Apologia for Genocide

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
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Rob S.
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#286

Post by Rob S. » 03 Jul 2003, 15:51

We have documentation of church leadership being sent to concentration camps by merely stating that Jesus, all his disciples, and the entire 1st Century church was Jewish. Pastor Niemöller for example.

Church leaders claiming to be persecuted on grounds of political gain is a rather rediculous arguement. I suppose they should deny it on grounds of humility.[/sarcasm]

On the other hand, we have this neat little tidbit:
Edith Stein was born on the Day of Atonement, 12 October 1891 in Breslau, Germany (now Poland). She was the youngest of seven children of a devout Jewish family.
http://carmelnet.org/sword/v58/08.htm

Therefore, we must jump 1 of 3 conclusions:

1. Sr. Edith Stein was gassed on the grounds of her Catholic faith, which made up the majority of Germany.
2. Sr. Edith Stein was rescued right before death by the Prophet Mohamed even though she was a Jew.
3. Sr. Edith Stein was killed on the basis of being a political activist and on being a jew.

I'm probably more of a Catholic revisionist than any of you, honestly. But this arguement is somewhat rediculous.

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#287

Post by Dan » 03 Jul 2003, 17:04

We have documentation of church leadership being sent to concentration camps by merely stating that Jesus, all his disciples, and the entire 1st Century church was Jewish. Pastor Niemöller for example.
If he said that, he was wrong, and in any event, that wasn't the only reason he was imprisoned. That part of your post was embellishment.


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Roberto
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#288

Post by Roberto » 03 Jul 2003, 18:32

Scott Smith wrote:
R.M. Schultz wrote:
Scott Smith wrote:
R.M. Schultz wrote:On August 9, 1942 she was sent to the gas chamber, where she died with her sister.
I don't think you can prove that.
Remember now?
Okay, I'll be easy on you and concede for the sake of argument that she was actually sent to the camp and even died there.

But can you prove that she was gassed or even murdered?
That shouldn't be so difficult.

In the article on the site

http://carmelnet.org/sword/v58/08.htm

it is stated that
On 7 August, Edith, her sister Rosa, and companions left Westerborn for Auschwitz. There they were stripped, forced into line, and marched into the gas chamber.
It seems there is documentary evidence to a transport that left Westerbork for Auschwitz-Birkenau on 7 August 1942 with 989 people inside, as this transport is mentioned under

http://www.cympm.com/deportationtimetable.html

Presumably there is also some list containing the names of the persons on that train, or there are witnesses who recall having seen Edith and Rosa Stein being taken onto the same. Then there is documentation like Danuta Czech's Auschwitz Calendar showing that this train arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 9 August 1942, and there are the camp records with the names and numbers of those who were taken into the camp on that day. If Edith Stein's name is not on that list, there's little if any reason to doubt what happened to her upon arrival. Maybe there are even some surviving witnesses from among those selected as able to work who saw her being waved to the wrong side of the column after examination. Brother Leonhard Broughan of the Mount Carmel Spiritual Centre, the author of the article from which the above quote was taken, may be familiar with the details.

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Rob S.
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#289

Post by Rob S. » 03 Jul 2003, 20:26

If he said that, he was wrong, and in any event, that wasn't the only reason he was imprisoned. That part of your post was embellishment.
Ha! Don't tempt me Dan, this isn't a bibical seminary :D

I imagine any church group which taught the Old Testament or the roots of Christianity would be considered dangerous in Das III. Reich. My "embellishment" would be logical considering his position. And he wasn't the first, nor the last, to be arrested for similar reasons.

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Gerry
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extermination of Jews

#290

Post by Gerry » 03 Jul 2003, 22:00

Dear members of this Forum:
As a german I cannot and will never deny the holocaust on the jewish
people committed by people of my country. Please allow me to remind you, that the extermination of Jews was no german invention. The population
of the other european countries occupied by the 3rd Reich supported the
NAZIS to get rid of their jewish neighbours.

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#291

Post by David Thompson » 03 Jul 2003, 23:32

Gerry -- You said: "Please allow me to remind you, that the extermination of Jews was no german invention. The population of the other european countries occupied by the 3rd Reich supported the NAZIS to get rid of their jewish neighbours."

This statement seems somewhat broad to me. Would you explain what you're talking about, starting with Denmark as an example?

