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At Large
Remembering the Unbelievable
On a guided tour through Yad Vashem.
JERUSALEM — Love it or hate it, Israel is unique. A young nation created amidst conflict and sustained under siege, it retains an ethic forged in the famed “exodus” from Europe after World War II. While Israel exhibits a superficial commonality with Europe — Tel Aviv has the relaxed feel of other Mediterranean cities — there remains a hard inner core. One might question the wisdom of particular Israeli policies, but no one should doubt the Jewish people’s willingness to do whatever is necessary not to repeat the past.
The best way to understand that commitment is to visit Yad Vashem. Established in 1953 as the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, Yad Vashem (the name comes from Isaiah 56:5) is a 45-acre complex on Har Hazikaron, or the Mount of Remembrance, overlooking Jerusalem. The site commemorates the Holocaust, or Shoah (meaning totally unimaginable catastrophe). To visit the history museum is to journey back into a human nightmare highlighting the utter depravity of mankind.
When the horror did end, Israel was one of the unintended results. The museum lives up to its goal of serving “as a bridge between the world that was destroyed and the life that resumed.”
A new complex opened five years ago. The museum is built into the mountain using a unique triangular design, with numerous side exhibition halls.
Shortly after entering the hall carpeting gives way to simple concrete: a rough road is about to begin. The first exhibit illustrates Jewish life before the Holocaust. Jews typically constituted less than one percent of the populations of Western Europe and were largely assimilated. In Eastern Europe the Jewish share of the population rose, hitting 10.3 percent in Poland. At 3.3 million, Poland’s Jewish population was Europe’s largest and largely unassimilated. The Soviet Union followed with three million, but that constituted only 1.8 percent of the total population.
Included are some amazing film footage and photographs. One sees a lost world that was vibrant and diverse. Although anti-Semitism existed in West, the most vicious antagonism was further east. Industrialized and sophisticated Germany was one of the last societies in which one would have expected Nazism to take hold.
Next comes an exhibit of Nazi Germany at peace, when anti-Semitism was turned into official law and practice. It is a familiar story in some ways, but the museum turns abstract history into brutal reality. There is anti-Semitic literature, including the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Beer drinkers could use an anti-Semitic beer stein decorated with detailed reliefs. There even is an anti-Semitic board game for children, with the objective of capturing the Jewish figures: never lose an opportunity to teach children to hate.
Through photos, posters, relics, and text, the story of the Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht, and much more is told. Nazi policies came as a shock to German Jews who, the museum explains, “considered themselves loyal patriots, linked to the German way of life by language and culture.” But nothing would protect them from the Nazis’ warped ideology.
Controls over the economic, professional, and cultural life of Jews were steadily expanded. Photos of the period remind us how Adolf Hitler built support, imprisoned opponents, and persecuted Jews. “The Fateful Year,” according to German documents, was 1938. An anti-Jewish campaign began which, according to the museum, “included the demolition of synagogues, mass arrests, destruction and looting of shops, and registration of Jewish property for expropriation purposes.” Deportations of Jews with Polish citizenship also started.
Moreover, the bloodless conquests of Austria and Czechoslovakia placed more unfortunate Jews under Hitler’s control. Still, Western nations were loath to offer sanctuary; the exhibit covers the tragic voyage of the St. Louis, turned back to Europe where many of its Jewish passengers ended up perishing. Jews had no sanctuary. Observed Chaim Weizman, President of the World Zionist Organization, in 1939: “the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places were they cannot enter.”
Still, despite all this, no one could imagine mass murder. The onset of the war on September 1, 1939, again expanded, dramatically, the number of Jews under German control, and made possible — indeed, necessary, in the warped Nazi mind — the physical elimination of the Jews. The broad war story is standard for any World War II buff. But the museum emphasizes how the conflict impacted Jews, who faced expropriation of their property, arrest, and abuse. The abundant photos have lost none of their power over the years. No practice was too degrading or humiliating not to use on hapless Jews. Even the common troops joined in, usually with no prodding from above.
