One of the regular readers of my blog wrote a comment in which he included this link:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26193808

(The BBC specializes in demonizing the German people.)

Did the Nazis really conduct experiments at Dachau, using mosquitoes?  Yes, but I will get to that later.

First, you must read this quote from the news article, cited above:

German scientists at Dachau concentration camp researched the possible use of malaria-infected mosquitoes as weapons during World War Two, a researcher has claimed.

Dr Klaus Reinhardt of Tuebingen University examined the archives of the Entomological Institute at Dachau.

He found that biologists had looked at which mosquitoes might best be able to survive outside their natural habitat.

He speculates that such insects could have been dropped over enemy territory.

Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, set up the institute at Dachau in 1942.  [...]

Dr Reinhardt, writing in the journal Endeavour, has found evidence that the unit’s researchers investigated a particular type of mosquito which could live without food and water for four days.

That means it could be infected with malaria and then dropped from the air – and survive long enough to infect large numbers of people, he says.

He speculates that the scientists were investigating the possible use of malaria – transmitted via mosquitoes – as a biological weapon.

It is not known whether there is a connection between the work of the Entomological Institute at Dachau and the experiments carried out by Dr Claus Schilling at the camp.

Schilling used prisoners as experimental subjects in his research on malaria – deliberately infecting them – and was sentenced to death by hanging at the Dachau trials held after the war.

Sounds bad, doesn’t it?

Here is the real story:

It is true that Dr. Klaus Schilling did experiments on prisoners at Dachau while doing research on malaria.

Dr. Klaus Schilling on the witness stand at his trial

This quote is from Dr. Johannes Neuhäusler’s book entitled  What Was It Like in the Concentration Camp at Dachau?  Dr. Neuhäusler was a prisoner at Dachau.  I purchased his book at the Dachau Memorial Site in 1997.

“A physician, Dr. Klaus Schilling (sentenced to death by the Allied court), wanted to test a remedy for malaria. Malaria, a tropical disease, did not prevail in Dachau. He could have gone to the tropics to make his tests there. But why go to such trouble? One could make everything more convenient in the concentration camp.”

Dr. Klaus Schilling

Dr. Klaus Schilling was one of the world’s foremost experts on tropical diseases when he was ordered by Heinrich Himmler, the head of all the Nazi concentration camps, to come out of retirement to work on a cure for malaria after German soldiers began dying of the disease in North Africa. Before his retirement, Dr. Schilling had worked at the prestigious Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. He had begun specializing in tropical diseases after he himself had contracted malaria.

After the war, Dr. Schilling was arrested by the American Army and charged with participating in a “common plan” to violate the Laws and Usages of War because he had conducted experiments on Dachau prisoners, using various drugs in an effort to find a cure for malaria. Most of his subjects were young Polish priests whom Dr. Schilling infected by means of mosquitoes from the marshes of Italy and the Crimea, according to author Peter Padfield in his book entitled Himmler. The priests were chosen for the experiments because they were not required to work, as were the ordinary prisoners at Dachau.

One of the prosecution witnesses at the trial of the German Major War Criminals at Nuremberg was Dr. Franz Blaha, a Czech medical doctor who was a Communist political prisoner at Dachau. An affidavit signed by Dr. Blaha had been entered into the main Nuremberg trial. It was marked Document Number 3249-PS, Exhibit USA-663. His comments in this affidavit about Dr. Schilling are quoted below from the transcript of the Nuremberg trial for January 11, 1946

“3. During my time at Dachau I was familiar with many kinds of medical experiments carried on there on human victims. These persons were never volunteers but were forced to submit to such acts. Malaria experiments on about 1,200 people were conducted by Dr. Klaus Schilling between 1941 and 1945. Schilling was personally ordered by Himmler to conduct these experiments. The victims were either bitten by mosquitoes or given injections of malaria sporozoites taken from mosquitoes. Different kinds of treatment were applied including quinine, pyrifer, neosalvarsan, antipyrin, pyramidon, and a drug called 2516 Behring. I performed autopsies on the bodies of people who died from these malaria experiments. Thirty to 40 died from the malaria itself. Three hundred to four hundred died later from diseases which were fatal because of the physical condition resulting from the malaria attacks. In addition there were deaths resulting from poisoning due to overdoses of neosalvarsan and pyramidon. Dr. Schilling was present at my autopsies on the bodies of his patients.”

The 74-year-old Dr. Schilling was convicted at Dachau and hanged. In his final statement to the court, Dr. Schilling pleaded to have the results of his experiments returned to him so they could be published. During his trial, he tried to justify his crime by saying that his experiments were for the good of mankind.

I don’t know what happened to the results of his experiments, but they were probably confiscated by the Americans who conducted his trial at Dachau, and used for medical purposes in the USA.  Since he was tried under the ex-post facto law called “common design,” he had no defense.  He was guilty because he had conducted his experiments in a concentration camp.

There is no rest for the wicked!

According  to a news article, which you can read in full here, “Hans Lipschis, a 93-year-old thought to have been a guard at Auschwitz, was arrested in Germany on Monday. The Lithuanian-born man, who was added to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s most wanted list last month, says he was only a cook. But prosecutors believe he supported the killing in his role as a guard.”