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#292

Post by michael mills » 04 Jul 2003, 04:10

There has been an awful lot of jerking off going on in this thread about Edith Stein, the Pope, flying saucers, blah blah blah, ad infinitum.

In the meantime, some very interesting material concerning Hoess's writings while in captivity has been ignored (perhaps because it was too complicated for some forum members, and did not provide an immediate opportunity to fling insults around).

The fact is that the material posted shows that Hoess did make statements in his writings in captivity that are demonstrably false. Furthermore, he repeated those falsehoods, making them first in November 1946, in the reports prepared for Judge Sehn, and then again in February 1947 in his autobiographical manuscript written while he was awaiting trial.

Of course, the fact that certain statements made by Hoess are demonstrably false by no means invalidates the whole corpus of his writings in captivity as a historical source.

At the outset, let me thank Roberto for posting the two items, one a summary of the history of the deportation of Gypsies to Auschwitz and their eventual extermination here, and the other an excerpt from Hoess's memoirs dealing with the fate of the Gypsies at Auschwitz. Those items essentially supported what I had previously written on this issue.

In summary, the relevant claims made by Hoess in his memoirs concerning the Gypsies are:

1. In July 1942, Himmler inspected the Gypsy Camp at Birkenau in the course of his well-known and fully documented visit to Auschwitz in that month.

2. In the course of that visit, Himmler ordered the destruction of the Gypsies, after selecting out those capable of work.

3. The destruction order was suspended for two years, to allow the Criminal Police to sort through the persons held in the Gypsy Camp and remove those who had been sent to Auschwitz by mistake (ie they did not fulfil the criteria for deportation).

4. During that two-year period, until August 1944, the destruction order was known only to Hoess and the camp doctors.

5. By August 1944, about 4,000 Gypsies remained in the Gypsy Camp at Birkenau out of a (presumed) original 10,000, those capable of work having been removed to another camp (and, by implication, those who did not fulfill the deportation criteria having been rleased). These 4,000 were killed by gassing.

Comparison with the actual history of the Gypsies at Auschwitz demonstrates that much of the above is false.

First, Himmler ordered the deportation of Gypsis and part-Gypsies to Birkenau on 16 December 1942. The first of at least 23,000 Gypsies arrived there in February 1943.

Accordingly, Himmler could not possibly have inspected Gypsies being held in the Gypsy Camp at Birkenau during his visit in July 1942, since the Gypsies had not arrived there by that date, and did not arrive until seven months later. In July 1942, there was no Gypsy camp at Birkenau.

Therefore, Hoess has demonstrably lied, both in the account given in his November 1946 report "My Meetings with Himmler" and in his February 1947 autobiographical manuscript. At the very least, Hoess was confused or mistaken.

One possible way in which Hoess was mistaken is that he confused a visit to Auschwitz by Himmler in 1943 or 1944, when there was a Gypsy Camp in existence, with the July 1942 visit. And it is a fact that a number of survivor accounts allege that Himmler did make a visit to Auschwitz in 1943.

However, Hoess himself, in his November 1946 report "My Meetings with Himmler", states that Himmler made two visits to Auschwitz, in 1940 and 1942, and specifically states that the July 1942 visit was Himmler's second and final visit.

Given Hoess's certainty that Himmler made no further visits to Auschwitz after July 1942, we must exclude the possibility that he confused two sparate visits by Himmler, and therefore has deliberately falsified history in claiming that Himmler inspected the Gypsy Camp during his second visit to Auschwitz and issued the extermination order during that visit.

The crucial question is why Hoess perpetrated that falsification in regard to the extermination of the Gypsies at Auschwitz. Did he perpetrate it for some reason of his own, or was he inducd to do so?

Other falsehoods in Hoess's account flow from the initial falsehood, that Himmler inspected the Gypsy camp in July 1942 and issued the extermination order at that date. For example, his claim that the extermination order, issued in July 1942, was postponed for two years until August 1944, is an obvious device to explain away the discrepancy between an extermination order issued in July 1942 and its actual, historically attested implementation on the night of 2-3 August 1944.

