Holocaust History

[Indeependent]

You didn't explain how the Sonderkommando units were immune to zyklon B when the rest of us would dead doing what they did. Do you believe that the prison warden whose court testimony I posted exists? You know he does. Do you believe what he said about the necessary precautions that must be taken after an inmate has been gassed?

How long does it take for zyklon B to kill hundreds of people? Your best guess.

We had this discussion already and you came off as a fool.
No one is paying attention to you and neither am I.
Have fun posting for your own gratification.

 

[Briss]

We had this discussion already and you came off as a fool.
No one is paying attention to you and neither am I.
Have fun posting for your own gratification.

You answered nothing, and yet believe that you're not a failure.

You don't believe that the warden of the Missouri State Penitentiary, Bill Armontrout, was an expert witness at the second Ernst Zundel trial in Toronto, you? Obviously, you take issue with what he said about the reality of the dangers of handling a gassed body. Why don't you fill us all in on how he had it all wrong?

Anyone?

Didn't think so . . .

 

[Sixties Fan]

Freddie Knoller​

Alfred ‘Freddie’ Knoller was born on 17 April 1921 in Vienna, Austria. Following a series of antisemitic attacks on the Viennese Jewish community in 1938, he left Austria and lived as a refugee in Belgium and France.

In 1943, he joined the French Resistance and was eventually arrested. He was taken to Drancy, a transit camp on the outskirts of Paris, and then deported to Auschwitz. As the Allied armies advanced through Europe in early 1945, Auschwitz was evacuated and the inmates were taken to the Dora-Nordhausen and Bergen-Belsen camps in Germany. Freddie took the uniform badge of a dead French political prisoner to conceal his Jewish identity. This helped him survive at Dora because as a political – and not Jewish – prisoner, he was given a less dangerous job.

After the war, Freddie was reunited with his two brothers and became a United States citizen. He moved to London with his wife in the 1950s.

Here, Freddie describes antisemitism in pre-war Austria and the effect the German annexation of Austria in March 1938 had on the Viennese Jewish community. He also recalls the events of 9 November 1938, when Germans staged mass violence against the Jewish communities of Germany, Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. This became known as Kristallnacht (‘Night of Broken Glass’).

Freddie Knoller interview © IWM (IWM SR 9092)
See object record

Concentration Camp Survivors Share Their Stories

The Holocaust was the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. The Nazis also enslaved and killed other groups who they perceived as racially, biologically or ideologically inferior or dangerous. Hear seven survivors talk about and...

www.iwm.org.uk

 

[Sixties Fan]

Toby Biber​

Toby Biber was born in 1925 to an Orthodox Jewish family in Mielec, Poland. Following German occupation in September 1939, the Jewish population of Mielec was subjected to increased antisemitism, persecution and violence.
Mielec’s Jewish community was deported in March 1942 and its residents were forced into a nearby forest. From there, they were moved to a small town where Toby’s father obtained forged papers for Toby and her sister, allowing them to escape. They lived in hiding until arriving in Krakow in southern Poland.
In the autumn of 1942, several thousand inhabitants of the Krakow ghetto, including Toby and her sister, were moved to the Plaszow forced-labour camp. They remained there until the summer of 1943, when they were deported to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen in 1944. Toby’s sister died eight days after Belsen’s liberation in April 1945.
After the war, Belsen was used as a displaced persons camp and Toby remained there until 1947. She met and married her husband at the camp and they immigrated to Britain in 1947.
Here, Toby reflects on her experiences and describes the conditions in Plaszow camp.

Toby Biber interview © IWM (IWM SR 19792)
See audio record

'This lorry with the children drove off and never seen again'​

Download transcript

Concentration Camp Survivors Share Their Stories

The Holocaust was the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. The Nazis also enslaved and killed other groups who they perceived as racially, biologically or ideologically inferior or dangerous. Hear seven survivors talk about and...

www.iwm.org.uk

 

[Sixties Fan]

Premysl Dobias​

Premysl Dobias was born in June 1913 in the Czech town of Turnov. In September 1938, Germany annexed territory along Czechoslovakia’s northern and western borders. Six months later, German forces occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia and divided it into two separate territories – Slovakia in the east and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the west.
In the winter of 1941, Premysl was arrested for helping Jews and in May 1942 was deported to the Terezin transit and labour camp. From there he was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where he was forced into slave labour and subjected to medical experimentation. The camp was liberated by American troops in May 1945 and Premysl worked with the Americans as an interpreter. He moved to London in 1947.

Here, Premysl describes an encounter with Austrian civilians following his deportation and remembers a particular incident at Mauthausen.