Death’s Head emblem worn by German SS soldiers

The photo above shows the emblem worn by the Death’s Head SS soldiers. The motto on the emblem reads in English: “My Honor’s name is Loyalty.”

The most important part of the article about the arrest of Hans Lipschis is this quote:

According to information obtained by the German news agency DPA, Lipschis was a member of the SS “Death’s Head” unit that ran the [Auschwitz] camp. He later worked as a cook for the SS adminstration (sic).

Oh no! Lipschis was a member of the dreaded “Death’s Head” unit.  Why hasn’t he been put on trial, by the Germans themselves, long before this?

Under the ex-post-facto laws created by the Allies after World War II, members of the Nazi party and members of the SS are all “war criminals.”  The German people have been remiss in their duty to bring all former Nazis, and former SS men, to justice.  This man should not expect pity, just because he is 93-years old.

So why was the “Death’s Head” unit worse than other units of the SS?

The following information is from a book written by Christopher Ailsby, entitled Hell on the Eastern Front, the Waffen-SS War in Russia 1941 – 1945:

Theodor Eicke, the first Commandant of the Dachau concentration camp, viewed the SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death’s Head unit) as an elite, within the elite structure of the SS. This concept grew from the fact that the most dangerous political enemies of the state were incarcerated in the concentration camps.

Hitler had given the sole responsibility for guarding and running the concentration camps to the SS- Totenkopfverbände.

Theodor Eicke had repeatedly pressed home his principles in orders, circulars and memorandums. The training of the SS-Totenkopfverbände was based on elitism, toughness and comradeship, together with a regime of ruthless discipline.

The SS-Übungslager at Dachau was a training center where members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände were taught to be concentration camp administrators. Voluntary SS fighting units, called the Waffen-SS, were also quartered in the garrison at Dachau, along with the SS camp guards.

The Waffen-SS and the SS camp guards were two distinct organizations which grew out of the original private army which was recruited to protect Hitler and other members of the Nazi party from the Social Democrats and the Communist Red Army during political campaigns.

At the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner testified that there were 13 Stammlager (central concentration camps). One of these camps was Matzgau, located near Danzig; it was a camp where SS guards were imprisoned for offenses such as physical mistreatment of concentration camp prisoners, embezzlement, or theft.

If Lipschis had committed any crimes, while he was a guard at Auschwitz, he would have been sent to the Matzgau camp as punishment.  He was a cook at Auschwitz, but apparently, he didn’t try  to poison any of the prisoners.  If he had, he would have been arrested.

The Dachau concentration camp had a section, in the camp prison, for the SS men who had mistreated the prisoners.  When the camp was liberated, there were 128 SS men in this prison.

Selections were made as soon as the Jews got off the trains to Auschwitz

The photo above was shown, along with the news story about Hans Lipschis. However, the  bottom half of the photo, which shows a woman and her baby being directed to the right, was cut off. I copied the photo below from the news article.

Photo taken at Auschwitz was cut in half in the news article

Why was this photo cut in half for the news article?  Because mothers and babies were directed to the left to the gas chamber.  This photo shows a mother and her baby being sent to the right.

Holocaust survivor Bernard Marks recently gave a talk, to 8th grade students at Holmes Junior High School in Davis, California. He revealed that he was a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau, although he has no tattoo on his arm.

Prisoners at Auschwitz had numbers tattooed on their arms

You can read an article, about the talk given by Bernard Marks, in the Davis Enterprise newspaper at http://www.davisenterprise.com/features/next-generation/holmes-students-spellbound-by-stories-of-holocaust-survivor/

This quote is from the article in the Davis Enterprise:

When it was [Bernard's] turn to be tattooed [at Auschwitz], Marks said, he told the German officer he had to use the restroom. He even got into an argument about it, going so far as to tell the officer if he didn’t let Marks go, he would find himself in a large puddle. He was given permission to go, as was his father, who was ordered to make sure he returned. But they never did, managing to avoid the tattooing day after day.

It was, Marks said, “just one of the games we played.”

So famous Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel is not the only survivor of Auschwitz who got by without a tattoo.  You can read about Elie and his lack of an Auschwitz tattoo at http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/tag/auschwitz-a-7713/

Elie Wiesel was sent to Buchenwald after he was marched out of Auschwitz.  Bernard Marks was sent to Dachau, where his mother and brother were killed, although Bernard and his father were spared.

(I wonder why Bernard’s mother was sent to Dachau to be killed.  Why wasn’t she gassed at Auschwitz?  Dachau was not a camp for women. There were no women there until the very end of the war.)

Elie Wiesel had no ID number at Buchenwald; I wonder if Bernard Marks got by without an ID number at Dachau.

This quote, regarding the tattooing of prisoners, is from a well-known True Believer website at http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/auschwitzbasics.html

The registration of newly arrived prisoners took place after the issuing of clothing and consisted of filling out a personal form, including details of next of kin. These forms were kept in the camps Political Department.

Thus registered, the prisoner received a camp serial number, which would serve instead of their name, for the duration of their stay in the camp.

