Bottled Note Found in German Concentration Camp After 60 Years

Bloomberg Terminal | 4/17/03 | Friederike Truemper

[Sam's Army]

"If you want to know where Holocaust deniers get their ammunition, it's from articles that say careless, easily-disproved things, as this article does."

Why even waste your own time worrying about such a thing? This article was about a bottle being found after 60 years......or is that suspect as well?

Go start your own thread if Holocaust statistics stick in your craw so easily. Otherwise, get used to the flames.

[RinaseaofDs]

No revisionist historian, or no Anti-Semetic, or perhaps Arab historian believes there were death camps.

The holocaust was fact. The irony of this is the lack of parallels to what is happening in Iraq. We just released over 100 people who were sealed in a concrete grave. There were prisons for children in Iraq. None of the liberal networks are breathing a word with respect to the parallels between the holocaust and Iraq.

You are proof that it only takes a few generations for people to forget even the most horific human acts.

[styky]

Dad was a POW in Stalag III and walked the death marches where towards the end of the war the Germans tried to kill off those left by exhaustion as the Red Cross new who was there. He was in the RCAF, but was with Anerican and British also. At the end of the war when the Russians freed the camp they found years worth of letters that the Germans did not pass on to the Red Cross for the POW's (suprise). Dad was able to get all the letters that he had written home back and we our family cherishes them.

[Skooz]

Good point.

[weegee]

Yes, while the 6 million Jews make up the largest single group, I found it odd that the article seemingly dismissed 5 million people as "numerous":

The Nazi regime in Germany used the camps to kill six million European Jews as well as numerous resistance fighters and members of political parties opposing Adolf Hitler's rule.

[ snip ]

About 18 million people were imprisoned in such camps during the Nazi regime of which 11 million died, estimates show.

I've seen that total dead figure also as ~10million in the camps.

[Cachelot]

What's IHR?

I'm completely sure that you already know. Institute for Historical Review. One of the prime outlets for holocoust-denial.

And what did I say that isn't true?

Your claim that no historians think there were extermination camps, for example.

Now, if you want to do this forum a favour, get your stinking carcass over to a neo-nazi/jihadist/holocoust-denier septic tank where you belong - such as LibertyForum. I'm sure you already have an account there. Hoplophile or Skunk?

[Cachelot]

I found it odd that the article seemingly dismissed 5 million people as "numerous":

Not "dismissed", I think. More that those 5 million was a diverse group and the fact that they fell into the system for other reasons than planned extinction. What makes the Jewish group special is not the number or that they are the largest single group, but the fact that they went down in a planned genocide - a premeditated (attempted) murder of a whole people.

[mtbopfuyn]

My uncle told of his unit going in to the camps at the end and how the troops were so sickened that they could hardly do the clean up. You calling him a liar?

[weegee]

I understand that the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish question" (what to do with them) was centered on one group and that the term "the Holocaust" applies to Europe's Jews.

I don't mind the numbers being broken out (even as '6million Jews and enormous number of those who opposed the Nazis or were considered subhuman') but when "numerous" is used to define a group of people caught up by the machine of death that is almost as large as the single largest (targeted) group then to me it underdefines the horror.

As I understand it, the first "euthenasia" program was to kill of the sick, weak, and mentally handicapped (they lived in "lavish" hospitals while the German citizens were poor, so the rational went).

And not to take anything away from Hitler, but Stalin killed even more people and yet the figures are brushed over. There have been other bloody purges in the 20th century as well. People said, "never again" but it did happen time and time again afterwards.

[7thson]

This is just not true. Americans liberated death camps in Germany. If all the death camps were in Poland, Americans would never have liberated any.

The Dachau Concentration Camp officially opened on Wednesday, March 22, 1933, a scant six weeks later.

The above is from http://www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/. In 1978, while stationed in Naples, Italy, I read a history of Dachau, which mentioned the gas chambers. My friend, by saying there were no death camps on German soil, you are not only lying but attempting a extremely poor Clintonian word games. Hit the road, liar!

[weegee]

Weren't some of the designs of the "slaughterhouses" made to give the Germans' plausible deniablity in the true purpose of the buildings?

The German bluff was something like that the buildings were for incineration/cremation to reduce the health risks in the camps (where as the mechanism of that death was obscured).

I recall seeing a documentary on this once (on PBS or one of the cable channels).

