From: revans@euclid.ucsd.edu (Ron Evans)

From: [email protected] (Ron Evans)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.mideast,soc.misc
Subject: Extensive documentation for the Holocaust
Summary: Long, documented passage from Hilberg, and related quotes
Date: 7 Sep 91 03:57:50 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Organization: Mathematics @ UCSD

Here is a powerful article on the Holocaust. Although I am not
the author, I assume full responsibility and accountability.
Email to the author or to the Lt. Colonel should be sent in
care of [email protected] .
The article is long (about 25 screens) and is not for those
with weak constitutions. Don't miss citation #75 and the quote
>from the Lt. Colonel (the author's father).
I cried as I read once more about man's inhumanity to man.
**********************************************************

Periodically we are exposed to the posts of those
who call themselves Revisionists. These people claim that the
Holocaust either did not occur at all, or is greatly exaggerated.
They also claim to present this material in the interest of seeking
after truth. However, these people don't seem to be interested in any
truths except those which portray Jews or Israel in a negative way.
Some of what they say is true: the rumor about Jews' bodies being made
into soap is just that, a rumor, although a persistent one. That fact
is quite plainly stated in the volume which I will be quoting later.
People have made a number of minor errors in the reporting of the
events surrounding the Holocaust, but none change the central truth
which these people would deny: that the Nazis carried out a program of
systematic genocide, resulting in the slaughter of 10 million people
in the extermination camps and labor camps. 6 million were Jews, the
rest being Blacks, Gypsies, the insane, the infirm, those opposed to
the Nazis, prisoners of war, principally Russian, and peoples of the
subjugated nations. All were Untermenschen, or under men, and their
extermination was part of Hitler's campaign from the beginning. The
extermination camps were reserved mainly for Jews. Most of the others
met their end in the slave labor camps. I will first reproduce
pages 967-976 from Raul Hilberg's "The Destruction of the European Jews",
Holmes & Meier, 1985. I have chosen this volume over the many others
available because of its copious references. All of the references
for the quoted section are included. Following this are three quotes
from observers of the period, which I feel are especially appropriate.
I realize that this post is very long, but this issue is important.

---
The "Conveyer Belt"

The killing operation was a combination of physical layout and
psychological technique. Camp officials covered every step from the
train platform to the gas chambers with a series of precise orders. A
show of force impressed upon the victims the seriousness of unruliness
or recalcitrance, even as misleading explanations reassured them in
their new, ominous surroundings. Although there were breakdowns and
mishaps in this system, it was perfected to a degree that justified
its characterization by an SS doctor as a conveyor belt (am laufenden
Band).28

The initial action in the predetermined sequence was notification of
the camp that a transport was arriving.29 Notice was followed by a
mobilization of guards and inmates who were going to be involved in
the processing.30 Everyone knew what would happen and what he had to
do. From the moment the doors of a train were opened, all but a few
of the departees had only two hours to live.31

The arriving Jews, on the other hand, were unprepared for a death
camp. Rumors and intimations that had reached them were simply not
absorbed. These forewarnings were rejected because they were not
sufficiently complete, or precise, or convincing. When, in May 1942,
a group of deportees was being marched from Zolkiewka to the
Krasnystaw station (where a train was to take them to Sobibor), Polish
inhabitants called out to the column: "Hey, Zydzi, idziecie na
spalenie! [Hey Jews, you are going to burn!]."32 A survivor of that
transport recalls: "The meaning of these words escaped us. We had
heard of the death camp of Belzec, but we didn't believe it".33 A
sophisticated Viennese physician who was in a cattle car remembers
that another deportee noticed a sign in a railway station and called
out "Auschwitz!". The physician noticed the outline of an "immense
camp" stretched out in the dawn and he heard the shouts and whistles
of command. "We did not know their meaning," he says. In the
evening, he enquired where a friend had been sent and was told by one
of the old prisoners that he could see him "there." A hand pointed to
the chimney, but the new inmate could not understand the gesture until
the truth was explained to him "in plain words."34 Another physician,
from Holland, reports:

