“So amazing & will never forget” said Trump at Yad Vashem

“So amazing & will never forget.”

Is this the proper thing to say when visiting a Holocaust Memorial? I don’t think so!

The following quote is from the news article:

 Begin quote

Donald Trump delivered a solemn message of remembrance and a defiant pledge of ‘Never again’ on Tuesday as he visited Israel‘s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem – and left a handwritten message saying his visit was ‘so amazing’.

It was criticized on Twitter by people claiming it failed to show sufficient respect to the victims of the Holocaust – although his speech had been a lengthy tribute to the dead.

One Israeli journalist published a pointed comparison of the message Trump left with that written by Barack Obama when he visited Israel in 2013.

However Trump’s speech was widely praised – and the chairman of Yad Vashem said that he believed the president did not deserve criticism.

End quote

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4533614/Trump-pays-homage-6-million-Jewish-Holocaust-victims.html#ixzz4iUwu3khO

Trump called the Holocaust “history’s darkest hour.”

The title of my blog post today is a quote from a news article, which you can read in full at http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/05/22/breaking-news/trumps-yad-vashem-visit-highlights-mixed-holocaust-record/

Sara Netanyahu, and first lady Melania Trump look on as President Donald Trump meets holocaust survivor Margot Herschenbaum during a visit to Yad Vashem, today in Jerusalem.

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

President Donald Trump paid a short visit to Israel’s national Holocaust memorial today, calling the Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews “the most savage crime against God and his children” during the most sensitive stop on his two-day visit to Israel.

Trump had come under criticism in some quarters for planning just a brief half-hour stop at Yad Vashem, following a series of missteps by his administration on issues of concern to the Jewish American community — such as inadequately denouncing the anti-Semitic rhetoric of some of his supporters and appearing cavalier at times about the Holocaust.

But Trump pleased his hosts in Israel by taking a strong stand in expressing sympathy for Holocaust victims and support for the Jewish state.

In a solemn ceremony, Trump rekindled the memorial’s eternal flame and laid a wreath in honor of the 6 million Jews killed. A children’s choir sang and a cantor recited a special prayer for the dead.

End quote

So Trump finally got it right. He had first visited Yad Vashem for only 15 minutes, which was a grave insult to the Jews.

The figure of 6 million is symbolic. The actual number of Jews who died in the Holocaust dwindles down by the day.

Note that the “Holocaust survivor” in the photo is very old, but she seems to be in good physical condition and very spry. Strangely, this is the same with most “Holocaust survivors” who have lived to an advanced age. How did this happen?

Trump’s 2nd trip to Yad Vashem — as he tries to make amends

Donald Trump wears a yam-aka at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on his second trip to honor the Jews

I previously wrote about Trump’s first trip to Yad Vashem, where he stayed for only 15 minutes. Vad Vashem is a vast place which takes at least 2 days to see.  The Jews were affronted by Trump’s insulting attitude toward the Jews — staying only 15 minutes in such a sacred place. What is WRONG with him?

The following is a quote from a recent news article which you can read in full by clicking on the link below:

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSKBN18J1JJ

Begin quote from the news article:

U.S. President Donald Trump paid tribute at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial on Tuesday to the six million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust, calling it an indescribable act of evil.

Holding hands, the president and First Lady Melania Trump walked solemnly to lay a wreath together upon the ashes of Holocaust victims, buried at the site’s Hall of Remembrance.

“Words can never describe the bottomless depths of that evil, or the scope of the anguish and destruction. It was history’s darkest hour,” Trump said in a short speech after the memorial ceremony.

“It was the most savage crime against God and his children,” said Trump, who is visiting Israel and the Palestinian Territories on the second leg of his first foreign trip since taking office in January.

Mrs. Donald Trump lays wreath.

Trump’s administration has drawn anger over past omissions and utterances regarding the Holocaust.

In January, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a Trump administration statement failed to mention Jews, the overwhelming majority of those who were killed in the Holocaust.