It is also possible that Hoess made the claim about the two-year delay in the implementation of the extermination order so as to paint himself in a favourable light as having saved the lives of many Gypsies by insisting that an investigation be made to identify those who did not fulfil the deportation criteria and had been sent to Auschwitz by mistake. But that motivation would not explain the original, underlying falsehood about Himmler's visit in July 1942 and the date of issue of the extermination order.

The claim that until August 1944 the existence of the Gypsy extermination order was known only to Hoess and the camp doctors is also patently a device to explain away the fact that no other former member of the camp staff had testified to the existence of that order prior to that date (which is a good indication that Himmler's order to exterminate the Gypsies was given in the summer of 1944, in the context of the Hungarian deportations).

About the only true element in Hoess's account is that there were about 4,000 Gypsies left in the Gypsy camp by August 1944 (some 4,297 according to the USHMM figures in the material posted by Roberto), and that the majority of them were killed when the Gypsy Camp was liquidated.

As stated, the original falsification was made in the document "My Meetings with Himmler", dated November 1946. My own feeling is that Hoss must originally have reported an order given by Himmler in the early summer of 1944 in the context of the Hungarian deportation, presumably when Hoess was in Berlin, to exterminate both the Gypsies remaining in the Gypsy camp and the Jews assessed as unfit for labour, in order to create space in the camp for holding the incoming Jews pending their transfer to labour camps. The whole tone of Hoess's description of what Himmler said on that occasion, with the emphasis on the transfer of Jews out of Auschwitz to other camps for work related to armaments production places it in the context of the Hungarian deportation.

The falsification involved bringing the date of issue of the extermination forward to years to 1942, and placing it in the context of Himmler's visit to Auschwitz in July of that year. Why Hoess did that is unclear. It is possible that he was pressured to do so by Judge Sehn or other interrogators. A credible motive for such pressure being applied (if in fact it was) would be that the interrogators could not understand why an order to exterminate Jews unfit for labour would have been issued in the Summer of 1944, given that they were convinced that the comprehensive extermination of all Jews had been ordered by Hitler in 1941.

The falsification is repeated in Hoess's own autobiographical manuscript, written in February 1947, and in fact is expanded, both to give it further underpinning and also to attempt to paint Hoess in a more favourable light. Why the repetition occurred is unclear. It may that Hoess felt that once he had made a false statement he could not go back on it. But it might also indicate that Hoess was still subject to suprvision and pressure from his Polish captors in February 1946, when he was writing his memoirs in pencil.

For the information of readers, the items posted by Roberto are reproduced below.


Quote:
[…]In a decree dated December 16, 1942, Himmler ordered the deportation of Gypsies and part-Gypsies to Auschwitz--Birkenau. At least 23,000 Gypsies were brought there, the first group arriving from Germany in February 1943. Most of the Gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau came from Germany or territories annexed to the Reich including Bohemia and Moravia. Police also deported small numbers of Gypsies from Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway.

At Auschwitz-Birkenau, officials set up a separate "Gypsy family camp" for Gypsies in Section BIIe of Birkenau: From the wooden barracks, the gas chambers and crematoria were clearly visible. During the seventeen months of the camp's existence, most of the Gypsies brought there perished. They were killed by gassing or died from starvation, exhaustion from hard labor, and disease (including typhus, smallpox, and the rare, leprosy-like condition called Noma.) Others, including many children, died as the result Of cruel medical experiments performed by Dr. Josef Mengele and other SS physicians. The Gypsy camp was liquidated on the night of August 2-3, 1944, when 2,897 Sinti and Roma men, women, and children were killed in the gas chamber. Some 1,400 surviving men and women were transferred to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps for forced labor.[…]


Source of quote:

http://www.ushmm.org/education/resource ... aSBklt.pdf

Rudolf Höß (autobiography, translated by Constantine FitzGibbon, Phoenix Press, London, pages 128 and following) wrote:

[…]The next largest contingent were the gypsies.
Long before the war gypsies were being rounded up and put into concentration camps as part of the campaign against a-socials. One department of the Reich Criminal Police Office was solely concerned with the supervision of gypsies. Repeated searches were made in the gypsy encampments for persons who were not true gypsies, and these were sent to concentration camps as shirkers or a-socials. In addition, the gypsy encampments were constantly being combed through for biological reasons. The Reichsführer SS wanted to ensure that the two main gypsy stocks be preserved: I cannot recall their names. In his view they were the direct descendants of the original Indo-Germanic race, and had preserved their ways and customs more or less pure and intact. He now wished to have them all collected together for research purposes. They were to be precisely registered and preserved as an historic monument.
Later they were to be collected from all over Europe, and allotted limited areas in which to dwell.
In 1937 and 1938 all itinerant gypsies were collected into so-called habitation camps near the larger towns, to facilitate supervision.
In 1942, however, an order was given that all gypsy-type persons on German territory, including gypsy half-castes, were to be arrested and transported to Auschwitz, irrespective of sex or age. The only exceptions were those who had been officially recognized as pure-blooded members of the two main tribes. These were to be settled in the Ödenburg district on the Neusiedlersee. Those transported to Auschwitz were to be kept there for the rest of the war in a family camp.
But the regulations governing their arrest were not drawn up with sufficient precision. Various offices of the Criminal Police interpreted them in different ways, and as a result persons were arrested who could not possibly be regarded as belonging to the category that it was intended to intern.
Many men were arrested while on leave from the front, despite high decorations and several wounds, simply because their father or mother or grandfather had been a gypsy or a gypsy half-caste. Even a very senior Party member, whose gypsy grandfather had settled in Leipzig, was among them. He himself had a large business in Leipzig, and had been decorated more than once during the First World War. Another was a girl student who had been a leader in the Berlin League of German Girls. There were many more such cases. I made a report to the Reich Criminal Police Office. As a result the gypsy camp was constantly under examination and many releases took place. But these were scarcely noticeable, so great was the number of those who remained.
I cannot say how many gypsies, including half-castes, were in Auschwitz. I only know that they completely filled one section of the camp designed to hold 10,000. Conditions in Birkenau were utterly unsuitable for a family camp. Every pre-requisite was lacking, even if it was intended that the gypsies be kept there only for the duration of the war. It was quite impossible to provide proper food for the children, although by referring to the Reichsführer SS I managed for a time to bamboozle the food offices into giving me food for the very young ones. This was soon stopped, however, for the Food Ministry laid down that no special children’s food might be issued to the concentration camps.
In July 1942 the Reichsführer SS visited the camp. I took him all over the gypsy camp. He made a most thorough inspection of everything, noting the overcrowded barrack-huts, the unhygienic conditions, the crammed hospital building. He saw those who were sick with infectious diseases, and the children suffering from Noma [A cancerous growth, usually fatal, which appears mostly on the face, as the result of starvation and physical debility, editor’s note], which always made me shudder, since it reminded me of leprosy and the lepers I had seen in Palestine – their little bodies wasted away, with gaping holes in their cheeks big enough for a man to see through, a slow putrefaction of the living body.
He noted the mortality rate, which was relatively low in comparison with that of the camp as a whole. The child mortality rate, however, was extraordinarily high. I don’t believe that many new-born babies survived more than a few weeks.
He saw it all, in detail, and as it really was – and he ordered me to destroy them. Those capable for work were first to be separated from the others, as with the Jews.
I pointed out to him that the personnel of the gypsy camp was not precisely what he had envisaged being sent to Auschwitz. He thereupon ordered that the Reich Criminal Police Office should carry out a sorting as quickly as possible. This in fact took two years. The gypsies capable of work were transferred to another camp. About 4,000 gypsies were left by August, 1944, and these had to go into the gas chambers. Up to that moment, they were unaware of what was in store for them. They first realized what was happening when they made their way, barrack-hut by barrack-hut, towards Crematorium I.
It was not easy to drive them into the gas chambers. I myself did not see it, but Schwarzhuber told me that it was more difficult than any previous mass destruction of Jews and it war particularly hard on him, because he knew almost every one of them individually, and had been on good terms with them. They were by their nature as trusting as children.
[…]
I would have taken great interest in observing their customs and habits if I had not been aware of the impending horror, namely the Extermination Order, which until mid-1944 was known only to myself and the doctors in Auschwitz.
By command of the Reichsführer SS the doctors were to dispose f the sick, and especially the children, as inconspicuously as possible.
And it was precisely they who had such a trust in the doctors.
Nothing surely is harder than to grit one’s teeth and go through with such a thing, coldly, pitilessly and without mercy.[…]



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Roberto
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#293

Post by Roberto » 04 Jul 2003, 23:09

michael mills wrote:There has been an awful lot of jerking off going on in this thread about Edith Stein, the Pope, flying saucers, blah blah blah, ad infinitum.

