A survivor of Majdanek tells about the 18,000 Jews who were killed in one hour there

Just behind the Mausoleum pictured in the photo below, and a little to the right, is a small stone which commemorates the deaths of around 18,000 Jews who died on that spot on November 3, 1943, an event that was code-named by the Nazis with the cynical word “Erntefest” which means Harvest Festival in English.

The camp inmates called this day “bloody Wednesday.” This was the largest mass execution carried out at any of the concentration camps in the history of the Holocaust. The victims were the last remnants of the Jewish population in the Lublin district.

Can you imagine 18,000 Jews being executed in just one hour?  Why would the Nazis do something like this? These innocent Jews had never done anyone any harm — or had they?

The ashes of the 18,000 Jews, who were killed in one hour, are under this dome. Photo credit: Simon Robertson

The video below shows the trip taken by Holocaust survivor Cipora Hurwitz to the Majdanek camp where she was a prisoner.

The video above depicts the trip to Poland and the Majdanek death camp that Cipora Hurwitz helped to lead.

The trip became the basis of a new book authored by Cipora. The book is entitled Forbidden Strawberries.

http://www.multieducator.net/Books/Fo….

In the video, Cipora is shown as she takes a group of high school students from Israel and the US on a visit to the Majdanek death camp in Poland.

In his best-selling book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen wrote that the number of Jews executed at Majdanek that day was 16,500 and that there were an additional 14,000 Jews executed at Poniatowa.

Jews marching to their death on Bloody Wednesday

But why were these innocent Jews killed by those bad Nazis? Was there any justification for this? Does the term “illegal combatant” mean anything to you?

According to a book entitled The forgotten Holocaust: the Poles under German Occupation, written by Richard Lucas, these Polish resistance fighters were responsible for 6,930 damaged train engines, 732 derailed trains, 979 destroyed train cars, 38 bridges blown up, 68 aircraft destroyed, 15 factories burned down, 4,623 military vehicles destroyed, 25,125 acts of sabotage and 5,733 attacks on German troops.

In preparation for the mass execution at Majdanek, ditches were dug for the bodies behind the spot where the Mausoleum now stands, 50 meters away from the crematorium building. It took 300 prisoners, working two shifts day and night to dig three big ditches over 2 meters deep and 100 meters long, running in a zigzag line. These open ditches are still visible, although they look like they have been filled in somewhat.

Around 100 SS men were brought in from Auschwitz and other locations to do the shooting, according to the Majdanek guidebook. Very early on the morning of November 3, after roll call, all the Jews in Fields III and IV were ordered to form a column and march to the ditches.

The gravely ill Jews from the three typhus barracks in Field III were dragged out of their bunks and dumped onto trucks for transportation to the ditches. Loudspeakers mounted on trucks had been placed near the ditches, and by the camp gate near the street, to drown out the noise of the machine guns.

Simultaneously, a column of over 10,000 Jews were marched toward the gate of Field IV. The first prisoners reached the gate before the end of the column had left the city of Lublin. These victims were from the sub-camps of Majdanek and the work gangs employed outside the camp.

The Jewish political prisoners from the Gestapo prison in the Castle in Lublin were also marched to the camp. Around noon, the SS soldiers ordered the Jewish women out of their barracks in Field I, and again the sick were loaded onto trucks, while those able to walk were marched to the ditches.

The shooting started at around 6 or 7 o’clock in the morning, and lasted without a break until 5 p.m., with 100 victims at a time ordered to strip in a nearby barrack and then lie down in the ditches in groups of 10, where they were then machine-gunned to death.

Each new group had to lie down on top of the dead bodies from the previous group. The men were shot separately from the women.

The barbed wire fence was cut between Field V and the ditches, so that a column of armed policemen could form a passage, along which the victims were funneled into the ditches.

This operation was, by no means, done in secret. The shooting was done at the top of the low hill where the Mausoleum now stands and in full view of nearby residents who lived behind the area.

The loud dance music which went on for almost 12 hours that day ensured that the local residents knew that something unusual was going on, even if they couldn’t see it.

On the same day, there were other mass executions of Jews at the labor camps near the villages of Poniatowa and Trawniki.

According to a book entitled Poland, the Rough Guide, the liquidation of the Lublin Jews continued on November 4th and 5th. A total of 43,000 inhabitants of the Lublin ghetto were machine-gunned to death at Majdanek. The same book says that after the city was liberated by the Soviet Union, “Jewish partisan groups began using Lublin as their operational base.”

The bodies of the victims of the massacre at Majdanek were burned, near the ditches, on pyres formed from old truck chassis, and the ashes were thrown onto the compost pile behind the clothing warehouse barracks, which now hold the tourist exhibits. It is these ashes of the massacre victims which have now been given a place of honor in the Mausoleum.