In April, White House spokesman Sean Spicer triggered an uproar when he said Hitler did not sink to the level of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by using chemical weapons on his own people. Spicer also used the term “Holocaust centers”, in an apparent reference to the Nazi death camps.

Spicer later apologized after his comments sparked an uproar on social media and elsewhere for overlooking the fact that millions of Jews perished in Nazi gas chambers.

The Anti-Defamation League said in April that anti-Semitic incidents, from bomb threats and cemetery desecrations [sic] to assaults and bullying, have surged in the United States since the election of Trump, and a “heightened political atmosphere” played a role in the rise.

Trump had been criticized for waiting until late February to deliver his first public condemnation of anti-Semitic incidents, previously speaking more generally about his hope of making the nation less “divided.”

He later called such incidents “horrible … and a very sad reminder” of the work needed to root out hate, prejudice and evil.

Trump was due to travel to Rome later on Tuesday, where he will continue a nine-day trip that began in Saudi Arabia.

 

End quote from news article

free online course that teaches about the Holocaust from the Jewish perspective

You can read about a new online history course that teaches about the Holocaust: https://www.coursera.org/learn/holocaust-introduction-1/

The following quote is from the website, cited above:

Begin quote

This free online course was produced jointly by Tel Aviv University and Yad Vashem – the World Center for Holocaust Research. The course tracks the history of the Holocaust and has two parts. “The Holocaust – An Introduction (I): Nazi Germany: Ideology, The Jews and the World” is the first of the two courses and covers the following themes in its three weeks:

Week 1

From Hatred to Core Ideology; From Democracy to a Totalitarian State; Nazi Germany and the Jews

Course Introduction trailer
Introduction:
Why the Jews?
Nazi Antisemitism
Gleichschaltung
Life in Nazi Germany
Jewish Life in Nazi Germany
1938 – A Major Turning Point

End quote

Gleichshaltung was a new word made up by the Nazis. I will try to explain it to you:

Buildings in the town of Dachau

By March 1933, the Nazis had taken over every town in Germany, including the town of Dachau.  The building on the left in the photo above is where the Nazis raised their flag on March 9, 1933, after they took over the town of Dachau.

An important policy of the Nazi party in Germany was called Gleichschaltung, a term that was coined in 1933, to mean that all German culture, religious practice, politics, and daily life should conform with Nazi ideology. This policy meant total control of thought, belief, and practice, and it was used to systematically eradicate all anti-Nazi elements, after Hitler came to power in January 1933.

Under the Gleichschaltung policy, every member of the Nazi party was given a second job, in addition to his regular job.

Heinrich Himmler was given a second job as the supervisor of the German prisons.  On his first visit to the Munich prison, Himmler noted that the prison was overcrowded because Communists had been rounded up after the fire in the German Reichstag on February 27, 1933 and sent to “wild camps” or to regular prisons, including the Munich prison.

On March 22, 1933, Heinrich Himmler opened the first Nazi concentration camp in Germany at an old factory just outside of the town of Dachau. The first prisoners were 200 Communists who had been taken into “protective custody” after the burning of the Reichstag on the night of February 27, 1933; the justification for the imprisonment of the Communists was that they were “enemies of the state.”

Here is a little history of Germany to put everything into context:

Following World War I, Germany became a democratic Republic with a Constitution based on the American Constitution. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, a new congressional election was required to confirm his appointment.

In the election which took place on March 5, 1933, the Nazis gained enough seats in the Reichstag (German Congress) so that, with the help of other conservative parties, they were able to pass legislation on March 7th, which ended state’s rights in Germany. This legislation allowed Hitler to unite Germany for the first time into “ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (one people, one empire, one leader).

After this legislation was put into effect on March 9, 1933, all the German states were now controlled by the federal government, under the rule of the Nazis; the governors of each state and all the government positions of any importance were now appointed by the Nazis, and of course, the appointees were loyal members of the Nazi party.

The Nazi term for this new unity among the German people was Gleichschaltung; it meant that everyone was on the same page with all the people pulling together, united in their beliefs and objectives.