In the meantime, some very interesting material concerning Hoess's writings while in captivity has been ignored (perhaps because it was too complicated for some forum members, and did not provide an immediate opportunity to fling insults around).
It seems that most of your "Revisionist" brothers in spirit don’t have your intellectual capacities, but how about watching the language in the first paragraph lest you incur in contradiction with what you stated in the second?
michael mills wrote:The fact is that the material posted shows that Hoess did make statements in his writings in captivity that are demonstrably false.

Furthermore, he repeated those falsehoods, making them first in November 1946, in the reports prepared for Judge Sehn, and then again in February 1947 in his autobiographical manuscript written while he was awaiting trial.

Of course, the fact that certain statements made by Hoess are demonstrably false by no means invalidates the whole corpus of his writings in captivity as a historical source.

At the outset, let me thank Roberto for posting the two items, one a summary of the history of the deportation of Gypsies to Auschwitz and their eventual extermination here, and the other an excerpt from Hoess's memoirs dealing with the fate of the Gypsies at Auschwitz. Those items essentially supported what I had previously written on this issue.

In summary, the relevant claims made by Hoess in his memoirs concerning the Gypsies are:

1. In July 1942, Himmler inspected the Gypsy Camp at Birkenau in the course of his well-known and fully documented visit to Auschwitz in that month.

2. In the course of that visit, Himmler ordered the destruction of the Gypsies, after selecting out those capable of work.

3. The destruction order was suspended for two years, to allow the Criminal Police to sort through the persons held in the Gypsy Camp and remove those who had been sent to Auschwitz by mistake (ie they did not fulfil the criteria for deportation).

4. During that two-year period, until August 1944, the destruction order was known only to Hoess and the camp doctors.

5. By August 1944, about 4,000 Gypsies remained in the Gypsy Camp at Birkenau out of a (presumed) original 10,000, those capable of work having been removed to another camp (and, by implication, those who did not fulfill the deportation criteria having been rleased). These 4,000 were killed by gassing.

Comparison with the actual history of the Gypsies at Auschwitz demonstrates that much of the above is false.

First, Himmler ordered the deportation of Gypsis and part-Gypsies to Birkenau on 16 December 1942. The first of at least 23,000 Gypsies arrived there in February 1943.

Accordingly, Himmler could not possibly have inspected Gypsies being held in the Gypsy Camp at Birkenau during his visit in July 1942, since the Gypsies had not arrived there by that date, and did not arrive until seven months later. In July 1942, there was no Gypsy camp at Birkenau.

Therefore, Hoess has demonstrably lied, both in the account given in his November 1946 report "My Meetings with Himmler" and in his February 1947 autobiographical manuscript. At the very least, Hoess was confused or mistaken.
The later being the assumption that becomes a researcher of history in the absence of evidence to deliberation.
michael mills wrote:One possible way in which Hoess was mistaken is that he confused a visit to Auschwitz by Himmler in 1943 or 1944, when there was a Gypsy Camp in existence, with the July 1942 visit. And it is a fact that a number of survivor accounts allege that Himmler did make a visit to Auschwitz in 1943.
See?
michael mills wrote:However, Hoess himself, in his November 1946 report "My Meetings with Himmler", states that Himmler made two visits to Auschwitz, in 1940 and 1942, and specifically states that the July 1942 visit was Himmler's second and final visit.

Given Hoess's certainty that Himmler made no further visits to Auschwitz after July 1942, we must exclude the possibility that he confused two sparate visits by Himmler, and therefore has deliberately falsified history in claiming that Himmler inspected the Gypsy Camp during his second visit to Auschwitz and issued the extermination order during that visit.
How about considering the possibility that Hoess misdated a visit of Himmler’s in 1943 to July 1942 due to a simple memory failure, before jumping to the conclusion that he "falsified history"?
michael mills wrote:The crucial question is why Hoess perpetrated that falsification in regard to the extermination of the Gypsies at Auschwitz. Did he perpetrate it for some reason of his own, or was he inducd to do so?

