Auschwitz

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David E M
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Auschwitz

#1

Post by David E M » 29 May 2002, 10:00

quote:

'The message was drawn up on three large sheets of parchment. The Sonderkommando's editor, a painter from Paris, copied it in beautifully written letters, as was the custom with ancient manuscripts, using India ink so that the writing would not fade.
The fourth sheet contained the signatures of the Sonderkommando's 200 men. The sheets were fastened together with a silk thread, then rolled up, enclosed in a specially constucted cylindrical tube made of zinc by one of our tin-smiths, and finally sealed and soldered so as to protect the manuscript from air and humidity. Our joiners placed the tube in the reclaimer's springs, among the wool floss of the upholstering.

Another message, exactly the same, was buried in the courtyard of number two crematorium'
Dr Miklos Nyiszil. 'Auschwitz'

My Question: Does anyone know if this was recovered and is it in the Auschwitz Museum?.

cheers.

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#2

Post by michael mills » 29 May 2002, 15:24

'The message was drawn up on three large sheets of parchment. The Sonderkommando's editor, a painter from Paris, copied it in beautifully written letters, as was the custom with ancient manuscripts, using India ink so that the writing would not fade.
The above sounds like a fantasy to me. I strongly doubt that a group of prisoners in a death camp, fearing for their lives and acting furtively, needing to avoid detection, would have wasted time and energy writing a message on parchment in beautiful letters so that it looked like an ancient manuscript. I think it more likely that they would have written the message as hastily as possible, with as few words as possible, without even worrying about such niceties as beautiful handwriting.


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#3

Post by Roberto » 29 May 2002, 17:40

michael mills wrote:
'The message was drawn up on three large sheets of parchment. The Sonderkommando's editor, a painter from Paris, copied it in beautifully written letters, as was the custom with ancient manuscripts, using India ink so that the writing would not fade.
The above sounds like a fantasy to me. I strongly doubt that a group of prisoners in a death camp, fearing for their lives and acting furtively, needing to avoid detection, would have wasted time and energy writing a message on parchment in beautiful letters so that it looked like an ancient manuscript. I think it more likely that they would have written the message as hastily as possible, with as few words as possible, without even worrying about such niceties as beautiful handwriting.
He who wrote the above is obviously not an artist and doesn't know any artists either.

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Re: Auschwitz

#4

Post by Hans » 30 May 2002, 10:20

Nyiszli wrote that one message was put into the sofa of Oberscharführer Muhsfeldt, which joiners in the Sonderkommando had to build for his flat in Mannheim/Germany. This message was never found of course and there is no way to verify Nyiszli's claim.
What was found were several handwritings of six different Sonderkommandos buried next to the crematoria, but only fragments are actually legible. These were published in one number of the "Hefte von Auschwitz" by the Auschwitz State Musuem.
Parts of Selmen Lewental's handwriting are also quoted in Hermann Langbein "Menschen in Auschwitz", page 286:

"Geschrieben von ... genau bei ... Sonderkommando des Krematoriums II, 15. 8. 1944 von Zelman Lewental, Polen, Chiechanow.

So genau, wie die Geschehnisse selbst verliefen, kann sie kein Mensch sich vorstellen, denn es ist unvorstellbar, dass man so genau unsere Erlebnisse wiedergeben kann... Wir aber - die kleine Gruppe grauer Leute, die den Historikern keine geringere Mühe bereiten werden...

...doch auch die Psychologen, die wissen und erforschen wollen, wie der Geisteszustand der Menschen war, die Hand an diese düstere, schmutzige Arbeit legten; ja, das ist interessant!
Aber wer weiß, ob diese Forscher die Wahrheit ergründen werden, ob irgend jemand imstande sein wird, gründlich..."


Michael, it appears that Lewental wrote his message without thinking about writing it "as hastily as possible, with as few words as possible".

And I find it questionable to declare a witness account fantasy just because the witness had the impression that the editor of the message was writing in beautifully written letters. There are some reasons that justify to doubt if everything we are told by Nyiszli is true, but THIS is certainly none of them.

regards, Hans

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#5

Post by michael mills » 31 May 2002, 06:23

It is entirely possible that members of the Sonderkommando wrote messages and hid them. That we quite a logical thing to do in the circumstances.

However, Nyiszli's DESCRIPTION of the preparation of such a message still sounds fantastic to me.

The excerpt quoted from what purports to be a manuscript written by Leventel while a prisoner in Birkenau and hidden also seems a bit wanky to me.