After March 9, 1933, the former German states, such as Prussia and Bavaria, no longer had state’s rights and the German people were now ruled by one government and one leader for the first time ever in the history of the German people.

One reason that the Nazis wanted to bring all the German states under their central control was to make sure that Bavaria would never again be taken over by the Communists, which was what happened on November 7, 1918 when Jewish leader Kurt Eisner led a revolution, forced the King of Bavaria to resign, and then set up a Communist Republic in Bavaria.

So, long story short, Gleichschaltung was the start of Germany for the Germans, not for the Jews. The Jews thought that it was their right to live in any country in the world, and to control that country for their benefit. The Jews have now achieved that goal, and Hitler is now the worst person who ever lived on this earth.

 

Yad Vashem races to collect 6 millon names of Holocaust victims

As everyone in the world knows by now, there were 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, but what were their names?  Those sly Nazis didn’t record the names of their victims in the genocide of the Jews, known today as “The Holocaust.”  Now the Holocaust Museum in Israel, Yad Vashem, is trying to collect the names of all 6 million victims.

Entrance into Yad Vashem museum in Israel

The issue of the lack of names was addressed in a news article, published world-wide today by the Associated Press; you can read the article in full here.

This quote is from the news article:

Contrary to popular belief, the Nazis did not keep meticulous records. They kept tabs on the identity of Jews in Germany, Austria and elsewhere in central Europe, but ordered the wholesale murder of communities elsewhere that were not documented. They also tried to cover up many of their crimes.

The statement above is correct. Way back in the 1940s, when the Jews were being transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the main killing centers in the Holocaust, some of the victims were sent directly, from the incoming trains, to the gas chambers.  Others were kept for a few weeks at Auschwitz, before being transferred to other camps.  No records of the names of those who were gassed were ever kept, nor the names of those who were transferred.  Only the Jews, who were assigned to live in the barracks at Auschwitz, were registered and given a number, which was tattooed on their arm.

Records in all the Nazi concentration camps were kept on IBM Hollerith cards. The code for those who were gassed at Auschwitz was F-6, which was the code for “special treatment.”  The code for Jews who were transported to another concentration camp was also F-6, for “evacuations.”

Jews who were transported, from the ghettos in Europe, to the three Operation Reinhard camps (Belzec, Sobibor and Treblink)  were not registered; they were gassed immediately upon arrival.  The victims were not given a code number, nor tattooed.  Their names are unknown, except to some of their relatives, who are now being questioned by researchers in Israel.

This quote is from the news article, cited above:

Yad Vashem’s goal is to collect the names of all 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The memorial’s very name — Yad Vashem is Hebrew for “a memorial and a name” — alludes to its central mission of commemorating the dead as individuals, rather than mere numbers like the Nazis did.

It hasn’t been an easy task.

The project began in 1955, but over the following half century, fewer than 3 million names were collected, mostly because the project was not widely known. Many survivors refrained from reopening wounds, or they clung to hopes that their relatives might still be alive.

Those clever Nazis!  They predicted that some day, there would be a world-wide religion, called Holocaustianity, and they diabolically obfuscated the numbers, so that some day, a cult of Holocaust denial would arise.  According to the news article, the main purpose of collecting names now is “to combat Holocaust denial.”  Good luck with that!

Where did the 6 million number come from?  From Adolf Eichmann, the alleged mastermind of the Holocaust?  No, Eichmann mentioned FIVE MILLION victims, not six million.

During his trial in Poland, Rudolf Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz, changed the figure in his confession to a total of 1,130,000 Jews that were gassed but declared “During my tenure at Auschwitz, millions of people died, whose exact number I cannot determine.”

When Rudolf Hoess was questioned on the witness stand at the Nuremburg IMT, he claimed that, after each gassing action, the records were destroyed.  The only person who knew the actual numbers, according to Hoess, was Adolf Eichmann.

At the Nuremberg IMT, a quote, allegedly made by Eichmann in 1945, was introduced into evidence:

“I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have five million human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction.”

