didn’t even notice that there were several kitchen buildings. The shutters on these buildings are now closed so that students can’t see the huge stoves and the pots that were used to cook the food for the prisoners.

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

Begin quote

Life has a knack for continuously shaping our perspectives, for changing how we view the world through exposure to new experiences and ideas. These changes can be gradual or arrive in a sudden rush of mind-blowing revelation, as happened when my life was changed by my visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

A history buff, I had been looking forward to this day for months. It was summer last year. I was taking a fun school course in Europe with a great class. At first, this was just another destination, albeit a momentous one.

But as soon as we entered [the main Auschwitz camp], my mood changed entirely. It was like a heavy weight was pressing down on me as I glimpsed the rows of barracks, barbed wire, the silent streets. I was haunted by the amount of misery, anguish and suffering that had occurred there, a sentiment reflected in the faces of those around me. Minutes earlier, everyone was chatting and enjoying themselves, even being a bit callous about what we were about to encounter.

End quote

The news article continues on with this quote from the young student:

Begin quote

But as soon as we set eyes on the gate [into the main Auschwitz camp], an unprompted hush fell on us all. 

The arch above the gate bore the words “Arbeit Macht Frei — Work will set you free.” In retrospect, it seems fitting that such a place should have a twisted and deformed motto. After all, who would create such a place as Auschwitz except those utterly twisted and deformed of mind?

End quote

The truth is that, with their “utterly twisted and deformed mind[s],” the Auschwitz main camp was originally built by the Germans as a camp for migrant workers. From Auschwitz, the workers could get on a train and travel to any place in Europe. Auschwitz was literally a major “cross road” of Europe.

The news article continues with another quote, written by this young student:

Begin quote

It is astounding how meticulous the Nazis were. Nothing was wasted or left to chance, not even the geographical position of Auschwitz. Away in Poland, the Nazis could continue to hide the truth of the concentration camps from the rest of the world. [Auschwitz was far from hidden. It was a major railroad hub in Europe.]

Families were ripped apart, screaming children were torn from their mother’s arms. With a wave of his hand, an SS officer would decide a person’s fate: an instant agonizing death or the slow torture of the labour camps. But the deportees knew nothing of this. Instead, they saw each line split, people headed for the camp or the “shower room” to be “disinfected.” 

Those sent to the showers suffered a grim fate. Through the vents and shower valves, a gas was released causing a slow agonizing death. It took up to 15 minutes for a person to die.

End quote

What kind of “shower valves” can have Zyklon-B pellets flowing through them? Did this young student mean “shower valves” like the ones in the Dachau gas chamber, which is shown in my photo below:

My photo of the last remaining shower head at Dachau, which is now gone

The student did not include a photo of the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp. That could be because photographs are strictly forbidden in the alleged gas chamber now.  I took the photo below on a trip to Auschwitz in 2005.

My 2005 photo of the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp

That’s all she wrote, and she rubbed that out.

 

 

 

 

students and professors create a replica of an Auschwitz gas chamber

The title of my blog post today comes from a news article, which you can read in full at http://www.therecord.com/news-story/6694371-touching-the-horrors-of-auschwitz/

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

The [Auschwitz-Birkenau] gas chambers’ heavy, airtight doors were completely destroyed at the war’s end, as were the columns used to release hydrogen cyanide inside, killing millions in concentration camps. [which camps other than Auschwitz-Birkenau?]

[…]

Proving the Holocaust happened became crucial to the [court] case [against David Irving] and Van Pelt used his expertise as an architectural historian to navigate through the proof: blueprints, letters written by Nazi architects and engineers, photos and contractors’ bills.

He [Van Pelt] wrote a book about it afterwards called “The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the [David] Irving Trial.”

“We knew this was something that needed to be done,” said Michael Nugent, an architecture student who was responsible for building the gas column replicas.

“It’s an important part of history that needed to be remembered.”

[…]

Based on blueprints, construction documents, architects’ letters and photographs, The Evidence Room brings forensic evidence of the Holocaust to life in the form of harrowing white plaster casts and monuments in a pure white room.