I can well imagine a secret record along the following lines:

"I am X. I was brought to Auschwitz on date X from place X. I was assigned to the Sonderkommando of Krema X. We burn the bodies of the Jews killed in the gas-chamber next door (or below us). I have kept a list of the numbers of bodies we burned.
Day 1 so many bodies
Day 2 so many bodies
Day 3 so many bodies
etc etc etc"

That sort of thing I could accept as genuine: written hastily and furtively, keeping an eye out for the guards, limiting it to the essential information that it is desired to convey, using limited time to write down what was essential, using the limited amount of paper available to record essentail information.

An example of a real secret document is the copy of the register of prisoners kept illegally by the prisoners working in the Registry Office. They did not copy the entire register; rather, against each day, they recorded the first and last registration number issued on that day. That way they could keep a running record of the number of prisoners registered in the most economical way. Each day it could be done very quickly, so as to minimise the chance of detection; simply copy the first and last number on the list for that day.

The sort of philosophical speculations that were supposedly written by Leventel in the most extreme conditions read more like something composed by a Jewish scholar or psychologist in the quite solitude of his study. Men who wake up each morning not knowing whether they will still be alive that evening do not have the time for self-indulgent navel-gazing. Prisoners at Auschwitz, particularly the Jewish prisoners, were engaged in a desperate struggle to survive, not a literary competition.

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Auschwitz

#6

Post by David E M » 31 May 2002, 08:21

Unfortunately I tend to agree with Michael on this one, ( The idea of a time capsule appeals to me ) . Also what Hans said 'Few fragments are actually legible'' also seems true. But if the documents were sealed and airtight and no-one has found them, where does that leave us?. ok thanks guys lets keep it on topic.

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by the way

#7

Post by David E M » 31 May 2002, 08:38

For those of you who have read the book you might be interested in this.

'...That was on 3 November 1943, and SS Lieutenant Georg Kurt Mussfeld, who was in charge of the day's work, boasted to the SS Judge Konrad Morgen that on that day '' the ashes of the Jews I roasted floted like dust over all of Lublin' On the strenght of that days notable achievment. Mussfeld was sent - coals to newcastle- to be an efficiency expert at Auschwitz. He regretted it all later, or so he said in 1958 when Benno Feld and Hannah Baum found him - fat and prosperous- and hanged him in the kitchen of the pilgrims' inn Mussfeld kept in obergammerau, where every ten years the devout Germans re-enact the Passion of Christ.

Forged in Fury - Michael Elkins.

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#8

Post by Hans » 31 May 2002, 17:47

michael mills wrote:However, Nyiszli's DESCRIPTION of the preparation of such a message still sounds fantastic to me.
That's still incomprehensible to me.

Before the quoted extract Nyiszli says that this message contained things which Michael Mills wants to see in such message in order to accept it possibly as genuine:

"Die Henker der getöteten werden beim Namen genannt, die Methoden und Mittel der Vernichtung aufgeführt, auch die Zahl der Opfer fehlte nicht."
(Miklos Nyiszli: Im Jenseits der Menschlichkeit, page 85)

The names of the perpetrators, the methods and means of the destruction and the number of victims were written on the first three sheets. This appears indeed to be the most rational way one would write such a message.

But what is so fantastic about the description. All what he says basically is that the editor of the message had a beautifull handwriting. He was an artist, why should he had put it down in spidery handwriting?
And he says that the sheets were put into a zinc tube specially made for this purpose. What's wrong and fantastic with this one?

In my opinion it's a very strange idea of our Michael Mills that a "Jewish scholar or psychologist" wrote the above quoted (and amongst other things an anti-polish conspiracy theory), destroyed it so that only "Satzfetzen" are actualy legible (why?), travelled to Poland, buried it near the crematoria and made the stuff of the Auschwitz state Museum believe that it was genuine (that alone must have been very difficult considering that Lewental has heavily attacked the polish resistance in his writings). Now, that's something I consider to be fantastic. What's even worse is the fact that Lewental's writings were recovered in 1961 because the Auschwitz surviver Henryk Porebski remembered the place where Lewental buried the notes. Hence, there is little room for any conspiracy and forgery theories.

Michael Mills is bothered by the fact that Lewental wrote not only about facts and figures, but that he also wrote down what was going up inside his head, in his mind. That's a very poor reason in my opinion to reject a handwriting found in Auschwitz as forgery. It's true, it sounds not very rational to us. But who says that people always behave rational "in the most extreme conditions"?

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#9

Post by michael mills » 02 Jun 2002, 07:59

The names of the perpetrators, the methods and means of the destruction and the number of victims were written on the first three sheets. This appears indeed to be the most rational way one would write such a message.
I agree that those would be the most rational things to put in a message intended to be smuggled out, or to be preserved until after the war, a message being prepared under extreme conditions in which haste and brevity were of the essence. They are more rational and credible than the sort of philosophical musings that Leventel was supposed to have written.
What's even worse is the fact that Lewental's writings were recovered in 1961 because the Auschwitz surviver Henryk Porebski remembered the place where Lewental buried the notes. Hence, there is little room for any conspiracy and forgery theories.
How come Porebski did not remember in 1945? I know that one set of notes was dug up soon after the capture of the camp. I would think that whatever messages had been buried would have been recovered at that time, by the Soviet investigative commission, since survivors had reported the existence of such messages.