At this point the hallway steadily narrows to illustrate the diminishing options for Europe’s Jews. Germany had to come up with a policy towards the millions of Jews now under its rule. In Western Europe, home of kindred racial peoples in Hitler’s view, “the Nazis did not ghettoize the Jews but enforced racial legislation and introduced Aryanization and discrimination,” explains the museum. In the east the policy was far harsher: Jews were forced into ghettos, isolating them from employment, culture, and the rest of the world.
The next side gallery — they are growing in size even as the hallway shrinks — tells the horrifying story of the ghettos in Kovno, Lodz, Theresienstadt, and Warsaw. Included are a bench, cobble stones, and even section of train tracks from the Warsaw ghetto. Again, photos and art show us a life that is unimaginable, filled with forced labor, starvation, and disease. Nevertheless, residents fought to preserve a community and cultural life, especially for children. Tragically, Jews so effectively imprisoned “were doomed to humiliation, poverty, decline, and death.”
The death of millions was made inevitable by the German invasion of the Soviet Union, covered in the next gallery. Millions more Jews fell into Nazi hands. In January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference — the villa where the meeting was held is a museum in Potsdam, Germany — the decision was made for the “final solution.” At first the killings were slow and inefficient: the four Einsatzgruppen could only shoot so many people.
Yet the photos of these operations are among the most striking in the entire museum. We see those about to be murdered and those who have been murdered. We also have a few horrifying images of the moment of death, of German personnel shooting, smoke escaping from their guns, and the victims’ bodies poised at the top of a ditch, about to topple onto the corpses below. This was murder at the retail level, up close and personal. How can someone willingly commit such a crime? It is a question that carries forward through the ages.
About the Author
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author and editor of several books, including The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington (Transaction).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (58) | Leave a comment
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Ken (Old Texican)| 8.24.10 @ 6:55AM
Doug,
Thank you for the reminder.
While at Baylor, I discovered Victor Frankl. In fact, I wrote my thesis on "Logotherapy".
His little paperback "Man's Search For Meaning" was an expansion of his earlier work translated into English: "From Deathcamp To Existentialism"
One of the two watershed books in my life, the Bible number one of course.
I am going to be fascinated seeing the comments here.
Again, thanks.
Rob| 8.24.10 @ 1:12PM
I'd be interested in hearing more about your thesis. I've read Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and agree that it is outstanding.
Alan Brooks| 8.24.10 @ 4:25PM
The situation in the Mideast is lose-lose: Israel loses, the feudalists win; Israel wins, it brutalizes its minorities... without a buddhist-minarcho-socialist-vegetarian gay-tolerant world, ALL nations oppress their minorities to some extent.
Arab-Israeli peace treaties buy time for outside parties to do damage control; as with the Gazan war a year and a half ago: the war was limited but the willpower for doing another war is there. Belligerents do not spend their lives fighting & hating to cease merely because intellectuals living safely outside of military areas want them to. By all means, encourage another treaty-- however be prepared to wait until midcentury when the oldtimers are dead and have taken their animosities with them.
Occam's Tool| 8.24.10 @ 9:23PM
The leader of the SA was gay and Hitler was a vegetarian. The Nazis WERE socialist.
The West Bank economy is growing by leaps and bounds because the Palestinians there don't engage in rockets and terror bombs now. Alan, what is your moronic point?
Ryan| 8.25.10 @ 8:28AM
The Nazis were FASCISTS.
It aggravates me how many of us on the right get this wrong because we want to run from it somehow.
Companies were still private in Nazi Germany. That's fascism.
Margie| 8.25.10 @ 1:19PM
Ryan,
That's like the diff between 1% and 2% milk. It's still milk!
Alan Brooks| 8.25.10 @ 6:25PM
"The leader of the SA was gay and Hitler was a vegetarian. The Nazis WERE socialist."
If this is so, it only makes it worse. Which is why I am a pessimist.