So why is the number of 6 million used today, instead of 5 million?  6 million just sounds better. Since there is no way of knowing the actual number of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, why not just go with 6 million?

Family of deceased “Righteous among Nations” award recipient rejects highest Jewsish honor

One of the most famous recipients of the Jewish honor, known as “Righteous among Nations” was Oskar Schindler who saved 1,200 Jews from certain death, as told in the famous Spielberg film Schindler’s List.

Family members of the first Arab to be given this prestigious honor “have rejected the accolade because of their hatred for Israel,” according to a news article which you can read in full here.

According to the article: “Egyptian doctor Mohamed Helmy was honored posthumously last month by Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem for hiding a Jew in Berlin during wartime.”

So an Arab has been honored for saving only one Jew?  The Jews at Yad Vashem must be scraping the bottom of the barrel to find non-Jews who saved at least one Jew during World War II.

Most non-Jews had no sympathy for the Jews during the Holocaust, and did not want to risk their own lives to hide a Jew.

Plaszow camp from which Oskar Schindler saved Jews

When Oskar Schindler left his factory, which was a sub-camp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, to escape from the Nazis at the end of the war, he was given a ring by the Jewish prisoners whom he had saved.

The ring had been made by the prisoners, who  used gold from the dental work taken out of the mouth of Schindlerjude Simon Jeret. The ring was inscribed “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.”  Is this what it really said inside the gold ring made by the Jewish prisoners?  Some Holocaust deniers claim that the ring said: “He who saves ONE JEW saves the world entire.”

Do the Jews really believe that saving the life of one goyim is the same as saving the life of one Jew?

German officers at the Belzec death camp

In the news article, this caption is on the photo above:  “Brave: Dr Mohamed Helmy secretly hid Anna Boros in his cottage near Berlin to save her from being sent to a death camp like Belzec, in occupied Poland, pictured, guarded by armed Nazis.”

Amon Goeth, commandant of Plasow camp

Wait a minute!  That “Nazi monster” Amon Goeth saved Jews from being sent to the Belzec death camp when he accepted bribes in exchange for sending these doomed Jews to a labor camp instead. Goeth should be given a posthumous award for saving hundreds of Jews from certain death at Belzec.  An Egyptian doctor saved one Jewish girl in Berlin and he gets Israel’s highest award for a non-Jew.  And then, his family rejects the award. Allegedly, there were 10,000 Jews who hid in Germany and were never sent to a Nazi camp.  There could be as many as 10,000 Righteous Gentiles in Germany who deserve a Yad Vashem award.

The Buchenwald concentration camp and the Treblinka “extermination camp” both had a zoo

There is an on-going discussion in the comments section of my blog about the mislabeling of photos by Holocaust Museums.  For example, the photo below, which is shown on the Yad Vashem Museum website here.

Photo of the Treblinka zoo on Yad Vashem website

Same photo of bears, enhanced in PhotoShop

I have added an enhanced version of the photo. Notice the background, which shows a stone structure, like the one at Buchenwald zoo.

Here is the caption on the photo above, as it is written on the Yad Vashem website:

Name:
Treblinka, Poland, Bears in the menagerie belonging to the camp command.
Belongs to collection:
Yad Vashem Photo Archive
Additional Information:
The photograph is from the private album of Kurt Franz from the time of his service as Deputy Commandant of Treblinka. The album was presented by the prosecution at Franz’s trial in Dusseldorf during the years 1964-5.
Origin:
Justizverwaltung des Landes Nordrhein- Westfalen
Credit:
Yad Vashem
Name of submitter:
Leitender Oberstaatsanwalt-Dusseldorf

One of the regular readers of my blog believes that the photo, shown above, is mislabeled and that the photo was actually taken at Buchenwald, a concentration camp which also had a zoo.

The photos below were taken by me in 1999 when I visited the Buchenwald Memorial Site.

