Oskar Groening is back in the news!

Poor Oskar looks to old to go to jail.

You can read about Oskar in this 12/31/2017 news article:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/240016

Begin Quote from news article:

He came to attention in 2005 after giving interviews about his work in the camp in an attempt to persuade Holocaust deniers that the genocide had taken place.

End Quote

You can read my many other blog posts about Oskar by following the links below:

https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/oskar-groening/

https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/oskar-groening/page/2/

 

Oskar Groening — the SS man who observed the gassing of the Jews at Auschwitz

My photo of the gas chamber at Auschwitz

I took the photo above, in the Auschwitz main camp, while my tour guide was screaming at me that I COULD not take photos. She should have said “you MAY not take photos”. I could take photos, so I did.

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Birkenau/RuinsBunker2.html

The following text is quoted from my web site which you can read in full by following the link above.

Oskar Groening, an SS man who worked at Auschwitz-Birkenau, said that the gassing of the Jews, during the Holocaust, was done at night in two old farmhouses.

As told by Laurence Rees, Groening said that he had witnessed a gassing operation one night after he had been awakened by an alarm because a number of Jews had escaped as they were being marched to the gas chamber. He saw the lights on in one of the farm houses, and seven or eight bodies out in front of the building. He assumed that these were the bodies of escapees who had been caught and shot.

Groening was “overcome by curiosity,” according to Lawrence Rees, and Groening and his comrades stayed around to watch what was going on at the farm house. They saw an SS man, wearing a gas mask, pour Zyklon-B pellets through a hatch in the side of the cottage wall. They heard screaming for a minute, followed by silence. Then an SS man went up to the door, and looked through a peephole to see if all the prisoners were dead.

This remote area at Auschwitz-Birkenau was a good location for the use of Zyklon-B which was a dangerous chemical that had the potential to kill the SS men who had to throw it inside the building.

Until March 1942, the gassing of the Jews had been done in Krema I at the Auschwitz main camp. Krema I was situated between the SS hospital and the Gestapo building, not a good location for the use of dangerous poison gas.

In his autobiography, Rudolf Hoess, the Commandant at Auschwitz-Birkenau, wrote regarding the gassing of the Jews in the little white house:

Begin quote

“Hundreds of men and women in the full bloom of life walked all unsuspecting to their death in the gas chambers under the blossom-laden fruit trees of the orchard. This picture of death in the midst of life remains with me to this day. I looked upon them [the Jews] as enemies of our people. The reasons behind the Extermination Program seemed to me right.”

End quote

https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/oskar-groening/

Oskar has been in the news quite a bit lately, and you can click on the link above and then scroll down to read the many news articles.

Nazi criminal will be 100 years old when he gets out of prison

Oskar Groening

You can read about this vicious Nazi criminal in this recent [November 29, 2017] news article: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/886068/germany-news-nazi-guard-bookkeeper-auschwitz-prison-96-years-old-oskar-groening

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

Oskar Groening, known as the ‘Bookkeeper of Auschwitz’, was found guilty in July 2015 of being an accessory to the murders of 300,000 people at the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland.  [He should have known that it was a crime to be a bookkeeper in a Nazi concentration camp.]
Groening has not yet begun his sentence after filing an appeal for the sentence to be suspended because of health concerns.Despite protestations from Groening’s lawyers, the court insisted  “appropriate precautionary measures” would be taken to meet any special needs he has in prison.The court in Celle in northern Germany ruled: ‘Based on expert opinion, the superior regional court finds that the convicted individual is fit to serve out the term despite his advanced age.” 

Related articles

• 

  ‘Bookkeeper of Auschwitz’ LOSES appeal against sentence: Oskar Groe…

• 

  Soldier tells Camilla how he escaped Nazi prison camp with her father

Groening had been living at home despite being convicted and it had been unclear whether the former Auschwitz guard would be jailed.

End quote from news article.

https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/oskar-groening/

I have blogged about Oskar many times before.  You can read my earlier posts by clicking the link above.