(photo of Auschwitz Tattoo. Number of Henry Oertelt B11291)

The registration process [at Auschwitz] also included the tattooing of the prisoners camp number on their left forearm, and photographs were taken of the prisoners from three angles. [...]

Every prisoner registered in Auschwitz Concentration Camp received a camp number, which he had to wear on his striped uniform in a precisely defined place.

Bernard Marks was 13 years old when he arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau. How did he manage to get past Dr. Josef Mengele, the most famous of the 30 SS men who made the selections for the gas chamber?  Prisoners under the age of 15 or over the age of 45 were sent to the gas chamber immediately upon arrival at Auschwitz.

This quote from the Davis Enterprise explains why Bernard Marks was not sent to the gas chamber upon his arrival at Auschwitz:

In August 1944, Marks and his family were transported from Lodz to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Marks’ father had managed to hang on to his son’s work permit, which showed him being two years older than he really was, and it spared him on the selection ramp at Auschwitz — a ramp upon which the infamous Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death,” decided who would be killed and who would be spared to labor in the camp.

The rest of Marks’ family wasn’t so fortunate.

I will never forget that day,” he said.

He credited his father for saving his life time and again and getting him through the ordeal.

And he ended the presentation to Holmes students with a little levity. Asked by a student if he had a number tattooed on his arm like other Holocaust survivors, he told the story of how he and his father managed to avoid that particular indignity with a little ingenuity.

It should be a crime for Holocaust survivors to tell 8th graders stories about how they fooled Dr. Mengele and were able to get by without a tattoo at Auschwitz.  The lack of an Auschwitz tattoo is an indication that Bernard Marks was not really at Auschwitz.

According to many survivors, the prisoners at Auschwitz had to show their tattoo before they could get their food in the chow line.

Another clue is that prisoners from the Lodz ghetto were sent directly to Dachau, near the end of the war.

This quote is from the H.E.A.R.T  (True Believer) website:

They [the Jews in the Lodz ghetto] were tortured and subsequently shot or transported to Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps.

You can read the latest news about the late Harry W. Mazel at http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2014/03/04/momentous-gift-holocaust-archive-cu-boulder-will-draw-scholars-around-world

This quote is from the news article:

The archive is the life work of Harry W. Mazal, a retired businessman from Mexico City who made San Antonio, Texas, his home and became an internationally recognized Holocaust collector and researcher. Working with numerous volunteers, Mazal dedicated his life to creating a vast repository committed to defending the voices and memories of the victims of the Holocaust around the world by promoting scholarly research related to Holocaust studies, Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and bigotry.

The website of Harry W. Mazel, entitled The Holocaust History Project was one of the first websites that I ever visited when I started studying the Holocaust.

I blogged about Harry W. Mazel on this blog post:  https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/harry-w-mazal/

The Irish are desperate to be included among the countries that suffered at the hands of the Nazis. The Irish have recently put up a memorial to a Jewish woman who lived for a time in Ireland before she was sent to Auschwitz in 1942 and killed.

A couple of years ago, a teacher in Ireland assigned students to find the one and only Irish prisoner who had been incarcerated in the Dachau concentration camp.  I received many e-mails from Irish students who were trying to find out the name of the only Irish prisoner at Dachau.

I did some research on the subject of the only Irish prisoner at Dachau and wrote two blog posts about this:

http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/more-about-the-only-irish-prisoner-at-dachau/

http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/the-only-irish-prisoner-at-dachau/

You can read about the only Irish prisoner to be killed by the Nazis in this news article:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/memorial-to-ireland-s-only-holocaust-victim-unveiled-1.1737753

This quote is from the Irish Times article, cited above:

A memorial to Ireland’s only Holocaust victim Ettie Steinberg has been unveiled at a secondary school in Malahide, Co Dublin.

[Lynne Jackson, chair of Holocaust Education Trust Ireland] said the stone memorial to Ettie Steinberg was a way for the school to create a permanent Holocaust memorial.

Steinberg’s family were [sic] from Czechoslovakia and came to Dublin from London in 1926. In 1937 she married a Belgian man and later moved to Belgium and then Paris, where she had a son. In 1942 she and her little boy were transported to Auschwitz and killed.

In Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland , Dermot Keogh notes, “the Steinbergs in Dublin had secured visas for Ettie and her family trough [sic] the British home office in Belfast. The visas were sent immediately to Toulouse but they arrived too late. Ettie and her family had been rounded up the day before…”

I checked the timeline for Auschwitz to confirm that Jews were killed at Auschwitz in 1942 and found this on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website at

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007259

January 25, 1940
The SS decides to construct a concentration camp near Oswiecim (Auschwitz).

May 20, 1940
The first concentration camp prisoners—30 recidivist criminals from Sachsenhausen—arrive at Auschwitz concentration camp.
March 1, 1941
Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of German Police Heinrich Himmler inspects Oswiecim (Auschwitz). Because nearby factories use prisoners for forced labor, Himmler is concerned about the prisoner capacity of the camp. On this visit, he orders both the expansion of Auschwitz I camp facilities to hold 30,000 prisoners and the building of a camp near Birkenau for an expected influx of 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war. Himmler also orders that the camp supply 10,000 prisoners for forced labor to construct an I.G. Farben factory complex at Dwory, about a mile away. Himmler will make additional visits to Auschwitz in 1942, when he will witness the killing of prisoners in the gas chambers.