Bear pit in the Buchenwald zoo

House for bears at Buchenwald

The zoo at Buchenwald was built in 1938, as soon as the camp was opened. Commandant Karl Otto Koch ordered the construction of a park area for the SS guards, just outside the camp fence. The park featured a birdhouse, a water basin, and a zoo for four bears and five monkeys. The bears were in full view of the prisoners, and there was also an elaborate falconry in another area outside the camp where the SS kept birds of prey.

Commandant Koch may have been a cruel, ostentatious embezzler, but he was soft-hearted when it came to animals. The Buchenwald camp guidebook contains the following order by Commandant Koch, concerning the animals at Buchenwald:

Commanders’s Order No. 56 dated 8th September 1938 (Extract)

1. Buchenwald zoological gardens has been created in order to provide diversion and entertainment for the men in their leisure time and to show them the beauty and peculiarities of various animals which they will hardly be able to meet and observe in the wild.

But we must also expect the visitor to be reasonable and fond of animals enough to refrain from anything that might not be good for the animals, cause harm to them or even compromise their health and habits. (…) In the meantime, I again received reports saying that SS men have tied the deer’s horns to the fence and cut them loose only after a long while. Furthermore, it has been found that deer have been lured to the fence and tinfoil put in the mouth. In the future, I will find out the perpetrators of such loutish acts and have them reported to the SS Commander in Chief in order to have them punished for cruelty to animals.

The Camp Commandant of Buchenwald Concentration Camp

signed by Koch

SS-Standartenführer

Note that “loutish” behavior by the SS guards was not tolerated. The German army was the best disciplined of all the armed forces fighting in World War II, and the elite SS troops were held to an even higher standard. Note that the Commandant is threatening to report them. He did not have the power to punish the guards nor the prisoners without approval from headquarters in Oranienburg.

Photo of Buchenwald taken after the liberation of the camp

The old photo above was taken shortly after the liberation of the Buchenwald camp. On the far left, you can see the Buchenwald zoo, which was just outside the camp. On the far right is the Buchenwald gatehouse, which is the entrance to the prison enclosure.

The camp inmates were not allowed to visit the zoo, but they could see the bears and monkeys through the fence, which is shown in the photo above.

As for Treblinka, a book by Jean Francois Steiner, entitled Treblinka, mentions that there was a zoo, which had been built at Treblinka by Commandant Franz Stangl for the amusement of the SS staff and some of the privileged prisoners, called Kapos, who assisted the Germans in the camp. Treblinka also had a camp orchestra and a brothel for the SS staff, just like the concentration camps.

Aerial photos taken by the Soviet Union while the Treblinka “death camp” was in operation show that there were Polish farms adjacent to the camp and that the whole area of the camp was devoid of trees. Today, the area of the Treblinka Memorial site is completely surrounded by a forest and the section of the camp where the guards once lived is now covered by trees.

Jean Francois Steiner wrote in his book Treblinka that the privileged prisoners in the camp had “a great life.” They were allowed to marry in the camp, and Kurt Franz conducted the wedding ceremonies. After one of the wedding celebrations, the prisoners got the idea of “a kind of cabaret,” where there was music, dancing and drinking on the Summer nights.

The book Treblinka reads like a novel and I am not sure if it is truth or fiction. The Treblinka II camp, where the zoo was located, was supposed to be an “extermination camp” where Jews were brought for the sole purpose of gassing them immediately upon arrival.

The following quote is from Steiner’s book.  It describes how the privileged prisoners (Kapos) and the SS men were having parties at the “death camp.”  The Commandant, Kurt Franz, was nicknamed “Lalka,” which means doll.  He was given this nick name by the prisoners because he was a very handsome man.

When Lalka heard about what was going on, far from forbidding it, he provided the drinks himself and encouraged the SS men to go there. The first contact lacked warmth, but the S.S. men knew how to make people forget who they were, and soon their presence was ignored. In addition to the dancing, there were night-club acts. The ice was broken between the Jews and the S.S. This did not prevent the S.S. from killing the Jews during the day, but the prospect of having to part company soon mellowed them a little.

