Photo of Anne Frank at the age of 13
The following words are a famous quote from The Diary of Anne Frank:
It’s difficult in times like these: Ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
The famous photo below is from news reel footage that was shown in American theaters. It shows a British soldier shoving Jewish bodies into a mass grave at Bergen-Belsen.
The Bergen Belsen concentration camp is the place where Anne Frank died. Remember that as you read this news article: http://theislandnow.com/new_hyde_park-108/holocaust-survivors-share-stories-strength-remembrance-forum/
The following quote is from the news article:
Begin quote
Memories of the Holocaust are as fresh as they were decades ago for the women who were forced into World War II concentration camps as children and miraculously lived to tell the tale as adults.
“When you look at these survivors, know you’re looking at miracles,” Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County Senior Director of Education Beth Lilach said. “For any child to have survived the Holocaust is nothing less than a miracle because it was a very intentional plan by the Nazis to destroy every single Jewish child, so these people represent the tiny percent of Jewish children that survived.”
Parker Jewish Institute hosted “Stories of Strength: a Holocaust Remembrance” Thursday afternoon to document the stories of three survivors.
Chana Pfeifen, Alice Tenenbaum and Mia Feuer, wife of survivor Samuel Feuer, shared memories with a heartbroken audience as they recounted tales of gas chambers, death marches and the traumatic loss of their parents at the hands of the guards and doctors who imprisoned them.
Lilach opened the forum with a presentation focused around what can be learned from the Holocaust and how many times history could have gone differently with earlier help from countries around the world.
“By looking at the evolution of Nazism, you see so many red flags when the Holocaust could have been stopped,” Lilach said. “We need to look to see if our country is experiencing any of these red flags, and we need to act on it. We can’t be silent — that was an incredibly destructive force during the Holocaust, and we need to speak up.”
End quote
I wrote at length about Bergen Belsen on my website, starting at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/BergenBelsen/Introduction.html
The following quote is from my website:
Begin quote
Bergen-Belsen was the name of an infamous Nazi camp which has become a symbol of the Holocaust that claimed the lives of 6 million Jews in Europe more than sixty years ago. In 1943, Bergen-Belsen was initially set up as a detention camp (Aufenthaltslager) for prisoners who held foreign passports and were thus eligible to be traded for German citizens being held in Allied internment camps. In December 1944, Bergen-Belsen became a concentration camp under the command of Josef Kramer, the former Commandant of the Auschwitz II camp, also known as Birkenau.
A section for sick prisoners, who could no longer work in the Nazi forced labor camps, was set aside at Bergen-Belsen in March 1944. In 1945, when World War II was drawing to a close, civilian prisoners were evacuated from other concentration camps as Soviet troops advanced westward; thousands of these prisoners were brought to the Bergen-Belsen camp which was not equipped to handle such a large number of people.
Finally, Bergen-Belsen itself was right in the middle of the war zone where bombs were falling and Allied planes were strafing the Autobahn and the railroads. British and Germans troops were doing battle on the Lüneberg heath right outside the camp. In February 1945, the situation at Bergen-Belsen became catastrophic when a typhus epidemic broke out in the crowded camp.
End quote
I think that all students should learn to speak and write correct English in English class. I am way behind the times — an old fogey who does not even know how to spell fogey. [I think that I’ve said that before.]
In modern English classes in America, the students learn about the Holocaust. They don’t learn English.
You can read all about it in this recent news article: http://www.timesdaily.com/news/education/deshler-students-create-holocaust-exhibit/article_57abf905-3faa-552b-a30b-1c99bb2aa6dd.html
The following quote is from the news article:
Begin quote
TUSCUMBIA — Students in Tanya Hayes’s 10th-grade English class at Deshler High School honored victims and heroes of the Holocaust with an exhibit, “Heroes’ Hands and Victims’ Voices.”
The students researched and selected a Holocaust victim and a hero who assisted others.
The students began the project after reading the book “Night” by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel.
“This exhibit showcases and honors the heroes and gives voices to those whose stories were untold,” Hayes said.
She said the project included the creation of an altered book page, a poem, a fictional narrative from the perspective of someone who died during the Holocaust, and a hero.
