British archaeologist destroys Holocaust deniers' argument with mass grave find at Treblinka

The Daily Mail ^ | January 18, 2012 | Lee Cain

[Aircop_2006]

A British forensic archaeologist has unearthed fresh evidence to prove the existence of mass graves at the Nazi death camp Treblinka - scuppering the claims of Holocaust deniers who say it was merely a transit camp.

Some 800,000 Jews were killed at the site, in north east Poland, during the Second World War but a lack of physical evidence in the area has been exploited by Holocaust deniers.

Forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls has now undertaken the first co-ordinated scientific attempt to locate the graves.

[katana]

I worked for a company in New Jersey owned by a man whose family left Germany in 1933. His wife was born in Belgium and she was sent as a little girl out to a Christian family in the country side and hidden for the duration of the war. The rest of her family perished. I would have a very difficult time resisting the urge to punch out (or worse) anyone who within my hearing would deny that the Holocaust occurred.

For one thing the Germans, as was and is their nature, kept very precise records and what most people don't realize is that the death camps were just the final act. As many or perhaps more were killed by the "task forces" (Einsatzgruppen) or mobile killing squads sent into Poland and the Soviet Union as the regular army forces took territory. It was all thoroughly documented and anyone who would deny it is either an imbecile or is operating from the most evil of motives.

[Campion]

The "extermination camps," or "death camps" were all in eastern Poland, except for Auschwitz, which was in southwestern Poland. All of them were liberated by the Soviets, although several of them had been shut down and destroyed by the Nazis long before the Soviets arrived.

(The term "death camp" is a bit of a misnomer, except for Auschwitz. In the rest of the "death camps," almost nobody "camped" there; they were industrial murder mills which killed people almost as fast as they arrived.)

The camps Eisenhower liberated were KzL's (concentration camps) in Germany. A lot of people died in those camps due to starvation, disease, abuse, etc., but they were not built for the sole purpose of killing people. They were built, mostly long before the Wannsee Conference, to imprison and intimidate Hitler's political enemies.

[Campion]

Dachau, established only a few months after the Nazis took power in 1933, was a concentration camp, not a "death camp". At Dachau, there were barracks, facilities where the prisoners were forced to work, etc. Some people even finished their sentences there and were released.

Treblinka, built to implement the "Final Solution," was a death camp. There was a railroad siding, facilities to undress the victims and process ( = steal) their belongs, gas chambers, and crematoria. The only barracks (besides those for the SS guards) were for the few Jews who were kept alive briefly to help run the place. The only "work" that was done there was related to killing people.

Dachau was a prison, albeit a very nasty, awful, evil prison. Treblinka was a factory for turning human beings into ashes.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2rXhWeMzTo

This was a British documentary filmed, in part, by Alfred Hitchcock. All the camps were apparently not controlled by the Soviets. I have only watched this once, about 15 years ago. I do not need to see it again.

[ClearCase_guy]

Your information is solid.

This highlights something which I often comment on and which has disturbed me for decades. When I was in High School, I had teachers who taught about Marxism. Some of them liked it, some didn't -- but they wanted young people to know about Communism. Same thing in College (I have a BA in History), although there, I think all the teachers liked Communism.

But Fascism? Nazi political theory?? Sssshhhhhhhhh. It's a secret. We don't talk about Fascism. No one is supposed to know what it looks like. You're not supposed to be able to recognize it. We just don't teach that stuff.

The difference between Concentration Camp (very bad) and Death Camp (worse) falls along the same lines. Our society has done a poor job of educating people about the details of what the Nazis did and how they thought. A lot of people believe they have seen photographs from "death camps" of jubilant Jews welcoming the Allied liberators. Nope. Concentration camps, sure. Death camps? Much less so, because most of the people didn't survive.

I look at America is 2011 and I truly believe that the reason we don't talk about Fascism is because we are a fascist society and we are embarrassed and don't want the people to recognize the truth. True, we have neither death camps nor concentration camps, but there's a lot more to fascism than just that. We say "crony capitalism" but we might just as well say "fascist economics".

[Keith in Iowa]

By he, do you mean the archaeologist in the headline???

If so, you didn’t read the story... “Forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls...” I doubt many British parents name sons Caroline.... #justsayin

[MD Expat in PA]

While not mass "extermination camps", dedicated solely to the extermination of Jews, Dachau and Buchenwald, liberated by the Americans, were death camps too. Horrible human “medical experiments” were carried out at both. Both had crematoriums to dispose of the bodies of those who died including those who died from the forced labor and from near starvation and disease due to the inhumane conditions.

Initially most of the prisoners at Buchenwald were political prisoners but after Kristallnacht nearly 10,000 Jews were sent there. It also held Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies and German military deserters and later on allied POW’s .

“Periodically, the SS staff conducted selections throughout the Buchenwald camp system and dispatched those too weak or disabled to work to so-called euthanasia facilities such as Bernburg, where euthanasia operatives gasse them as part of Operation 14f13, the extension of euthanasia killing operations to ill and exhausted concentration camp prisoners. SS physicians or orderlies killed, by phenol injection, other prisoners unable to work.”

As the US forces came near, many were shot and thrown into mass graves in an attempt to cover up before the Germans fled. Townspeople could smell the crematoriums and many knew what was going on there and yet turned a blind eye and denied they knew what was taking place there.