Ret. Marine| 8.24.10 @ 7:07AM
This was a very sad read for me. I am a decendent of the German society. My paternal grandfather was one of those who fought and killed many of his fellow countrymen, and dare I say woman because in his words they had turned against God, Country and humanity. I heard the stories, saw the pictures, listened how it became that they changed their family name to relieve themselves of the shame they held for a once very proud German family. To this day, I feel no shame for what my grandfather did, rather I am very proud that he had the humanity to reconize what the Nazi's were doing was against God and country and in fact acted in response to it. I am an American, born to an American of German decent, but nonetheless an American Patriot. I was the First to enter the Marine Corp in my family's history, the first Officer of these United States and will willingly do as my grandfather once did if the time requires. Make no mistake, I will do exactely the same thing with my fellow Countrymen/ladies if they insist upon this type of behaviour. I am begining to see just that, we are presently a divided Nation, being done in a deliberate fashion by the modern day fascist/progressives/marxist/communist/ TRAITORS to this Republic. I pray this never ever happens to any peoples but am willing to stand against this attitude and fight those who wish to enslave me or my children or their children. Long live the Republic and God Bless and secure his people, the Israeli's.
ddn| 8.24.10 @ 2:04PM
I toured the Holocaust museum in Washington DC. What impressed me most was not the evil that man has done to his fellow man - the perpetrators and their victims - what impressed me was those who stood up to the evil and laid down their lives to help and protect the victims. These were men and women who did not have to risk all - but did!they stood up for truth and righteousness even when it cost them their lives.
I see many parallels between Nazi Germany and the US today. I greatly grieve over the evil I see all around me - and the attitudes of so many. May God give me the ability to continue to stand against evil and if necessary to laid down my life in the defense of truth and for the innocent.
Ret. Navy| 8.24.10 @ 9:04PM
We sadly, indeed, are in such a divided nation. Words cannot express the gulf between the Left & the majority of Americans. The Left's policy of 'tolerance' is ONLY applicable towards those it favors. To any other group, they are as intolerant of the Inquisition....as those who oppose the Mosque at Ground Zero are discovering.
Lastly, I never thought I'd be in a position of fighting against my own countrymen, however the Left's positions are NOT American ones and somewhere, the line has to be drawn, exactly as it was some 150 years ago.
Appleby| 8.24.10 @ 7:19AM
I am descended from German Jews. My Daddy fought in Europe in World War II and secretly brought back photos of the one concentration camp he entered (as driver to one of the generals) which he showed us when we turned 12 because he was convinced that when the generation who had seen for themselves was gone, no one would believe it had happened. Someone recently said that the success of the plot of 9/11/01 was the result of a *failure of imagination* in that nobody who could have stopped it could imagine that it could ever happen. I believe the Shoah to be in that same category.
Canada, which now unquestioningly accepts boatloads of Tamil Tigers and smuggled illegal aliens, turned away boatloads of Jews seeking refuge. There are many days I believe that those who run this country are, as my old granny would have said, growing like onions with their heads in the ground.
Pecos Pete| 8.24.10 @ 8:10AM
For more history:
"The Source" by James A. Michener
WRTolkas| 8.24.10 @ 8:14AM
Dear Readers,
A month ago on a business trip in Germany, I visited again Dachau. This was my second trip to that place of infamy. My colleague almost insisted we visit. I warned him that once you enter the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gates, you will not leave here the same again. I was correct - after a while reading and witnessing the places of horror, he almost vomited. We were touring. I could never imagine being confined there.
Back near the three chapels (Temples?), I overheard a tourist from Tennessee ask this simple question: "How could this have happened and how could the people have submitted so meekly?" My answer was short, sweet, and pointed: "They didn't have a 2nd Amendment to their Constitution." I know this was not the only answer, but for me, if they came for me and my family, I'd take a few down with me - make them pay.
Regards and Remember November to Vote,
WRTolkas
Paul D| 8.24.10 @ 8:26AM
WRTolkas,
You are correct. The Nuremberg laws specifically prohibited the Jews from owning firearms.
Much easier to force unarmed people onto cattle cars than armed ones.
Occam's Tool| 8.24.10 @ 9:25PM
In addition, Jews had a higher view of what civilized people would not do. It shows in the attempts of the Israeli army to minimize Civilian casualties, something unheard of in WWII.
hardcard| 8.24.10 @ 8:29AM
Do not let history repeat the horror. New enemies are on the march, with new weapons and the same hate.
Ed, Edd and Eddie| 8.24.10 @ 10:34AM
appropos nothing whatever, I wonder how large the armory in the GZ Mosque is planned to be...?