Perhaps Porebski wrote the notes attributed to Leventel; he could have done it at his leisure between 1945 and 1961, buried them, and then "remembered" where they were buried. It would not take long for a sheaf of papers buried in waterlogged ground (such as at Birkenau) in a container that was not hermetically sealed to become damaged and the writing to become illegible in parts - one rainy season would suffice.

.........travelled to Poland........
Not if the writer was already in Poland. The document is written in the Polish dialect of Yiddish, hence composed by a Polish Jew.

........buried it near the crematoria and made the stuff of the Auschwitz state Museum believe that it was genuine (that alone must have been very difficult considering that Lewental has heavily attacked the polish resistance in his writings).
Trenchant criticism of the Polish resistance, ie the Armia Krajowa, linked to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London, would not have posed a problem for the staff of a State-run institution in Communist Poland. After all, it was one of the major concerns of the Communists returning from exile in the Soviet Union who took power in post-war Poland to discredit the Polish wartime underground by painting it as anti-Semitic and collaborationist. The fact that the writings supposedly by Leventel attack the Polish resistance supports the proposition that they were in fact composed after the war, in a Communist environment.

On a more general note, it is puzzling that all the buried writings "found" after the War are composed in the Polish dialect of Yiddish, as previously stated (apart from one found fairly late, in the 1980s, which I understand is in Greek), given that Polish Jews constituted only a minority at Auschwitz, eg there were far more Hungarian Jews. What was the ethnic composition of the Sonderkommandos? Did Yiddish-speaking Polish Jews predominate? Why are there not buried messages written in Hungarian, German, French, Ladino, Slovak? Is it because the Polish dialect of Yiddish is a language familiar to the staff of the State Auschwitz Museum?

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#10

Post by James » 02 Jun 2002, 13:37

Michael:

When you refer to "the Polish dialect of Yiddish", do you mean a particular variant or dialect of the Yiddish language spoken only by Polish Jews, or do you mean that Yiddish generally is a dialect spoken only by Polish Jews? It is my (albeit limited) understanding that Yiddish was spoken by Jews throughout Europe, not just in Poland, and I had never heard that there was a particular identifiable variant unique to Polish Jews.

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#11

Post by Roberto » 02 Jun 2002, 23:32

How come Porebski did not remember in 1945? I know that one set of notes was dug up soon after the capture of the camp. I would think that whatever messages had been buried would have been recovered at that time, by the Soviet investigative commission, since survivors had reported the existence of such messages.

Perhaps Porebski wrote the notes attributed to Leventel; he could have done it at his leisure between 1945 and 1961, buried them, and then "remembered" where they were buried. It would not take long for a sheaf of papers buried in waterlogged ground (such as at Birkenau) in a container that was not hermetically sealed to become damaged and the writing to become illegible in parts - one rainy season would suffice.
I don’t know the details, but I wouldn’t jump to such convenient speculations without knowing when exactly Porebski was tracked and made his statements about the hidden notes. The eventual possibility of establishing the age of a document by archaeological methods should also be taken into consideration, as should an assessment of Porebski’s credibility and his possible motivations for “forging” Leventel’s writings. Why would Porebski have done this? What benefit would he have expected to derive from it? Besides, it would have been a small thing for a good graphologist to identify the handwriting as Porebski’s own, if he had forged the document.
On a more general note, it is puzzling that all the buried writings "found" after the War are composed in the Polish dialect of Yiddish, as previously stated (apart from one found fairly late, in the 1980s, which I understand is in Greek), given that Polish Jews constituted only a minority at Auschwitz, eg there were far more Hungarian Jews. What was the ethnic composition of the Sonderkommandos? Did Yiddish-speaking Polish Jews predominate? Why are there not buried messages written in Hungarian, German, French, Ladino, Slovak? Is it because the Polish dialect of Yiddish is a language familiar to the staff of the State Auschwitz Museum?
How does Mr. Mills know that all documents found at Auschwitz were in the “Polish dialect of Yiddish” (which, if so, would mean nothing other than their authors having been Polish Jews)?

According to the study Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, edited by Kogon, Langbein, Rückerl et al (pages 201/202) the following buried manuscripts were found on the former camp area:

1. During the site excavations shortly after the liberation of the camp, a letter in French language dated 6 November 1944 was found, written by a Chaim Herman and meant for his wife and daughter. The letter, buried inside a bottle, was found near one of the Birkenau crematoria. The author, of Polish origin, stated that he had been deported from Drancy on 2 March 1943; his name indeed is included in the transportation list from this French collection camp dated 2 March 1943.