Have you ever seen the footage and interviews of the US troops who liberated Dachau and Buchenwald? Many of these men, who had seen years of hard combat were reduced to tears, some sobbing uncontrollably over the horrors of what they saw in those concentration camps.

[rdl6989]

Does he really think the Holocaust deniers will be silenced by this?

You can't argue with idiots, it's a waste of time.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Soviets liberated Auschwitz? I thought Obama said his grandfather did.

[Verginius Rufus]

One of my professors was also on that last transatlantic liner before the outbreak of WWII, along with his family, who were Viennese Jews (he was then about 4 years old). He went on to have a very distinguished career and to become one of the top scholars in America in his specialty.

Who knows how many people who would have become brilliant scholars, scientists, and doctors were killed because of the irrational obsession of one loser who happened to have a talent for demagoguery? Certainly a large number.

[hanamizu]

I show this film, Memories of the Camps, to my 8th graders as part of the World War II unit. It is extremely graphic. Even my most “worldly” or cynical ones are shaken by what they see. The English teacher has them read Diary of Anne Frank at about the same time. The film opens with the British liberation of Bergen-Belsen which is where she died only a month before. After seeing the movie, swazticas are no longer cool.

[Nebr FAL owner]

You honestly think that all the camps were in areas under Soviet control. There were literally hundreds of slave labor & concentration camps all over Europe ,also WE liberated parts of what were to be parts of the Soviet zone of control . Unlike the Red Army our officers were allowed a degree of freedom in regard to initiative & they also got evidence hell my late Uncle Ed helped liberate the Concentration camp outside the city of Dachau.

[SkyDancer]

Imagine a stadium filled with 80,000 people. Then multiply that by ten. Just at one camp. There was also Sobibor and Chelmno (plus a few more) which were purely extermination camps. Unlike some others which were work camps. How these people can deny them even with German documents to the fact.

[dfwgator]

Do they deniers really believe the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, was lying at Nuremberg? He admitted everything that happened there, why would he lie? It sure wasn’t going to save his skin, he ended up hanging anyway.

[dfwgator]

Auschwitz was essentially three camps in one.....Birkenau was the death camp section, another section was generally where political prisoners, and Russian POWs were sent, and the third Auschwitz camp was were companies like IG Farben set up factories to utilize slave labor.

[MD Expat in PA]

This was a British documentary filmed, in part, by Alfred Hitchcock. All the camps were apparently not controlled by the Soviets. I have only watched this once, about 15 years ago. I do not need to see it again.

Thank you for posting this. I watched it. I was hard, very hard to watch. This was not a systematic “extermination” camp but a death camp none the less and anyone trying to deny it, Dachau and other concentration camps within Germany and Austria had a gas chambers and crematoriums for the purpose of mass exterminations. And it doesn’t even get into the horrific human “experiments” carried out at some of these camps including Dachau, not only on Jews, but on Catholics and Lutherans, other political objectors and on ethic Poles and Gypsies, homosexuals and other “undesirables” such as people with Downs Syndrome, the mentally ill and physically infirmed.

Not to minimize the horrors of the systematic killing camps like Auschwitz, but in some ways those people may have been the lucky ones; killed quickly rather than killed slowing by unimaginably hard forced labor, slow starvation and disease, women forced into prostitution and then the medical experimentations even on the children.

I can’t understand anyone who wants to minimize or deny the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps no matter where they were located.

[denydenydeny]

Extermination camps = places with large gas chambers to which there were enormous deportations of hundreds of thousands of Jews. There were only six of these, Auschwitz, Chelmno, Maidanek, Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka. All were in Poland, none were liberated by Americans. At Belzec, there were believed to be 600,000 Jews sent there; only two are known to have survived.

The other camps, in Germany, Austria, and France (Dachau, Buchemwald, Mauthausen, etc.) killed prisoners by shooting, lethal injection, and starvation, and they have death totals were at most in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. These camps are not even remotely comparable to the extermination camps.

[terycarl]

Who knows how many people who would have become brilliant scholars, scientists, and doctors were killed because of the irrational obsession of one loser who happened to have a talent for demagoguery? Certainly a large number.

that statement would also apply to the U.S. abortion policies....both situations boggle the mind.

[dfwgator]

There were only six of these, Auschwitz, Chelmno, Maidanek, Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka. All were in Poland, none were liberated by Americans. At Belzec, there were believed to be 600,000 Jews sent there; only two are known to have survived.

There were revolts at Sobibor and Treblinka, in each case, about 300 inmates managed to escape.

[PAR35]

OK, I see the problem here now. It is ignorance of history. Some folks don’t know the difference between a concentration camp, a labor camp, and a death camp. While many of you might not have the resources to visit the facilities and learn the history on-site, there are many resources available through libraries or online.

Some specifics mentioned by some of you:

Dachau - set up as a concentration camp (the first one), primarily for political prisoners although also used by others deemed undesirable.

Buchenwald - primarily a labor camp, many died from starvation and disease, (and some executions) but not an extermination center. Interestingly enough, it was operated by the Soviets after they captured it, and some folks deemed undesirable by both the Nazis and the Reds were imprisoned there by both.

For those of you with little knowledge of the subject except what you learned from your politically correct teachers, you might start with the map here:

http://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/ss/Camps-Map.htm
(Just breaks down between concentration camps and death camps).

See also the list here, that designates the extermination camps.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/cclist.html