 

95 year old “Bookkeeper of Auschwitz” will serve jail time for his conviction as an “accessory to murder”

Oskar Groening, defendant & former Nazi SS officer dubbed the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz”, is shown in the photo above as he listens to the verdict during his trial in Lueneburg, Germany, July 15, 2015. The 94-year-old German man who worked as a bookkeeper at the Auschwitz death camp was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people and was sentenced to four years in prison, in what could be one of the last big Holocaust trials, Lueneburg, Germany, July 15, 2015. REUTERS/Axel Heimken/Pool

The following quote is from a recent news article which you can read in full at

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/oskar-groening-fit-prison-nazi-auschwitz_us_5982c81de4b06d488874337b

Begin quote from news article:

A 96-year-old former Nazi guard and SS officer known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” has been deemed fit to serve jail time for his 2015 conviction as an accessory to murder, German prosecutors say.

Kathrin Soefker, a spokeswoman for prosecutors in Hanover, northern Germany, said doctors had determined that Oskar Groening was well enough to start his four-year prison sentence, so long as he was able to receive “appropriate medical care” while incarcerated.

“A 96-year-old has physical constraints but … he is fit for prison,” Soefker said.

End quote

Oscar Groening is a former SS man who worked at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He has admitted, in the past, that Jews were killed in gas chambers at this camp.

Groening said that the gassing of the Jews, in two old farmhouses, took place at night. As told by writer Laurence Rees in one of his books, Groening said that he had witnessed a gassing one night after he had been awakened by an alarm because a number of Jews had escaped as they were being marched to the gas chamber.

Groening said that he saw the lights on in one of the farm houses, and seven or eight bodies out in front of the building. He assumed that these were the bodies of the escapees who had been caught and shot.

Groening was “overcome by curiosity,” according to Rees. Groening and his comrades then stayed around one night to watch what was going on at the farm house. They claimed that they saw an SS man, wearing a gas mask, pour Zyklon-B pellets through a hatch in the side of the cottage wall. They heard screaming for a minute, followed by silence. Then an SS man went up to the door, and looked through a peephole to see if all the prisoners were dead.

Groening said that this remote area was considered to be a good location for the use of Zyklon-B which was a dangerous poison that had the potential to kill the SS men who were throwing it inside the building.

Until March 1942, the gassing of the Jews had allegedly been done in Krema I at the Auschwitz main camp. Krema I was situated between the SS hospital and the Gestapo building, not a good location for the use of  a dangerous poisonous gas. That is why a new location for gassing had to be found.

In his autobiography, Rudolf Hoess, the  former Commandant at Auschwitz-Birkenau, wrote regarding the gassing in the little white house:

Begin quote from the autobiography of Rudolf Hoess:

“Hundreds of men and women in the full bloom of life walked all unsuspecting to their death in the gas chambers under the blossom-laden fruit trees of the orchard. This picture of death in the midst of life remains with me to this day. I looked upon them as enemies of our people. The reasons behind the Extermination Program seemed to me [to be] right.”

End quote from autobiography of Rudolf Hoess

87-year-old Ursula Haverbeck convicted of Holocaust denial in Germany

Ursula Haverbeck

This quote is from a news article, which you can read in full here:

BERLIN – An 87-year-old German woman who is a prominent neo-Nazi has been convicted of Holocaust denial and sentenced to 10 months in prison.

Bild newspaper reported Friday that Ursula Haverbeck says she will appeal Thursday’s Hamburg state court verdict.

Haverbeck was charged earlier this year after giving an interview outside the trial of former SS Sgt. Oskar Groening claiming Auschwitz wasn’t a death camp.

When she challenged the presiding judge in Hamburg to prove it was, Bild reports that he said he wouldn’t debate someone who “can’t accept any facts,” adding “I also don’t have to prove to you the world is round.”

Groening, who gave lengthy testimony on how the death camp functioned, was convicted of 300,000 counts of accessory to murder for the Jews killed while he was there.

What is wrong with this woman? She is 87 years old, living in Germany, and she doesn’t know that it is as sure that the Auschwitz was a death camp, as it is sure that the earth is round.

Ursula is a harmless old lady, who looks like a nun.  She should be allowed to say whatever she wants.  What’s the harm?

The news article says that Haverbeck claimed that the Auschwitz camp was not a death camp.  Actually, that is correct. Auschwitz (the main camp) was not a death camp; the death camp was Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The Auschwitz main camp had a gas chamber but it was unworkable.

My photo of Krema I gas chamber in Auschwitz camp

You can read about the alleged gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Auschwitz1/Auschwitz08.html

Ursula should demand that the judge go to the Auschwitz main camp, put some live animals into the gas chamber and gas them with Zyklon-B pellets thrown through the holes on the roof.