[...]

January 25, 1942
SS chief Heinrich Himmler informs Richard Gluecks, the Inspector of Concentration Camps, that 100,000 Jewish men and 50,000 Jewish women would be deported from Germany to Auschwitz as forced laborers.

February 15, 1942
The first transport of Jews from Bytom (Beuthen) in German-annexed Upper Silesia arrives in Auschwitz I. The SS camp authorities kill all those on the transport immediately upon arrival with Zyklon B gas.

December 31, 1942
German SS and police authorities deported approximately 175,000 Jews to Auschwitz in 1942.

Notice that the last entry in the timeline says that 175,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz in 1942, which could have included the Jews sent from France to Auschwitz in 1942.  Ettie Steinberg and her son, who were killed in Auschwitz, were in Paris in 1942, and could have been on a transport sent from Paris to Auschwitz.

This quote is from a Yad Vashem web page about the Holocaust in  France:

In July 1942 some 23,000 Jews were arrested in Paris and in the remainder of the Occupied Zone. At the initiative of Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of the Vichy regime, most of the Jewish children were deported to the East together with their parents.

So the Irish have a legitimate claim for a Holocaust Memorial.

The following quote is from an article, which you can read in full at

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/545399/20140328/racial-discrimination-act-tony-abbott-holocaust-moshe.htm#.UzWQ4V7Y1Ph

Holocaust Survivor Moshe Fiszman pleads [with Australia's] leader to abandon his proposed changes [in the Free Speech law], saying that he would be taking away [the Jew's] freedom in doing so.

[...]

[Australian Prime Minister] Mr Abbott claimed that the changes are necessary to remove the restrictions on “free speech,” and that they also include strong prohibitions on racial vilification.

Mr Fiszman, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor who spent the Second World War in Nazi concentration camps, begged to differ.

He penned an open letter to the PM, asking him to abandon his plans to change the RDA [Racial Discrimination Act].

[Moshe Fiszman said] “You might think you are increasing freedom, but let me assure you that you will be taking away the freedom of communities such as mine [the Jewish community]. The freedom to live without hatred and without lies being told about us [the Jews],” he wrote.

“That is why every single ethnic community is against this change. Some 39 communities have protested against it. Australia is a beautiful country because, like the United States, we are all migrants – not minorities. But if this law gets up, we will be made to feel like minorities.

“You might think you are increasing freedom, but this change will hurt disadvantages, underprivileged groups, like the Aborigines who regularly visit the Jewish Holocaust Museum.”

He continued, “I came to this country because it was the furthest away from Europe I could get. Also, I had four years behind bars as a refugee after the war because nobody wanted me, so I had plenty of time to check out what Australia was made of. I researched its constitution and so forth, and I liked it.

[...]

“What do they want to change this law for? If you start playing around with it, where will it end up? Who is it giving the freedom to? They want the right-wing loonies to have a free rein so they can write and say whatever they like and get away with it scot-free. Holocaust deniers like the Adelaide Institute.”

Mr Fiszman was the only member of his family to survive after suffering in various Nazi concentration camps, including the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau.

“This is my opinion as a survivor, the opinion of a man who went through living hell for five-and-a-half years, on death row for 24 hours a day. I am dead against it. Don’t let them touch the freedom of the people in the country.

After I read the news article, I did some  research on Moshe Fiszman and found a website which gives the following information about Moshe, obtained in an interview:

http://www.arturszulc.se/anslagstavlan/mellan-himmel-jord/a-interview-with-moshe-fiszman-holocaust-survivor

The following information is from the website, cited above:

What happened to your family? And where you put into a camp? What camp?

In August 1942 the Jewish population (including my family of five people) nearly 24 000 people men, woman, children, babies, pregnant woman, old people, were cramped in cattle trucks over 100 per truck, no food, water or toilet, and what we found out later, taken to a place called Treblinka, and gassed to death, their bodies burned, and the ashes used as fertilizer.

3 000 Jews, including myself, were given striped clothing, and were declared as prisoners of the K/Z. Majdanek.

In July 1944 we were death marched to Tomaszow Mazowiecki for six days. From there to Auschwitz- Birkenau were I was selected to live a while longer. There after I was taken to Natzweiler-Struthof (my prisoner number 25627), from there to Vaihingen am Enz, were we left a mass grave of  1600 prisoners. In March 1945 marched to Dachau (my prisoner number 150321), and finally all Jewish prisoners marched in to the Austrian Alps and by miracle freed.

I survived. What actually what did I survive? I had no family, no home and no country to go back to, I was alone in a cursed country.

You spent almost two years in Majdanek. How does one survive such an ordeal? What kept you going?

Hope.
And the will not to allow the savages to turn out the light on the Jewish people and their history.

[...]

You managed to survive. What happened after the War? How did you end up in Australia?

