New TV show about Hitler, the opportunist…(updated)

I have been watching a TV show on the American Heroes channel. The first episode was called “Hitler, the opportunist”.

At first, I thought that this show must be a re-run from years ago.  I recognized all the footage. But when I looked more closely, I recognized the name Thomas Weber. He appears to be making the controversial claim that he has “discovered” that  Hitler was actually promoted to the rank of Private First Class. Weber is often quoted, in sensational media articles which trash Hitler’s service record in World War One, at least sometimes a little out of context.

When I watched the television program, the first time, I thought the show made it sound like someone had gone back and looked up Hitler’s military records, and discovered that his rank was actually not Corporal or Lance Corporal but rather Private First Class (PFC).

There was no rank with the name Private First Class in the German Imperial Army during World War One.

Many sources maintain that Hitler was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. There was no rank of Lance Corporal in the German Imperial Army either.

The truth is that the one promotion that Hitler received during the war was to the rank of Gefreiter.

http://www.worldwar1.com/sfgrank.htm

The website, cited above, has an image of a Bavarian Gefreiter rank insignia near the bottom of the page, which I have copied.  Letter B in the photo is the correct Bavarian badge of rank insignia that Hitler would have worn.

On the same page, the rank of Gefreiter can be seen in the NCO table, which translates the rank into English as Lance corporal. This is a rank in the British Army which roughly corresponds to Gefrieter in the German Imperial Army.

Note that a Lance Corporal in the British Army was, and still is,  an NCO.  A Gefrieter in the German Imperial army was the lowest rank of NCO, at least by some accounts. Again the table in the web site cited above lists Gefrieter as an NCO

The American Army currently has no rank of Lance Corporal; however, the American Marine Corp does have this rank.

A Lance Corporal in the American Marine Corp is NOT an NCO.  In the modern Bundeswehr there are many classes of Gefrieter.  The lowest class is closer to a buck private, and also not an NCO.

German ranks in World War One did not correspond with ranks in today’s German Army (Bundeswehr).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gefreiter

The following quote is from the Wikipedia page in the above link:

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“Throughout the periods of the Royal Prussian Army, Imperial Army of the German Empire, Reichswehr and the German Wehrmacht, the rank of Gefreiter was considered in English the equivalent to a British Army Lance Corporal rank.

End quote

I will refrain from commenting on Weber’s book until I have read it. In the comment section of this blog post, Weber said that he agrees with me that Hitler was a Gefreiter, and notes that there is some difficulty in translating this word into English.

The TV show does not make Weber’s position clear.  Before I ordered the book, I went in and read the 31 reviews on Amazon.  The majority of the people who read Weber’s book either loved it or hated it.  It got a lot of five star ratings, and a lot of one star ratings.  While the people, who gave it a one star rating, criticized Weber’s methodology in reaching the conclusions that he reached, even his most virulent detractors  admitted that the book was well researched.

Again, I will reserve further comment on Weber’s book until after I read it.
 

Holocaust theme used in skating performance

Holocaust outfit worn by a skater

You can read about the skater, who wore a Holocaust outfit for her skating routine, in this news article: http://www.rferl.org/a/kremlin-spokesmans-wife-in-row-over-holocaust-skating-performance/28142577.html

Is nothing sacred anymore?  These people should be arrested for trivializing the Holocaust, which is a crime in 20 countries now.

The Jew who was sent to a labor camp called Theresienstadt

Was Theresienstadt really a labor camp?

According to this news article, it was.

Strictly’s Judge Rinder opens up about his Jewish grandfather’s horrifying experience during the Holocaust

The caption of this photo says “Moishe [a Jewish prisoner] was sent to a series of labour camps, including Theresienstadt in what was then Czechoslovakia”

Excuse me! I don’t think that Theresienstadt was classified as a “labor camp.” The photo above appears to have been taken in “the small camp” which was a prison at Theresienstadt.

I have a similar photo on my website, which you can see below:

My photo of the prison camp at Theresienstadt

My photo above seems to show the same prison camp that is shown in the photo in the news article.

I have written at length about Theresienstadt on my web site. I have a whole section devoted to Theresienstadt, which you can read at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/CzechRepublic/Theresienstadt/TheresienstadtGhetto/History/index.html

Start by reading my web page about the history of Theresienstadt at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/CzechRepublic/Theresienstadt/TheresienstadtGhetto/History/GhettoHistory.html

The Hour of the Avenger — the story of the liberation of Dachau

Body of German guard at Dachau unlawfully killed by American soldiers

The photo above shows a German guard at Dachau who was unlawfully killed, and his body mutilated, by American soldiers after the Dachau camp was voluntarily surrendered under a flag of truce.

Bodies of German guards killed at Dachau after the camp was surrendered

A reader of my blog recently made the following comment:

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Probably the best book on the liberation of Dachau is “Hour of the avenger” [written by] Howard Buechner, where the author witnessed the unlawful execution of German guards and medical staff.