Premysl Dobias interview © October Films (IWM SR 19781)
See audio record

'That is an experience which will haunt me all my life'​

Download transcript

Concentration Camp Survivors Share Their Stories

The Holocaust was the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. The Nazis also enslaved and killed other groups who they perceived as racially, biologically or ideologically inferior or dangerous. Hear seven survivors talk about and...

www.iwm.org.uk

 

[Sixties Fan]

What was the Holocaust?​

When the Nazis came to power in 1933 they began to strip Jewish people of all property, freedoms and rights under the law. After the German invasion and occupation of Poland in 1939, the Nazis started deporting Jewish people from the Third Reich to parts of Poland, where they created ghettos to separate them from the rest of the population.

In 1941, during the German invasion of the USSR, the Nazis began their campaign of extermination in earnest. Nazis spoke about their invasion as a race war between Germany and Jewish people, as well as the Slavic population and the Roma.

Groups of German soldiers called Einsatzgruppen set out across newly conquered lands in Eastern Europe to massacre civilians. By the end of 1941, they had killed 500,000 people, and by 1945 they had murdered about two million - 1.3 million of whom were Jewish.
Behind the lines, Nazi commanders were experimenting with ways to kill en masse. They feared that shooting people was too stressful for their soldiers, and so came up with more efficient means of murder.

Experimental gas vans had been used to kill mentally disabled people in Poland as early as 1939. Poisonous fumes were pumped into a sealed compartment to suffocate those inside. By the winter of 1941, the Nazis had constructed gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Nazi leaders met in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference to coordinate the industrial slaughter - what they called a "final solution to the Jewish question" - killing the entire European Jewish population, 11 million people, by extermination and forced labour.


(full article online)

Auschwitz: How death camp became centre of Nazi Holocaust

It is 75 years since Soviet Union troops liberated Auschwitz - now marked as Holocaust Memorial Day.

www.bbc.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

When Dachau opened in 1933, the notorious Nazi war criminal Heinrich Himmler christened it as “the first concentration camp for political prisoners.” And that’s what Dachau was in its early years, a forced labor detention camp for those judged as “enemies” of the National Socialist (Nazi) party: trade unionists, communists, and Democratic Socialists at first, but eventually Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and of course, Jews.

The cruelly efficient operation of Dachau was largely the brainchild of SS officer Theodor Eike, who instituted a “doctrine of dehumanization” based on slave labor, corporal punishment, flogging, withholding food and summary executions of anyone who tried to escape. The Dachau prisoners labored under brutal conditions tearing down a massive WWI-era munitions factory and then constructing the barracks and offices that would serve as the chief training ground for the SS.

The prisoners even built their own “protective custody camp,” the euphemistically named concentration camp within the sprawling Dachau complex, composed of 32 squalid barracks surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire fence, a ditch and seven guard towers. Prisoners were subjected to medical experiments, including injections of malaria and tuberculosis, and the untold thousands that died from hard labor or torture were routinely burned in the on-site crematorium.

Forged into the iron gate separating the concentration camp from the rest of Dachau were the taunting words, Arbeit Macht Frei(“Work sets you free”). Dachau was such a success for the Nazis that Eike was promoted to inspector general of all German concentration camps, for which Dachau became the model.

After the events of Kristallnacht (“night of broken glass”), in which Jewish synagogues, businesses and homes were destroyed by Nazi mobs across Germany, a greater and greater number of Jews were held at Dachau. On the eve of the American liberation of Dachau, there were 67,665 registered prisoners at the concentration camp and roughly a third of them were Jewish.

(full article online)

The Horrifying Discovery of Dachau Concentration Camp—And Its Liberation by US Troops

The wrenching images and first-hand testimonies by Dachau’s shocked U.S. liberators brought the horrors of the Holocaust home to America.

www.history.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

In the world the Nazis wished to create, Jews and Gypsies were to be eliminated as racially, socially, and physically defective. The deaf, the blind, the physically disabled, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and alcoholics were either to be sterilized or killed simply because they were viewed as "genetically defective." Slavic people, though labeled racially inferior by the Germans, would be allowed to exist as slaves in order to supply the Nazis with free labor. Criminals, political enemies of the state, and homosexuals were pronounced socially undesirable and subject to the will of the Nazis.

Barely two months after attaining power, the Nazis laid the constitutional foundation for Hitler's dictatorship with the passage of the Enabling Act on March 24, 1933. This legislation was subtitled "The Law to Remove Stress from the People and State." It gave Hitler the right to pass any law without the approval of the Reichstag. In effect, the implementation of this law allowed the Nazis to completely ignore the civil and human rights previously guaranteed by the German constitution.