“What we wanted to do was [to] create a room people can touch. … We want people to touch everything,” said Robert Jan van Pelt, a UW architecture professor who worked on the exhibit.

He said the tangible nature of the exhibit makes it difficult to ignore.

“There will be no explanation of these things,” van Pelt said. “Really the idea is that we in some way relate with this, or the visitor relates to it through the gut.”

The architectural exhibit opens at La Biennale, an international architectural exhibition in Venice on Saturday.

Two constructed gas columns, an airtight hatch with a ladder and a heavy, gasproof door sit in the centre of the eerily white makeshift room.

The physical pieces of evidence cast in plaster by van Pelt and his team tell the story of what millions of people saw before they were killed.

End quote

Excuse me! Something is missing in this story!

Auschwitz-Birkenau was a huge place; it was 425 acres in size! The map below shows the location of the alleged homicidal gas chambers. Why have such a huge camp for the purpose of gassing people? And why weren’t the gas chambers hidden from view by people walking through the camp?

Map of the Auschwitz-Birkenau shows gas chamber buildings in red and disinfection chambers in orange

At the bottom of the map shown above, the train tracks can be seen going through an opening in the gate house on the left side of the drawing. Parallel to the tracks is the Hauptstrasse, or the main street of the camp. On the left side of the main street are the women’s barracks with two disinfection chambers shown in orange in between the two sections of women’s barracks.

Are you begining to see something wrong here? Why have such a huge camp, just to kill people, and then have disinfection chambers to kill the lice in the clothing of the prisoners who were waiting to be killed?

All of the gas chambers should have been used to kill the Jews; this would have eliminated the waiting of the Jews to die, as shown in the photo below.

Women and children waiting for their turn in the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chamber

The women and children in the photo above are looking across the road toward the place where the Sauna building is located. The Sauna building had a shower room for incoming prisoners, and huge ovens where the clothing of the prisoners was disinfected with hot steam.

You can read the full story of Auschwitz-Birkenau on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/History/Articles/Birkenau01.html

Don’t worry, the above web page is kosher, and suitable for both deniers and True Believers.

 

 

 

The outside door through which Jews entered the Auschwitz gas chamber

Peephole on the door into the alleged Auschwitz gas chamber

The photo above shows a peephole on the outside of a door into the alleged gas chamber in the Auschwitz main camp. This photo is shown at the top of a news article, which you can read in full at http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/evidence-room-holocaust-auschwitz-1.3455784

Why am I writing “alleged,” you ask? I don’t believe that the Nazis gassed Jews in Auschwitz, nor in any other location.

I have personally seen the door in the photo above. On my second trip to Auschwitz in 2005, tourists were being taken through this door into the alleged gas chamber. On my first trip to Auschwitz in 1998, I was told that the Jews entered through a door on the other side of the alleged gas chamber building.

In 1998, I was told that the Jews entered the gas chamber through this door

Front door into Auschwitz gas chamber

My photo of the front door, as seen from the inside

Back door into Auschwitz oven room

Another view of the outside door into the oven room

The peephole, that is shown on the first photo on my blog post, is on the other side of the door shown above. Unfortunately, I did not know that the peephole in this door was so important, so I didn’t take a photo of it from the other side.

This is the view of the ovens that the Jews saw when they entered the building to take a shower

The Jews are now asking us to believe that Jewish prisoners were ushered into the Auschwitz gas chamber through the oven room where the bodies of the Jews were being burned in huge ovens. I think that this would have caused panic and pandemonium. I don’t believe that the Jews were taken into this building at all. The incoming Jews were taken into a shower room where they took a shower to get rid of any lice that they might have had. Lice spreads typhus, which was the real danger in the concentration camps.

Entrance door, as seen from the inside

When I took these photos in 2005, this door was being kept open, and I did not see the outside of the door. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of the front of the famous peephole.