We may be encountering this same tactic in Iraq today (there are some on the left who deny that the structures we've run across were prisons or torture chambers).

The proof comes in eye witness accounts (and records) and measuring trace amounts of toxins.

[Sam's Army]

"But this sort of thing gives me pause."

Perhaps you could pause and reflect why poking holes in the holocaust methods, locations, numbers is so important to you.

[Southack]

Camps were an essential part of the Nazis' systematic oppression and mass murder of Jews, political adversaries, and others considered socially and racially undesirable. There were concentration camps, forced labor camps, extermination or death camps, transit camps, and prisoner-of-war camps. The living conditions of all camps were brutal. Dachau , one of the first Nazi concentration camps, opened in March 1933, and at first interned only known political opponents of the Nazis: Communists, Social Democrats, and others who had been condemned in a court of law. Gradually, a more diverse group was imprisoned, including Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies , dissenting clergy, homosexuals, as well as others who were denounced for making critical remarks about the Nazis. Six death or extermination camps were constructed in Poland. These so-called death factories were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec , Sobibór, Lublin (also called Majdanek ), and Chelmno . The primary purpose of these camps was the methodical killing of millions of innocent people. The first, Chelmno, began operating in late 1941. The others began their operations in 1942.

In the beginning of the systematic mass murder of Jews, Nazis used mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen consisted of four units of between 500 and 900 men each which followed the invading German troops into the Soviet Union. By the time Himmler ordered a halt to the shooting in the fall of 1942, they had murdered approximately 1,500,000 Jews. The death camps proved to be a better, faster, less personal method for killing Jews, one that would spare the shooters, not the victims, emotional anguish. Five photographs and a map of Einsatzgruppen activities may be viewed in the Resources section. A chilling report by the commander of one of the Einsatzgruppen, detailing the murders of 137,346 persons in a five month period. Detailed information about the Einsatzgruppen, with primary source material. A growing collection of documents related to the Einsatzgruppen is available at this site. Map of Einsatzgruppen massacres in Eastern Europe, 1941-1942. In September 1941, the Nazis began using gassing vans--trucks loaded with groups of people who were locked in and asphyxiated by carbon monoxide. These vans were used until the completion of the first death camp, Chelmno, which began operations in late 1941. Nazi correspondence detailing the operation of gassing vans. Nazi testimony regarding gassing vans. On December 7, 1941, the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) order was issued to deter resistance by allowing military courts to swiftly sentence resisters to death. Those arrested under this order were said to have disappeared into the "night and fog." More on the Night and Fog order from the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.