I was lucky, for five and a half years of starvation and maltreatment, to be found by a front line unit of the 7th U S Army in the mountains of Austria. Lived as a refuge for four years in UNNRA camps, finally Australia was ready to accept me as a migrant.

From this interview, and Moshe’s description of his survival in the Holocaust, we learn that Moshe Fiszman is the living proof of what Holocaust deniers claim.

1. Moshe Fiszman was sent to Treblinka, a death camp, where he was not gassed in any of the 10 gas chambers, but was sent on to the Majdanek death camp, where it was initially reported that there were 5 gas chambers.

2. Next Moshe was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where he was again not gassed in any of the alleged 5 gas chambers.

3. From Auschwitz, Moshe was sent to the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, which was mostly a camp for Resistance Fighters, although it had the obligatory gas chamber.  (Was Moshe sent to Natzweiler because he was fighting in the Polish Home Army of illegal combatants?)

4. When the Natzweiler-Struthof camp was abandoned, Moshe was sent to Dachau, which allegedly had a gas chamber, but Moshe was again not gassed. He was sent to a sub-camp of Dachau, called Mittenwald.

5.  After the American Seventh Army liberated the main Dachau camp, they went on to liberate the Mittenwald camp.  After the camp was liberated, it became a Displaced Persons camp, where Moshe stayed on until he went to Australia.

Last night, during a conversation with a teen-aged visitor to my home, the subject of the “death marches” out of the Nazi concentration camps came up.  My young visitor had noticed that, on my library shelf, I have a copy of a huge book which gives the several versions of the Anne Frank diary side by side.

The sight of this book prompted my young visitor to mention that she had studied the Anne Frank Diary in school, and that a Holocaust survivor, who had a number tattooed on the inside of her left arm, had recently given a talk at her school.

At this point, I told her that the tattoo was an indication that the survivor had been a prisoner at Auschwitz, because the Auschwitz camp was the only place where the prisoners were tattooed.  This was news to her; the Holocaust survivor had not mentioned this.

Then my young visitor told me that the Holocaust survivor, who spoke at her school, had said that she had been taken on a march out of Auschwitz.  On the march, she had been forced to walk for miles, barefoot through the snow.  When the march ended, the prisoners were allowed to escape, running through the snow, into the arms of soldiers who liberated them.

The story of marching barefoot through the snow resonated with me because many other survivors of Auschwitz have told stories about how the German soldiers, who led the marches out of Auschwitz, walked ahead of the prisoners, tramping down the two feet of snow, so that the women and children could walk better.  The women and children were given a head start, so that they would not have to keep up with the men, who could walk faster.

I have also heard stories about how the women were taken to the clothing warehouses, known as Canada, where they were allowed to select a nice pair of boots for the march.

This is the first time that I have heard that the prisoners were marched barefoot out of Auschwitz.  The women were wearing shoes, while they were prisoners at Auschwitz, but according to this survivor, they were apparently told to take off their shoes so that they could march barefoot through the snow.

Some Holocaust survivors say that the purpose of a “death march” was to kill the prisoners by marching them to death.  Holocaust deniers say that the purpose was to take the prisoners to other camps, where they could be put to work.

I decided to look it up on Wikipedia, where I found a page entitled Death marches (Holocaust).

This quote is from Wikipedia:

Death marches (Todesmärsche in German) refer to the forcible movements of prisoners in Nazi Germany. They occurred at various points during the Holocaust, including in 1939 in the Lublin province of Poland, in 1942 in Ukraine, and between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 from Nazi concentration camps and prisoner of war camps near the front, to camps inside Germany away from front lines and Allied forces to remove evidence from concentration camps and to prevent the repatriation

The photo below is on the page entitled “Deach marches.” The caption on the photo is this:

Dachau concentration camp inmates on a death march, April 1945, photographed walking through a German village, heading in the direction of Wolfratshausen, Bavaria.

Were the prisoners, shown in the photo above, really marched out of the Dachau camp to “to remove evidence from concentration camps and to prevent the repatriation”? In the photo, it appears that the prisoners are walking through the rain, wearing shoes and some kind of rain gear.

Would marching the prisoners out of Dachau remove the evidence of the Dachau gas chamber?  Wouldn’t it have been easier to blow up the gas chamber inside the Dachau camp?

Why take a chance on one of these prisoners escaping the march, and living to tell about the gas chamber and other atrocities committed at Dachau?

Other sources, including my website, claim that these prisoners were marched out of Dachau to prevent them from killing Germany civilians in the vicinity of the town of Dachau.

Holocaust deniers claim that prisoners were marched out of Auschwitz, not for the purpose of killing them by marching them to death, but for the purpose of taking them to camps in Germany to work.

I wrote about the prisoners being marched out of Dachau on this page of my website:  http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/LiberationDay2A.html

In a letter to students at Vanderbuilt, which you can read in full here, Rabbi Schlomo Rothstein explains the meaning of the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” on the entrance gates into the Nazi camps.  A photo of the gate into the Dachau camp, which is shown below, accompanies the letter.