 

the Manor house at Chelmno

One of the readers of my blog mentioned the Manor house at Chelmno in a comment.

The Chelmno Schlosslager had neither prisoner barracks nor factories; its sole purpose was to murder Jews and Roma who were not capable of working at forced labor for the Nazis. In 1939, there were around 385,000 Jews living in the Warthegau; those who could work were sent to the Lodz ghetto where they labored in textile factories which made uniforms for the German army.

On January 16, 1942, deportations from the Lodz ghetto began; records from the ghetto show that 54,990 people were deported before the final liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944. The Jewish leader of the Lodz ghetto, Chaim Rumkowski, compiled the lists of people to be deported, although he had no knowledge that they were being sent to their deaths at Chelmno.

The gassing of the Jews at Chelmno was carried out in two separate phases. In the first phase, between December 7, 1941 and April 1943, Jews from the surrounding area and the Lodz ghetto were brought to Chelmno and killed on the day after their arrival. Although the Nazis destroyed all records of the Chelmno camp, it is alleged that around 15,000 Jews and 5,000 Roma, who were deported from Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Czechoslovakia and Luxembourg, were brought to Chelmno to be killed in this remote spot.

Chelmno was allegedly a Nazi extermination camp. It was located in the small Polish village of Chelmno nad Neren (Chelmno on the river Ner), 60 kilometers northwest of Lodz, a major city in what is now western Poland.

Foundation of the Manor house at the Chelmno transit camp [Photo credit: Alan Collins]

Location of the Manor house at Chelmno transit camp [photo credit: Alan Collins]

The site of another building at Chelmno [photo Credit: Alan Collins]

Alan Collins, the photographer who visited the site of the camp, and took these photos, wrote the following with regard to the fate of the Jews at Chelmno:

Begin quote:

The [Jewish] victims were driven to the Castle Site during phase 1 which stared in December 1941, though the building is sometimes described as a Manor House. They were made to undress after being told they were going to be resettled in the east but required a shower before they left.

They were forced through the ground floor of the building and via a ramp into a specially constructed lorry which was waiting at the end of the building. The exhaust of the lorry could be directed into the rear of the vehicle.

The lorry was driven to the Forest Site in the Rzuchowski Forest, about 4km away and the victims disposed of. To add to the horror the Manor House was blown up by the SS on the 7th April 1943 with a group of victims inside the building. These people had arrived unexpectedly late and it was feared by the Germans that they had typhus so they were ordered to go to the first floor of the building which was blown up with them inside.

End quote from Alan Collins.

The victims of the Nazis at Chelmno also included Polish citizens and Soviet Prisoners of War. The POWs were taken directly to the Rzuchowski forest where they were shot.

The Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem has a list of 12 names of children from Lidice who were sent to Chelmno, although other sources claim that the number of orphans from Lidice was far higher. These were children whose parents had been killed when the Czech village of Lidice was completely destroyed in a reprisal action after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

The Chelmno camp, which was opened by the Germans some time in October or November 1941, was in the Warthegau, a district in the part of Poland that had been annexed into the Greater German Reich after the joint conquest of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.

Chelmno was called Kulmhof by the Germans and Lodz was known by the German name Litzmannstadt.

The Warthegau had been a part of the German state of Prussia between 1795 and 1871. After the German states united in 1871, the Warthegau was in Germany until after World War I, when it was given back to the Poles.

The Jews were brought on trains to the village of Kolo, 14 kilometers from Chelmno. Kolo was the closest stop on the main railroad line from Lodz to Poznan. At Kolo, the victims were transferred to another train which took them on a narrow gauge railroad line 6 kilometers to the village of Powiercie.

From Powiercie, the victims had to walk 1.5 kilometers through a forest to the village of Zawadka where they spent their last night locked inside a mill. They were then transported, by trucks, the next day to Chelmno.

You can see more photos, taken by Alan Collins, on this page of my website: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Poland/Chelmno/Tour01A.html

 

an oldie but goody – how to tell if you are having a stroke

A blog post that I wrote 5 years ago is now getting a lot of hits, and I don’t know why.

How to tell if you are having a stroke

One of the regular readers of my blog has been MIA for several weeks now. I suspect that he may have had a stroke, or maybe his doctors have warned him not to participate in blog discussions that might upset him to the point of causing him to have a stroke.

I had a mild stroke several years ago, but I have recovered completely.

How did the Holocaust gas chambers really work?

One of the readers of my blog asked this in a comment: “Lets just say for now that the Holocaust actually happened? How would you describe it?”

I assume that the real question is “How did the gas chambers work?”

