PoliticalChic
Diamond Member
Recently, I read Im No Monster, by journalists Stefanie Marsh and Bohan Pancevski.
It covered the time of the 'monster's' growing up in Germany; the OP is from that book.
It is an appropriate addendum to the thread 'Calling Holocaust Deniers."
Challenge it if you can.
1. On March 12, 1938, Hitlers troops rolled over the border from Germany, into Austria. This was the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into Greater Germany. Three days later, Hitler entered Vienna, greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of up to one million people. A plebiscite was held in less than a month, and 99.7% of Austrians voted to join the Third Reich.
a. In 1938, Austria had a Jewish population of about 192,000, representing almost 4 percent of the total population. The overwhelming majority of Austrian Jews lived in Vienna.
Austria
2. The little town of Amstetten, halfway between Vienna and Linz, on the Ybbs River, which flows into the Danube. In May, 1938, the Amstettner Anzeiger was proud to report that the town swimming pool and sunbath declares that Jews are banned from entering. Now we only have to get rid of the mosquitoes from our pool for it to become really ideal. The town had become a Fuhrerstadt!
By summer, all 28 of Amstettens Jews had been expelled.
3. Amstettens location as the main railway hub supplying both Germany and Italy made it a target of Allied bombers. The first bombs fell on November 19, 1944.
4. About 25 miles West of Amstetten, on the Danube, was the town of Mauthausen. Prisoners from the concentration camp at Dachau had been sent to build a much larger facility where political prisoners could be held. The state owned Mauthausen expanded, and by 1944, it was grouped with nearby Gusen, as a commercial enterprise.
5. The German mining company DEST, used the prisoners as slave labor, to work in the quarries, or to be hired out to local manufacturers and farmers. The Amstetten railway network came in handy to transport the slaves.
a. The labor supply was inexhaustible and when a prisoners productivity dropped, they would simply be transported to Mauthausen-Gusen and killed.
6. It was a hugely profitable death camp and the only camp designated Grade III (incorrigible enemies of the Reich ). The motto was Vernichtung durch Arbeit (Extermination through Work)
a. Far beyond Jews, the camp included communists, socialists, Polish boy scouts, homosexuals, Romanies, Jehovahs Witnesses, anarchists, Spanish Republicans who had fled Franco.
b. In 1943, life expectancy in the camps was 6 months; by wars end it was 3 months.
7. Slave labor was responsible for construction of Austrias largest steelworks and Steyr munitons, Puch automobiles, and most businesses in Amstetten.
8. It was a place of inconceivable barbarism whose secrecy liberated its masters into horrific inventiveness. In the camps gas chambers, quarries, hospitals, isolation units, and crematoria, in its underground brothel, and on its dissecting tables, a creative degeneracy blossomed.
9. The camp was liberated on May 5, 1945 by the 41st Reconnaissance Squad of the US Eleventh Armored Division. They found 85,000 inmates, and estimated the death toll at 320,000. Among the liberated was Simon Wiesenthal.
It covered the time of the 'monster's' growing up in Germany; the OP is from that book.
It is an appropriate addendum to the thread 'Calling Holocaust Deniers."
Challenge it if you can.
1. On March 12, 1938, Hitlers troops rolled over the border from Germany, into Austria. This was the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into Greater Germany. Three days later, Hitler entered Vienna, greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of up to one million people. A plebiscite was held in less than a month, and 99.7% of Austrians voted to join the Third Reich.
a. In 1938, Austria had a Jewish population of about 192,000, representing almost 4 percent of the total population. The overwhelming majority of Austrian Jews lived in Vienna.
Austria
2. The little town of Amstetten, halfway between Vienna and Linz, on the Ybbs River, which flows into the Danube. In May, 1938, the Amstettner Anzeiger was proud to report that the town swimming pool and sunbath declares that Jews are banned from entering. Now we only have to get rid of the mosquitoes from our pool for it to become really ideal. The town had become a Fuhrerstadt!
By summer, all 28 of Amstettens Jews had been expelled.
3. Amstettens location as the main railway hub supplying both Germany and Italy made it a target of Allied bombers. The first bombs fell on November 19, 1944.
4. About 25 miles West of Amstetten, on the Danube, was the town of Mauthausen. Prisoners from the concentration camp at Dachau had been sent to build a much larger facility where political prisoners could be held. The state owned Mauthausen expanded, and by 1944, it was grouped with nearby Gusen, as a commercial enterprise.
5. The German mining company DEST, used the prisoners as slave labor, to work in the quarries, or to be hired out to local manufacturers and farmers. The Amstetten railway network came in handy to transport the slaves.
a. The labor supply was inexhaustible and when a prisoners productivity dropped, they would simply be transported to Mauthausen-Gusen and killed.
6. It was a hugely profitable death camp and the only camp designated Grade III (incorrigible enemies of the Reich ). The motto was Vernichtung durch Arbeit (Extermination through Work)
a. Far beyond Jews, the camp included communists, socialists, Polish boy scouts, homosexuals, Romanies, Jehovahs Witnesses, anarchists, Spanish Republicans who had fled Franco.
b. In 1943, life expectancy in the camps was 6 months; by wars end it was 3 months.
7. Slave labor was responsible for construction of Austrias largest steelworks and Steyr munitons, Puch automobiles, and most businesses in Amstetten.
8. It was a place of inconceivable barbarism whose secrecy liberated its masters into horrific inventiveness. In the camps gas chambers, quarries, hospitals, isolation units, and crematoria, in its underground brothel, and on its dissecting tables, a creative degeneracy blossomed.
9. The camp was liberated on May 5, 1945 by the 41st Reconnaissance Squad of the US Eleventh Armored Division. They found 85,000 inmates, and estimated the death toll at 320,000. Among the liberated was Simon Wiesenthal.
99-104