This information, about how the Jews entered the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp through the oven room, comes from a book written by Filip Müller, who was a Sonderkommando Jew at Auschwitz. He wrote a book, published in 1979, entitled Eyewitness Auschwitz, Three Years in the Gas Chambers. In his book, Filip famously wrote about how he ate cheese from the suitcase of one of the prisoners who had been gassed in the main Auschwitz camp.

Filip Müller testified at the Auschwitz trial conducted by the German government at Frankfurt in 1964. A few years later, he wrote his famous book about his 3 years in the gas chambers.

The door, shown in the photo at the top of my blog post, was described by Müller in his book. He wrote that, after the victims were herded through this door, “two SS men slammed shut the heavy iron-studded door which was fitted with a rubber seal and bolted it.”

In his book, Müller described how Max Graebner, the head of the Political Department at Auschwitz, a branch office of the Gestapo, which was located next door to the gas chamber building, stood on the flat roof of the building and addressed the victims who had to assemble outside in the yard in front of the door shown at the top of my blog post. Grebner would tell the Jews that they had been brought to Auschwitz to work, but first they had to remove their clothing and then enter the building to take a shower, after which they would be given hot soup.

Allegedly, the Jews entered the oven room, believing that it was a shower room. If you believe this, I can’t help you. You are too far gone to be educated about the truth.

 

 

 

Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein has died, at the age of 91

You can read a newspaper report on the death of Hedy Epstein at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/us/hedy-epstein-rights-activist-and-holocaust-survivor-dies-at-91.html?_r=0

A protest in Cairo in 2009. Hedy Epstein, center, spent much of her life working for a broad range of social justice movements. Credit Amr Nabil/Associated Press

It was only a year ago that I was blogging about Hedy Epstein: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/hedy-epstein-the-jewish-woman-who-was-arrested-in-st-louis-confronted-herman-goering-at-nuremberg/

The following quote is from the recent news story:

Begin quote

Ms. Epstein, a Holocaust survivor who spoke widely about the persecution of the Jews in Germany, and who spent most of her adult life working for a broad range of social justice movements, died on Thursday at her home in St. Louis. She was 91.

The cause was cancer, said Dianne Lee, a friend.

Ms. Epstein was born Hedwig Wachenheimer on Aug. 15, 1924, in Freiburg, Germany, and raised in nearby Kippenheim. Her father, Hugo, ran a dry-goods company founded by his grandfather. Her mother, the former Ella Eichel, was a homemaker.

After the Kristallnacht pogrom, Hedy was expelled from school. She returned home to see her house ransacked and her father being dragged away by the police. He spent four weeks in Dachau. After being released, he and his wife arranged for Hedy, their only child, to travel to England in 1939 on a Kindertransport train and ship.

“I was a terrible child,” Ms. Epstein told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2000. “I resisted going away and accused my parents of having found me on the doorstep, left by Gypsies, and now wanting to get rid of me. I recognized later that they were giving me life.”

She was an interview subject in the Academy Award-winning 2000 documentary “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport.”

[…]

Hedy was raised by foster parents in London and left school at 16 to work in a munitions plant. In 1945, she returned to Germany, where she was a translator and researcher with the Allied War Crimes Tribunal at the Nuremberg “Doctors Trial.”

She immigrated to the United States in 1948 and began working for the New York Association for New Americans, an agency that brought Holocaust survivors to the United States. Two years later, feeling restless, she moved to St. Paul, a city she picked at random, where she worked on behalf of refugees.

End quote

It is a mystery to me why the Nazis sent children to England to be saved. Didn’t they realize that these children would spend the rest of their lives demonizing the German people, and participating in war crimes trials against Germans. That’s the thanks they got for saving a few Jewish children, by sending them to England.

The following quote is from the end of the news article:

Begin quote

Her 1999 memoir, written in German and published in Germany, was titled “Erinnern Ist Nicht Genug” (“Remembering Is Not Enough”).

Ms. Epstein often addressed audiences at schools and community events about the Holocaust. Her talks concluded with an admonition: “Remember the past, don’t hate, don’t be a bystander.”

End quote

Sorry, but I have no respect for Hedy Epstein, who spent her whole adult life encouraging people to hate the German people.