End quote

I wrote about “The Hour of the Avenger” on this previous blog post: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/91-year-old-wwii-veteran-breaks-his-silence-about-the-dachau-massacre/

My blog post, cited above, starts with this quote:

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Most news articles, about the American soldiers who liberated the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, mention that these veterans have never talked to their families about the horror of Dachau.  Now one of the Dachau liberators, Don Ritzenthaler, has broken his silence and has told his grandson about what really happened at Dachau when the camp was liberated [by American soldiers].

End quote

I wrote about the surrender of the Dachau camp to American soldiers on this page of my website: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/Surrender.html

 

Voices of Terezin — rhymes with gasoline

Gate into the Theresienstadt [Terezin] ghetto where Jews were held

You can read about Terezin [Theresienstadt] in this recent news article: http://nhpr.org/post/112116-voices-terezin-vegan-schism-nfl-ratings

Begin quote from the news article:

Today, voices of Terezin, [Theresienstadt] the Nazi concentration camp [are] used to divert attention from the final solution. We’ll hear about how prisoners held under brutal conditions created art and music amid the horrors of the holocaust.

Plus, what happens when a protest movement professing all-or-nothing absolutism splits in two? We’ll find out how a splinter group of vegan activists toned down their goals and built a powerful machine for change.

End quote

The following information about Theresienstadt [Terezin] is from my scrapbookpages.com website:

The word “ghetto” derives from the name of an area of the city of Venice where the city’s foundries were located. In the Venetian dialect, a foundry was known as a “geto” which meant a workshop or a factory. The word “geto” was derived from the verb “gettare” which means “to cast” as in to cast iron in a foundry.

After the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497, many of them settled in Venice. In 1516, a city decree forced the Jews of Venice to live on a small island with only two access points which were sealed off at sunset. This island had previously been the area of the “gheto nuovo” or new workshops.

However, even before the word ghetto came into use, the Jews, particularly in Poland, were confined to walled sections of the city where they lived. In 1492, the Jews of Krakow in Poland were put into a walled-off section after they were accused of setting fires in the city.

There were no walled Jewish ghettos in the Old Reich, as Germany proper was called, during Hitler’s regime. Hitler sent the German Jews to the Lodz ghetto, located in what had formerly been Poland or to Theresienstadt, located in what was formerly the country of Czechoslovakia.

After the Nazis invaded Poland and then occupied the country, they initially put the Polish Jews into ghettos, using the excuse that had been used for centuries, that the Jews were responsible for spreading disease. Later, these ghettos became a convenient way to concentrate the Jews in one location for eventual transport to the concentration camps for extermination in Hitler’s “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

On October 10, 1941, the Germans initially decided to make Theresienstadt into a ghetto for selected Jews in the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and in the Greater German Reich, which included Austria and part of western Poland.

The Jews, who were to be sent to Theresienstadt, included those over 60 years old, World War I veterans, prominent people such as artists or musicians, very important persons, the blind, the deaf, and the inmates of Jewish mental hospitals and the Jewish orphanages.

Read more on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/CzechRepublic/Theresienstadt/TheresienstadtGhetto/History/GhettoHistory.html

 

 

 

Holocaust survivor Irving Roth still out on the lecture circuit at the age of 87

Irving Roth

In the photo above, notice the faint tattoo on the arm that has a Rolex watch.

The following quote is from this news article: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/holocaust-survivor-irving-roth-to-tell-his-story-in-helena/article_f05dd6c0-f98f-531f-9939-cb0eb151af16.html

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By July and August 1941, the Nazis [had] rounded up Jewish men, women and children in Poland and Western Russia, he [Roth] said.

Many [Jews] were ordered into ditches and shot. [Roth said]

“This is too costly,” Roth recounted the Nazis’ discussions. “Every Jew takes five bullets to kill.” [the Nazis said]

That’s when some Germans came up with a more efficient method of murder — the death camps. Running gas chambers and crematoriums around the clock, they [some Germans] killed 6 millions Jews.

“The next chapter is winding up in a cattle car,” he said, and being shipped to Auschwitz and later Buchenwald.

End quote

Defending my blog posts about Schindler’s list

Amon Goeth standing on the patio in the rear of his house

Over the years, I have written several blog posts about the movie entitled Schindler’s List.  Before that, I wrote about Schindler’s List on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Poland/Kazimierz/Kazimierz01C.html

Now the subject of Schindler’s List has come up in a recent comment on my blog, written by a newb who knows nothing.

To understand the movie Schinder’s List, start by reading this blog post which I wrote five years ago in 2011: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/schindlers-list-the-movie-is-fiction-fiction-fiction-part-2/

Then move on to a blog post, which I wrote in 2010: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/did-oskar-schindler-save-1200-jews-from-certain-death/

I am now 83 years old, and literally on my death bed. I don’t want to spend the last years of my life arguing about whether, or not, Amon Goeth shot Jews from his second-floor balcony or from a spot on the ground in the rear of his house.

In 1998, I made a trip to Poland, accompanied by a tour guide, who took me to see the house where Amon Goeth was living when he allegedly shot prisoners from his balcony. The balcony, and the patio, are both at the rear of the house. Did Amon Goeth have a special rifle that could shoot over the house and hit prisoners who were working in the camp, a mile away?  I don’t think so.