I refused to...leave any room for the thought of the gassing
of the Jews, of which I could surely not have pretended
ignorance. As early as 1942 I had heard rumors about the
gassing of Polish Jews...Nobody had ever heard, however,
when these gassings took place, and it was definitely not
known that people were gassed immediately upon arrival.35

The great majority of the deportees could not grasp the situation so
long as they did not know the details of the killing operation, the
when and the how. Those who came with premonitions and forebodings
were usually unable to think of a way out. On a Warsaw transport to
Treblinka in August 1942, a young deportee heard the words, "Jews,
we're done for!" The old men in the car began to say the prayer for
the dead.36 Another young man, stepping off a train in Treblinka, saw
mounds of clothing and said to his wife that this was the end (Das ist
das Ende).37 Cognition was thus converted to fatalism more readily
than to escape or resistance.

The German administrators, however, were determined not to take
chances, lest some impetuous resistor in the crowd create a dangerous
confrontation. They were going to move swiftly while reinforcing
Jewish illusions to the last possible moment.
To this end they set a pattern of procedures that was virtually
the same in every camp save only for those variations that stemmed
from the different layouts and installations in each enclosure.

The ramps at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were too short to
accommodate lengthy trains. At each of these camps, transports were
backed into the compound to be unloaded a few cars at a time.38 On the
Belzec ramp the arriving Jews were received with the music and singing
of a ten-man inmate orchestra.39

Kulmhof was reachable only by road or narrow-gauge railway.
Initially, deportees were brought from the immediate vicinity on
trucks. Trains from the Lodz ghetto halted at Warthbrucken (Kolo),40
where the victims were sometimes kept overnight in the local synagogue
and from where they were taken by truck to Kulmhof. Later a more
complicated logistic procedure was instituted to avoid public display
of the deported Jews in Warthbrucken. The victims were loaded on a
narrow-gauge train and kept overnight in a mill at Zawacki. They were
then driven to Kulmhof in trucks.41

At Auschwitz the ramp was first located between the old camp and
Birkenau. Those who were directed to the Auschwitz I gas chamber
"streamed" through the gate. When Birkenau was opened, long columns
ran through a gauntlet several hundred yards long to one of the
crematoria.42 Not until the spring of 1944 was the spur built in
Birkenau. On the new ramp, trains were unloaded a short distance from
the gas chambers.43 The cars, emptied of the living and the dead, were
moved to a fumigation installation. One hot day, a loadmaster opened
up a car and was jolted when a blackened corpse tumbled out. The car was
filled with bodies that the camp personnel had neglected to remove.44

Following the unloading of the trains, there was a twofold selection
procedure. The old, infirm, and sometimes small children were placed
face down near a pit to be shot.45 At Sobibor, where trucks picked up
the aged and infants, guards would occasionally try to toss the babies
from a considerable distance into the vehicle.46 At Treblinka those
unable to stand were taken to a pit near the infirmary for shooting.47
From the first Auschwitz ramp, trucks would remove the old and the
infirm to the gas chambers.48

The camps also selected strong persons for labor. In the General-
government camps, or Kulmhof, very few individuals were needed as work
crews, and women among those chosen were but a handful.49 Asked about
the children, a former member of the SS establishment in Treblinka
declared at his trial that "saving children in Treblinka was
impossible [Kinder in Treblinka zu retten war unmoglich]."50 Labor
requirements at Auschwitz were greater, and at the Birkenau platform
SS doctors (Mengele, Konig, Thilo, or Klein) would choose employable
Jews for the industrial machine. Selections were not very thorough,
however. The victims were paraded in front of the physician, who
would then make spot decisions by pointing to the right for work or to
the left for the gas chamber.51