Other falsehoods in Hoess's account flow from the initial falsehood, that Himmler inspected the Gypsy camp in July 1942 and issued the extermination order at that date. For example, his claim that the extermination order, issued in July 1942, was postponed for two years until August 1944, is an obvious device to explain away the discrepancy between an extermination order issued in July 1942 and its actual, historically attested implementation on the night of 2-3 August 1944.

It is also possible that Hoess made the claim about the two-year delay in the implementation of the extermination order so as to paint himself in a favourable light as having saved the lives of many Gypsies by insisting that an investigation be made to identify those who did not fulfil the deportation criteria and had been sent to Auschwitz by mistake. But that motivation would not explain the original, underlying falsehood about Himmler's visit in July 1942 and the date of issue of the extermination order.
Assuming there was such a deliberate falsehood, see above.
michael mills wrote:The claim that until August 1944 the existence of the Gypsy extermination order was known only to Hoess and the camp doctors is also patently a device to explain away the fact that no other former member of the camp staff had testified to the existence of that order prior to that date (which is a good indication that Himmler's order to exterminate the Gypsies was given in the summer of 1944, in the context of the Hungarian deportations).

About the only true element in Hoess's account is that there were about 4,000 Gypsies left in the Gypsy camp by August 1944 (some 4,297 according to the USHMM figures in the material posted by Roberto), and that the majority of them were killed when the Gypsy Camp was liquidated.

As stated, the original falsification was made in the document "My Meetings with Himmler", dated November 1946. My own feeling is that Hoss must originally have reported an order given by Himmler in the early summer of 1944 in the context of the Hungarian deportation, presumably when Hoess was in Berlin, to exterminate both the Gypsies remaining in the Gypsy camp and the Jews assessed as unfit for labour, in order to create space in the camp for holding the incoming Jews pending their transfer to labour camps.
Given that Jews assessed as unfit for labour were being killed upon arrival long before the summer of 1944, that "feeling" stands on rather shaky ground.
michael mills wrote: The whole tone of Hoess's description of what Himmler said on that occasion, with the emphasis on the transfer of Jews out of Auschwitz to other camps for work related to armaments production places it in the context of the Hungarian deportation.
Rudolf Höß wrote:[…] In July 1942 the Reichsführer SS visited the camp. I took him all over the gypsy camp. He made a most thorough inspection of everything, noting the overcrowded barrack-huts, the unhygienic conditions, the crammed hospital building. He saw those who were sick with infectious diseases, and the children suffering from Noma [A cancerous growth, usually fatal, which appears mostly on the face, as the result of starvation and physical debility, editor’s note], which always made me shudder, since it reminded me of leprosy and the lepers I had seen in Palestine – their little bodies wasted away, with gaping holes in their cheeks big enough for a man to see through, a slow putrefaction of the living body.
He noted the mortality rate, which was relatively low in comparison with that of the camp as a whole. The child mortality rate, however, was extraordinarily high. I don’t believe that many new-born babies survived more than a few weeks.
He saw it all, in detail, and as it really was – and he ordered me to destroy them. Those capable for work were first to be separated from the others, as with the Jews.[…]
The last sentence actually suggest that Höß recalls the decision regarding the Jews as having been taken before the decision regarding the Gypsies, and not on occasion of Himmler’s visit to the Gypsy camp.
michael mills wrote: The falsification involved bringing the date of issue of the extermination forward to years to 1942, and placing it in the context of Himmler's visit to Auschwitz in July of that year. Why Hoess did that is unclear.
Assuming he did it at all, see above.
michael mills wrote:It is possible that he was pressured to do so by Judge Sehn or other interrogators.
That's rather unlikely. If Sehn had tended to pressuring Höß, why didn’t he pressure him on more important issues, like Höß’ inconvenient reduction of the death toll of the camp far below the figures of the Soviet investigation commission and his own previous depositions?
michael mills wrote: A credible motive for such pressure being applied (if in fact it was) would be that the interrogators could not understand why an order to exterminate Jews unfit for labour would have been issued in the Summer of 1944, given that they were convinced that the comprehensive extermination of all Jews had been ordered by Hitler in 1941.
As said above, there’s nothing in the passage on Himmler’s decision to destroy the Gypsies that suggests the decision to destroy the Jews unable to work was communicated at the same time. On the contrary, Höß’ statement
Those capable for work were first to be separated from the others, as with the Jews.
suggests that he recalled the decision to destroy the Jews to have been taken at an earlier stage (i.e., Höß was stating that he was told to proceed in regard to the Gypsies as he had some time before been told to proceed in regard to the Jews).
michael mills wrote:The falsification is repeated in Hoess's own autobiographical manuscript, written in February 1947, and in fact is expanded, both to give it further underpinning and also to attempt to paint Hoess in a more favourable light. Why the repetition occurred is unclear. It may that Hoess felt that once he had made a false statement he could not go back on it.
He went back on a more crucial issue (the death toll of the camp), so why should he have felt compelled to stick to previous depositions in regard to Himmler’s visit?
michael mills wrote:But it might also indicate that Hoess was still subject to suprvision and pressure from his Polish captors in February 1946, when he was writing his memoirs in pencil.
Which would leave unexplained the fact that they didn’t influence other statements in the autobiography that have been quoted on this thread and were probably not much to their liking.