Mimi| 8.24.10 @ 8:57AM
Yes...A serious,sad read. But a must read because the memory of this atrocity, mans inhumanity to man should be forever marked with indelible ink in our minds and souls..
The SHOFER rung out...loud and clear in 1998 at the March for Life. The warning.... the call together, the wake-up call. It was the last time I was in the nations capital.
Now.... the Shofer calls...alerting us. We must stand with Israel....Stand -up for America,
turn sharply from the devastating course we are on. The forces of darkness will be with us..same old...same old ...But the spirit of goodness, and BOLDNESS will light the way!
NavyBrat | 8.24.10 @ 8:58AM
I too am Jewish. My Dad was a Navy captain who served in Vietnam on the USS Saratoga. His ancestors had left Europe long before Hitler, but my Dad was born in 1944. He grew up with the very recent memories of what happened. "Never again, Sonny Boy," he used to tell me. I agree.
What's happening all over the world these days is scary for those who remember how the horror of the Holocaust began. Universities in England, of all places, are refusing to publish papers & articles by Jewish authors because of Israeli policies. The rest of Europe is no better, if not worse. Here in this country, we have a barely closeted anti Semite in the White House, & rampant anti Semitism coming from the left. I can only shake my head at my fellow Jews who continue to follow the drumbeat of these lefties. They'll realize the error of their ways, but what will it take to make this happen?
Here's a couple of American Thinker articles. The first is on "tolerant" lefties at San Francisco State & how they feel about Jews. The second is from yesterday about how, maybe, the political worm is turning as far as Jews & lefitism.
http://www.americanthinker.com.....sco_s.html
http://www.americanthinker.com.....ama_a.html
"Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge."...Cicero
Occam's Tool| 8.24.10 @ 9:26PM
British academics are vermin.
Maddox| 8.24.10 @ 9:28AM
I remember growing up watching documentaries and elements of history embedded in productions that depicted the horrors of the holocaust. I cannot remember the last time this was even mentioned except when one of our enemies declared it a hoax. Today's media seems more inclined to deny it happened or at least ignore it.
"History denied, history repeated."
Steve A| 8.24.10 @ 9:42AM
My 15 yr old daughter excells in school & was granted an interview with Holocaust survivor Alexander Lebenstein early this year as part of a feature article for the school newspaper. I accompanied her & sat in this man's kitchen for 3 hrs while he recounted, in vivid detail, his story. I will never be the same. He asked me a question & here it is: He said " do you think an event like the Holocaust could ever occur in the USA, & if so, how?" I suggested that I really did not see how it would be possible. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that not only was it possible, but that the trends in that direction were already apparent. His fear was that our society was beginning to be stripped of it's freedoms, power centralized & the tone set for a catastrophe not unlike the past. The appeasment of radical Islam disguising itself as moderate & gaining a foothold was the first step, in his view. Three weeks later in January, Alex was gone at 82. I look at the Ground Zero Mosque issue & begin to see his point. If these people are unwilling to admit what Hamas is & completely reject Sharia law, they have no business here. We do not "tolerate" our own destruction.
Ned the Red| 8.24.10 @ 9:53AM
Yet we stand by while Iran obtains nuclear weapons. Weapons, as stated by their "leader", to destroy Jews and Israel.
ncatty| 8.24.10 @ 10:03AM
Mr. Bandow asks "How can someone willingly commit such a crime?" Because they thought it was the right thing to do. German society had been conditioned over a long period of time to view Jewish persons as subhuman and a threat. The Nazis did not introduce this idea, which had been around a long time, they just took it to its logical end. This is hard for us to understand. The same thing with US slavery. Negroes were viewed as subhuman and slavery as their natural, even beneficial, condition. This idea didn't begin in 1861. The groundwork had been laid long before the Civil War. The common theme? Once the idea that people can be classified as subhuman, anything goes.
Claypoole| 8.26.10 @ 9:16AM
"Once the idea that people can be classified as subhuman, anything goes."
Yes, like tens of millions of abortions.