I have been blogging for over six years now; in the year 2001, I wrote an explanation of how the gas chambers worked, according to two eye-witnesses who wrote books about it.

Eye-witness description of the procedure used in the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers

My 2005 photo of the gas chamber in Auschwitz

The Krema I gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp, shown in the photo above, is a reconstruction which was done by the Soviet Union in 1947.

The original gas chamber had been converted by the Germans into an air raid shelter in September 1944. A new entrance door, which can be seen in the background of the photo above, had been added.

In September 1944, the original gas chamber in the Auschwitz main camp had been divided into four small rooms. In the photo above, you can see the reconstructed opening into the oven room on the left hand side. This opening had been closed up when the gas chamber was converted into an air raid shelter. During the reconstruction, the opening into the oven room was moved a few feet.

My photo above was taken with flash; the room is actually very dimly lit and looks much darker.

This YouTube video shows what tourists see today, when they take a tour of the main Auschwitz camp:

how those mean ole Nazis discriminated against the innocent Jews who never did them any harm

Today, I am commenting on a news article which you can read in full at http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/the-tragic-fate-of-jewish-sporting-heroes-in-the-holocaust/

Helena Nordheim (fourth left), Anna Polak (second left) and Judikje Simons (third right) were Jewish members of the Dutch gymnastics team

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

Not for the first time in writing my book, Who Betrayed The Jews?, I found myself shocked by discovering the fate of more than 30 Jewish Olympic medallists and sportsmen who had won medals for their country, but were exterminated without a thought when the Nazi juggernaut ploughed on with The Final Solution.

End quote

In my humble opinion, it would not have been fair to the Jewish non athletes, if the Jewish athletes had been exempted from the Holocaust.

This website article tells the story: https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007695

Begin quote

At the annual party rally held in Nuremberg in 1935, the Nazis announced new laws which institutionalized many of the racial theories prevalent in Nazi ideology. The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of “German or related blood.” Ancillary ordinances to the laws disenfranchised Jews and deprived them of most political rights.

The Nuremberg Laws, as they became known, did not define a “Jew” as someone with particular religious beliefs. Instead, anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents was defined as a Jew, regardless of whether that individual identified himself or herself as a Jew or belonged to the Jewish religious community. Many Germans who had not practiced Judaism for years found themselves caught in the grip of Nazi terror. Even people with Jewish grandparents who had converted to Christianity were defined as Jews.

End quote

It seems that those mean ole Nazis were trying to keep their race pure and free from hereditary disease. Bad Nazis!

The following stories are about Olympic athletes who were Jewish:

Judikje ‘Jud’ Simons (1904–1943) was a third Jewish member of the 1928 Dutch women’s gymnastics team and Olympic gold medallist. After her Olympics career Simons married and, with her husband, ran an orphanage in Utrecht, housing and caring for more than 80 needy children. As the Nazis rounded up Dutch Jews and sent them to concentration camps, Jud and her husband refused to abandon the orphans who depended on them. The Nazis captured her and her family, all of whom were shipped to the Sobibor extermination camp and gassed on 3 March 1943.

====

Eddy Hamel (1902–1943) was born in New York to immigrant Dutch-Jewish parents, and returned to Holland as a child. He played for the ‘Men from the Meer’ from 1922 until 1930, appearing in 125 matches and scoring eight goals as a right winger. He was the first Jewish player to serve in Ajax’s squad, which has had only three more to this day. Local Fascist groups assisted in rounding up ‘undesirables’ after Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. Despite his American citizenship, Eddy was detained as a Jew in late 1942. He spent four months doing hard labour at Birkenau and was sent to the gas chambers on 30 April 1943 after a swollen mouth abscess was found during a Nazi inspection.

====

Attila Petschauer (1904–1943), another Hungarian, won silver in Amsterdam in 1928 and gold in Los Angeles in 1932. During a routine check in 1943 he realised he had left some of his ID papers at home and was soon deported to the Davidovka labour camp in Ukraine. One of the people responsible, Kalman Cseh, a Hungarian Army colonel, was a fellow member of the Hungarian delegation to the 1928 Games. Cseh referred to him as ‘the Jew’ and told his subordinates to give him a bad time. Another Olympian Karoly Karpate, a Hungarian wrestler, said that one day, when he was digging in temperatures below zero, the guards told Attila to take off his clothes and climb a tree and crow like a rooster. They sprayed him with cold water which froze and eventually he fell off the tree. They took him back to the barracks but he died a few hours later on 20 January 1943, aged 39.

====

Check here to find out if Holocaust denial is allowed in your country:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_Holocaust_denial_is_legal

 

 

 

the story of Reinhard Gehlen

One of the regular readers of my blog mentioned the name Reinhard Gehlen, who is shown in the photo above, in this comment:

Begin quote from comment

I did have that one ol boy that popped up with the results I got for Gehiem. This dudes name was Reinhard Gehlen. I don’t trust ol Reinhard. There’s something shady about him.”