In addition to passing laws legalizing their denial of human rights, the Nazis began a press and radio propaganda campaign to portray their intended victims as rats, vermin, and Untermenschen (subhumans). Inmates of concentration camps were listed as Stuecks (pieces), with assigned numbers, rather than being permitted the dignity of a name. If a German gave these victims a thought, he was to think of them as animals.

Although belief in the theory that one race was superior to others was not unique to Hitler and the Nazis, the enthusiastic support given to Nazis by all facets of German society, particularly the scientific community, was unique.2 Geneticists, scientists, doctors, and anthropologists from the internationally acclaimed Kaiser Wilhelm Institute cooperated in the process of experimenting on human beings to prove the theory of a master race. Spurious experiments to "show" the inferiority of non-Nordic groups such as blacks, Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and others were conducted. Teachers embarrassed Jewish and Gypsy children by directing so-called scientific efforts that included measuring the sizes of their heads in order to prove so-called "mental deficiencies." Other efforts by the scientific community included certifying that sterilization or annihilation was necessary for "undesirable groups."

In 1943, Professor Eugen Fischer, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics, wrote to a German newspaper: "It is a rare and special good fortune for a theoretical scientist to flourish at a time when the prevailing ideology welcomes it, and its findings immediately serve the policy of the state."3 Professor Fischer's "good fortune" included creating an environment that allowed Dr. Mengele and others who took the Hippocratic oath the right to experiment on human beings and to murder them in the "interest" of science. This included the experiments Mengele performed on Jewish and Gypsy twins in Auschwitz, injecting them with chemicals and germs. If one twin died, the other twin was murdered to compare their physiognomy.

In efforts to breed a master race, more than 300,000 German Aryans were sterilized and countless numbers were gassed, under a law passed on July 14, 1933, the "Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring." In his book Murderous Science, Dr. Benno Mueller-Hill notes that the aforementioned statute provided for compulsory sterilization in cases of "congenital mental defects, schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, hereditary epilepsy . . . and severe alcoholism."4 This included the blind and the deaf, even those who became deaf or blind from illnesses such as scarlet fever or from accidents.

(full article online)

The Other Victims of the Nazis

 

[Mindful]

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever."—Elie Wiesel, on his first night in Auschwitz. He was 15 years old when he and his family were deported to the camp in May 1944.

This quote comes from Elie Wiesel's memoir "Night," first published in the 1950s. The memoir's subsequent translation into 30 languages has placed Elie’s personal memories into the public conscience and helped to create global awareness about the Holocaust.

For those who never had an opportunity to share their own stories, "Night" remains a harrowing and poignant record of what Elie, and many others, witnessed at the Holocaust's most infamous camp.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Willer’s escape from Germany was hatched by his mother, Franziska Willer, after the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938. Willer was previously married to a Christian man who left her in 1933 and later became a Nazi sympathizer. He committed suicide in 1964.

Through her brother, who was residing in London, and a pastor from Attlee’s area, it was arranged for Paul Willer to come live in the Attlee home for some four months.

“They took me inside what was a very large house,” Willer said of his first encounter with the Attlees. “They had a maid and a cook too. The next morning, their son Martin [the late Lord Attlee], who was my age, took me upstairs and ran a cold bath, bathed, and encouraged me to do the same. I thought, ‘Is this what they do for Easter?’ It turned out that cold baths were what the males in the family did every day.”

At the time, Attlee was composing his opposition to Nelson Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, according to The Guardian.

“He was a gentle man and a gentleman. He was very good with the children and affectionate. At breakfast, we would gather around the table and he played this game where he held out a coin and asked whose monarch’s head was on it. Whoever gave the correct answer was allowed to keep the coin,” said Willer.

As the war drew to an end in 1945, Attlee was elected prime minister, a post he held until 1951. He was preceded and succeeded in the position by Winston Churchill.

It was under his watch that the British Mandate was dissolved to make way for the State of Israel. Before the establishment of Israel, thousands of European Jews, many of them Holocaust survivors, were barred from settling in Palestine under British immigration policy.

(full article online)

Jewish refugee who fled Nazis, was hosted by future British PM Attlee, dies at 94

In 1939, then-opposition leader opened home to 10-year-old Paul Willer, who left Germany with mother and brother; Attlee never spoke of the story

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

(full article online)

New film brings Eichmann’s Holocaust confessions to life using his own voice

Original recordings are dubbed over actors portraying senior Nazi figure and his interviewer before Israel put him on trial; he expresses pride in genocide, says has no regrets

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

A Holocaust survivor who spent much of his life troubled that his father may have been a Nazi has been reassured through DNA testing that both his parents were Jewish.