Men and women were separated for undressing in barracks. An
impression was being created that clothes were to be reclaimed after
showers.52 At Sobibor, one of the SS men, dressed in a white coat,
would issue elaborate instructions about folding the garments,
sometimes adding remarks about a Jewish state that the deportees were
going to build in the Ukraine.53 At Kulmhof the victims were told that
they would be sent for labor to Germany, and in Belzec a specially
chosen SS man made similar quieting speeches.54 In all three of the
Generalgouvernement camps, there were special counters for the deposit
of valuables.55 The hair of the women was shorn,56 and the procession
was formed, men first. In Sobibor, groups of fifty to one hundred
were marched through the "hose" by an SS man walking in front and four
or five Ukranians following at the rear of the column.57 At Belzec,
screaming women were prodded with whips and bayonets.58 The Jews
arriving in Treblinka, states Hoss, almost always knew that they were
going to die.59 Sometimes they could see mountains of corpses,
partially decomposed.60 Some suffered nervous shock, laughing and
crying alternately.61 To rush the procedure, the women at Treblinka
were told that the water in the showers was cooling down.62 The
victims would then be forced to walk or run naked through the "hose"
with their hands raised.63 During the winter of 1942-43, however, the
undressed people might have to stand outdoors for hours to wait their
turn.64 There they could hear the cries of those who had preceded them
into the gas chambers.65

The Auschwitz procedure evolved in stages. In April 1942, Slovak Jews
were gassed in Crematorium I, apparently with their clothes on.66
Later, deportees from nearby Sosnowiec were told to undress in the
yard. The victims, faced by the peremptory order to remove their
clothes, men in front of women and women in front of men, became
apprehensive. The SS men, shouting at them, then drove the naked men,
women and children into the gas chamber.67 During the third stage, in
1942, the abuse was replaced by politeness, and the speech making by
Aumeier, Grabner and Hossler began. The victims were now told to
undress for the showers, before the soup that would be served
afterwards became cold.68 For added security, gassings would be
scheduled for a time before daybreak, when the camp inmates were still
sleeping, or for the night hours, after the curfew had gone into
effect.69

At Birkenau, illusion was the rule. It was not always simple or
possible, inasmuch as at least some of the deportees had observed the
sign "Auschwitz" as the train passed through the railway yards,70 or
had seen flames belching from the chimneys, or had smelled the
strange, sickening odor of the crematoria.71 Most of them, however,
like a group from Salonika, were funneled through the undressing
rooms, were told to hang their clothes on hooks and remember the
number, and promised food after the shower and work after the food.
The unsuspecting Greek Jews, clutching soap and towels, rushed into
the gas chambers.72 Nothing was allowed to disturb this precarious
synchronization. When a Jewish inmate revealed to newly arrived
people what was in store for them, he was cremated alive.73 Only in
the case of victims who were brought in from nearby ghettos in upper
Silesia (Sosnowiec and Bedzin) and who had had intimations of
Auschwitz was speed alone essential. These people were told to
undress quickly in their "own best interest."74

Once there was a major incident in front of an Auschwitz gas chamber.
A transport that had come in from Belsen revolted. The incident
occurred when two thirds of the arrivals had already been shoved into
the gas chamber. The remainder of the transport, still in the
dressing room, had become suspicious. When three or four SS men
entered to hasten the undressing, fighting broke out. The light
cables were torn down, the SS men were overpowered, one of them was
stabbed, and all of them were deprived of their weapons. As the room
was plunged into complete darkness, wild shooting started between the
guard at the exit door and the prisoners inside. When Hoss arrived at
the scene, he ordered the doors to be shut. Half an hour passed.
Then, accompanied by a guard, Hoss stepped into the dressing room,
carrying a flashlight and pushing the prisoners into one corner. From
there they were taken out singly into another room and shot.75

Selections were carried out not only on the platform, in order to pick
out deportees who would be able to work, but also within the camp, to
eliminate inmates too sick or too weak to work any longer. The usual
occasion for the choosing of victims was the roll call, where
everybody was present;76 another place was the hospital;77 and
sometimes selections were carried out block by block.78 One former
inmate, recalling such targeting, says: "I tried to make myself as
inconspicuous as possible, not too erect, yet not slouching,; not too
smart, yet not too sloppy; not too proud, yet not too servile, for I
knew that those who were different died in Auschwitz, while the
anonymous, the faceless ones, survived."79 A young intellectual from
Italy, who was in an Auschwitz hospital because of a swollen foot, was
told by a gentile Polish inmate: "Du Jude, kaputt. Du schnell
Krematorium fertig [You Jew, finished. You soon ready for
crematorium]."80 In Treblinka, to have been bruised in the face was
considered a calamity. The wounded man, "stamped" (gestempelt), was a
candidate for selection at the next roll call.81