End comment

Reinhard Gehlen has gotten a bad rap because he was a traitor; he left Germany before World War II was over and came to America where he joined the side of the enemy.

Here is the story on Reinhard Gehlen:

In 1943, the Allied powers had already started making plans for their occupation of Germany after the war, which by that time they anticipated winning.

There were major conferences at Teheran, Moscow and Yalta in 1943 and 1944 where resolutions were passed regarding the means necessary to secure the occupation.

On August 2, 1945, these resolutions were confirmed and the details were planned at the Potsdam Conference, held in a suburb of Berlin. By that time, Roosevelt was dead, and President Harry Truman was the one making the decisions at the Potsdam conference, along with Churchill and Stalin. For the first time, France was also included as the fourth victorious power.

According to the Potsdam Agreement, the officials of the Nazi party and its organizations, members of the Gestapo, and anyone who might endanger the goals of the occupation were to be interned in concentration camps. Not included were Nazis who might be of use to America, like General Reinhard von Gehlen, the chief of the Nazi spy organization, and Werner von Braun, the head of Germany’s V-2 rocket program.

The former Nazi concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen were to be converted into internment camps for German political prisoners, while thousands of Nazi scientists were to be taken to America and the Soviet Union.

General Reinhard von Gehlen was sneaked into the United States wearing an American uniform, even before the German surrender, and became part of the new American intelligence agency, called the CIA, after the war.

In the first half of 1945, approximately 6,000 German Army officers were released by the Western Allies, but were then arrested by the Soviets and held in Zone II at Sachsenhausen. Later the Zone II barracks were filled with German prisoners who had been sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal to 15 years of hard labor. Until 1950, a large number of German citizens were imprisoned by the Soviet Union and forced to perform slave labor in the gulags of Siberia.

End of story

Many years ago, I attended a lecture given by David Irving. At the beginning of his talk, Irving asked: “Who knows anything about  Reinhard Gehlen?” I held up my hand: “I do, I do.”

Irving was amazed at this. At that time, he had a reputation for thinking that all women were stupid.

He didn’t ask me how I knew the name Reinhard Gehlen, so I was not able to tell him that I had learned about Gehlen when I visited the memorial site at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where German prisoners were held after the end of World War II.

At the Sachsenhausen memorial site, I picked up a pamphlet which had the following information:
“The history of the Special Camp of the Soviet Secret Service (NKVD) in Germany must be viewed in light of the circumstances and events of World War II as well as the Soviet camp system (Gulag).”

The Information Leaflet explained the reason for the camp, from the Communist winner’s point of view.

Begin quote from pamphlet:

The Second World War which the German Reich began in 1939, and the genocide which the Nazis pursued against Jew, Sinti and Roma, and other groups who had been declared racially inferior by the regime, caused widespread misery and destruction of unknown proportions for that time throughout Europe until the end of the war in spring 1945.

In spite of the impossibility of winning the world war, which since 1943 had been pursued as a “total war,” up to the end the political and military leadership of the “Third Reich” was not prepared to capitulate.

The Allies had to militarily overpower National Socialist Germany costing them great losses. Moreover, the propaganda of the Nazi regime conveyed the impression that after Germany was occupied, the National Socialist would continue their struggle against the allied troops with the “Werewolf” organization.

End quote

According to the same Information Leaflet available at the Sachsenhausen Memorial Site, conditions in Special Camp No. 7 were deplorable, as the following quote explains.

Begin quote

Hunger and cold prevailed in the Special Camp. The inadequate hygienic and sanitary conditions and the insufficient nourishment led to disease and epidemics. Usually the barracks were overcrowded; the prisoners had to sleep on the bare wood frames until 1947, when the Soviet camp administration distributed blankets and bags of straw.

The only clothing which the prisoners had during their imprisonment was what they were wearing at the time of their arrest. The possession of personal items, particularly books and writing material was strictly forbidden.

Violations of these rigid camp regulations, which were for the most part unknown to most of the prisoners, resulted in harsh punishment imposed by the Soviet guard personnel or the German prisoners who held special functions.

Unlike the camps in the Soviet Union, the special camps were not work camps. The prisoners suffered much more from forced idleness. This is why the assignment to one of the few work commandos serving the camp’s self-sufficiency was regarded as a privilege.

The prisoners attempted to at least temporarily escape the monotony of their daily routine in the camps by participating in any activities. Most of them [activities] were prohibited, such as lectures, lessons, singing and improving the appearance of the barracks. Only after the first order for releases in 1948 were the conditions alleviated somewhat by the allowance of board games, sports, and occasionally newspapers and radio reports.