Jackie, 79, a survivor living in London, was orphaned during the war and later adopted by a British couple who never told him of his past.

When he eventually did find out, he began to wonder how it was that he had survived and was nagged by the thought that his father, of whom he could find no information, may have been a Nazi who used his influence to keep him from the death camps.

An episode of the BBC’s “DNA Family Secrets” was not only able to confirm to Jackie that he is “99 percent Jewish” of European descent but also was able to identify cousins who by remarkable chance were living not far from his north London home. The show was broadcast last Thursday.

Jackie was just nine months old when he was taken to the Theresienstadt Camp in the 1940s. The camp was a transit point and 15,000 children were sent from there to the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp where they were murdered.

(full article online)

UK family roots TV show reassures Holocaust survivor that his father was not a Nazi

Orphaned British survivor of Theresienstadt, 79, had been worried that was the only reason he didn't die; BBC show also finds cousins for man who never knew he had any relatives

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Raisa, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor who has difficulty walking, was living on her own in Odessa. Her son had passed away two years ago due to illness. Her three grand-daughers, who all live in Israel, are her only remaining family.

When Russian invaded Ukraine last week and war broke out, people fled the city.

Raisa’s granddaughters reached out to United Hatzalah and asked them to help save the elderly woman’s life.

(full article online)

Ukrainian Holocaust Survivor Rescued to Israel, Reunited with Last Remaining Relatives | United with Israel

Raisa was one of 160 Ukrainian Jewish refugees brought to Israel Thursday by United Hatzalah.

unitedwithisrael.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

In the early 1930s, Victor Perez was on top of the world.

The Tunisian Jewish boxer, who fought under the ring name “Young Perez,” became the World Flyweight Champion in 1931 and 1932 after moving from Tunis to Paris. He became a bonafide celebrity, dating famous French actress Mireille Balin (who would later go on to date Nazis).

But like millions of others, Perez’s story took a dark turn as the Nazi campaign progressed. In September 1943, Perez was detained and transported to the Monowitz subcamp of Auschwitz, the same labor camp where authors Primo Levi and Eli Wiesel were held.

While at Monowitz, Perez was forced to box other inmates to entertain the SS officers. The winner would receive extra food; the loser would be killed. Perez was ultimately murdered during a 1945 death march.

That story is just the first episode of “Holocaust Histories,” a new podcast by Jonathan Bonder, a 36-year-old Ontario native and sound designer whose credits include Jean-Claude Van Damme’s 2015 film “Pound of Flesh” among other movies, shorts and commercials.

(full article online)

A new podcast chronicles the little-known stories of boxers from the Holocaust era - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

“[T]hese individuals were amazing boxers,” said 36-year-old Jonathan Bonder, the voice of “Holocaust Histories.” “Once the Holocaust comes, it kind of gets forgotten.”

www.jta.org

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

I have been seeing a lot of article and threads on the Holocaust but have not found one which deals with the History, before, during and after. Therefore I am starting one now.

Any Holocaust denier is welcome to post and discuss here. Discuss, not attack, or troll. Proof that it did not happen, just post it.


It is important to tell History as it happened. Lets go at it.

My Grandfather was one of the toughest and most honest man I have ever known. He saw the death camps, he wouldn't say much but I could tell it haunted the shit out of him.

 

[SweetSue92]

Has Penelope weighed in here yet? She is a denier. No one was gassed by the Nazis see. They all just died of Typhoid

 

[Briss]

I don't think anyone here is out to minimize or negate the experience of the jewish people and others who were in concentration camps during the war. It is torture to be taken from your home; it is torture to be mistreated; it is torture to be made sick; it is torture to be separated from your loved ones; it is torture to not know the fate of your loved ones; it is torture to be starved; it is torture to be driven to suicide; and it is torture to be tortured. I'm pretty sure that everyone here understands that these things occurred. It was an event of great sorrow, beyond sorrow, and beyond words.

However, in researching the issue of mass gassings, it appears we've been misinformed. That's my point.

 

[Sixties Fan]

I don't think anyone here is out to minimize or negate the experience of the jewish people and others who were in concentration camps during the war. It is torture to be taken from your home; it is torture to be mistreated; it is torture to be made sick; it is torture to be separated from your loved ones; it is torture to not know the fate of your loved ones; it is torture to be starved; it is torture to be driven to suicide; and it is torture to be tortured. I'm pretty sure that everyone here understands that these things occurred. It was an event of great sorrow, beyond sorrow, and beyond words. However, in researching the issue of mass gassings, there appears to be some discrepancies. That's the only point of contention being brought up here.