Rudolf Kasztner is back in the news

Rudolf Kastzner allegedly saved thousands of Jews

The following quote, about Rudolf Kastzner, is from a news article, which you can read in full at http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/holocaust-hero-outed-nazi-collaborator-9264239

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A Jewish man [Rudolf Kastzner] hailed as a Holocaust hero for saving thousands from the gas chambers during World War II was actually a Nazi collaborator, it has been claimed.

Journalist and lawyer Rezső (AKA Rudolf) Kasztner was known for his role as an underground leader – but new research suggests he was a “conscious tool” in the Holocaust.

Paul Bogdanor, an expert on Kasztner, believes the man actually helped the Nazis to murder almost half a million Jewish men, women and children during Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’.

Until now, the Hungarian [Kasztner] was considered a hero for rescuing fellow Jews from the clutches of the Gestapo.

He smuggled them out of Budapest on a secret train bound for the free world following the German invasion.

End quote

Here is the rest of the story:

In June 1944, Adolf Eichmann deported 20,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and then transferred them to the Strasshof labor camp near Vienna.

This was an attempt to extort money from the Jewish community in Hungary, according to Laurence Rees who wrote in his book “Auschwitz, a New History,” that Eichmann convinced the Jewish leaders that he was going against orders in making an exception for these Jews and then demanded money for food and medical care because he had saved 20,000 Jews from the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

David Cesarani wrote in “The Last Days,” that Jewish leader Rudolf Kastner was able to prod Eichmann into sending these Jews to Austria where three quarters of them survived the war.

The last mass transport of 14,491 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz arrived on July 9, 1944, according to a book entitled “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz,” by Franciszek Piper, the director of the Auschwitz Museum. After this mass transport of Jews left Hungary on July 8, 1944, Horthy ordered the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to stop.

By that time, a minimum of 435,000 Hungarian Jews, mostly those living in the villages and small towns, had been transported to Auschwitz, according to evidence given at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961, in which transportation lists compiled by Laszlo Ferenczy, the chief of police in Hungary, were introduced.

According to Francizek Piper, the majority of the Hungarian Jews, who were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, were gassed immediately.

A booklet, which I purchased from the Auschwitz Museum, stated that 434,351 of the Hungarian Jews were gassed upon arrival. If these figures are correct, only 3,051 Hungarian Jews, out of the 437,402 who were sent to Auschwitz, were registered in the camp.

However, Francizek Piper wrote that 28,000 Hungarian Jews were registered.

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

The difference between a blog and a discussion forum

What you are reading right now is a BLOG, which is a word that is short for the word Weblog. Some people think that there is no difference between a blog and a discussion forum.

A blog has a comment section and a discussion forum is nothing but a comment section. But there is a difference between the two. You can read the definition of a discussion forum at

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/discussion-board-discussion-group-message-board-online-forum

Here is the definition of a blog, which I have copied from the Internet:

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A blog (a truncation of the expression weblog) is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (“posts”)

End quote

There is currently an ad on TV which shows a nice looking old lady who is writing on her blog, while her care giver looks on. That’s me. I have a blog, not a discussion forum. Comments on my blog should be about what I have written, not a discussion about something that I have not written.

I have over I,8OO readers per day, on my blog. These readers are in countries all over the world. They never comment, probably because English is their second language.

I have been advised [privately] by one of my readers, to set up a Hole where I can put the comments that have nothing to do with what I write. This could be called the Bielski Hole, in honor of the Bieklski Brothers who hid Jews in holes in the ground, while the Holocaust was in progress.

The story of the little boy with his hands up is taught at Penn University

Famous photo of the little boy with his hands up

I have blogged about “the little boy with his hands up” until I am blue in the face.

My most recent blog post about the little boy with his hands up is this one: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/the-little-boy-with-his-hands-up-is-back-in-the-news-2/

This blog post about the little boy gives some important information:

https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/photo-of-the-little-boy-with-his-hands-up-the-rest-of-the-story/

According to this news article, this unimportant story is the subject of a college course at Penn University.

The following quote is from the news article:

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To teach about the Holocaust is to confront human beings in their most evil form. Scholars who teach about the tragedy retell and relate accounts of ungodly cruelty and indescribable misery, agony, and pain.

Teaching the Holocaust can be distressing to one’s soul. Not some long ago, far off catastrophe solely chronicled by history, it lives with us today, present in current affairs and a part of Jewish life. There are people walking the Earth right now who lived it, breathed it, endured it, and miraculously survived. Their pain is a lived pain, their suffering a firsthand horror.

Courses concerning the Holocaust are offered across Penn, scattered throughout the University. They are taught by survivors and the children of survivors, individuals with a personal connection, and researchers with an academic interest.

The study of the Holocaust is as interdisciplinary as Penn, spanning several fields, including literature, language, the law, history, science, medicine, ethics, and film.

End quote

In my humble opinion, the Holocaust should not be taught in America’s universities.