Margaret| 8.24.10 @ 10:45AM
I have always been horrified by what I've read about the Holocaust ever since I was a young girl and read Anne Frank's Diary. I, too, have wondered how the Jews could just go along with the Nazis, seemingly without resistance. An article that was forwarded to me a few months ago explains some of it a little better. Go to: www.johnadams2010.com/kitty_werthmann.html to read this very sad story. Don't think it can't happen to us here in the U.S. I think it has already started.
KyMouse| 8.24.10 @ 11:01AM
One of my elderly relatives told me once that one reason they found it hard to believe that the Germans were committing atrocities was that they had been told in World War I that the Germans were eating babies.
Since it had turned out that German soldiers didn't eat babies during The Great War (as far as anyone knew), people were reluctant to believe that Germans were making lampshades out of skin, and so on.
All of Yad Vashem is certainly haunting, but the memorial to the children, in which candle flames seemingly reflect in a black infinity, has stayed with me the most.
David Shoup| 8.24.10 @ 11:49AM
Doug, your work is appreciated. I have written you before. You stand out as a Christian, a Civil War "buff" (you used that word here), and a friend of Israel. I hope God let's me live long enough to see Ezekiel 38 & 39 take place. I also want to be there when Ezekiel 37 takes place too.
Margie| 8.24.10 @ 1:10PM
True conservatives stand with Israel. We stand with any country who is our ally in freedom. There are many so called conservatives today who share the same hatred of the Jews as did their former fellow Jew haters, the Nazis and Communists. I will refer to them as CINO'S. They know who they are.
My Mother in law is a Nazi camp survivor and at age 85 she has not forgotten anything. Taken as a young girl and thrown into the back of an open truck carrying other young girls, wearing only a thin dress she was to spend the remainder of the war in the Volkswagen labor camp. She had to walk for miles in snow without boots in Winter each day and was starved nearly to death along with other young girls and boys. She said that some of the boys who were starving "worse than her" she would give to them her portion of the daily maggot soup to eat. The Nazi's would also sic their dogs on them if they did not do what they wanted them to do. To this day she cannot bear being around dogs.
To this day I have not met a single soul except another couple, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand who also survived many years of imprisonment and torture in Communist prisons~ who have this cheerful, thankful and appreciative spirit about them. One that puts me to shame.
The Nazis and Communist did not only murder Jews though, they murdered anyone who wasn't a Nazi. My Mother in law is a Russian, just a young girl living a simple life on a farm with no allegiance to anything except her family.
The spirit of Communism (Satanism) exists today in the Democrat party who also work hard to destroy individual freedom. Is it enough for you to vote Republican in order to defeat it? The friends of freedom will.
Until the Lord returns we have our battle to fight and win along with Him.
David Shoup| 8.24.10 @ 2:30PM
May the King of Glory bless you and your family in every sense of the word. It has indeed been and will be a long fight. We have a supernatural, multi generational enemy. We have an even greater Protector. He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. If he sees when a sparrow falls, he surely saw, and remembers, when the sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel were the victims.
WRTolkas| 8.24.10 @ 4:07PM
AMEN Sister Margie and Brother David.
Margie| 8.24.10 @ 6:35PM
Thank you so much, David & WRT.
Not only does He know when a sparrow falls to the Earth and He knows how many hairs are on our heads, but He minds our tears.
"Thou hast kept count of my tossings; put Thou my tears in Thy bottle! Are they not in Thy Book?" Ps. 56:8.
Occam's Tool| 8.24.10 @ 9:28PM
Margie, you're simply wonderful. I have a rabbi as a good friend, and he doesn't understand the way Christian Fundamentalists think at all. This Jewish kid, who went to TCU and is NOT a Jew for Jesus, does.
Margie| 8.24.10 @ 10:12PM
OT,
And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in Heaven." Mt. 16:17.
Wonderful I'm not, but Jesus is. He made the opportunity for Heaven a possibility, to the Jew first and then to the Greek. (Rms. 1:6). You may already be a Jew for Jesus, quite unknowingly. Do you know what the Bible happens to say about those who receive Christians, like you do?
"He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me." Mt. 10:40.
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.25.10 @ 7:57AM
Margie
Mathew 10:40
Thank you for a great reminder!
Margie| 8.25.10 @ 12:33PM
Ken,
You're welcome.