In Auschwitz the victims would try every subterfuge to escape. They
tried to hide. Occasionally they tried to argue. A nineteen-year-old
girl asked the Auschwitz women's camp commander, Hossler, to excuse
her. He replied, "You have lived long enough. Come, my child,
come."82 Driven by whips between cordons of Kapos and guards, the
naked people who had been picked out were loaded on trucks and driven
to the gas chambers or to a condemned block. Before Christmas in
1944, 2,000 women were packed into Block 25, which had room for 500.
They were kept there for ten days. Soup cauldrons were pushed through
a gap in the door by a fire guard. At the end of ten days, 700 were
dead. The rest were gassed.83

Gassing would begin with a command. At Treblinka a German would shout
to a Ukranian guard: "Ivan, water!" This was a signal to start the
motor.84 The procedure was not necessarily fast. With no room to move
in the small chambers, the victims stood for thirty or forty minutes
before they died. According to one Treblinka survivor, people were
sometimes kept in the chambers all night without the motor being
turned on.85 At Belzec, where Oberscharfurer Hackenholt was in charge
of the motor, a German visitor, Professor Pfannenstiel, wanted to know
what was going on inside. He is said to have put his ear to the wall
and, listening, to have remarked: "Just like in a synagogue."86 At
Kulmhof, the doors to the van were closed by Polish workers. One was
inadvertently locked in with the Jews and raged in despair to get out.
The Germans decided that it would not be prudent to open the door for
him.87

When the Auschwitz victims filed into the gas chamber, they discovered
that the imitation showers did not work.88 Outside, a central switch
was pulled to turn off the lights,89 and a Red Cross car drove up with
the Zyklon.90 An SS man, wearing a gas mask fitted with a special
filter, lifted the glass shutter over the lattice and emptied one can
after another into the gas chamber. Although the lethal dose was one
milligram per kilogram of body weight and the effect was supposed to be
rapid, dampness could retard the speed with which the gas was
spreading.91 Untersturmfuhrer Grabner, political officer of the camp,
stood ready with stopwatch in hand.92 As the first pellets sublimated
on the floor of the chamber, the victims began to scream. To escape
from the rising gas, the stronger knocked down the weaker, stepping on
prostrate victims in order to prolong their own lives by reaching
gas-free layers of air. The agony lasted for about two minutes, and
as the shrieking subsided, the dying people slumped over. Within
fifteen minutes (sometimes five), everyone in the gas chamber was
dead.

The gas was now allowed to escape and after about half an hour, the
door was opened. The bodies were found in tower-like heaps, some in
sitting or half-sitting positions, children and older people at the
bottom. Where the gas had been introduced, there was an empty area
from which the victims had backed away, and pressed against the door
were the bodies of men who in terror had tried to break out. The
corpses were pink in color, with green spots. Some had foam on the
lips, others bled through the nose. Excrement and urine covered some
of the bodies, and in some pregnant women the birth process had
started. The Jewish work parties (Sonderkommandos), wearing gas
masks, dragged out the bodies near the door to clear a path and hosed
down the dead, at the same time soaking the pockets of poison gas
remaining between the bodies. Then the Sonderkommandos had to pry the
corpses apart.93

In all the camps bodily cavities were searched for hidden valuables,
and gold teeth were extracted from the mouths of the dead. In
Crematorium II (new number) at Birkenau, the fillings and gold teeth,
sometimes attached to jaws, were cleaned in hydrochloric acid, to be
melted into bars in the main camp.94 At Auschwitz the hair of the
women was cut off after they were dead. It was washed in ammonium
chloride before being packed.95 The bodies could then be cremated.