The door into the oven room, that is right next to the Auschwitz gas chamber, has been removed so that tourists can enter from the oven room and proceed into the gas chamber.  That opening would have to be closed up, if the alleged gas chamber is tested.

Actually, nothing has to be proved by the prosecution in a German trial of a Holocaust denier.  The Germans have a long word, which I can’t remember, which means that the Holocaust is a fact that does not have to be proved.

Journalists gather outside the courtroom after a verdict in the case of former SS officer Oskar Groening on July 15, 2015 at court in Lueneburg, northern Germany. Photo: AFP PHOTO / TOBIAS SCHWARZ

Note that the building in the photo above is the Lueneburg courthouse where the trial of the Bergen-Belsen war criminals was held after World War II.

The moral of this story is the following:  Don’t open your mouth and start denying the Holocaust in front of a courthouse where war criminals have been historically  tried and automatically convicted.  In fact, don’t speak about the Holocaust at all when you are in Germany which is not a free country.

Oskar Groening stood on the ramp at Birkenau 3 times, but was sentenced to four years in prison

Oskar Groening at his trial

Today, I read an old news story here about the trial of Oskar Groening, a former German SS man, who was prosecuted as a war criminal because he had formerly served as an accountant at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

Oskar Groening as a young soldier

This quote is from the news story:

Though he [Groening] was more regularly assigned to the camp’s Auschwitz I section, he said he guarded the Birkenau ramp three times, including one busy 24-hour shift. The main gas chambers were located at Birkenau.

“The capacity of the gas chambers and the capacity of the crematoria were quite limited. Someone said that 5,000 people were processed in 24 hours but I didn’t verify this. I didn’t know,” he said. “For the sake of order we waited until train 1 was entirely processed and finished.”

Auschwitz survivors describe their arrival as chaotic, with Nazi guards yelling orders, dogs barking and families being ripped apart.

But Groening, 93, maintained the opposite, saying “it was very orderly and not as strenuous” on the ramp at Birkenau.
“The process was the same as Auschwitz I. The only difference was that there were no trucks,” he said during the second day of his trial. “They all walked – some in one direction some, in another direction … to where the crematoria and gas chambers were.”

Wait a minute! Where were the crematoria?  The gas chamber buildings at Birkenau, and in the main Auschwitz camp, did not have a crematorium.  The room, which would normally have been a crematorium, was instead an undressing room.  Everyone knows that!

Note that Groening worked at the ramp, where selections for the gas chamber were made, only 3 times. Yet he was sentenced to 4 years in prison. I don’t think that this was a fair sentence.  Groening should have been sentenced to only THREE YEARS in prison, one year for each time when he was at the ramp, collecting money from the luggage.

Groening had nothing to do with the prisoners being gassed, but he was THERE, so he is guilty of a war crime. This is according to the ex-post-facto law, known as “common plan.”

Groening committed his crime BEFORE the common plan law was created by the Allies after the war.

Oskar Groening speaks in “Auschwitz Deportation” episode on American Heroes Channel on TV

Update 2:30 p.m. July 19, 2015

I have just finished watching Episode 4 of the Auschwitz Deportation series on TV.  I now understand the motivation behind Oskar Groening’s confession regarding his role in the Holocaust.

It turns out that Konrad Morgen had visited Auschwitz to investigate a theft in the Auschwitz camp. It seems that Oskar Groening had stolen money and goods at Auschwitz and had stored the goods in his locker. He had taken the wall off the back of his locker and made a door there. Then he bolted the door on the front of the locker and called a locksmith to open it. When the locksmith was unable to get the door open, he opened up the back of the locker and found the stolen goods. Oskar Groening was in big trouble because he was now a criminal, not a respected SS man. This was what motivated Groening to side with the Jews and start telling lies about how the Jews were treated.  The whole thing back-fired and the Jews turned on him.  That’s how Groenning wound up being tried and convicted of being a war criminal.

Continue reading my original post:

Last night, I watched the Holocaust 103 episode on TV, entitled Auschwitz Deportation, and I was very surprised to see Oskar Groening, looking around 15 or 20 years younger than he is today, as he spoke about his role in the Holocaust.