Jer. 20:9.
Howard| 8.24.10 @ 2:09PM
My family visited Yad Vashem in 2006. This was right after the war between Israel and Hezbollah. Jews are still fighting for survival. If Iran gets a nuke, I'm almost certain they will use it. The fact that 50,000,000 Iranians die will not dissuade them from going first.
In Yad Vashem there is an area outside the main museum that has walls engraved with names of cities in Europe that were destroyed by the Nazi's and they no longer exist. Very powerful museum that is as relevant today as ever.
TR| 8.24.10 @ 3:59PM
I have been to Dachau in 1975 when stationed in Europe in the AF. A decade later I worked with an Army veteran of WWII. He was among the first to liberate that death camp, and he revealed stories to me that had me in tears. He has since passed away, but I considered him a personal hero. His name was George Veston and I miss him. He vowed to me in the 1980s that he would never allow his country to descend to what he fought against.
I began reading the comments with trepidation - I seriously worried that I would read some comments from the typical liberal America haters/anti-semites that would set me off and to my great surprise, I only read supportive comments. Thank God the haters are avoiding this post. I will go to Yad Vashem. People need to understand that these atrocities have repeated (Cambodia, Africa) and we must be on guard constantly.
TR| 8.24.10 @ 4:08PM
After posting, I reread my last sentence, and I want to clarify that the holocaust was MUCH worse than the modern exterminations because of its scale, planning, and length of time that it occurred. And Jews in particular are vulnerable because of the "accepted world view" that they are a problem that needs to be eliminated.
WRTolkas| 8.24.10 @ 4:10PM
Dear TR,
To answer your question on reading only supporting comments: When the light shines, the cockroaches flee.
Michele San Pietro| 8.24.10 @ 5:34PM
I love Israel, and I will always side with that wonderful country.
Frank Natoli| 8.24.10 @ 6:10PM
As proud as the Germans were of their "work", they never allowed any photography of the extermination complex at Auschwitz Birkenau, and since they completely demolished all the evidence prior to the Russians overruning the camp in January 1945, Holocaust deniers were able to say "what extermination complex".
But in 1978, two CIA analysts, Dino Brugioni and Robert Poirer, realized that USAAF aerial reconnaissance of the nearby I G Farben chemical plant, served by slave labor from the Auschwitz arbeitslager, might also show the nearby Auschwitz Birkenau extermination complex. It did.
The CIA had a copy of their article on their website but it has been mysteriously removed. The URL was https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v44i4a06p_0001.htm. If you search the CIA site for Brugioni and Auschwitz, you get links to the article, but they're cold. Maybe the current administration is now in the Holocaust denial business.
The Yad Vashem site has some information on the Brugioni article and much better photos than the CIA site article had. That URL is http://www1.yadvashem.org/exhi.....aphs.html.
In particular, look at the September 13, 1944 photo. You can see a stick of 500lb bombs on the way down to the Farben plant, but directly below is the Birkenau facility, annotated for the various buildings, gas chambers, crematoria, etc.
Use the Yad Vashem digital collections page and search keywords Auschwitz or Birkenau aerial for more photos.
Frank Natoli| 8.24.10 @ 6:13PM
The Spectator web server has apparently unintentionally appended the trailing period to the Yad Vashem URL. When the link fails, remove the trailing period and retry.
Peter McGrath| 8.24.10 @ 6:55PM
The notorious Auschwitz was a labor camp which was part of an extensive industrial complex devoted to making synthetic rubber, among other enterprises. Some 1.6 millions died there - the elderly, very young, sick and infirm immediately upon arrival.
Less well known are the so-called Aktion Reinhard camps - Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka. These were extermination centers. No selections of industrial workers occurred. The only industry was death. Virtually all who came off the trains were marked for death - except a few Jews selected to assist in the process of sorting clothes, burying bodies, etc., who themselves, after a few weeks, were mostly killed. Very, very few survived.
Treblinka began operations in the Summer of 1942. By the end of Fall 1943, some 900,000 Jews, several thousand gypsies, and others had been delivered by train - mostly from Jewish ghettos throughout Poland - to this remote "transit" station 60 miles northeast of Warsaw.