End quote
Wait a minute! Elie Wiesel was never in a Holocaust camp. There is an extensive website devoted to proving that Wiesel was never in a camp. Elie the Wiesel wrote a fictional book and made a fortune, but he was never in any camp. He has no Holocaust tattoo on his arm and no other proof that he was ever in a concentration camp.
The news article continues with this quote:
Begin quote
The somberness of Sarah Seaman’s project with a heavily edited writing display was indicative, she said, of the Hitler regime trying to “eradicate” Jewish people from history.
End quote
If Hitler had wanted to eradicate the Jewish people from history, he would have done it. The Jews were not “eradicated”. A million Jews are now back in Germany where they can now lie, steal and cheat to their Heart’s content, knowing that nothing will be done about their crimes.
This quote is at the end of the news article:
Begin quote
Hayes [the teacher] said the reading and writing experiences helped equip the students to be aware of the importance of caring and compassion, the dangers of hatred, and the need for human beings to demand dignity and respect for all.
“More than 6 million Jews were never given the chance to tell their stories, and these students certainly realized the importance of those stories being told,” Hayes said.
End quote
How many million Jews DID get a chance to tell their stories?
Today’s libraries are filled with the stories told by the Jews who SURVIVED.
If Hitler had wanted to kill six million Jews, why didn’t he do it? Why did so many Jews survive?
I live in Sacramento, which has a library of books written by Holocaust survivors. Who was it that said, “If Hitler had wanted to kill the Jews, he would have done it — and there would have been NO SURVIVORS.”
O.K. there might have been a few survivors, but not enough to write a library of books.
The title of this blog post is a quote from this news article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/02/21/anne-frank-center-slams-trump-do-not-make-us-jews-settle-for-crumbs-of-condescension/?utm_term=.05934eba3a7d
This is the headline on the news article:
The following quote is from the news article:
Begin quote
On Tuesday morning, Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, blasted Trump in a Facebook post.
“His statement today is a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting Antisemitism, yet day after day have refused to apologize and correct the record,” Goldstein said in the statement. “Make no mistake: The Antisemitism coming out of this Administration is the worst we have ever seen from any Administration.”
End quote
Trump is learning that you can never bow low enough to the Jews.
I have a section on my website that is all about Anne Frank: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AnneFrank/AnneFrank02.html
The title of my blog post today is a line from a news article, which you can read in full at http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2016/jun/05/dutch-get-holocaust-museum-20160605/
The following quote is from the news article, cited above:
Begin quote
AMSTERDAM — More than 70 years after tens of thousands of Dutch Jews were deported and killed by the Nazis, the Netherlands is finally getting a national Holocaust museum.
[…]
In all, 104,000 Dutch Jews were among the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The theater is now home to a memorial to those victims.
End quote
The most important part of the news article comes later in this quote:
Begin quote
The nine paintings on show are collectively titled “The Demise of Abraham Reiss.” They trace the life of [Jeroen] Krabbe’s grandfather, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1943 in the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland.
From a man sitting in a forest of birch trees on the edge of Amsterdam, the paintings trace Reiss’ life in pre-war Amsterdam to his detention in the Westerbork camp in the northeastern Netherlands and his arrival at Sobibor, where he was greeted by a snarling dog and shadowy, faceless guards. The final painting shows thick smoke billowing out of the chimney of Sobibor’s gas chamber and a flock of geese, whose honking was intended to drown out the screams of Jews being murdered, according to a text accompanying one of the paintings.
The artist said he couldn’t bring himself to visit Sobibor. So instead he drew on the memories of camp survivor Jules Schelvis, who wrote a book about his experiences and built models of the camp and its gas chambers. The models are exhibited in the same room as Krabbe’s paintings.
Krabbe said he also used his acting skills to imagine how his grandfather would respond to the horrors unfolding in his life.
“I wanted to get under his skin,” Krabbe told The Associated Press. “To imagine how it would be to experience what happened to him and how he would have reacted. It was like I had to play a role.”
End quote
Only 104,000 Dutch Jews were “murdered”? How many other Dutch Jews, including Anne Frank, died of disease, or natural causes, during the Holocaust?
It hardly seems worth it to have a national museum dedicated to only 104,000 citizens who were murdered. Why not have a memorial to all the Dutch citizens who died during World War II, which would include Anne Frank, who died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen?