The door into the Auschwitz main camp gas chamber

My photo of the wooden door into the alleged  gas chamber in the Auschwitz main camp

My photo of the door to the outside in the alleged Auschwitz main camp gas chamber

Notice the peephole in the door. The peephole was for the German SS men at Auschwitz to look outside to see if it was all clear and safe to come out of the “gas chamber” which was originally a bomb shelter for the SS men in the main Auschwitz camp.

This morning, I read a news article, which I don’t understand at all: http://www.dezeen.com/2016/05/27/evidence-room-holocaust-denial-auschwitz-killing-facility-robert-jan-van-pelt-venice-architecture-biennale/

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

 Begin quote

Venice Architecture Biennale 2016: a team of architects and academics has created a room of architectural evidence from Auschwitz that shows how the Nazi concentration camp was purposefully designed as a killing facility (+ slideshow).

End quote

After my first visit to Aushwitz in 1998, I wrote about the main camp on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Auschwitz1/Auschwitz01.html

I wrote about the buildings in the main camp on this page of my website: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Auschwitz1/Auschwitz12.html

How could I have been so wrong about Auschwitz? I tried my best, but my best wasn’t good enough.

The following quote is also from the news article:

Begin quote

“This is evidence of the worst crime ever committed by an architect, [Hitler]” explained University of Waterloo professor Robert Jan van Pelt, who curated the exhibition with fellow professors Donald McKay and Anne Bordeleau, and arts producer Sascha Hastings.

“This is the worst thing an architect has ever done – it is the baseline of evil in architecture,” he told Dezeen.

The photo above is included in the article.  I seriously question whether this photo shows the peephole in the alleged Auschwitz gas chamber.  I don’t recall that the peephole in the door looked like this.

Outside door into the alleged Auschwitz homicidal gas chamber

When I visited Auschwitz for the first time in 1998, my tour guide and I entered through the door shown in the photo above. Now this door is closed and locked; tourists now enter the gas chamber through the oven room where the bodies were burned.

Maybe one of my readers would like to photoshop the photo above to show the peephole in this door. I am too old, and too lazy, to do this myself.  Besides that, I don’t think that the photo of the door, that is shown in the news article, was taken at the alleged Auschwitz gas chamber.

Tourists now enter through this door into the oven room

The current story of the Auschwitz gas chamber is that the victims stood outside the oven room door, which is shown in the photo above, and the Commandant of the camp told them that they were going inside to take a shower, after which they would be served hot soup. They were told to take their hand luggage inside with them. Allegedly, some of the victims took a block of cheese out of their luggage and ate it while they were waiting for the poison gas to kill them.

 

 

The walls of the Auschwitz gas chamber before the scratches were made

One of the readers of my blog asked me if I have any photos of the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp BEFORE the scratches were allegedly made on the wall by the dying prisoners.

Today, tourists are told that the prisoners clawed the walls with their fingernails, trying to get out of the gas chamber before they were poisoned to death with Zyklon-B gas pellets.

Allegedly, the Auschwitz gas chamber was packed, to capacity, with adult prisoners, and then babies were thrown into the gas chamber, on top of the adults. Somehow the adults were able to reach up, over the bodies of the babies, and make scratch marks with four of their fingers, and their fingers just happened to be all the same length.

My first visit to Auschwitz was in September 1998. I also visited the camp again in 2005 and in 2007. My 1998 tour guide told me that I was not allowed to take photos inside the gas chamber, but I was so nervous that I just kept hitting the button on the flash gun that caused the camera to go off accidentally.  Sorry that I was so disrespectful to the Jews who were gassed there.

The earliest photo that I have, which shows the scratch marks, was sent to me by Simon Roberts on Jan 12, 2004. His photo is shown below.

Alleged fingernail scratches on gas chamber wall in Jan. 2004

In the photo above, it appears that previous fingernail scratches have been covered over with white paint.