There, the victims disembarked, were unclothed, divided by sex, and then herded along a path (what the SS derisively called the "Path to Heaven") and then crowded directly into gas chambers (using gas piped from diesel engines of what are now believed to be engines from Soviet T-34 tanks), and asphyxiated. The victims were worked into a frenzy - the SS learned that the asphyxiation process was quicker for victims short of breath. The victims were directed to hold their arms straight up in the air, as doing so permitted greater numbers to be crammed into the 13 gas chambers. For the SS, the process ideally took, from disembarkation to the removal of the bodies from the crematoria, an hour or so to complete - per train car.
Vicious dogs, whippings, rifle-buttings, and indiscriminate shootings kept most of the bewildered and exhausted victims at bay. The guards, Ukranians for the most part, routinely dragged young girls into nearby woods and raped them. Those too sick or weak to make it to the gas chambers were taken to an "Aid Station" - and shot. Steiner tells of a kapo doctor (a Jewish prisoner) who would humanely administer morphine overdoses to infants and others, when he could.
For women, the harrowing march to death was interrupted while their hair was shorn. An estimated 300 tons of such hair - from Treblinka alone - was collected and sent back to Germany for various uses.
The soul cries.
Never Forget.
Peter McGrath| 8.24.10 @ 6:55PM
The notorious Auschwitz was a labor camp which was part of an extensive industrial complex devoted to making synthetic rubber, among other enterprises. Some 1.6 millions died there - the elderly, very young, sick and infirm immediately upon arrival.
Less well known are the so-called Aktion Reinhard camps - Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka. These were extermination centers. No selections of industrial workers occurred. The only industry was death. Virtually all who came off the trains were marked for death - except a few Jews selected to assist in the process of sorting clothes, burying bodies, etc., who themselves, after a few weeks, were mostly killed. Very, very few survived.
Treblinka began operations in the Summer of 1942. By the end of Fall 1943, some 900,000 Jews, several thousand gypsies, and others had been delivered by train - mostly from Jewish ghettos throughout Poland - to this remote "transit" station 60 miles northeast of Warsaw.
There, the victims disembarked, were unclothed, divided by sex, and then herded along a path (what the SS derisively called the "Path to Heaven") and then crowded directly into gas chambers (using gas piped from diesel engines of what are now believed to be engines from Soviet T-34 tanks), and asphyxiated. The victims were worked into a frenzy - the SS learned that the asphyxiation process was quicker for victims short of breath. The victims were directed to hold their arms straight up in the air, as doing so permitted greater numbers to be crammed into the 13 gas chambers. For the SS, the process ideally took, from disembarkation to the removal of the bodies from the crematoria, an hour or so to complete - per train car.
Vicious dogs, whippings, rifle-buttings, and indiscriminate shootings kept most of the bewildered and exhausted victims at bay. The guards, Ukranians for the most part, routinely dragged young girls into nearby woods and raped them. Those too sick or weak to make it to the gas chambers were taken to an "Aid Station" - and shot. Steiner tells of a kapo doctor (a Jewish prisoner) who would humanely administer morphine overdoses to infants and others, when he could.
For women, the harrowing march to death was interrupted while their hair was shorn. An estimated 300 tons of such hair - from Treblinka alone - was collected and sent back to Germany for various uses.
The soul cries.
Never Forget.
Margie| 8.25.10 @ 11:31AM
Sabina Wurmbrand, whom I mentioned in my post, survived Treblinka. She wrote a beautiful, yes beautiful book about her life called simply, "The Pastor's Wife." Her and her husband, Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, a Jew converted to Christ began what is know today as the underground churches in Communist countries. Richard wrote very many books, one of which is, "Tortured for Christ." They have both gone to Heaven now, but their family carries out their mission today and they are known as Voice of the Martyrs or VOM. Their main goal is to help feed and clothe the families of the persecuted in Communist countries, and to bring them Bibles.
Tim*| 8.24.10 @ 7:02PM
Dad , a commander in a Mech Recon/Ranger Task Force , came first across one of the smaller Nazi camps . He cut out a halftrack , had it loaded it up with medical supplies , assigned a medical officer and some troopers and vehicles to give aid until the Spearhead caught up and kept his column moving , because they were chasing krauts.