But to get back to Sobibor…..
Map of Sobibor camp
Sobibor is one of the few places, related to the Holocaust, that I have not visited. From everything that I have read about Sobibor, I believe that it was a transit camp, from which Jews were sent to the east, never to return.
I have written several blog posts about Sobibor: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/sobibor/
I have a section about Sobibor on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Poland/Sobibor/Tour01.html
Alert readers of my blog post might have noticed that the news article mentioned “thick smoke billowing out of the chimney of Sobibor’s gas chamber.”
A real gas chamber, like the one in Jefferson City, MO, is supposed to have a tall chimney to vent the gas high into the air. Did the Nazis have a gas chamber consultant, like Fred Leuchter, to advise them on the construction of the gas chamber at Sobibor?
My blog post today is a comment on a news article which you can read at http://highschool.latimes.com/champs-charter-high-school-of-the-arts/opinion-millennials-will-soon-be-responsible-for-kindling-the-holocausts-flame/
The headline of the article is this:
The following quote is from the news article:
Begin quote
[the word “millennial” refers to young people today]
Many adults seem exasperated by the “typical” millennial attitude, and our tendency to disregard problems that do not directly impact our own lives. We have been dubbed “Generation ADD” and “The Selfie Generation” by those who do not believe we are capable of being the future movers and shapers of society.
However, in the next decade or so, one incredibly important responsibility will fall upon our shoulders: keeping the memory of the atrocities of the Holocaust alive.
It’s not an easy period of history to recall, whether you are Jewish, German, or of any other cultural background. But the reality is, there will come a time when those who actually lived through these events are no longer with us. It is not unlikely that my own children will never meet a Holocaust survivor.
End quote
The article continues with this quote:
Anne Frank’s diary must remain a staple in schools, as it plays such an important role on educating young people about the monstrosity of the Holocaust, and making us feel connected to the events that transpired. Just this year, a new German film based Frank’s diary premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, and Variety says that it is a “compassionate and intelligently made contribution to the ever-growing body of work on the subject.” Art about the Holocaust must be continually produced, as it makes knowledge about the topic accessible to almost everyone. Young people are fully capable of creatively sharing more stories about the Holocaust in the forms of literature and writing, plays, songs, poems, and films. We can continue exposing the subject, and we must. We should not leave the teaching to a chapter in a history textbook.
End quote
“Anne Frank’s diary must remain a staple in schools…”
Sorry, but I think that Anne Frank’ diary promotes Holocaust denial. Anne Frank was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau after her hiding place was found and her family was arrested. She stayed there only 5 months before she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen on a “sick transport.” She died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. How does her story prove the Holocaust?
My personal opinion is that the Holocaust should be laid to rest. People today are suffering from Holocaust fatigue. Enough already!
The following quote is from a news article which you can read in full at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-trial-idUSKCN0W109K
Begin quote:
A 95-year-old former Nazi SS paramedic at the Auschwitz death camp, accused of being an accomplice to the murder of thousands, is to stand trial in Germany on Monday, one in a series of such recent cases.
Hubert Zafke was serving as a medic in the SS at the biggest death camp in occupied Poland where he was deployed in 1943. During the trial, he will be faced with the accounts of at least two witnesses.
Prosecutors in the northern German city of Schwerin say that Zafke, in his function as a medic, supported the slaughter at Auschwitz, where over 1.2 million people, most of them Jews, were killed.
Zafke was responsible for treating SS members in case of sickness, not any of the inmates, but prosecutors say he was stationed directly on the path leading to the gas chambers.
End quote
My early morning photo of the SS hospital at Auschwitz and the road that went past it
If Zafke was treating SS members at Auschwitz for sickness, that means that he was stationed at the hospital for SS men at the Auschwitz main camp, which is shown in my 1998 photo above.
Unfortunately, the road to the gas chamber, in the Auschwitz main camp, went right past the hospital where Zafke worked. Zafke must have known what was going on, and he could have run out of the hospital and stopped the gassing of the Jews, but he didn’t. So he is a criminal, for sure, and deserves to spend his last years in prison.