End quote

Several of the brick barracks in Zone II were open to visitors, when I toured the Sachsenhausen Memorial Site.  Inside were TV monitors where one could see videos of interviews with the survivors, who told about the horrendous conditions in the prison.

According to one survivor, the windows of the barracks were blocked out so that the prisoners were kept in almost total darkness. They had to sleep on bare boards with no mattresses and were furnished with only a block of wood for a pillow.

End of story

Why are visitors to Auschwitz not allowed to see Block 14?

Today, I am writing about the Russian exhibits at the Auschwitz main camp which are no longer open to tourists. You can read all about it at https://www.rt.com/news/controversy-remains-over-auschwitz-museum-exhibition/

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

As [the] dispute about the contents of the Russian exhibition at the Auschwitz Museum in Poland continues, the doors of the display remain closed. The nationalities of the victims of Nazi concentration camps are in question.

Block 14 of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Oswiecim, Poland was opened in 1961 as a Soviet tribute to the victims of the Nazi concentration camp. The exhibition has been closed for over three years now, and its doors remain closed as disagreement over the nationalities of the victims becomes an increasingly political issue.

It was in 1945 that Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and were the first to expose the truth of the Nazi death camp to the world. But today the museum operates without recognizing Russian efforts in the Second World War, and the role of the Soviet Army in the liberation of the camp is almost never spoken of. Tourists don’t know why the exhibition is closed.

The museum’s administration says the complex does not agree with the Russian interpretation of history that is portrayed in the display. Curators claim that the occupation of Poland, which occurred following the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, is not reflected in the Russian exhibit.

End quote

My photo of Block 15 at Auschwitz which is open to visitors

When I visited Auschwitz in 2005, and again in 2007, the visitors’ tour of the main Auschwitz camp began in Block 15, shown in my photo above. This building houses an exhibit entitled “Historical Introduction”.

The building is located at the corner of the first intersection of the camp streets after you pass the camp kitchen near the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate, which is behind the camera on the left in the photo above.

Organized groups begin their tour of the museum buildings at Block 15, and then move on to Blocks 4, 5, 6, and 7 which are in the last row of barracks buildings.

Blocks 4, 5, 6, and 7, at the former Auschwitz I concentration camp, have been converted from barracks into museum rooms with glass display cases. All of these exhibit buildings are located on the second cross street, to your right after you enter through the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate. At the end of this street is Block 11, the prison block which is also open to visitors.

In Block 5, there are displays devoted to the “Material Evidence of Crime.” One of the saddest sights at Auschwitz is the display of shoes in a huge glass case that takes up half a barracks room in Block 5.

The shoes seem to be deteriorating and are mostly the same dark gray color, except for a few women’s or children’s shoes that are made of red leather. The red shoes stand out like the red coat worn by the little girl in Schindler’s List, a black and white picture.

There is a large display case in Block 5, taking up half of a barracks room, which contains the suitcases brought by Jewish victims to the camp. The Jews were instructed to mark their suitcases for later identification; you can still see the names written on the leather cases in large letters in the photo below.

On some of the suitcases is the word Waisenkind, which means orphan; this is proof that there were children among the victims at Auschwitz.

Block 4 has exhibits entitled “Extermination.” Holocaust historians define the German noun Ausrottung to mean extermination. The word can also mean “get rid of.”

Among the exhibits in Block 4 is a model of one of the gas chambers at Birkenau, which was used to “exterminate” the Jews.

Photo Credit: Lukasz Trzcinskihttp://www.lukasztrzcinski.comIn Room 5, of Block 4, there is a huge glass display case, about the size of a walk-in closet, filled with hair cut from the heads of an estimated 140,000 victims. The hair, which is shown in the photo above, appears to be deteriorating badly, and most of it has turned the same shade of dark gray. This is a truly disgusting sight and one that a visitor won’t soon forget.

The exhibits in Block 6 are about the “Everyday Life of the Prisoner.” Included in the exhibits are some of the enamelware dishes brought to the camps by the victims, as well as display cases of eyeglasses, brushes and even a display of the lids from cold cream jars and flat cans of shoe shine wax.

There is a glass case with moth-eaten baby sweaters and another with Jewish prayer shawls which are old and worn, and have been extensively darned and patched.

One of the exhibits in Block 6 shows the blue and gray striped uniforms worn by the prisoners.

Another display in Block 6 shows a typical day’s ration of food: a chunk of coarse whole grain bread the size of four thick slices and a large, red enamel bowl of gray looking soup. This is real food which was put into a glass case where it is deteriorating like the other displays. The sickening effect of all this was overwhelming, when I saw it in 2005.