---
References

28. Affidavit by Friedrich Entress, April 14, 1947, NO-2368
29. See Novak to Hoss, copy to Liebenhenschel, January 23, 1943, on
arrival of three Da trains from Theresienstadt, Case Novak, vol. 17,
p.295.
30. Adalbert Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager (Munich, 1977), pp. 135, 138
(Belzec), p. 181 (Sobibor), p. 217 (Treblinka).
31. Ibid, p.226
32. Itzhak Lichtman, "From Zolkiewka to Sobibor," in Miriam Novitch,
Sobibor (New York, 1980) pp.80-85
33. Ibid.
34. Victor Frankl, From Death Camp to Existentialism(Boston, 1949),
pp.6-12.
35. Elie Cohen, Human Behavior in the Concentration Camp (New York,
1953),p.119.
36. Abraham Krzepicki, "Eighteen Days in Treblinka", in Alexander
Donat, ed. The Death Camp at Treblinka(New York, 1979), pp. 77-145, at
p. 79. Krzepicki escaped to the Warsaw ghetto, where he recorded his
experiences from December 1942 to January 1943. During the Warsaw
ghetto battle, he was wounded and abandoned in a burning building.
His account was found after the war.
37. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, p. 218.
38. Ibid, pp. 138, 166-67, 217. On Treblinka, see detailed statement
by David Milgrom in Bratislava, August 30,, 1943, enclosed by US
Vice-Consul Melbourne (Instanbul) to Secretary of State, January 13,
1944, National Archives Record Group 226/OSS58603. Milgrom had
escaped.
39. Statement by Stefan Kirsz (Polish locomotive helper), October 15,
1945, Belzec case 1 Js 278/60, vol. 6, pp. 1147-49.
40. Deutsche Reichsbahn/Verkehrsamt in Lodz to Gestapo in Lodz, May
19, 1942, Judisches Historisches Institut Warschau, Faschimus-Getto-
Massenmord (Berlin, 1961),pp. 280-81.
41. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, pp.268-69, 277, 285. A photograph
of what appears to be a two-tiered narrow-gauge train being loaded
with Jews is on page 284 of Faschismus-Getto-Massenmord.
42. Filip Muller, Eyewitness Auschwitz(New York,
1979),pp.173(map),31,69.
43. Danuta Czech, "Kalendarium," Hefte von Auschwitz 7 (1964): 92n,
94. The Hungarian transports were unloaded on the new siding.
44. Testimony by Adolf Johann Bartlemass, December 2, 1964,
Case Novak, vol.13, pp.281-89, and his statement of April 11, 1967,
Case Novak, vol. 16,p.338. Interrogation of Willy Hilse, ca. 1964,
Case Novak, vol.12, p.605, and his testimony, Case Novak, vol.13, pp.
248-57. Both were railroad men at Auschwitz.
45. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, pp.14-41
46. Ibid., pp. 171, 191-92
47. Ibid., p.219.
48. Affidavit by Entress, April 14, 1947, NO-2368.
49. Krzepicki, "Eighteen Days," in Donat, Treblinka, p.117.
50. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, p.223.
51. Olga Lengyel, Five Chimneys, (Chicago and New York, 1947),
p.10. Testimony by Auerbach (Jewish survivor), Case No. 11, tr. pp.
2512-14. Sehn, "Oswiecim," German Crimes in Poland, vol.1,pp.41,
77-78. See also photographs, taken by SS photographers at Auschwitz,
of arrival procedure in Peter Hellman, The Auschwitz Album (New York,
1981).
52. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, pp. 135, 167, 202, 218-219.
53. Ibid., p. 167
54. Ibid., p. 269. Statement by Karl Schluch (Belzec cadre),
November 10, 1961, Belzec case, vol. 8, pp.1503-25.
55. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, pp. 135, 139, 166, 219.
56. Ibid., pp. 135, 222-23. At Belzec the naked women who had their
hair cut were beaten on the head and in the face. Statement by Rudolf Reder
made shortly after the war in Poland, Belzec case, vol. 1, pp. 28.31. Reder
was the only Jewish escapee from Belzec known to have been alive in 1945.
57. Ruckkerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, pp. 182, 135.
58. Postwar statement by Reder, Belzec case, vol. 2, pp. 258-87.
60. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, pp.208-9.
61. Samuel Rajzman in Hearings, House Foreign Affairs Committee, 79th
Cong., 1st sess., on H.R. 93, March 22-26, 1945, pp.121-25.
62. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, p. 223.
63. Ibid, pp. 224-25. Jankel Wiernik, "One Year in Treblinka, " in