My 1998 photo above shows the road to the gas chamber [at the bottom of the photo]
My 1998 photo shows the entrance to gas chamber which was near the SS hospital
The following quote is at the end of the news article cited above:
Begin quote:
Zafke’s charges focus on a month-long period between August and September 1944, when 14 deportation trains from Poland, Slovenia, Greece, Germany and the Netherlands arrived at the camp.
One carried Anne Frank, the German-born Jewish writer, whose “Diary of a young girl” became one of the most widely known witness accounts of the Holocaust, documenting her life in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Anne Frank and her sister Margot were eventually transferred westwards to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died shortly before its liberation in April 1945.
Zafke has already been charged abroad for his role at Auschwitz. In 1946, a Polish court sentenced him to four years in prison. Afterwards, Zafke returned to Germany, where he worked as an agricultural salesman.
End quote
Did you catch that? Zafke was working at the hospital in the main Auschwitz camp on the the day that Anne Frank arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, which was several miles down the road.
Zafke should have known that Anne Frank was arriving, and he should have had the common decency to run over to the Birkenau camp and say to Dr. Mengele: “What in the hell are you doing? That young girl is Anne Frank, who will be famous some day. You have to save her!”
Hubert Zafke, depraved war criminal who will soon go on trial in Germany
You can read the full story of this 95-year-old depraved criminal in a recent news story here.
This is the headline of the article:
Former Auschwitz guard who was on duty when Anne Frank arrived in 1944 is deemed fit enough to face charges of murdering 3,681 people.
Oh well, if he was at Auschwitz-Birkenau, when Anne Frank got off the train, and he didn’t lift a finger to help her, he should be put into prison for the rest of his life, provided that he lives through his trial.
This quote is from the news article:
Begin quote:
Hubert Zafke, 95, served as medic but claims he played no part in murders
Psychiatric doctors have ruled he is mentally sound enough to stand trial
Prosecutors say murders took place in medical block while he was on duty
Medics often poured Zyklon-B pesticide into the gas chambers to kill them
End quote
Oh no! As part of his job as a medic, “He often poured Zyklon-B pesticide into the gas chambers.”
He was pouring PESTICIDE into gas chambers?
Was he trying to kill lice or people? Would it have killed the Germans to execute the Jews in a nice way and save the pesticide for killing the lice that spread typhus.
Moving right along, this quote is from the news article:
Begin quote:
A former SS guard who was on duty when Jewish diarist Anne Frank arrived at the Auschwitz death camp in 1944 has been fit enough to stand trial on charges of mass murder.
Hubert Zafke, 95, was examined by psychiatric doctors this week appointed by a court in Rostock and judged mentally sound enough to go on trial for his part in the murders of 3,681 people.
Zafke served at the Nazi extermination facility in occupied Poland as a medic and claims he took no part in the estimated 1.2 million murders of Jews and others that took place there. [Only 1.2 million? What about the 4 million Jews that were mentioned at the Nuremberg IMT? What happened to them?]
Earlier this year a lower court ruled Zafke was incompetent to stand trial but that has now been overturned and he could be in the dock by the early spring.
End quote
At the very end of the news article, there is a video that shows young children marching out of Auschwitz-Birkenau; it also shows old women talking to the Soviet liberators of Birkenau. This video is completely inappropriate. As everyone know, children under the age of 15 were gassed, and old ladies were also gassed.
Anne Frank at age 13
My blog post today is a comment on a news article which you can read in full here.
This is the headline of the article:
My complaint is about this quote, which is from the article:
Among the countless Jews denied refuge in the United States were the Frank family of Amsterdam, as personal letters discovered in a New Jersey warehouse in 2007 revealed.
The “Frank family” did not live in Amsterdam. At first, only Otto Frank left Germany and went to Amsterdam.
Otto Frank was a fugitive from justice because he, and his brother, had been convicted of bank fraud. His brother managed to enter the United States in spite of his criminal conviction, but for some unknown reason Otto, the bank fraud criminal, was denied entry. Shame on the USA: all Jewish criminals should have been allowed in.
This quote is from the news article:
The United States even denied refuge to the most well-known Holocaust victim of all, the young Anne Frank, whose father’s desperate efforts to save his family were met with cold indifference.
Anne Frank was not denied refuge. She was waiting until her father got settled in the USA before undertaking this journey herself.