In Block 7 there are exhibits about the “Living and Sanitary Conditions” in the former concentration camp. In this building, there are three-tiered bunk beds like the ones that can be seen in the barracks at Birkenau.

Block 27 has special displays about the Jewish prisoners; these displays were put up after the fall of Communism when the plight of the Jews in the camps was given more importance at the Auschwitz museum.

The whole Auschwitz museum puts heavy emphasis on the resistance movement, and in keeping with this theme, there is a special section on the second floor which is devoted to the Jewish resistance to the Nazis, both inside the camp and on the outside. Jewish partisans fought with the Polish Home Army, known as the Armia Krajowa or Polish AK, and also organized resistance on their own.

In front of Block 27, shown in the photo above, is a small memorial stone to the Jews who were gassed; it is the only memorial specifically dedicated to the Jews in all of Auschwitz.

Most of the Jews were sent to Auschwitz II, otherwise known as Birkenau, which had enough barrack’s space to house between 90,000 to 200,000 prisoners at one time.

Auschwitz I was strictly a camp for prisoners who were able to work in the factories; the old, the young and the sick were sent to Birkenau.

Block 27 is located on the first street that intersects the main camp street, as you enter through the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate. Turn to your right on this street and go past the camp kitchen to Block 27.

Blocks 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, and 21 have exhibits devoted to the various nations that were victimized by the Nazis.

Block 13 has a Museum devoted to the Extermination of the European Roma, known to Americans as Gypsies. The photo above is a display in this Museum. When I visited this museum in September 2005, I was the only person there.

The exhibits in Block 16 are entitled “The Tragedy of Slovak Jews. Prisoners from the Czech Lands at Auschwitz.”

Block 17 has exhibits about the prisoners sent to Auschwitz from Yugoslavia and Austria. Elie Wiesel and his father allegedly stayed in the barracks in Block 17 for three weeks before being sent to work in the factories at Auschwitz III. All of the prisoners were kept in quarantine for a few weeks to make sure they were not suffering from any communicable diseases.

The title of the exhibit in Block 18 is “The Citizen Betrayed, to the Memory of the Hungarian Holocaust.” The Hungarian Jews were not deported until the Spring of 1944 after the country had been taken over by the German Army.

Block 20 is in honor of the “People Deported from France to Auschwitz from March 1942 to January 27, 1945.”

Block 21 is devoted to the “Persecution and deportation of Jews in the Netherlands, 1940 – 1945.” People from Italy, who were deported to Auschwitz, are also included in the exhibits in Block 21.

Oops, wrong use of photo in Holocaust article

Kenny Wodzanowski, group leader for World Youth Day pilgrims from the Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y., walks with his rosary alongside prisoners’ barracks during a July 25 visit to the Birkenau Nazi concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland. (CNS photo/Bob Roller) See WYD-AUSCHWITZ-PILGRIMS July 25, 2016.

The barracks shown in the photo above are not “prisoners’ barracks.” These barracks, located just inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, were the quarantine barracks, where prisoners were held for a few weeks until it was determined that they did not have any disease which would spread to the entire camp. The purpose of these barracks was to save lives.

Quarantine barracks at Birkenau

The photo above shows the wooden barrack buildings in BIIa, the Quarantine section, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. These are prefabricated horse barns, which were typically used in concentration camps, and also used for army barracks, because they were easy to put up and to take down.

In the background, you can see the vast forest of brick chimneys, which is all that is left of the barracks buildings on the north side of the Birkenau camp. The Quarantine section faces a busy public road that runs north and south past the Birkenau camp.

Quarantine barracks, as seem from the top of Birkenau gate tower

Tourists, who take a guided tour of Birkenau, are typically taken first to these barracks, which are just inside the camp as you enter. Of course, they are not told that the purpose of these barracks was to save lives.

The information, given on all the display boards, makes it clear that the Nazis did nothing humane: the prisoners were allegedly housed in the Quarantine camp in order to establish discipline, not to stop the spread of disease, according to the display board. The hair was allegedly cut from the heads of the incoming prisoners to humiliate them, not to control the lice which spreads typhus.

When I visited Birkenau in 2005 and again in 2007, practically every sign in the camp made a point of mentioning the gas chambers and emphasizing the fact that the Jews were sent immediately to the gas chamber, rather than being registered in the camp. There are no death records for the Jew who were not registered, so there is no way of knowing how many Jews were murdered.

During World War I, four million people had died from typhus in Poland, and fifty million world-wide had died from the Spanish flu. At Birkenau, there was a grave danger of an epidemic spreading to the SS guards in the camp, or even to the German soldiers fighting on the Eastern front. This was the reason for isolating new prisoners in the Quarantine barracks for a period of time.