My 2005 photo of the Auschwitz gas chamber

Note that my 2005 photo, shown above, was taken from a spot near the back door into the gas chamber. Today’s tourists enter the gas chamber through the open doorway that is on the left side of the photo above. In 1998, I was told that the victims entered through the back door, which is behind the camera in my photo above. Now tourists are told that the victims entered the gas chamber after going through the oven room where the bodies were being burned.

My 2005 photo of the Auschwitz gas chamber shows the entrance door used by the SS men when this was a bomb shelter

My 1998 photo shows the Auschwitz gas chamber with very little white paint covering scratch marks made by tourists

My 1998 photo of Auschwitz gas chamber with white spots on the wall but no visible nail marks

My 1998 photo of the back door into the Auschwitz gas chamber

When I visited the Auschwitz camp in 1998, I was told by my tour guide that the victims entered the gas chamber through the back door, which is shown in my photo above.  Now tourists are told that the victims entered the gas chamber through the oven room where bodies were being burned.

My 1998 photo of the gas chamber shows white spots on the left hand side

In my photo above, notice the white paint covering the wall on the left hand side. The fingernail marks that tourists see today are located just above the last white mark near the door into the gas chamber which is shown in the background of the photo above. My photos show that the nail marks were made AFTER 1998 when I took these photos.

Today’s students who visit Auschwitz are so brain-washed that they actually believe that the gassing victims were ushered into the gas chamber through the oven room.

When I first saw the alleged Auschwitz gas chamber in 1998, I knew that something was wrong because there was no high smoke stack on the building, like the one that I had seen on the gas chamber in Jefferson City, MO when I was a child.

As you may recall Fred Leuchter got into big trouble when he pointed out that the alleged Auschwitz gas chambers had no high smoke stack.

 

 

Hannah Arendt is back in the news

You can read the latest about Hannah Arendt at http://wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/looking-back-moving-forward/pariah-can-hannah-arendt-help-us-rethink-our-global-refugee-crisis/

I previously blogged several times about Hannah Arendt: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/hannah-arendt/

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

Hannah Arendt was on her way to lunch with her mother Martha when a Berlin policeman arrested her and took her to the presidium at Alexanderplatz. It was 1933. Hitler had been in power for several months; Hermann Göring’s agents were rounding up suspicious activists. The young researcher for the German Zionist Organization spent eight days in jail while gendarmes scoured her apartment, examined her philosophical notes, and pored over her mysterious codes — a selection of Greek quotes. Upon her release, she packed her bags. Since the torching of the Reichstag in February, life had become hell for socialists, communists, and Jews. Like others before her, and more after, Arendt fled to Paris. She would spend the next 18 years as a refugee, a stateless person, a pariah.

LESVOS, GREECE – SEPTEMBER 29, 2015: Refugees arriving in Greece by boat from Turkey. Volunteer lifeguards swam out to assist and guide the boat in when the motor failed.Malcolm Chapman / Shutterstock.com

There are 60 million refugees in the world, the highest sum of pariahs since 1945. The figure tripled in the past year alone. Half of the world’s unwanted are under age 18. Most will grow up in a camp. Many will die escaping their places of origin; more than 3,000 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean in 2015. The lucky ones will make new homes. But how welcome they will feel can be gauged by the decibel level of nativists like Donald Trump, a chorus of Republican governors and candidates, Marine Le Pen in France, and the surging Danish People’s Party. So long as these negative voices have the megaphone, can the resettled ever feel at home?

End quote

I personally don’t believe that America should take in refugees.

 

 

two sisters in the gas chamber waiting to die…

Nail marks on Auschwitz gas chamber wall made by Jews trying to claw their way out

I love gas chamber stories, especially stories about Jewish girls who were saved when they were unexpectedly pulled out of a gas chamber by a German soldier.

The most famous story of a Jewish girl being pulled out of a gas chamber is the story of Irene Zisblatt, who was pulled out of a gas chamber by a Jewish Sonderkommando.

I wrote about Irene on this blog post: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/stuck-in-the-door-of-the-gas-chamber-how-irene-zisblatt-survived-auschwitz-birkenau/

My 2005 photo of gas chamber in Auschwitz camp

As far as I know, there were no Jewish men who were pulled out of a gas chamber, but I could be wrong.  My memory is not what it used to be.