[…]

The high point of these festivities was unquestionably Arthur Gold’s birthday. An immense buffet was laid out in the tailor shop, which the S.S. officers decorated themselves. Hand written invitations were sent to every member of the camp aristocracy. It was to be the great social event of the season and everyone was eager to wear his finest clothes. […] The women had done each other’s hair and had put on the finest dresses in the store, simple for the girls and decollete for the women. […] Arthur Gold outdid himself in the toasts that preceded the festivities. He insisted on thanking the Germans for the way they treated the Jews.

[…]

One evening a Ukrainian brought an accordion and the others began to dance. The scene attracted some Jews, who with the onset of Summer, were more and more uncomfortable in their “cabaret.” The nights were soft and starry, and if it were not for the perpetual fire which suffused the sky with its long flames, you would have thought that you were on the square of some Ukrainian village on Midsummer Eve. Everything was there: the campfire, the dancing, the multicolored skirts and the freshness of the night. Friendships sprang up. Just because men were going to kill each tomorrow was no reason to sulk.

Does the photo in the Yad Vashem museum show the Treblinka zoo or the Buchenwald zoo?  I will leave it up to the readers of my blog to decide.

Holocaust gas chambers were designed by the Topf und Söhne company…Who knew?

I’ve never been to Israel so I’ve never seen the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum there.  Today I learned from this website that there is a “scale model of a gas chamber” in the museum.

This quote is from the web site which mentions the scale model at Yad Vashem:

There we saw a scale model of a gas chamber, and we learned that a company called Topf und Söhne was hired to design and build four gas chambers and a crematorium. In case anyone in the future wanted to perpetrate another genocide, they patented the design. The facility was capable of murdering 4,756 people in 24 hours – they guaranteed it in writing.

Wow! Talk about German engineering!  The Topf und Söhne (Topf and son) company guaranteed an exact number of Jews that could be killed in 24 hours! And they patented their design! Now we know how the Germans were able to dispose of 400,000 Hungarian Jews in only 10 weeks at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as claimed by Holocaust historians.

But wait a minute! Topf und Söhne guaranteed in writing that 4,756 people could be MURDERED in 24 hours, but how long did it take to burn the bodies of 4,756 people?  How many bodies could fit on the elevator that brought the bodies up from the underground gas chambers in Krema II and Krema III to the ovens on the ground floor?  Where did they store the bodies while they were waiting to burn them?  Surely not outside the gas chamber buildings because that would have immediately tipped off the victims that they were not going into a shower room.  There was no corpse storage room in Krema II, nor in Krema III, because the only rooms in these crematoria were the gas chambers and undressing rooms.

Logo of Topf und Söhne on Dachau oven

The photo above shows the Topf logo on the one oven (with two retorts) in the Old Crematorium at Dachau. The logo is on the lower left hand side in the photo below.

Oven in the Old Crematorium at Dachau

The diaries of Dr. Josef Mengele will be displayed at Yad Vashem

I have been reading in the news about the diaries of Dr. Josef Mengele, one of the Nazi doctors who worked at Auschwitz from May 1943 to Jan. 1945. His writings, in 31 notebooks, were sold at auction to “an ultra Orthodox Jew,” according to a news article which you can read here.  You can also read about it here and here.  Dr. Josef Mengele worked on the “ramp” at Auschwitz-Birkenau, waving the Jews to the left or the right as they got off the transport trains.  He volunteered to work on the ramp even when it was the turn of one of the other 29 SS doctors because he wanted to find Jews with hereditary defects and twins for his research into hereditary conditions.  You can read more about Dr. Josef Mengle on my web site here.

Dr. Mengele at home on leave after 5 months at Auschwitz-Birkenau

In all of these news articles about what Dr. Mengele wrote, I did not see the words “incriminating” or “proof” in describing Dr. Mengele’s alleged crimes.  The article here has many accusations about the “twisted mind” of Dr. Mengele, but no proof that any of the stories about him are true. Apparently Dr. Mengele was a prolific writer but he never wrote anything that would incriminate himself.