In January 1942, SS official Reinhard Heydrich held a meeting of Nazi government officials to present the Final Solution. At this meeting, known as the Wannsee Conference , the Nazi officials agreed to SS plans for the transport and destruction of all 11 million Jews of Europe. The Nazis would use the latest in twentieth century technology, cost efficient engineering and mass production techniques for the sole purpose of killing off the following racial groups: Jews, Russian prisoners of war, and Gypsies (Sinti-Roma). Their long-range plans, unrealized, included targeting some 30 million Slavs for death. Wannsee Conference entry from the "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust." Minutes of the Wannsee Conference planning the annihilation of over 11 million European Jews. Starting early in 1942, the Jewish genocide (sometimes called the Judeocide) went into full operation. Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau), Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibór began operations as death camps. There was no selection process; Jews were destroyed upon arrival. Ultimately, the Nazis were responsible for the deaths of some 2.7 million Jews in the death camps. These murders were done secretly under the ruse of resettlement. The Germans hid their true plans from citizens and inhabitants of the ghettos by claiming that Jews were being resettled in the East. They went so far as to charge Jews for a one-way train fare and often, just prior to their murder, had the unknowing victims send reassuring postcards back to the ghettos. Thus did millions of Jews go unwittingly to their deaths with little or no resistance. The total figure for the Jewish genocide, including shootings and the camps, was between 5.2 and 5.8 million, roughly half of Europe's Jewish population, the highest percentage of loss of any people in the war. About 5 million other victims perished at the hands of Nazi Germany. View hundreds of archival photographs of camps in the Resource section. View hundreds of recent photographs of camps in the Resource section. This table gives the name, location, type, years of operation, closure, and present status of the major concentration camps. Many photographs of Buchenwald. History of Buchenwald from the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. This site contains photos and maps of tunnels, shelters, and underground production facilities built with forced labor from nearby camps. Soviet cameramen made the first pictures of the camp Auschwitz-Birkenau with its prisoners' barracks from the air. Richard Hitchens' slide show of Auschwitz and Birkenau camps. History of the Auschwitz camp from the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Information about Chelmno, the first Nazi extermination camp. Notes on the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. A collection of 11 articles about the Belzec, Sobibór, and Treblinka extermination camps. An extensive article about Treblinka from the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Article and photographs of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This article provides a concise history of the Majdanek camp. "Majdanek: Cornerstone of Himmler's SS Empire in the East" by Elizabeth B. White. This article traces the phases of the Final Solution, from early resettlement plans, through ghettoization, to the death camps. Nazi correspondence and reports on "medical" experiments carried out on camp inmates. An extensive bibliography related to Nazi medical experimentation is available at the Wiesenthal Center site. Nazi correspondence concerning plans to sterilize Jews needed as slave laborers for the Reich. A lengthy article (with photographs) on Nazi medical experiments. "Holocaust Numismatics," an article by Joel Forman about monetary systems used in concentration camps. Richard Sufit's story of his captivity in Auschwitz and Buchenwald contains many details of camp life. Staff Sgt. Albert J. Kosiek describes the liberation of Mauthausen and Gusen camps. Article, maps, and photographs of the Stutthof concentration camp. By the end of 1943 the Germans closed down the death camps built specifically to exterminate Jews. The death tolls for the camps are as follows: Treblinka, (750,000 Jews); Belzec, (550,000 Jews); Sobibór, (200,000 Jews); Chelmno, (150,000 Jews) and Lublin (also called Majdanek, 50,000 Jews). Auschwitz continued to operate through the summer of 1944; its final death total was about 1 million Jews and 1 million non-Jews. Allied encirclement of Germany was nearly complete in the fall of 1944. The Nazis began dismantling the camps, hoping to cover up their crimes. By the late winter/early spring of 1945, they sent prisoners walking to camps in central Germany. Thousands died in what became known as death marches. Map of major death marches and evacuations, 1944-45. Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall describes a death march from Auschwitz and her escape into the forest.

[Cachelot]

I said they were in Poland, not Germany

Oh, so that was what you said, uh? Well, wrong. And it is the classic line from the holocoust denial crowd. To give you just two examples from Germany (there are more): Buchenwald and Ravensbruck. But of course you know this. And of course you know the revisionist off-the-hook wiggles ;).

Thanks for clearing up the IHR thing

You know the revisionist talking points, you quote writings from historians regarding the holocoust, and you're telling me that you didn't know what IHR is??? Pull the other one :).

No thanks, however, for the string of abuse

No thanks needed. Do take a look at LF, though - you'll fit right in - if you're not already there. Of course, I think you are.

[bmwcyle]

It's good CNN did not get the note first. It would be another 60 years to read it until CNN realized it would not get the dead Hitler's interview.

[Cachelot]

I understand that the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish question" (what to do with them) was centered on one group and that the term "the Holocaust" applies to Europe's Jews.

The Holocoust was what happened to Jews everywhere at the hands of the Germans and their allies in WWII. I think that is a fairly correct way of putting it.

The "Final solution" was what Hitler, his generals, and one important other party came up with. And that focussed on the European Jewry. However, the "important other" in this process was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who actually was a personal friend of Hitler and who did his best to emulate the führer with respect to killing off Jews, and who sent troops to Nazi Germany. There seems to be little doubt that the "final solution" was decided by Hitler already before Wannsee, and he and the Mufti was quite in agreement on this question. The Mufti was even more enthusiastic than most of Hitler's closest officers.

And not to take anything away from Hitler, but Stalin killed even more people and yet the figures are brushed over.

True, there has been other atrocities and genocides. But not "brushed over": when much is known about the Holocoust, it's partly because Jewish organizations and individuals have not let us forget (much to the revisionist critters chagrin). Where are the Russian organizations hammering the pogroms into the public memory? Where are the Cambodian efforts to never let the world forget the killing fields?

Of course, there has been books written on these subjects. However, too often when someone mentions communist atrocities, some slimy character will pop up and start the standard neo-nazi spiel about how "the Jews invented communism".

[Sam's Army]

"confirms that the extermination camps were not in Germany."

Again, I'm curious as to why this is such an important thing for you to spend time attempting to split hairs?