He saw many dead soldiers and civilians along his march from Normandy , to Paris , to The Battle of The Bulge , to Germany , to link with The Russkie Commie Reds in Czechoslovakia.
Remember that 50 some million civilians died in WWII and over 5 1/2 million non-Jews , mostly Christians died as well , in those Nazi camps.
Margie| 8.25.10 @ 1:34PM
Tim*
I will remember. What you said is true. And in God's eyes all precious souls. Whether Jew or Christian, Athiest or Agnostic, all perished through no fault of their own.
"Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same thought, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.." 1 Pe. 4:1.
Peter McGrath| 8.25.10 @ 4:44PM
Here's a remarkable translation / interpretation of the same verse, from The Message:
"Since Jesus went through everything you're going through and more, learn to think like him. Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way. Then you'll be able to live out your days free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannized by what you want. "
Margie| 8.25.10 @ 5:10PM
I like that and it's true but I really like to stick with my Interlinear Bible. Have you ever seen it? Jay P. Green put it out. It's a super translation directly from the Greek (NT). Hebrew for the OT. If you want to really get fed spiritually, I highly recommend it! There are words in it that you never would have know otherwise, and to me that brings you even closer to God's thoughts.
Occam's Tool| 8.24.10 @ 9:33PM
Tim, there are 13 million Jews in the world now. In 1939, there were 18 million. Jews, despite there miniscule numbers, have won 168+ Nobels, and the colloquial name for genius is named after a Jew.
Just numerically speaking, 10-20 Nobel winners perished in those camps, as a minimum. Keeping in mind that the German Jews were particularly prolific Nobelists, you can see the problem.
Tim, what the hell is your problem?
Tim*| 8.24.10 @ 9:42PM
I see a problem with outrageous Agenda Scum like You ,You Tool .
People like you ,who dare to play cheap politics with the reality of World War Two
How dare you imply that Jewish lives trump the lives of other victims of the Nazis,You Bigoted Little Agendist Puke.
GRUP| 8.24.10 @ 11:16PM
The references to Michener remind me of the outstanding work he published as "Kent State". This still stands as one of the best reports on Left crowd control and manipulation. I seem to recall he also included some detailed data on Ayers' wife steering the male "leaders" of the rioters. There was another Michener novel {perhaps Colorado] which contains a simply fascinating look at the shifting sands of political identification from WWII through the 1960's. Aging leftists might want to review how a landslide leader can become irrelevant. Hope for massive peaceful change in 2010 and 2012. GBUSA
Kurt| 8.25.10 @ 9:05AM
It is very simple to explain it, efficient organization. Many nations took part in genocidal action throughout history or raised the Jewish question, Poland was always a center of anti-jewish sentiment and progromes but only the German conspirators of the SS special troops did it in an industrial fashion, in a very efficient way. Only the nuremberg laws implemented the "science" in a bureaucratic fashion. Killing is also a huge logistic problem. Contrary to popular opinion you don't need many persons to carry out these crimes. Look how few guards were employed in the Treblinka site. Killing is always a matter of perspective, the United States democracy celebrated it when it ended WWII by murdering the inhabitants of two cities. We have to stop all these racial crimes and segregation. Only a great population mix will keep a nation strong, mixed religion, mixed culture, bastardization.
John II| 8.26.10 @ 1:17AM
When one looks closely at a map of the Holy Land and considers the tiny sliver of former desert wasteland claimed by the Israelis, one cannot but marvel at the shortage of ordinary hospitality exhibited by the Islamic mindset--and the warm fuzzies accorded the Nazis by middle eastern potentates during World War II.
And the soulless chatter of the West's lefty political class today, stuffing their empty hearts with chic excuses for imbecile viciousness and mass murder.
Jim| 8.26.10 @ 9:08PM
I visited Yad Vashem in 2008, and it was overwhelming. I felt immense sadness as I wondered back and forth through the exhibit. That is, until I came upon the exhibit that depicted Pope Pius as one who collaborated with the Nazis. I realized that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the pope continues to suffer from the propaganda merchants. All I could feel after that was anger. I quickly left. I will never return, nor will I ever recommend visiting this place.