Entrance gate into Dachau concentration camp

I previously blogged about the meaning of “Arbeit Macht Frei” at http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/arbeit-macht-frei-what-does-it-stand-for/

Arbeit Macht Frei gate at Sachsenhausen camp

The Arbeit Macht Frei slogan was first used at the the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, which was a camp for political prisoners, not a camp for Jews.

According to Rudolf Höss, who was an adjutant at Sachsenhausen before he became the first Commandant of Auschwitz, the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei” means that works liberates one in the spiritual sense. Sachsenhausen was a Class 1 camp, where prisoners who worked had a good chance of being released.

After World War II, the Sachsenhausen camp was turned into a Communist prison for German citizens. The Arbeit Macht Frei sign was removed and the prisoners did not work.

Höss was himself a prisoner at one time and he complained about having to sit all alone in a prison cell without having any work to occupy his time. When Höss was transferred from Sachsenhausen to Auschwitz, he had the “Arbeit Macht Frei” slogan put over the entrance gate into the Auschwitz main camp, which became known as Auschwitz One.

The Auschwitz II “death camp” did not have the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign, and few prisoners were released from there.

This quote is from the Rabbi’s Letter to Vanderbilt students:

“Arbeit Macht Frei” — or “Work Makes You Free” — is not just a slogan. It represents hate at its worst. They were the words twisted in metal above a Nazi death camp in which millions of human beings, Jews and non-Jews alike, were cruelly killed. “Arbeit Macht Frei” has been purchased with blood; it belongs to the murdered.

I do not expect all people to know the words and meaning of “Arbeit Macht Frei.” What I am asking is that this phrase and all phrases from the Holocaust not be separated from their tragic history. This extends to all situations of hate and cruelty: Let us not separate the words from their context.

To separate “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or anything that means destruction, from its horrible historical sense and apply it to causes and campaigns — no matter how righteous — is a gross and dangerous mistake.

Does anyone think that the Vanderbilt students will ask the Rabbi whether the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign was put over the entrance into the Auschwitz II “death camp”? Or the Buchenwald camp, which was a Class II camp, mainly  for captured Resistance fighters, in World War II?

How about the Majdanek “death camp” where the latest death toll is 59,000 Jewish deaths?  Does Majdanek have the Arbeit sign? No!

Does the Mauthausen Class III camp have this sign over the gate? No!

The “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign was only put over the gates into the Class I camps, like Dachau, where prisoners were sometimes released.

My 2003 photo of the gate into the Dachau camp

You can read about the sign over the Buchenwald gate on this blog post: http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/buchenwald-was-a-class-ii-camp-with-jedem-das-seine-on-the-gate/

In an article in the Wicked Local Bedford online newspaper, which you can read in full here, a suggestion was made by Alan Beauchamp to Jon Sills, the Bedford Public Schools Superintendent, on how to combat anti-Semitism in Bedford schools. Included in the headline of the article was this suggestion: “Don’t sugarcoat horrific history.”

The author of the article wrote that he was “appalled that in this community that anti-Semitism appears on the surface to be endemic from grade school students to high school students.”

This quote is from the article:

I think a PowerPoint presentation that shows numerous photos and videos of Jewish prisoners – men women and children being marched into the gas chambers at Dachau, Birkenwald, Bergen Belsen and other notorious death camps – may open some eyes as to what “kill the Jews” actually entails. It is a messy business. There is no need to coddle these students. History is what it is and sometimes it is not pretty — Arbeit macht frei. Tell them the irony of this and the story of Auschwitz. Sugars coat it and you get Swastikas on bathroom walls in Bedford High School.

I would like to know “the irony” of Arbeit macht Frei myself. I blogged about this at http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/arbeit-macht-frei-what-does-it-stand-for/

I would certainly like to see some of the “numerous photos” of Jewish prisoners being marched into the gas chambers of Dachau and Bergen Belsen. I am familiar with several photos of Jews marching to the gas chambers at Auschwitz Birkenau.  I blogged about this at http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/walking-to-the-gas-chambers-at-auschwitz-birkenau/

As far as I know, there are no photos of Jews marching to the gas chamber at Bergen-Belsen. However, there are survivors of Bergen-Belsen, who are telling school children about the gas chamber at the Bergen-Belsen EXCHANGE camp. I blogged about this at http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/holocaust-survivor-eva-olsson-educates-young-students-about-bergen-belsen/

Yes, children, there was a gas chamber at the Bergen-Belsen exchange camp, where Jewish prisoners were waiting to be exchanged for German citizens being held in internment camps in America.  I wrote about the evidence of a gas chamber at Bergen-Belsen on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/BergenBelsen/BergenBelsen04.html

The quote above continues with this information:

Let the students see the corpses piled up like cordwood. Let them see the piles of shoes and yes even teeth. Let them see the bodies being thrown into mass graves. Show them photos of SS Officers separating families at train stations where men were marched to the gas chambers and women were sent to the SS brothels. Let them see the results of Dr. Mengele’s “experiments”. I would expose the students to exactly what “kill all the Jews” means in graphic detail.