As usual, a more simple explanation seems more likely than sinister conspiracy theories: the one that Höß simply misdated a visit of Himmler’s at some time in 1943 (July?) to July 1942 for no reason other than a failure of his memory.
Last edited by Roberto on 06 Jul 2003, 23:19, edited 1 time in total.

xcalibur
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#294

Post by xcalibur » 05 Jul 2003, 00:19

Is it not possible to ascertain the date of Himmler's second visit to Auschwitz by examining other documents,eg., Himmler's own desk diary or similar journals?

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#295

Post by xcalibur » 05 Jul 2003, 00:26

hmm... Seems I was able to ask and answer my own question. his pic was found on Irving's site with the cation indicating it was taken on July 18, 1942 at Auschwitz.
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Dan
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#296

Post by Dan » 05 Jul 2003, 02:01

Good work, Xcaliber, but you didn't answer your own question. That was the first visit according to what Michael Mills posted. You question is good, but not answered by that picture.

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#297

Post by michael mills » 05 Jul 2003, 02:21

Himmler's inspection of the entire Auschwitz-Birknau complex in July 1942 is a fully documented historical fact. There are many references to it in contemporary documents, and also a number of photographs of Himmler carrying out the inspection. It is referred to by many Grman officials.

The issue is whether Himmler made any further visits to Auschwitz after his inspection tour of July 1942.

A number of surviving Auschwitz prisoners claimed that Himmler did make a further inspection, in 1943. Rudolf Vrba is one of them; in a post-war book, he gave a detailed description of Himmler inspecting a group of prisoners, and also gave his impression of Himmler's demeanour.

Danuta Czech, in her massive tome "Auschwitz Chronicle", also seems to believe that Himmler made a further visit to Auschwitz sometime in the summer of 1943, although she is unable to date it or to quote any documentary evidence for its having taken place.

The fact is that there is no documentary evidence of Himmler's having made any visit to Auschwitz after July 1943, ie no records, diary notes, appointments etc. Nor do any of Himmler's staff, or anybody else who might have accompanied him, remember any such visit having been made.

Furthermore, Hoess, in the document signed by him, "My Meetings with Himmler", specifically says that the inspection tour of JUly 1942 was the second and last visit that Himmlr made to Auschwitz.

On the basis of all the hard evidence, I think we can conclude that Himmler made no further visits to Auschwitz after July 1942, which Hoess might have confused with the 1942 inspection tour.

Accordingly, it follows logically that Himmler never inspected the Gypsy Camp in Birkenau, since that camp was established in 1943, ie after Himmler made his final visit there.

Accordingly, we must conclude that Hoess's description of Himmler's inspection of the Gypsy Camp, which he had to date to the inspection tour of July 1942 since he had confirmed that no further visits by Himmler to Auschwitz occurred after that date, is totally fictional. The only issue is why Hoess invented it.

I would recommend to Roberto that he look at the appendices in his copy of the Fitzgibbon translation of Hoess's writings, find the one callled "My Meetings with Himmler", and read it.

If he does so, he will discover that his speculations about Hoess's treatment of the relationship between the order to kill the Gypsies and that to kill the unfit Jews is mistaken.