Donat, Treblinka, pp. 147-88, at p.163.
64. Wiernik, Ibid, p.163.
65. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, p. 226. Statement by Milgrom,
August 30, 1943, in National Archives Record Group 226/OSS 58603.
66. Muller, Eyewitness Auschwitz, pp. 11-13.
67. Ibid., pp.31-35.
68. Ibid., pp.35-39.
69. Ibid., p.39.
70. Elie Wiesel, Night (New York, 1969), p. 36. Interrogation of
Hilse, Case Novak, vol. 12, p. 605. According to Hilse, transports passed
through the station. The freight yards, consisting of forty-four parallel
tracks, were two miles long.
71. Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p.22.
72. Muller, Eyewitness Aushchwitz, pp.80-81.
73. Ibid, p.80.
74. Ibid, pp.69-71.
75. Affidavit by Hoss, March 14, 1946, NO-1210. The incident
is described in greater detail by Muller, Eyewitness Auschwitz,
pp.83-89. Muller credits a seductive, strikingly good-looking Jewish
woman with riveting the attention of two SS men. She struck one with
a shoe, drew his pistol and shot the other (Schillinger). Tadeusz
Borowski, a Polish inmate, describes the incident in a story, "The
Death of Schillinger," This Way to the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen (New
York, 1976), pp. 143-146. In this version, the woman, already naked,
picked up gravel, threw it at Schillinger, and shot him with his own
pistol. The SS man, mortally wounded, was carried to a car and,
groaning, was heard to say: "O Gott, mein Gott, was hab' ich getan,
dass ich so leiden muss? [God, oh God, what have I done that I have
to suffer like this?]."
76. Lengyel, Five Chimneys, p. 40. Gisela Perl, I Was a
Doctor in Auschwitz (New York, 1948), p. 103.
77. Lingens-Reiner, Prisoners of Fear, pp.64-65, 82-83, 85.
Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, pp.55, 94, 108-9.
78. Perl, Ibid., pp.128-30.
79. Rudolf Vrba and Alan Bestic, I Cannot Forgive (New York,
1964), p. 140. Vrba, anonymous but not average, escaped from the
camp.
80. Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York, 1961), p.44.
81. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, p. 230.
82. Testimony by Helene Klein in Raymond Phillips, ed., Trial
of Josef Kramer, (London, 1949), pp.127-30. The witness herself was
given this answer by Hossler, but she managed to hide. A survivor,
Dr. Bertold Epstein, once witnessed a selection of children in which
the decisive criterion was height. The children marched up to a pole
at the height of 4 feet and 3.18 inches. Those who did not make it
were gassed. Friedman, Oswiecim, p. 72.
83. Ella Lingens-Reiner, Prisoners of Fear, (London, 1948),
pp. 85-86.
84. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, p. 224.
85. Wiernik, "One Year, " in Donat, Treblinka, p. 164.
86. Statement by Gerstein, April 26, 1945, PS-1553.
Pfannestiel confirms that he was in Belzec in Gerstein, but denies
having made the remark. Statements by Dr. Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, June
6, 1950, and November 9, 1952, Belzec case, vol. 1, pp.41-44, 135-141.
German personnel stationed in Belzec would sometimes look through the
peephole. Statement by Schluch, November 10, 1961, Belzec case, vol.
8, pp. 1503-25. Pfannenstiel points out in his statement of November
9, 1952, that when he tried to look he could not see much, because the
Jews had beaten on the glass.
87. Ruckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, pp. 270-71.
88. Sehn, "Oswiecim, "German Crimes in Poland, vol. 1, p.85.
89. Affidavit by Dr. Nikolae Nyiszli (survivor), October 8,
1947, N1-11710.
90. Ibid, Affidavit by Dr. Charles Sigismund Bendel
(survivor). October 21, 1945, N1-11390.
91. Hoss, Kommandant, p. 171. Muller, Eyewitness Auschwitz,
p. 116.
92. Affidavit by Perry Broad (SS man working under Grabner),
December 14, 1945, N1-11397.
93. Muller, Eyewitness Auschwitz, pp. 116-18. Affidavit by
Nyiszli, October 8, 1947, N1-11710. Affidavit by Broad, December 14,
1945, N1-11397. Affidavit by Hoss, April 5, 1946, PS-3868. Sehn,
"Oswiecim, "German Crimes in Poland, vol. 1, pp. 85-87.
94. Muller, Eyewitness Auschwitz, pp. 68, 95, 100, 176.
95. Ibid., pp. 65, 95, 100.
---