As Groening spoke, I deduced that he might be mentally unstable. On the show, Groening said that he was “supervising the luggage,” when trains arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He said that he saw SS men “bashing the heads of babies against a lorry.”

Why is he using the British term “lorry” instead of the American term “truck”?  And why is he telling one of the most famous lies about the Holocaust: the bashing of the heads of babies?

I previously blogged about the bashing of babies here and here.  I wrote about a story told by Holocaust survivor Philip Riteman, regarding the bashing of a baby, near the end of this page of my website.

Then it was mentioned on last night’s TV show that “the French were sent to gas chambers.” According to the TV show, there was the story of 4,000 French children without parents who all died because, to the Nazis, “the enemy is the (Jewish) blood inside them.”

After he was totaled out by seeing baby’s heads bashed against the side of a train, Oskar Groening said that he “applied for a transfer to the war front.”  Apparently, Oskar didn’t last long at the front, or maybe he was turned down for some reason, and that’s when he moved to the main Auschwitz camp where his new job was counting the money brought to the camp by the Jews.

But to get back to the beginning of last night’s TV show, the very first thing that is mentioned in the show is that “1.1 million people died in the Holocaust.” This tells you that the show was made fairly recently; the original number of people who died at Auschwitz was 4 million.

The narrator of the show mentions “the scratching of the walls of the gas chamber in the factory of death.” My most popular blog post of all time is the one about the scratching of the walls of the Auschwitz main camp gas chamber: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/dying-victims-scratched-the-walls-of-the-auschwitz-gas-chamber-with-their-fingernails/

Literally millions of people, all over the world have read my blog post, cited above. Could it be that Oskar Groening got his information about the scratches on the wall of the Auschwitz gas chamber from me?

Near the beginning of the show last night, a photo of the Commandant’s house is shown. The photo was similar to my photo below, and it might even have been my photo.

My photo of the house where the Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Hoess lived with his family

The problem with the photo above is that the house, where Hoess lived, was painted red when he lived there. When I took this photo in 2005, the house had been re-painted.

It is little mistakes like this which make current TV shows about the Holocaust unbelievable.  Would it have killed the producers of this show to have found an old photo which shows the house when it was painted red.

But that wasn’t the worst mistake in the TV show. The narrator said that the gassing of the Jews started in Autumn of 1941 in the main Auschwitz camp. He said that “SS men climbed up on the roof of the gas chamber and dropped powder into the gas chamber.”  As every school child in America knows, the gas was in the form of pellets, not powder. This mistake shows that Groening knows nothing about the gassing of the Jews, and he is just trying to please the Jews so that he won’t have to spend the last years of his life in prison.

The screams could be heard outside the gas chamber, so two motorcycles were revved up to “stifle the screams.”  The screams lasted for 15 to 20 minutes before they stopped.  This is the first time that I heard about the motorcycles being used to stifle the screams.

About 10 minutes into the show, the fake photo of prisoners hanging by their hands is shown. Please try to keep up, people!  This photo was revealed as a fake several years ago.

photo of “pole hanging” is from a Soviet film

The photograph above, which I took inside the old Dachau Museum in May 2001, shows a scene at Buchenwald that was created in 1958 for an East German DEFA film. (Source: H. Obenaus, “Das Foto vom Baumhängen: Ein Bild geht um die Welt,” in Stiftung Topographie des Terrors Berlin (ed.), Gedenkstätten-Rundbrief no. 68, Berlin, October 1995, pp. 3-8)

This fake photo was not included in the new Dachau Museum which opened in 2003, but all the tour guides at Dachau still dwell at length upon the hanging punishment. I have not been to Dachau since 2008; perhaps the fake photo has been brought back.

94-year-old Oskar Groening sentenced to 4 years in prison for being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews

According to an article in today’s news, which you can read in full here:

Seventy years after the end of World War II, [Oskar Groening] a guard who worked at the Auschwitz [Birenau] concentration camp was convicted in Germany on Wednesday [July 15] on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder and given a four-year prison sentence.

Oskar Groening was found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews. How did that happen?

It was not until May 1944, when the Hungarian Jews were deported, that Auschwitz-Birkenau became the site of the largest mass murder in modern history and the epicenter of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Oskar Groening had the misfortune to have been assigned to work as a bookkeeper at Auschwitz during this terrible time.

Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1944

The photo above shows Hungarian Jews arriving by train, carrying their bundles.  Oskar Groening’s job was to take their bundles and remove any money that they might have brought with them. This might not sound like a horrendous crime, but Oskar was depriving the Jews of the opportunity to bribe the guy, on the far right, to let them get by without being sent immediately to the gas chamber.  The guy in the striped pajamas is a Sonderkommando, whose job it was to help the Nazis at the ramp.

In 1942, there were 2.7 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, including 1.6 million at the three Operation Reinhard camps, but only 200,000 Jews were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau that year in two old farm houses that had been converted into homicidal gas chambers. [I got this information from the book entitled Auschwitz, a New History by Laurence Rees, which was published in 2005.]

Almost one half of all the Jews that were killed at Auschwitz were Hungarian Jews who were gassed within a period of 10 weeks in 1944. Up until the Spring of 1944, it had been the three Operation Reinhard camps at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor, that were the main Nazi killing centers for the Jews, not Auschwitz.

The order to round up the Hungarian Jews and confine them in ghettos was signed by Lazlo Baky of the Royal Hungarian government on April 7, 1944. By this time, Hungary was an ally of Germany.

The deportation of the Hungarian Jews began on April 29, 1944 when a train load of Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau on the orders of Adolf Eichmann, according to the book by Laurence Rees.

According to The Holocaust Chronicle, a huge book published in 2002 by Louis Weber, the CEO of Publications International, Ltd., another train filled with Hungarian Jews left for Auschwitz-Birkeanu on April 30, 1944. The two trains with a total of 3,800 Jews reached Birkenau on May 2, 1944. There were 486 men and 616 women selected to work; the remaining 2,698 Jews were gassed upon arrival. Oskar Groening was found guilty of being an accessory to this crime, because he was there.

The news article continues with this quote:

A judge in the northern German city of Lueneburg convicted Groening for his role at the camp following testimony that he presided over prisoners’ belongings and collected their money before they were marched to their death in gas chambers.

He did not dispute the charges and admitted “moral guilt” for the atrocities. His lawyers argued he should be acquitted because he did not actively facilitate mass murder.

Judge Franz Kompisch nevertheless concluded that Groening played at part in the camp that allowed the Nazi regime to murder hundreds of thousands of Jews.

Hungarian Jews walking to the gas chamber, carrying their bundles

The photo above shows Hungarian Jews walking to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, carrying their bundles. Was Oskar Groening remiss in his duties? I suspect that these Jews might have been carrying some money in those bundles, ready to bribe one of the guards to let them escape the gas chamber.

This final quote is from the news article:

The four-year sentence [of Oskar Groening] exceeds the three-and-a-half years sought by the prosecution.

“For us, it was not a big question of whether it is three, four, five, six years in prison — that was never a topic,” Thomas Walther, a lawyer who represents 51 co-plaintiffs, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “It is an excellent verdict,” he said.

Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, an organization that represents Jewish interests in 100 countries, said it was the correct decision to put Groening on trial despite his old age.

“Albeit belatedly, justice has been done. Mr. Groening was only a small cog in the Nazis’ death machine, but without the actions of people like him, the mass murder of millions of Jews and others would not have been possible,” Lauder said.

“We urge authorities (in Germany) — and in other European countries — not to relent in the quest for bringing the perpetrators of the biggest crime in the history of mankind to justice,” he added.

Of the approximately six million Jewish men, women and children killed during the Holocaust, around 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz in then-German-occupied Poland.

The case against Groening related to a period between May and July 1944.

Angela Orosz-Richt, 70, a Holocaust survivor born in Auschwitz who now lives in Montreal, Canada, testified at Groening’s trial last month.

“I thank Germany for eventually putting him on trial, although that should have happened decades ago, and although many other perpetrators never had to stand trial for their crimes,” she said in emailed comments to USA TODAY.

Wait a minute! Did I read Angela’s testimony correctly?  She was BORN in Auschwitz? How did that happen?

What right does she have to testify against Groening.  She was a new born baby at Auschwitz, who knew nothing about Groening standing on the ramp, taking bundles from the new arrivals, and counting their money.

Hungarian Jews waiting for the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau (Click to Enlarge)

The photo above shows Hungarian Jews who are facing the Sauna building where arriving Jewish women and children took a shower.  Behind them is the building called Canada, where the possessions of the Jews were stored, but only after Oskar Groening had removed all the money in the luggage.