I would tell them that, even today, when one walks through Dachau, how one can still hear on the wind the moans and screams of the former inmates. I know this from firsthand experience after visiting the camp many times while stationed in Europe and escorting visitors.

When the man who wrote the words quoted above, was “stationed in Europe,” the Dachau camp was filled with ethnic Germans who had been expelled from what is now the Czech Republic.  After World War II, these refugees lived in the barracks at Dachau, until they were thrown out so that Dachau could be turned into a Memorial Site.  What this man heard was the moans of these former refugees, who lived in extreme poverty at Dachau for 17 years.  They were the lucky ones; other German “expellees” were living on the streets of German cities, begging for food.

I blogged about corpses piled up like cordwood at http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/bodies-stacked-like-cordwood-how-many-times-have-you-read-those-words/

I blogged about the piles of shoes at http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/do-photos-of-piles-of-shoes-prove-that-prisoers-were-murdered-at-dachau/

If any of the photos on my blog, or on my website scrapbookpages.com, would be useful for the Power Point presentation to the Bedford students, you have my permission to include  them.  For example,  the photo below shows prisoners arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Prisoners arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau

The photo below should be included in the Power Point presentation. It shows German POWs digging holes for shelter in one of Eisenhower’s death camps, which you can  read about on my blog post at http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/eisenhowers-death-camps-a-stain-on-american-history/

German POWs digging holes for shelter in one of Eisenhower’s death camps

I wrote about how the Holocaust should be taught in American schools in this blog post: http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/should-the-holocaust-be-taught-in-american-schools/

The anniversary of the liberation of Dachau on April 29, 1945 will be coming up soon, and there will be lots of news articles about the camp. There might also be some news about the Herbertshausen shooting range, where Soviet Prisoners of War were allegedly shot for target practice.

Rifle range at Herbertshausen Photo credit: Donald E. Jackson

There is now a Memorial to these POWs, which you can read about at http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/news-hebertshausen.html

This quote is from the website, cited above:

On June 22, 2011 a commemorative service was held to mark the burial of the mortal remains of unknown Soviet prisoners of war on the former “SS shooting range Hebertshausen”. In 1941-1942 SS units of the Dachau concentration camp shot dead around 4,500 Soviet prisoners, contravening international law – officers, Communist officials, intellectuals, and Jews. A memorial now commemorates the unknown murdered victims at the site of the crime. Speeches were held by Dr. Gabriele Hammermann, Head of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, Karl Freller, MP, director of the Bavarian Memorial Foundation, Andrei Grozow, Consul General of the Russian Federation, Alexander Ganevich, Consul General of the Republic of Belarus, Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria. Subsequently, representatives of the Jewish, Russian Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant and Islamic religious communities said funeral prayers in memory of the unknown victims.

Memorial to the murdered Soviet POWs at Herbertshausen

Wikipedia has a page about the Herbertshausen Memorial site at http://wikimapia.org/22774181/Memorial-to-the-murdered-Soviet-soldiers

This quote is from Wikipedia:

Some 4,000 imprisoned Soviet soldiers were executed there between 1941 and 1945. These murders were a clear violation of the provisions laid down in the Geneva Convention for prisoners of war. The SS used the cynical term “special treatment” for these criminal executions. The first executions of the Soviet prisoners of war at the Hebertshausen shooting range took place on November 25 1941.
The prisoners brought to Dachau for execution were not recorded in the concentration camp files. Today, an arduous evaluation of the lists and statistics from the prisoner camps at Hammelburg in the Rhone, Nuremberg-Langwasser, and Moosburg on the Isar is trying to obtain a complete record of the names.

Alert readers may have noticed that I used the word “allegedly” in the first sentence of my blog post today.  Surely, there must be plenty of proof that Soviet Prisoners of War were used for target practice at Herbertshausen.

No, dear readers,  I am sad to say that there is no proof whatsoever that Soviet POWs were shot at Herbertshausen.

This quote is from my own website scrapbookpages.com

After October 1941, captured Soviet soldiers were brought to Dachau. They were interrogated and 90 Russian officers, who were believed to be Communist Commissars, were executed on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler. This order was a violation of the Geneva Convention which set rules for the treatment of enemy POWs. Germany had signed the Convention but the Russians had declined to be a party to it.

During the American Military Tribunal for the staff members of the Dachau concentration camp, which was held in the Dachau complex in November 1945, the American prosecutor charged that several of the accused were guilty of “a common plan to violate the Laws and Usages of War” because they were present when 90 alleged Communist Commissars were executed at Dachau and did not try to stop the execution.

According to the American prosecutors at the American Military Tribunals held at Dachau, thousands of Russian POWs were taken to the SS shooting range at Herbertshausen, which was located in the Dachau suburb of Etzenhausen, where they were executed by a firing squad. The American defense attorneys at the American Military Tribunal for 40 Dachau staff members claimed that there was no proof that 5,000 Russian POWs were shot for target practice at Herbertshausen, as alleged by the prosecution.

I previously blogged about the trial of the German war criminals at the American Military Tribunal in which it was NOT proved that thousands of Soviet POWs at Dachau had been shot.