What if Otto Frank had brought his family with him when he tried to enter the USA? Would Anne have written her famous Diary? I seriously doubt it. She wrote her diary because she was cooped up in an attic and had nothing else to do.
Anne Frank was no saint. If she had been in America during the war years, she would have been “lying, cheating and stealing” with the best of them.
By the end of the 1930s, Jews in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe had long been outlawed—they were officially declared subhuman, stripped of their citizenship and their wealth, banned marrying or even having sex with Aryans, barred from owning land, blacklisted from many professions and subjected to countless other dehumanizing indignities, large and small. They were forced to wear badges and carry special identification. Boycotts and violence plagued Jewish-owned homes and businesses, which were soon stolen as Jews were rounded up and forced into segregated ghettos where the awaited what turned out to be Hitler’s “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.
My photo of the Anne Frank house
You can read about the Anne Frank house on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AnneFrank/AnneFrank02.html
The following quote is from an Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times newspaper, which you can read in full here.
The [Rialto] school district has finally apologized — appropriately — and is dispatching all [Rialto School District] students and their teachers to the Museum of Tolerance’s new Anne Frank exhibition before they graduate next month. […]
Soon, nearly 2,000 teens from the Rialto School District will visit the Museum of Tolerance to meet and hear from Holocaust survivors. They will be encouraged to ask them questions and engage in a dialogue. Not one of them is likely to leave that day thinking the Holocaust didn’t happen. One day soon however, there won’t be any survivors left to share their real-life experiences. That’s when the ultimate challenge to truth will begin. Heaven help us all if we fail to provide young people with skills to recognize the difference between hate and history.
Anne Frank at the age of 13
Sorry, but I don’t think that a display about Anne Frank is the right way to prove the Holocaust. In my humble opinion, the story of Anne Frank disproves the Holocaust, and here’s why:
1. Anne Frank was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau “death camp” after her hiding place was discovered, but she was not gassed. She was somehow chosen to work, even though she was barely 5 feet tall and had no work skills of any kind. When Anne arrived at Auschwitz, she was not in a healthy condition, after spending two years in hiding, yet she was not gassed.
After only two months at Auschwitz, Anne and her sister Margo were both sent on a SICK TRANSPORT to Bergen-Belsen. The train that took them to Bergen-Belsen was monitored by the Red Cross because it was a SICK TRANSPORT.
2. Anne Frank’s mother died of tuberculosis after 5 months at Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was apparently sick when she arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau “death camp,” yet she was allowed to live, even though she was sick with a terminal illness.
3. Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank, was 56 years old when he arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau “death camp,” where everyone over the age of 45 was automatically sent to the gas chamber. Otto Frank was selected to work, but he didn’t want to work, so he paid a Jewish doctor in the camp to put him into the camp hospital, where he survived.
4. Otto Frank was allowed to stay in the camp hospital at Auschwitz-Birkenau, when the other prisoners were taken on a “death march” out of the camp.
5. Anne Frank’s school friends in Amsterdam didn’t go into hiding. They survived the Holocaust and went to Israel after the war. They were sent to the Star Camp, the best section of Bergen-Belsen, instead of being sent to Auschwitz. After Anne’s family was discovered in their hiding place, they were sent to the punishment section of the Westerbork transit camp because they had gone into hiding, and from there they were sent to Auschwitz, instead of being sent to Bergen-Belsen.
6. Anne Frank was allowed to live at Bergen-Belsen, until she died of typhus, and was buried in a mass grave.
One of several mass graves at Bergen-Belsen
To sum up the Anne Frank story, everything in the saga is against the known facts of the Holocaust:
1. Sick prisoners were immediately sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau upon arrival.
2. Old people were immediately taken to the gas chamber, upon arrival, at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
3. The prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau were forced to go on a “death march” out of the camp for the purpose of killing them.
Here is one final quote from the Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times:
But historians would no more debate whether the Holocaust happened than they would whether Nazi Germany unleashed the blitzkrieg on Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. These events are facts.
I am not a historian, so I DID debate the subject of “whether Nazi Germany unleashed the blitzkrieg on Poland on September 1, 1939.” on this post post: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/alfred-naujocks-and-the-start-of-world-war-ii/