Quotes:

The first quote below (recorded 8/31/91) is especially signifi-
cant for me, as it comes from my father, a Lt. Colonel J.A.G.C.
(retired). During World War II he was a forward artillery observer
who saw first hand a great many of the slave labor camps that existed
openly throughout Germany, in cities and towns large and small. These
weren't the mass extermination camps such as Dachau, Auschwitz,
Treblinka or Belzec. However, the Nazis managed to murder millions of
people in these camps.

"I, personally, was the first Allied soldier to enter the city square
of Witten, a large city on the Ruhr River. I led a patrol through the
city, and incidentally, passed a slave camp that occupied the entire
city square. Behind the barbed wire of that camp were French, Dutch,
Belgian, Polish, Czech and Soviet prisoners; most were prisoners of
war; some were people that had been dragooned into slavery. They
worked in the local mills and mines. I found, personally, I saw -
personally, the effects of the German intent to destroy peoples by
starvation, exhaustion and disease. The prisoners were segregated by
nationality. The French, Dutch, etc. were the best off, the Soviets
the worst. The Soviets were reduced to cannibalism, I saw! I smelled
it, all of A and B companies, 1st Battalion 289th Infantry Battalion
saw it. This was the first such sight as we conquered Germany. It
was far from the last. These were not concentration camps with gas
chambers and ovens. In these slave camps people were systematically
killed by starvation and disease. This camp held 6,000 people. A
total of 30,000 had passed through it. The 24,000 had died during the
years 1943, 1944 and one-half of 1945. This too was a death camp, one
of thousands of such camps in Germany. I personally saw, as a front
line soldier, at least 200 such camps large and small.

German is my third language. I spoke with many Germans, every one to
whom I spoke acknowledged the existence of these death camps. At
least one-third acknowledged the existence of the concentration camps,
and the Einsatz Gruppen, the murder squad which operated throughout
Eastern Europe. No one admitted to being a participant. Hundreds
informed on their friends and neighbors as having been participants.
I participated in identifying persons for arrest and trial as war
criminals. This was Kreis Brillon in Westphalia, Germany."

On October 4, 1943, Himmler addressed a body of SS-Gruppenfuhrer
(lieutenant-generals), in a long rambling speech about the SS. He
spoke also about the annihilation of the Jews:

"I also want to refer before you here, in complete frankness, to a
really grave matter. Among ourselves, this one, it shall be uttered
quite frankly; but in public we will never speak of it...
I am referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the annihilation of the
Jewish people. This is one of those things that are easily said.
"The Jewish people is going to be annihilated," says every party
member. "Sure, it's in our program, elimination of the Jews,
annihilation - we'll take care of it." And then they all come
trudging, eighty million worthy, Germans, and each one has his one
decent Jew. Sure, the others are swine, but this one is an A-1 Jew.
Of all those who talk this way, not one has seen it happen, not one
has been through it. Most of you must know what it means to see a
hundred corpses lie side by side, or five hundred, or a thousand. To
have stuck this out and - excepting cases of human weakness - to have
kept our integrity, this is what has made us hard. In our history,
this is an unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory ...."*

* Trials of the Major War Criminals, 29, Doc. 1919-PS, pp. 110-173;
excerpts in English translation in Dawidowicz, Holocaust Reader.

I dedicate this last quote to the Revisionists.

"The same day I saw my first horror camp, I visited every nook and cranny.
I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify about
these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or
assumption that the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda."

- General Dwight D. Eisenhower

--
Ron Evans, Department of Mathematics, UCSD ([email protected])