2. On 5 March 1945, in the area of Crematorium II at Birkenau, an aluminium bottle was dug out which contained a letter dated 6 September 1944 by a Salmen Gradowski and a booklet in the same handwriting. The text stops in the middle of a sentence.

3. In the summer of 1952 a school booklet with twenty-one pages of handwritten text was dug out in the area of the same crematorium. The first four pages are related to the camp Belzec, the seventeen following ones to Auschwitz. The whole text was written in Birkenau in 1943/44, the last dated page is of 26 September 1944. The author’s name is unknown, but it becomes apparent from the contents that he spent much time at Auschwitz and was a member of the Sonderkommando.

4. On 17 October 1962 near the ruins of the gas chamber of the same Birkenau crematorium there was found a glass pot with 65 handwritten, partially damaged and thus badly readable sheets. The author of this text, Salmen Lewental, of Polish origin, had arrived at Auschwitz on 10 December 1942 and been detached to the Sonderkommando that worked at bunkers 1 and 2 and the body incineration pits.

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#12

Post by michael mills » 03 Jun 2002, 05:04

Michael:

When you refer to "the Polish dialect of Yiddish", do you mean a particular variant or dialect of the Yiddish language spoken only by Polish Jews, or do you mean that Yiddish generally is a dialect spoken only by Polish Jews? It is my (albeit limited) understanding that Yiddish was spoken by Jews throughout Europe, not just in Poland, and I had never heard that there was a particular identifiable variant unique to Polish Jews.

The term "Polish dialect of Yiddish" was used by Reuven Ainsztejn is his 1970s work "Jewish Resistance in eastern Europe" when describing the texts dug up at Auschwitz, which were published under the title "In Groil fun Retsikhe". He does not doubt their authenticity, but thinks it odd that all the texts were in that language spoken by POlish Jews ,who were are minority at Auschwitz.

There are in fact several dialects of Yiddish that differ markedly in pronunciation. There is a Lithuanian dialect, a Polaih dialect, a Rumanian dialect and probably others.

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#13

Post by michael mills » 03 Jun 2002, 05:14

How does Mr. Mills know that all documents found at Auschwitz were in the "Polish dialect of Yiddish"; (which, if so, would mean nothing other than their authors having been Polish Jews)?
Because I know more about this topic than you do. Please see my reference to Reuven Ainsztejn in my preceding message.

Indeed, the language in which almost all the texts are written indicates that the authors were Polish Jews, which is my point exactly. Yiddish-speaking Polish Jews were very much a minority at Birkenau, but for some unknown reason seem to have produced almost all the texts buried and dug up there.

As for the four discovered texts, number 1 is almost certainly genuine, and number 2 possibly so. Number three, found in 1952 and containing material about both Belzec and Auschwitz, is probably a fake; what would someone sent to Auschwitz know about Belzec (unless the writer claims to have been in both camps). Number four is possibly a fake.

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#14

Post by Roberto » 03 Jun 2002, 13:57

Because I know more about this topic than you do. Please see my reference to Reuven Ainsztejn in my preceding message.
Now that’s a royal answer. Especially considering that of the four authors of buried diaries mentioned in the source cited in my last post, two were Polish Jews and one wrote in French rather than in the "Polish dialect of Yiddish".
Indeed, the language in which almost all the texts are written indicates that the authors were Polish Jews, which is my point exactly.
All, Mr. Mills? What about Chaim Herman?
Yiddish-speaking Polish Jews were very much a minority at Birkenau, but for some unknown reason seem to have produced almost all the texts buried and dug up there.
This may be explained by the fact that Polish Jews were skilled craftsmen particularly suited for the job and thus chosen for the Sonderkommando (in some areas of Poland, Jews made up the majority of skilled workers and craftsmen, if I well remember). It may also be a mere coincidence. No need for far-fetched speculations.
As for the four discovered texts, number 1 is almost certainly genuine, and number 2 possibly so. Number three, found in 1952 and containing material about both Belzec and Auschwitz, is probably a fake; what would someone sent to Auschwitz know about Belzec (unless the writer claims to have been in both camps).
The mention of Belzec and Auschwitz in the same diary is strange indeed. I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions, however, without knowing the exact contents of that diary.
Number four is possibly a fake.
The arguments supporting this possibility are rather feeble, as explained in my last post.

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#15

Post by Mensch Meyer » 04 Jun 2002, 07:46

Roberto wrote:
two were Polish Jews and one wrote in French rather than in the "Polish dialect of Yiddish".
Bunk! There is no "Polish dialect of Yiddish." Yiddish is the Jewish language of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe

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