On December 28, 1942 a directive was issued to all the Nazi concentration camps which included this statement: “The Reichsführer SS [Heinrich Himmler] has ordered that the death rate absolutely must be reduced.”

This order referred to the death rate from typhus and other diseases. Yet, according to today’s Holohoaxers, the prisoners who were saved from disease were then allegedly gassed — in underground chambers that looked like crematories for dead bodies.

My photo of the quarantine barracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp

Is Donald Trump the new Hitler?

According to a news article, which you can read in full here, the answer to the question in the title of my blog post today is “Yes, Donald Trump is the new Hitler.”

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote:

Likening any modern politician to Hitler is a dodgy errand. And while people have been making the comparison this year, it’s usually unfair and inapt. Hitler was ultimate evil. Trump is no mass murderer; Trump is no Nazi; Trump has launched no wars.

But to any serious student of Hitler’s frightening and unforeseen rise to power in Germany, the recurring echoes in Trump’s speeches, interviews and his underlying thinking have become too blatant to overlook.

No resemblance has been stronger than Trump’s claim that he “alone” could rescue America from its misery. Hitler famously conjured the model of “the genius, the great man” who alone held the key to a country’s destiny. Calling democracy “a joke,” Hitler fiercely disdained what he called “weak majorities.” Progress and civilization could be achieved only through “the genius and energy of a great personality,” wrote Hitler in “Mein Kampf,” his racist political manifesto. Among the great personalities he included Frederick the Great of Prussia, Napoleon Bonaparte, Otto von Bismarck and, by implication, himself.

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Most people would think that it is a great insult to compare anyone to Hitler. But what was Hitler really like?

When construction started on the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the summer of 1936, Nazi Germany was the envy of the Western world. From the depths of the Great Depression in 1932, Hitler had achieved an “economic miracle” in Germany in less than three years.

In 1936, there was, as yet, no sign of Nazi aggression, nor any attempt at world domination by Germany. Gertrude Stein, the famous Jewish writer, who was a mentor to Ernest Hemingway, even suggested in 1937 that Hitler should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Because of the Nazi program of nationalism, the German people had regained their self respect after the humiliating Treaty of Versailles, which Germany was forced to sign at the end of World War I. They now had great pride in their ethnicity and their country. No people in the world were more patriotic than the Germans in 1936 and no other world leader had the total dedication to his country that Adolph Hitler had.

The ordinary Germans were satisfied with their lives and had no reason to fear the concentration camps, nor the Gestapo. Hitler was a hero to the 127 million ethnic Germans throughout Europe, whom he wanted to unite into the Greater German Empire, a dream that had been discussed in his native Austria for over 50 years. In less than four years, this dream would be accomplished when Austria, parts of Poland that had formerly been German territory, Luxembourg, the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, and the Sudetenland were combined with Germany to form the Greater German Reich.

In 1936, Hitler was more loved and admired than all the other world leaders put together. He was also the only world leader who was actively helping the Zionists with their plan to reclaim Palestine as their country.

While America and the rest of Europe were still in the depths of the depression caused by the stock market crash in October 1929, Germany had stabilized its economy and had virtually eliminated unemployment.

Unlike the other countries in Europe in 1936, Nazi Germany was doing very  well, thanks in part to American investment capital. Many American businessmen, led by auto maker Henry Ford, supported Hitler and his Fascist form of government. Other prominent Americans who supported Hitler included Joseph P. Kennedy (the father of President John F. Kennedy), and Prescott Bush (the grandfather of President George W. Bush) and Charles Lindbergh.

Meanwhile, the American government was drifting to the liberal left; Communist refugees like playwright Bertold Brecht and Jewish refugees like Albert Einstein were flocking to America and their influence was strong in American politics. In the 1936 presidential election in America, Al Smith, who had run as the Democratic candidate in 1928 against Herbert Hoover, accused fellow Democrat President Roosevelt of being a Communist.

Hitler had thumbed his nose at the Versailles Treaty by stopping the payment of reparations to France and Great Britain, and a massive program of industrialization had restored Germany to full employment, compared to the 20% unemployment in America in 1936. Roosevelt had copied many of the social welfare programs in Germany, including Social Security, but America was still struggling to recover from the depression.

The workers in Nazi Germany enjoyed unprecedented social benefits such as paid vacations under the Strength Through Joy program (Kraft durch Freude). Factory workers listened to classical music as they worked, and took showers before going home. In order to demonstrate their importance to the country, workers were allowed to march in Nazi parades, carrying shovels on their shoulders just like the soldiers who marched with their rifles.