Auschwitz Survivor says that she is “unable to forgive Oskar Groening”

94-year-old Oskar Groening awaits the decision on his potential prison time

According to a recent news article, German national Oskar Groening, 94, stands accused of 300,000 counts of  “accessory to murder” in the cases of deported Hungarian Jews sent to the gas chambers between May and July 1944.”

Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944  (click to enlarge)

The photo above shows a typical scene of a train arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Jews waiting for their turn in the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Oskar Groening worked at the train tracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where he collected money from the luggage brought to the camp by Hungarian Jews in 1944.

Working at the train tracks makes Groening guilty as an “accessory to the fact” of the murder of 300,000 Jews, according to the prosecutor at his trial, which has just ended.  Groening has admitted his “moral guilt” in court, but he denies that he is guilty of this latest ex-post-facto law, which became a new law as a result of the John Demjanjuk trial.

The following quote is from the news article which you can read in full at http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-bookkeeper-of-auschwitz-survivor-testify-as-trial-nears-end-2015-7

As the final witness during the [Groening] trial, Irene Weiss, 84, a Czech-born Auschwitz survivor from the United States, gave searing testimony against Groening.

Dressed in a black trouser suit and speaking in an unwavering voice, Weiss described her terrifying ordeal as a 13-year-old girl.

Showing two photographs of her family as they arrived at Auschwitz that were recovered 25 years after the Holocaust, Weiss said her mother, three younger siblings, and older brother were all murdered soon after in the gas chambers.

Her father was forced to work as a Sonderkommando, removing corpses from the gas chambers and cremating them, until the SS shot him.

Weiss said she was unable to forgive Groening.

“He has said that he does not consider himself a perpetrator but merely a small cog in the machine,” she said.

“But if he were sitting here today wearing his SS uniform, I would tremble and all the horror that I experienced as a 13-year-old would return to me.

“Any person who wore that uniform in that place represented terror and the depths to which humanity can sink, regardless of what function they performed.”

You can read all about Irene Weiss on this website: http://www.ushmm.org/remember/office-of-survivor-affairs/survivor-volunteer/irene-fogel-weiss

This quote is from the USHMM article, cited above:

Over a two-month period beginning in May 1944, nearly 425,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau, including Irene and her family. Irene was 13 years old. Upon arrival at the camp, her mother, three younger siblings, and older brother were killed.

SS authorities selected Irene and her sister Serena for forced labor, while their father was forced to work as a Sonderkommando, removing corpses from the gas chambers and cremating them. The SS camp staff periodically killed the members of the Sonderkommando and replaced them with persons from newly arriving transports. While still in the camp, Irene’s aunt learned through a boy from their hometown that when Meyer could no longer perform this work, the SS shot and killed him.

Wait a minute! Irene was only 13, but she was selected to work, while her older brother was sent to the gas chamber. It was the policy of the SS, at the death camps, to kill everyone younger than 15 or older than 45 immediately upon arrival. How was 13-year-old Irene able to pass the selection while her older brother was sent to the gas chamber?

The USHMM article continues with this quote:

Irene, Serena, and two maternal aunts, Rose and Piri Mermelstein, worked in the “Canada” section of Birkenau—storage warehouses located near two crematoria—for eight months until January 1945,

Working in the “Canada” warehouse was the best job that a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau could get. How was Irene so fortunate that she got one of the best jobs in the camp, at the tender age of 13? Didn’t someone notice that she should have been gassed?

Selections for work or the gas chamber  at Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp

But wait, there’s more: “One day during morning roll call, the SS separated Serena and other prisoners from the group, deeming them too weak and emaciated to work. Irene said to a camp guard, “She is my sister,” and was then allowed to go with Serena. The sisters heard from other inmates that they would be sent back to Ravensbrück, where there were gas chambers. They were locked in a room with other prisoners to await the transport truck, but it never arrived.”

So Irene was finally selected to be sent to Ravensbrück, “where there were gas chambers”? But once again, Irene was saved because the transport truck never arrived.

Irene should be arrested as a “Holocaust denier.”  Her testimony at the trial goes against all the facts of the Holocaust.

