Posted on 06/18/2008 9:14:45 AM PDT by Alouette
Henryk Mandelbaum, a member of the Sonderkommando -- Jewish prisoners who were forced to empty the gas chambers at Auschwitz after fellow Jews were gassed and burned -- died Tuesday. He was 85.
Mandelbaum died at a hospital in the southern Polish city of Bytom several days after undergoing heart surgery, said Igor Bartosik, a historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum who has co-written an upcoming book on Mandelbaum.
Bartosik said he did not know the exact cause of death, and hospital officials refused to comment.
Mandelbaum was Poland's last surviving member of the Sonderkommando, in which he was forced by the Nazis to search the body cavities of fellow Jews for valuables and pull out gold teeth and fillings after they were executed. They then had to carry the bodies to crematories for burning and when the crematories were filled to capacity they dug huge pits to burn the bodies.
"I thought I was in hell. Fire and smoke were everywhere. I had to clean the gas chambers and put the bodies in the crematoria, or burn them outside when the extermination was in full swing and the crematoria were not enough," he told reporters some time ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
RIP. I fear when the last of these souls have passed there will be a serious and concerted effort to rewrite history. Sanctioned, institutional anti-semitism is on the upswing sadly.
Unimaginable experience. May Mr. Mandelbaum rest in peace.
They knew even then that the Holocaust would be denied someday. "Those who do not remember history..."
May HaShem grant him rest and peace in the bonds of eternity after what he was forced to endure.
Further proof that true evil does exist in the world.
I’m sure Pat Buchanan has an explanation for this.
And remember - the Nazis were left wing nuts.
The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany, otherwise known as the Nazi Party, was indeed socialist, and it had a lot in common with the modern left. Hitler preached class warfare, agitating the working class to resist “exploitation” by capitalists — particularly Jewish capitalists, of course. Their program called for the nationalization of education, health care, transportation, and other major industries. They instituted and vigorously enforced a strict gun control regimen. They encouraged pornography, illegitimacy, and abortion, and they denounced Christians as right-wing fanatics.
You were Henryk, my friend. May you now find peace.
Myself, I wonder why Bush's grandfather helped finance this.
Hard to imagine that Hell could be any worse.
Don’t know a thing about that, nor do I care. In the here and now, the Nazis have an active and willing apologist and his name is Patrick J. Buchanan.
I have visited Dachau. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that you can literally FEEL the weight of the evil in that place.
How did you maintain your composure?/Just Asking - seoul62......
I concur. We were at Auschwitz in ‘88. You could feel the heaviness and oppression.
All the evil imposed upon him, and he didn't turn evil himself. And yet there are those who try to rationalize the actions of terrorists.
I visited Dachau several years ago. Very little of the camp remains and what does comes across as sterile. I found it almost impossible to visualize the horrors that had occurred there.
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