Everything in Nazi Germany was clean and orderly; there were no slums; the trains ran on time. By 1938, the crime rate was at an all-time low because repeat offenders were being sent to a concentration camp after they had completed their second sentence. Anyone who did not have a permanent address and some visible means of support was hauled off to Dachau and put to work.

The political parties of the opposition (Communists and Social Democrats) had been banned in Germany; political dissidents were being locked up; there was no more bomb throwing or revolutionary fighting in the streets. There were no more crippling general strikes because the trade unions had been banned to prevent the Communists from organizing the workers.

A healthy lifestyle was encouraged by the Nazis and group calisthenics for young people were compulsory. Family values were the order of the day: abortion was banned; homosexuals and prostitutes were imprisoned; women were encouraged to be homemakers, and mothers with four or more children would shortly be awarded military style medals for serving their country.

In Germany, it was safe to walk the city streets at night; no bars were needed on the windows of German homes to keep the criminal element out; all the social misfits were being sent away to the concentration camps; bums and vagrants were no longer allowed to beg on the streets.

Money that had formerly been spent to care for institutionalized persons with mental and physical disabilities was now being used for other purposes as the mentally ill and the severely disabled were being put to death at Hartheim.

The Nazis were attempting to achieve a perfect world like Disneyland’s Main Street, which ends at a replica of Germany’s Neuschwanstein Castle. Germany’s advanced technology was the Tomorrowland of its day.

In America today, the backlash from the Nazi ideology of racialism and nationalism has become the impetus for the creation of today’s Politically Correct world of diversity and tolerance, which is the exact opposite of what it was like in Nazi Germany.

Unfortunately, the end result of Hitler’s policies was the Holocaust, for which he can never be forgiven.

 

Why have so many Holocaust survivors lived to an advanced age?

Holocaust survivors return to visit Auschwitz to mark this year’s 70 years of liberation. (left to right) Robert Singer, CEO of the World Jewish Congress; Natan Grossman (Germany); Samuel Beller (US); Florence Sprung (US); Manny Buchman (US); Mascha Schainberg (South Africa); Marcel Tuchman (US); Rose Schindler (US); Jonny Pekats (US); Henry Korman (Germany); Ronald Lauder; Mordechai Ronen (Canada); Joseph Madrowitz (US); Edgar Wildfeuer (Argentina). (Photo: Shahar Azran)

Note that the Holocaust survivors, shown in the photo above, appear to be in fairly good condition, even after their ordeal in a Nazi “extermination camp.”

The photo above was taken in the Auschwitz main camp; these survivors had been prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, not the main camp.

I think that the secret to their survival is the turnips that they ate while they were prisoners at Birkenau. I have lived to the age of 83 and one of my favorite foods is turnips. I also eat a lot of potatoes, which is another food that the prisoners ate. My favorite food, which I eat almost every day, is potato salad. I eat very little meat, just as the prisoners ate almost no meat.

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

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More than 100 Auschwitz survivors from at least 19 countries arrived in Poland on Monday as part of the World Jewish Congress’ delegation to participate in the upcoming ceremony and events. From the United States, 21 American survivors of Auschwitz will participate in the January 27 observance of the 70^th anniversary of the camp’s liberation for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Given the age and conditions of the survivors and the heavy emotional experience, the WJC also arranged a special medical team of 12 doctors, psychologists and nurses who will accompany the survivors throughout the visit.

image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/useful_banner_manager_banners/46-Subscribe-Generic-600WIDE.jpg

“I deeply admire the courage of these survivors,” said Ron Lauder, WJC President, who joined the survivors today at Auschwitz. “For some of them, this was the first time they returned to the place of their nightmares. Each survivor is a living testament to the triumph of good over evil, of life over death, and they are my heroes.”

Lauder has been involved in the restoration and preservation of Auschwitz-Birkenau for more than 20 years and has helped to raise $40 million from 19 countries to ensure that the camp forever be preserved for future generations.

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Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/28380/holocaust-survivors-return-to-auschwitz-to-mark-70-years-of-liberation-jewish-world/#7HdIsSuB6l359I71.99

These survivors were not prisoners in the main camp, where the “Arbeit macht Frei” sign is over the gate, as shown in the photo above.  They were prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, which is now in ruins.

The following quote is also from the news article:

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During the Holocaust, Auschwitz was the largest site of extermination of Jews in Europe since 1942. The Nazi Germans killed at least 1.1 million people there, most of whom were Jewish but also Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war and prisoners of other ethnicities.

On January 27, 1945, the death camp was liberated by Soviet troops.

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Note that the news article mentions the number of 1.1 million, which is the current number of people, claimed to have been killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, down from the original claim of 4 million, although the 6 million number never changes.  “Into the valley of death rode the six million.”

My photo of the ruins of Krema III gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau