Should Israeli students visit Auschwitz?

I am commenting on a recent news article about student visits to Auschwitz, which I have quoted below.

The following quote is from the news article:

Auschwitz should not be elevated to sacredness.

Altering Israel’s historical education will also help to change the perception in the country that the Jewish state is here only because of the horrors of Nazism. Israel’s existence should not be seen as compensation for the butchery of Jews in Europe. But pilgrimages that connect Poland and Israel, or those using Poland as a tool with which to bolster the commitment of young Israelis to their own country, send exactly this message. There is a tragedy, and then rebirth.

But there is no resurrection. The dead are still dead. The Jewish culture that was destroyed in Poland and across Europe will never re-emerge. Israel is not a compensation for Auschwitz, and its marching teenagers, with their flags and their songs, with their we-are-still-here spirit, spite only the ghosts.

What I believe we Israelis need is a realignment. We need to remember the dead without forgetting them or forgiving their butchers. We need to draw the proper lessons from the Holocaust — one of which is that there is no merit in dying and Jews must be proactive in our quest to keep living. So let’s not confuse ourselves by making Auschwitz the axis of our culture and the culmination of our civic religion. Let’s keep our March of the Living where it belongs: here, in Israel.

End quote

When I first began to travel to Holocaust sites, I was warned not to go to Auschwitz during the “March of the Living” so I avoided going at that time. However, as it turned out, the March of the Living was actually going on when I was there on one of my visits.

I was appalled by the way the Israeli students acted. I understood the reason for the warning. Some of the students tried to grab my expensive camera. Others attacked me by throwing stones at me. It was a nightmare. After that, I understood why the Nazis wanted the Jews out of Germany.

Is the Sacramento Bee newspaper anything like Hitler’s book entitled “Mein Kamft?

The Sacramento Bee is my home town newspaper, but I don’t read it anymore. I read the news on the Internet, and I also watch the news on TV.

This recent news article tells all about the Sacramento Bee:

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article200131459.html

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

Conservative media personality Ann Coulter weighed in on Sacramento schools and media coverage with four consecutive tweets to her 1.9 million followers this weekend.

Coulter appeared unhappy with both The Sacramento Bee’s coverage of a McClatchy High School science fair project and the project’s removal over allegations of racism. The student attempted to justify a lack of racial diversity in McClatchy High’s elite HISP program by proving blacks, Southeast Asians and Hispanics have lower average IQs than whites and Northeast Asians.

The student’s project remained up for two days before being taken down at the request of students, parents and staff. As a response to The Bee’s story, Sacramento City Unified Superintendent Jorge Aguilar released a video Saturday night promising to diversify the city’s elite academic programs.

 End quote

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article200131459.html#storylink=cpy

Do blacks, whites and Asians all have equal intelligence? I don’t know the answer to this question, but I suspect that Asians are more intelligent.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

Bergen-Belsen Exchange Camp and Concentration Camp “The fact is that all these were once clean-living and sane and certainly not the type to do harm to the Nazis. They are Jews and are dying now at the rate of three hundred a day. They must die and nothing can save them – their end is inescapable, they are too far gone now to be brought back to life. I saw their corpses lying near their hovels, for they crawl or totter out into the sunlight to die. I watched them make their last feeble journeys, and even as I watched they died.” Peter Coombs, British soldier, May 4, 1945 letter to his wife after liberation of Bergen-Belsen.   Dying man struggles to survive at Bergen-Belsen camp   Introduction to Bergen-Belsen British liberation of Bergen-Belsen Eight sections of Bergen-Belsen Hungarian Jews at Bergen-Belsen History of Bergen-Belsen Camp What was it like in Bergen-Belsen? Exchange Camp (Aufenthaltslager) Women Overseers at Bergen-Belsen Sick Camp (Erholungslager) Trial of Josef Kramer & 44 Others Gas Chamber at Bergen-Belsen?

© Copyright 2002 Scrapbookpages.com – All Rights Reserved

When I was a child in Missouri, my next door nighbor was an African man

Update: Read this recent article to learn more about the Africans who were brought to American and sold as slaves: https://www.splcenter.org/tt-landing-nation

The article, cited above, does not mention that the Africans who were brought to America were already slaves.  This fact is not known today.

Continue reading my original article.

Note that I did not write that my neighbor was an African-American man. No, he had been brought to America straight from Africa. He had been born a slave in Africa. His skin was actually black, not brown.

He lived in a house that was next door to my house, although we each had a garden in the space between our houses.

This man’s wife was nearly white. She could have passed for white if she had used some cream rinse on her hair. When I was a child, she worked in our house as a maid. She told us about the background of her husband. One thing that she didn’t tell us is that her African husband could speak perfect English which he had learned when he was a slave.

Both of our houses were very close to the railroad tracks that ran past our property. When a freight train would go by, there would be pieces of coal that fell off the train. I would run outside with a bucket and pick up the pieces of coal. My black nieghbor also ran out to pick up the coal, but when he saw me, he would run away.

I would take some coal from my bucket and put it on the ground near him. Then I would say “for you.” He would approach very slowly and pick up a piece of coal; then he would run away.

I would sometimes walk past his house, on my way to visit my friends. When he would see me coming, he would run inside.

I talked to his wife and asked her why he was afraid. She said that he had been treated very badly by white people when he was a slave in Africa. I told her to tell him that no one would treat him badly now — this man was 6 foot 6, and very muscular.

After that, the next time that I walked past his house, I spoke to him and said “May I join you, and sit with you on your porch?” He appeared to be shocked and scared to death, but he motioned to me to come up on the porch and sit beside him.

After that, I sat with him many times, and then one day, I asked him if he would go for a walk with me. We walked down the main street of the town where we lived. I held his hand and tried to reassure him.

We started walking together down the main street of our town, and then one day, I took him to see the town jail, which was a small brick building. I told him that this was where white people would be locked up if they hurt him. He was completely shocked. He had no idea that white people would be punished for hurting a black man.

Long story short: he eventually got to the point that he would walk through the town by himself and greet the people that he met.

One important point here is that the black people who were brought here by slave traders were already slaves in Africa. The free Africans brought the slaves down to the ships and sold them to the slave traders.

I am now 85 years old — this was way back in the dim past.

 

The youngest Shindler’s List survivor is still telling her story

You can read about the youngest Schindler’s List survivor in this recent news article:

The youngest Schindler’s list survivor is still telling her story

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

[Eva] Lavi is the youngest survivor to have been on Schindler’s list, the Jews saved by German industrialist Oskar Schindler and immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film. Lavi was put in a ghetto in Poland with her family immediately after the Nazi takeover, transferred to a labor camp and then to Auschwitz.

After being saved by Schindler, who sheltered hundreds of Jews who worked in his kitchen goods and armament factories, Lavi lived a quiet life in Israel. She served in the army, lived on a kibbutz, worked as an administrative assistant and raised a family. She remembers the early years in Israel when survivors were disparaged as weak and passive. But as interest in the Holocaust increased, she became more vocal in recounting her experience. Now she speaks to groups at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust authority, and travels to Poland every year with a group of high school students.

“It’s true testimony from someone who was there. It’s not a story,” she told JTA in a separate interview last week, adding that once Israelis became interested in the Holocaust, “the survivors opened their mouths and began to tell the story. It’s not just a story. It’s the worst and cruelest thing that happened in the world.”

Although Lavi now regularly returns to Auschwitz, she says the experience still isn’t easy. Each time, she finds herself looking around in horror and crying. But by now she’s used to it.

“Every time I go, I cry here and there because it’s a terrible thing,” she told JTA. “Every person that went there saw the ovens, the gas chambers. Everything was real. It’s very scary, but because I’ve gone so many times, I take it differently. I don’t think about myself. I think about how the kids are reacting.”

End quote

The following information about Treblinka is from my scrapbookpages.com website:

Treblinka was second only to Auschwitz in the number of Jews who were allegedly killed by the Nazis. Between 700,000 and 900,000, compared to an estimated 1.1 million to 1.5 million at Auschwitz.

The Treblinka death camp was located 100 km (62 miles) northeast of Warsaw, near the railroad junction at the village of Malkinia Górna, which is 2.5 km (1.5 miles) from the train station in the tiny village of Treblinka.

Raul Hilberg stated in his three-volume book, “The Destruction of the European Jews,” that there were six Nazi extermination centers, including Treblinka. The other extermination camps were at Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau, all of which are located in what is now Poland. The last two also functioned as forced labor camps (Zwangsarbeitslager), and were still operational shortly before being liberated by the Soviet Union towards the end of the war in 1944 and early 1945.

The camps at Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Chelmno had already been liquidated by the Germans before the Soviet soldiers arrived, and there was no remaining evidence of the extermination of millions of Jews. The combined total of the deaths at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor was 1.5 million, according to Raul Hilberg.

In June 1941, a forced labor camp for Jews and Polish political prisoners was set up near a gravel pit, a mile from where the Treblinka death camp would later be located. The labor camp became known as Treblinka I and the death camp, which opened in July 1942, was called Treblinka II or T-II.

Don’t ever say “Polish death camps”

You can read a news article about the phrase “Polish death camps” at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/01/28/israel-demands-changes-polish-death-camp-bill/1073258001/

So what are the proper terms to describe the various camps that were set up by the Nazis?

Both Buchenwald and Auschwitz were called concentration camps (Konzentrationslager) by the Nazis and both were called extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) by the Allies during the war and in the immediate aftermath.

Jews were sent to both Buchenwald and Auschwitz, but both camps had non-Jewish prisoners as well. Both camps had SS soldiers as guards and administrators, and both were under the jurisdiction of the Inspectorate in Oranienburg.

Both Buchenwald and Auschwitz were within the 1939 borders of Germany, which was then known as Grossdeutschland. Auschwitz is now in Poland, but it was in Grossdeutschland when the camp was opened in June 1940.

Neither Buchenwald, nor Auschwitz, was “liberated.” The prisoners at Buchenwald were set free at 3:15 p.m. on April 11, 1945 after the Communist prisoners took control of the camp and the SS guards escaped into the woods. The first American soldiers in General Patton’s Third Army arrived at Buchenwald around two hours later that same day and freed the prisoners.

The SS guards abandoned Auschwitz on January 18, 1945 and marched the prisoners to the German border where they were put on trains and taken to other camps. Those who chose not to join the march stayed at Auschwitz where they were free to leave, but most of the prisoners decided to wait until the Soviet Army found the camp on January 27, 1945 and set the prisoners free.

Auschwitz consisted of three separate camps, called Auschwitz, Birkenau and Monowitz, and 40 sub-camps. In June 2007, the United Nations officially changed the collective name of the three Auschwitz camps to Auschwitz-Birkenau, German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945) because the Poles were tired of hearing Auschwitz being described as a “Polish death camp.”

Buchenwald had a main camp and around 100 sub-camps.

Both Buchenwald and Auschwitz had factories where the prisoners worked and these factories were considered to be essential to the German war effort. The factories at both Buchenwald and Auschwitz were bombed by the Allies because of this.

Both Buchenwald and Auschwitz had child survivors. There were 900 children under the age of 18 at Buchenwald and 600 child survivors in the abandoned Auschwitz camp.

According to testimony at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, both Buchenwald and Auschwitz had gas chambers.

Both Buchenwald and Auschwitz also had typhus epidemics which accounted for the lives of thousands of the prisoners.

After Auschwitz was opened by the Nazis in 1940, some of the prisoners from Buchenwald were transferred there. When Auschwitz was abandoned in January 1945, some of the prisoners were transported back to Buchenwald.

Both Buchenwald and Auschwitz were in the Soviet zone after World War II ended, and Museums were set up at both camps by the Soviets.

So what’s the difference between Buchenwald and Auschwitz now?

The difference is that today the Auschwitz II camp, aka Birkenau, has been designated a “death camp” by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, while Buchenwald is now officially called a concentration camp by the Museum.

When Jewish prisoners arrived at Birkenau, beginning in February 1942, they allegedly went through a selection process in which those who were able to work were saved while those who were not selected to work  allegedly were sent into a gas chamber.

Today, no one claims that Buchenwald had a gas chamber, nor that there was even a selection process for Jewish prisoners at Buchenwald.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum now says that only six of the Nazi camps were “death camps”. The alleged death camps were Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Chelmno, all of which are in what is now the country of Poland. Nevertheless, a few people still call all of the Nazi camps “death camps” where Jews were allegedly killed.

The Communist survivors of Buchenwald estimated that 56,000 prisoners died at Buchenwald. The latest estimate of the deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau is 1.1 million, and of those prisoners who were killed, 90% were Jews.

No Jews were sent to any Nazi camp, solely because they were Jewish, until November 10, 1938 when 10,000 Jewish men were sent to Buchenwald following the pogrom in Germany, known as Kristallnacht.

An equal number of Jewish men were sent on November 10, 1938 to Dachau and Sachsenhausen, the other two main concentration camps in Germany. However, they were released within a few weeks if they promised to leave Germany forever.

It was not until February 1942 that all the free Jews in Germany and Poland were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in what is now Poland. Before that, persons who were considered to be the enemies of the German Reich were sent to concentration camps, regardless of their ethnicity, race or religion, including a few Jews.

In January 1941, Buchenwald was classified as a Class II camp where prisoners were less likely to be released. Prisoners at Dachau and Sachsenhausen, which were Class I camps were more likely to be released.

The main Auschwitz camp was a Class I camp, mainly for political prisoners, and 1,500 non-Jewish prisoners were later released, according to information at the Auschwitz Museum.

The famous Auschwitz camp where Jews were killed

My photos of the Auschwitz main camp The Arbeit Macht Frei gate into the main Auschwitz camp, 2005  It was through this gate that the Jewish prisoners walked each morning on their way to work in the factories, marching to the beat of music played by the camp orchestra, stationed in front of the kitchen building near the gate. Ten hours later, the prisoners marched back through this gate in the evening, again to the accompaniment of classical music. Newly arriving prisoners were also greeted by orchestra music as they passed through this gate after being registered in the camp. Auschwitz 1 was also a transit camp for prisoners who were waiting to be transferred to another camp. My 2005 photo of Block 24, the former brothel The first building that you see on the left side, after walking through the entrance gate, is Block 24, which now houses the Auschwitz archives and the office of the Museum director. Block 24 was formerly used as a brothel for the Polish political prisoners; the camp library was on the first floor. Block 24 also housed the prisoner’s art museum, where their artwork was exhibited. A sign near the corner of Block 24 tells visitors that the corpses of prisoners, who were executed because they had attempted to escape, were often displayed here as a warning. There is no sign which identifies Block 24 as the former camp brothel and camp library. Arbeit Macht Frei gate, Block 24 in background Photo Credit: José Ángel López My photo of tourists entering camp In January 1941, the Auschwitz I camp was designated a Class I camp, where prisoners had a chance to be released. Only Class I camps had the “Arbeit Macht Frei” slogan over the gate. Other Class I camps included Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg and Gross-Rosen. Buchenwald was a Class II camp and Mauthausen was a Class III camp; neither of these camps had the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign. The six death camps (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek and Auschwtiz II, also known as Birkenau) did not have the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” on the gate into the camp. My photo of entrance gate into Birkenau Commandant Rudolf Hoess, who had served at both Dachau and Sachsenhausen before becoming the first Commandant of Auschwitz I in June 1940, ordered the Arbeit Macht Frei sign to be placed over the original gate into the camp. He wrote in his autobiography that the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” mean that works sets one free spiritually, not literally. According to the Auschwitz Museum, approximately 1,500 prisoners were released from Auschwitz 1 Block 11 – the camp prison Prison Cells Inside Block 11 Standing Cells in Block 11 Gas Chamber

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

 

Did the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps have toilet paper?

In the comments section of my blog, someone asked if the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps had toilet paper to wipe their ass after shitting.

Good question. I know the answer to this question. When I went to visit the location of the former Majdanek concentration camp, there were signs that pointed to the toilets, which were claimed to have been there when the camp was filled with prisoners.

Dome at Majdanek camp

After I visited the former Majanek camp, I wrote the following on my website:

Begin quote

Also to the left, as you face the dome, is the very inappropriate location of the toilets, which are underground but have air vents sticking up, that look like some weird sculpture. The first thing that the tour guides explain to Americans is the toilet etiquette in Poland. In many places, including the camp at Majdanek, one must pay the attendant on duty to use the toilets. Bring your own toilet paper because there is usually none available, even though the charges are supposed to pay for the cost of the paper. The toilets are for both sexes and there is no door on the men’s facility. When I visited the camp, the toilets were unbelievably filthy, just like at the Auschwitz II camp at Birkenau.

The photograph above shows the Mausoleum. To the right of it is located the reconstructed crematorium building. Standing on this spot, you have a panoramic view of the camp below you. Behind the Mausoleum are new modern apartment houses, their balconies painted red, yellow and blue, resembling buildings made with children’s colorful building blocks.

As you are standing in front of the Mausoleum facing the camp area, to the left there are more apartment buildings in the city of Lublin. To the right, as you face the camp area, is Lublin’s main Catholic cemetery which borders the camp; this cemetery was being used when the concentration camp was in operation.

There are noisy black crows flying overhead, which the tour guide says are always present here, as if to give further warning to visitors.

End quote

It is a crime to say “Polish death camps”

Don’t ever say “Polish death camp” because you might go to prison for making this mistake.

To be correct, you must say “Nazi death camp in Poland” or you could say “German death camp in Poland.”

My photo of a fence at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp

You can read all about it in this recent news article: http://www.history.com/news/poland-holocaust-law-death-camps

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

Auschwitz. Treblinka. The Warsaw Ghetto. During World War II, Poland became the epicenter of the Nazis’ crimes—but soon, implying that those crimes were committed by the Polish state will itself be a crime. A controversial new law in Poland makes it illegal to accuse the nation of being complicit with Nazi crimes like the Holocaust. It also outlaws the phrase “Polish death camps.” Both are punishable by prison sentences of up to three years.

The law has provoked an academic and diplomatic firestorm, drawing criticism from historians and rebukes from people like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who said the law “adversely affects freedom of speech and academic inquiry.” Israel’s memorial to Holocaust victims, Yad Vashem, called the legislation “liable to blur the historical truths regarding the assistance the Germans received from the Polish population during the Holocaust.”

End quote

Did the Germans receive assistance from the Polish population during the Holocaust? I believe that they did, but the Polish people now deny it.

When I went to Poland for the first time, I went to a book store to buy a book on this subject as soon as I arrived. The woman in the book store told me that the Polish people were not to blame; only the Germans were bad.  Why did she volunteer this information? I interpreted this to mean that she knew perfectly well that the Polish people wanted to get rid of the Jews, but she denied it.

You can read the history of the Auschwitz camp on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/History/Articles/Birkenau01.html

 

The grave stones of Hitler’s parents — updated

Update on the Graves of Hitler’s Parents in Leonding, Austria

You can read the latest news about the graves of Hitler’s parents at

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/30/adolf-hitler-parents-grave-tombstone

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

The tombstone marking the grave of Adolf Hitler’s parents, a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, has been removed from an upper Austrian village cemetery at the request of a descendant, and the grave is ready for a new burial, officials said on Friday.

Walter Brunner, mayor of Leonding village, said the stone with the faded black and white portrait photos of Alois and Klara Hitler was taken down on Wednesday. Village priest Kurt Pitterschatscher said the rented grave was available for a new lease. Austrian graves are usually leased for periods of 10 years. The lease is renewable and can be willed to friends or relatives.

Asked whether he would have trouble persuading people to let their loved ones share a grave with the parents of a man whose name is a universal epitome of evil, Pitterschatscher said: “I really haven’t thought about it.”

He said the stone and black marble marker, topped by a granite cross, was removed without ceremony by a stonemason hired by the relative, described as an elderly female descendant of Alois Hitler’s first wife, Anna. What’s left at the site is a white gravel square and a tree.

End quote

I visited these graves several years ago, and took the photos below.

Grave of Alois and Klara Hitler in Leonding, Austria

Hitler visited the grave of his parents on March 12, 1938, the day he followed his troops as they invaded Austria.

Close-up of the gravestone of Hitler’s parents in Leonding, Austria

Hitler’s father was a respected civil servant in the Austrian government; his mother was a homemaker who loved and cared for her family.

Grave of Hitler’s parents under a giant fir tree in Leonding, Austria

Hitler’s father died suddenly while having a glass of wine at the Gasthaus Wiesinger on January 3, 1903; his mother died of breast cancer at the age of 47 on December 21, 1907.

Entrance into cemetery of St. Michael’s church in Leonding, Austria where Hitler’s parents were buried.

 

Hitler’s Boyhood Home

More Photos of Hitler’s house

Cemetery Across the Street