Acording to Hoess, Himmler said in July 1942: "Eichmann's program will be continued and will be accelerated every month from now on. See to it that you move ahead with the completion of Birkenau. The Gypsies are to be exterminated. With the same relentlessness you will exterminate those Jews who are unable to work" (Deathdealer, p. 288).

As is patently obvious, the killing of the Gypsies is given as a model for the killing of the Jews unfit for work. There is a close connection between the two, and the reason for the killing is to relieve the congestion in the camp caused by Eichmann's deportation program.

Now, it is clear that in July 1942 Himmler could not have given Hoess an order to kill the Gypsies in Birkenau since, at that date, he had not yet even given the order to send Gypsies to that destination (it was given on 16 December 1942).

From other evidence we know that Himmler gave Hoess the order to liquidate the Gypsy Camp and exterminate its inhabitants in the early summer of 1944, and that the purpose of the liquidation was to create space for the incoming Hungarian Jews. From Hoess's account, it is apparent that at the same time Himmler ordered Hoess to kill the Jews incapable of work (presumably referring to the incoming Hungarian Jews).

Roberto raises the objection that Jews unfit for work had been killed in Auschwitz well before the summer of 1944, and asks why an extermination order would have been given at such a late date.

However, it is perfectly consistent with the fact that the Hungarian deportation was undertaken for the purpose of providing a slave labour force, and the original German intention was that only fit Jews would be deported, with Auschwitz serving as a holding pen and distribution point to various places of labour deployment. That intention was frustrated by the fact that the Hungarian Government withheld many of the young, fit male Jews, and filled the transports with women, children and old people.

Under that scenario, Hoess and the other camp staff would have been expecting to hold temporarily a number of Hungarian Jews, pending their transfer to other labour camps. They would not have been expecting to be swamped by huge numbers, a large proportion unfit for work. That would explain why Hoess complained to Himmler about overcrowding and lack of accommodation, and asked for the deportation to be interrupted, and why Himmler then authorised Hoess to kill the Gypsies and the unfit Jews, in order to create a "breathing space".

An extermination order given in 1944 would also indicate that the killing of Jews at Birkenau was episodic, rather than an ongoing program stemming from an order given in 1941. That would be consistent with the documented fact that the whole purpose for the existence of Birkenau was to hold 200,000 slave labourers, for work either in the immediate area or for transfer to other camps. Since the development of Birkenau lagged behind schedule, and Jews were being shipped in at a fast rate, at various times massive congestion ensued. At such times, it is likely that Hoess applied for and received authorisation to select out and kill a sufficient number of unfit Jews to bring the camp population down to manageable proportions.

Such a scenario would be compatible with the testimony of surviving prisoners such as Lingens-Reiner that there long periods when no exterminatios took place, and also with the surviving orders of Himmler concerning Auschwitz, which all stress the need to send fit Jews to Auschwitz for use as slave labour, and sometimes deny authorisation to send unfit Jews there.

Roberto wrote:
As usual, a more simple explanation seems more likely than sinister conspiracy theories: the one that Höß simply misdated a visit of Himmler’s at some time in 1943 (July?) to July 1942 for no reason other than a failure of his memory.
I respectfully invite Roberto, or any other forum member, to present hard evidence that any such visit in 1943 took place.

xcalibur
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#298

Post by xcalibur » 05 Jul 2003, 06:48

So, if I understand it correctly, there is no existing evidence of a Himmler visit in 1943... and that the testimonies of Baer, Kremer and Liebehenschels support this?

i ask because it is an important point...i've read some of this testimony many years ago and have found some inconsitencies in it, but figure there are some here with either more recent aquaintanceship with the source material or are able to access more recently opened archives...

xcalibur
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#299

Post by xcalibur » 05 Jul 2003, 06:52

xcalibur wrote:So, if I understand it correctly, there is no existing evidence of a Himmler visit in 1943... and that the testimonies of Baer, Kremer and Liebehenschels support this?

i ask because it is an important point...i've read some of this testimony many years ago and have found some inconsistencies in it, but figure there are some here with either more recent acquaintanceship with the source material or are able to access more recently opened archives...

demonio
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#300

Post by demonio » 05 Jul 2003, 06:58

There will always be inconsistencies in peoples testimony or accounts. What is important in cases ultimately is general convergence. Even when the same person gives an account after a period of time it is a well known fact that it will probably differ a little from what they first said x amount of time ago.

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