Why would a German soldier go into a gas chamber and pull out a Jewish girl who was on the verge of death?  To rape her, of course.  German men are not noted for being rapists. Rape was punishable with a death sentence in Nazi Germany, but maybe rape of a Jewish woman was allowed by the Nazis.

I am commenting today on a news article which you can read in full at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-pauline-lowry/a-chat-with-rufi-thorpe-a_b_10091600.html

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

In [the novel] Dear Fang, Lucas’ grandmother Sylvia barely survived life in a concentration camp during WWII. She and her sister were in the gas chamber waiting to die, and an officer pulled Sylvia out, raped her and then set her free. Her sister was not so lucky. And every year Sylvia celebrated her “rape birthday” with a birthday cake. Lucas would always remember “the blue flowers of lard frosting she would lick off the knife.” What did this rape birthday mean to you? What did you want to get across in writing about it?

Well, on the one hand, I stole it. The bones of it were a story told to me by a dear friend and mentor who had a family member who had experienced that. So there was a kind of radiant authenticity to me, right away—this eccentricity of the cake, of the combination of freedom and sexual violence.

But I suppose it was also because my mother was sexually abused as a child and one of my very close friends was violently raped. I watched them struggle over years, decades, with it, and what I saw in their journeys seemed so far from how sexual violence and rape were generally talked about. The world saw rape as scandalous, almost licentious, but to me it seemed very threadbare and common.

End quote

What else is new? The Jews will continue lying until there are no more Jews in this world.

 

 

Pregnant women and their babies survived because the Nazis ran out of gas the day before

Stop laughing, all you disbelieving deniers! There were actually Jewish women and their babies who survived the Nazi plan to kill all the Jews in gas chambers.

This news article tells the story:

Wendy Holden is on the left; the woman on the right is Hannah Berger Moran, who was born in a Nazi death camp and survived.

Begin quote from news article:

“But some wonderful things happened and again luck played a part,” [Wendy] Holden said. “They [the pregnant women] arrived on April 29, 1945. The gas in Mauthausen-Gusen [had] ran out April 28. Hitler killed himself on April 30.

End quote

What a difference a day makes!

But I am getting ahead of the story. The news article begins with this quote:

Begin quote

Technology plays an important role in society, but it also poses a danger with its ability to disseminate hateful messages and propaganda to people all over the world, according to Sara J. Bloomfield, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

“Hitler once said, ‘Propaganda is truly a terrible weapon in the hands of an expert,’ and the unprecedented challenge that we now face, and that our grandchildren and their children will face, is that with the internet, anyone’s an expert,” said Bloomfield during the museum’s annual “What You Do Matters” luncheon May 19. About 425 people attended the event at Executive Caterers at Landerhaven in Mayfield Heights.

The event featured Wendy Holden, author of “Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance and Hope,” and Hana Berger Moran, a child Holocaust survivor and the daughter of one of the mothers written about in Holden’s book.

The book tells the story of how three young mothers survived through various concentration and labor camps and the harrowing way they gave birth and kept their newborn babies safe from the Nazis.

Holden said she developed the idea for the book after stumbling across an obituary a few years ago of a woman who had survived Auschwitz when she was a baby.

“It occurred to me that I had never before read anything about babies who had survived the Holocaust, and I thought that’s probably because there weren’t any,” Holden said.

End quote from news article

One would think that the Nazis would have made sure that the supply of Zyklon-B gas pellets did not run out.  Especially near the end, when they were desperate to kill all the Jews before they lost the war.

You can read all about the Mauthausen camp on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Mauthausen/KZMauthausen/History/introduction.html

You can read all about the Mauthausen gas chamber on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Mauthausen/Gas%20Chamber/index.html

Caution: Don’t deny that there was a gas chamber at Mauthausen unless you want to risk going to prison in the 19 countries that now have Holocaust denial laws.  For the time being, you are relatively safe in America, but don’t push your luck.