If you do have any real historical proof of these discrepancies, go ahead and post them here. So far, I have really seen none. Denial of murders by gas is no different to me from Holocaust denial.

All the Nazi records are out there. They gratefully kept a very impeccable record of everything they did.

You may start there.

 

[Briss]

This is the issue being put to you. It's your thread. It's for the purpose of debating Holocaust issues. Well here's my issue:

You must believe that the warden of the Missouri State Penitentiary, Bill Armontrout, who was an expert witness at the second Ernst Zundel trial in Toronto, is full of shyt. Obviously, you take issue with what he said about the reality of the dangers of handling a gassed body. Why don't you fill us all in on how he had it all wrong?

You can either explain how he's wrong, or you can ignore the facts. What's it gonna be?

Just so you don't get sidetracked:

Explain how the Sonderkommando units were immune to zyklon B when the rest of us would be dead doing what they did. Do you believe what Armontrout said about the necessary precautions that must be taken after an inmate has been gassed? This is a simple question. You do, or you don't . . .

How long does it take for zyklon B to kill hundreds of people? Your best guess.

 

[Sixties Fan]

This is the issue being put to you. It's your thread. It's for the purpose of debating Holocaust issues. Well here's my issue:

You must believe that the warden of the Missouri State Penitentiary, Bill Armontrout, who was an expert witness at the second Ernst Zundel trial in Toronto, is full of shyt. Obviously, you take issue with what he said about the reality of the dangers of handling a gassed body. Why don't you fill us all in on how he had it all wrong?

You can either explain how he's wrong, or you can ignore the facts. What's it gonna be?

Just so you don't get sidetracked:

Explain how the Sonderkommando units were immune to zyklon B when the rest of us would be dead doing what they did. Do you believe what Armontrout said about the necessary precautions that must be taken after an inmate has been gassed? This is a simple question. You do, or you don't . . .

How long does it take for zyklon B to kill hundreds of people? Your best guess.

I know nothing about the issue and you just want to play gotcha with the issue.

You are clearly a Holocaust Denier. Just like Zundel.
You are aware that Zundel was a Holocaust Denier, aren't you? And an Anti ZIonist?

This is the information about Armontrout. He says he "believes".

False News Trial — 31 Bill M. Armontrout

-------
[Then there is this:]
-------------
The defense presented two other “expert” witnesses earlier in the week. Fred Leuchter of Boston, a consultant on execution devices, said the gas chambers at Auschwitz and other death camps were too leaky and poorly equipped for killing purposes.

Bill Armontrout, an American prison warden, said he had witnessed three gas chamber executions and that there would have been a risk to attendants in the use of cyanide gas in a room the size of the Birkenau gas chambers.

Neo-nazi's Second Trial Resumes in Toronto Court - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

A self-trained “historian” claimed in district court here last week that neo-Nazi propagandist Ernst Zundel forced people to prove that the Holocaust actually occurred. David Irving, a British writer, testified for the defense in the retrial of Zundel, who is charged with spreading false news...

www.jta.org

------
[ I am not sure that he could show proof of it to the court, besides simply saying so. ]
-------------

[ I would like to know what proof did either of them show, besides jut saying that they witnessed, etc ]

[But here is what is said about Leuchter]

His fall began when Leuchter claimed to have been sought as a witness for the defence of Ernst Zündel during the trial R v Zundel in Canada for "spreading false news" by publishing and sending material denying the Holocaust overseas. Leuchter was asked by the defence to travel to Poland to visit Auschwitz to investigate whether there had been operating gas chambers for executions at the camp.

At his first examination Leuchter felt that using poison gas in a building with the internal and external design of the buildings currently on display in the site would have caused the death of everyone in the area outside the buildings as well as inside. The film shows videotape footage taken in Poland of Leuchter taking samples of bricks in the buildings to take back to the United States forensic science crime labs to determine whether there was evidence of poison gas in the material, these samples were not identified as to where they came from. Leuchter states that the laboratories reported that there was not any trace of any poison gas at any time.

After Leuchter's conclusions were disproven and negative publicity ensued, Leuchter lost his work as consultant to American prisons.

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

----------------
[Gratefully there is a record of the trial]

Annual 6 Chapter 7

www.museumoftolerance.com

---------

Now, do you have any actually reliable witnesses, or experts to what you are attempting to prove ?


Thank you for bringing this up. It was very interesting to do the research about it.