Religious Jews who were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau to be gassed

Meanwhile, Holocaust survivors are asking for more money: http://www.news4jax.com/news/holocaust-survivors-ask-for-financial-aide/34051298

Daughter of Rudolf Hoess has been dragged back into the news, due to the trial of Oskar Groening

Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoess after he was tortured by the British and forced to confess to gassing the Jews

This quote is from a news article in a British newspaper, which you can read in full here:

When [the daughter of Rudolf Hoess] is told about an incident at the [Auschwitz] camp, when her father was spoken to by a pregnant Jewish woman on her way to the gas chamber with her children, she [the daughter of Rudolf Hoess] has had enough. “That’s it, I have heard enough,” she says.

“I heard everything I need to know. He [her father] did what he did.”

Unfortunately, the name of the “pregnant Jewish woman on her way to the gas chamber with her children” is not named in the news article. Who could it have been?

Maybe it was Miriam Rosenthal.  I blogged about her in this previous blog post:  https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/pregnant-at-auschwitz-the-story-of-miriam-rosenthal/

This quote from the news article explains why the daughter of Rudolf Hoess has been dragged into the news again:

Now she [the daughter of Rudolf Hoess] has told all to Stern Magazine from Germany: prompted to embark upon the painful journey of remembrance by the Oskar Groening trial which is currently going on in the country. Groening, 93, is charged with aiding and abetting the murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944 when he worked there as an S.S. guard – an S.S. guard employed by her father [Rudolf Hoess].

This photo of child survivors of Auschwitz was taken about 4 weeks after the camp was liberated

This photo was taken on the same day as the previous photo

Note how the photo directly above, which is shown with the article, has been photo-shopped to increase the contrast in order to show how terrible it was at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Both of these photos are still photos from a film taken by the Soviet liberators of Auschwitz.

I have complained many times about the inappropriate use of photos to make the Holocaust look worse than it actually was. The photo of Rudolf Hoess, that is shown below, would be a better photo to use in an article about his daughter. This photo shows him before he was tortured by the British.

Rudolf Hoess the Commandant of Auschwitz

But I am getting ahead of myself. The news article actually starts with this misleading quote:

Born Ingebirgitt Hannah Hoess, she now lives under an assumed name in Washington, US, where her social life has brought her into contact with former US President Bill Clinton and his deputy Al Gore.
It is a long way from the banks of the Sola River in southern Poland, a tributary of the Vistula which, as she sat and played as a child, would turn grey then black before her eyes: the result of the human ash tipped into it from the crematoria ovens at the camp which her father Rudolf oversaw.

The Sola river where ashes from the  Auschwitz cremoria were allegedly thrown

As a child, the children of Rudolf Hoess played at the Sola River which was close to the main Auschwitz camp, and close to the house where Hoess lived with his family.

Besides that, there was a place called Solahütte, which was a little known SS resort some 30 km south of Auschwitz on the Sola River.  I don’t think that the SS men at Auschwitz would have polluted the river that ran through their vacation spot.

I previously blogged about the ashes from the crematoria at Auschwitz on this blog post:

https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/where-are-the-ashes-of-the-1-1-million-people-killed-at-auschwitz-birkenau/

Here is another quote from the news article:

Dad [Rudolf Hoess] was strict when it came to etiquette,” says Ingebrigitt. “At the dining table, the children were allowed to speak only if they were asked.

“But he was never angry. At the table he spoke of family things and what we would do on weekends for excursions. But never something next door, because we never knew anything. Never.”

Next door was the supreme killing plant of the Third Reich where vast gas chambers capable of “processing” 12,000 human beings every 24 hours were in operation night and day.

The house where Rudolf Hoess and his family lived at Auschwitz

In the photo above, the gas chamber (not shown) was to the left, and only a few yards from the house. On the right was the garden where the children of Rudolf Hoess played. The balcony (not shown) was on the back of the house.

The balcony was on what Americans would call the “second floor.”  In German terms, the first floor of a house is called the ground floor and what we call the “second floor” is called the first floor in Germany.

This quote is also from the news article:

She [the daughter of Rudolf Hoess] says she sleepwalked and remembers now seeing the smoke from the crematoria, which consumed the bodies of the dead and turned them into ash to be fed into the [Sola] river, 100 metres away from a balcony on the first floor of the family house. She could see the floodlights and the watchtowers [in the Auschwitz main camp].