This quote is from my previous blog post at https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/german-war-crimes-in-wwii-shooting-soviet-pows-for-target-practice/:

Major Boysen was an American defense attorney for Alex Piorkowski, a former Dachau Commandant, who was charged with war crimes in a subsidiary case of the Dachau trials. The prosecution’s case against Piorkowski was based on the testimony of 34 paid witnesses who were former prisoners at Dachau.

As the defense attorney for Piorkowski, Major Boysen pointed out that the prosecution’s allegation, that 6,000 to 8,000 Soviet POWs had been executed at Dachau in the spring of 1942, while Piorkowski was the Commandant, had not been proved in the main trial of Dachau camp personnel, yet it was put into evidence in the Piorkowski trial, along with other atrocities that had become matters of judicial notice and did not have to be proved again.

According to Joseph Halow, the court reporter who wrote the book Innocent at Dachau, Major Boysen concluded that he was of the “definite opinion that no such massacre occurred at Dachau as is factually stated to have taken place there in Prosecution Exhibit 1.”

After the first proceedings, against former Commandant Martin Weiss and 39 staff members at the Dachau camp, had been concluded, Major Boysen had learned that the Dachau railroad station commander, a man named Rohrmuehler, had witnessed the arrival of the trains bringing Soviet Prisoners of War to Dachau.

Rohrmuehler claimed that no more than 500 Russians had ever passed through the Dachau camp, and that the claim that 6,000 to 8,000 Soviet POWs had been massacred at Dachau was absurd. The testimony at the Dachau proceedings, concerning the killing of Soviet POWs, was in the form of affidavits and the witnesses had not been subjected to cross-examination in the courtroom, according to Court Reporter Joseph Halow.

The claim, by the Dachau railroad station man, does not make sense, since there were 3,900 Russians still in the Dachau camp when it was liberated, according to the Official Army Report. If 6,000 Russians had been used for target practice, as alleged by the prosecution, that would mean that at least 9,900 Russians had been brought to Dachau.

In spite of the fact that the shooting of Soviet POWs was never proved by the American Military Tribunal at Dachau, this story is still being told to tourists every day at the Dachau Memorial Site, along with the story that the shower room at Dachau is a gas chamber that was used to kill a few prisoners at Dachau, although not for mass gassing.

Dachau is not the only place where tourists are told that the SS shot prisoners for target practice. When I visited the Little Fortress, across the road from the Theresienstadt ghetto, I was told that prisoners who had been condemned to death were used for target practice.

The photograph below shows the place where prisoners were executed in the Small Fortress at Theresienstadt. One of the fortification walls is in the background and the spot where the condemned prisoner stood is in the center of the picture. The concrete form in the foreground was one of three places, under a free-standing roof, from which the firing squad would shoot while in a prone position.

According to a small booklet which I purchased at the Museum, between 250 and 300 of the 32,000 prisoners, who were inmates at the Small Fortress, were executed. The first recorded execution was on May 11, 1943 when a leader of the Communist resistance, Frantisek Prokop, was shot at the firing range.

Firing range at the Small Fortresss at  Theresienstadt

I have just learned that there is a book, entitled Unforgotten - A Memoir of Dachau, which was written by Franz Thaler, a former non-Jewish inmate of Dachau.  The book was originally published in 1988; a new edition was published in 2011 by Kiener Press.

Thaler’s book is for sale at the Dachau Memorial Site, and on the Amazon website in the UK.

You can read a review of this book at http://www.marcinonabike.com/reviews/review_unforgotten.php

This quote from the review introduces the story of Franz Thaler, who was an ethnic German, living in the South Tyrol during World War II:

By September 1943 and after the Italian capitulation, the German Army ends up occupying Italy, as well as the Tyrol. The 19 year old Franz refuses to serve in the German army and is forced to go on the run and ends up living higher up in the mountains sleeping rough for many months, surviving on plants, berries and the occasional hand-outs from friendly farmers and shepherds. After a law was passed by the Nazi’s to punish the families of deserters Franz is forced to give himself up, and subsequently ends up in the Dachau KZ.

After his first initial days in the Dachau Bunker he was eventually moved around several [sub-camps] before being transferred back to Dachau [main camp] where he was liberated on the 29th April 1945.

This quote from the review explains what happened to Franz Thaler during the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp by American soldiers:

After his transfer back to Dachau for the final month of the war he was in the [concentration] camp on the day of liberation. He, and a few other prisoners noticed the guards had already fled [the night before] and he made his way to the gate of the Jourhaus and through into the S.S. training camp that bordered the concentration camp, and there Thaler was found by the American soldiers who treated him unbelievably not as a prisoner, but as a guard! He, and quite a few other prisoners were mistaken for members of the S.S. and eventually sent to a POW camp in France before finally being set free.

He finally makes it home, back to the South Tyrol at the end of August 1945. In other words his suffering, this time at the hands of the Americans meant his war and imprisonment didn’t finish until many months after the war had ended in Europe.

The photo below shows the entrance into the Dachau concentration camp, which was separated from the SS training camp by a canal.

Dachau Jourhaus — the SS training camp is on the left, but not shown in the photo

Entrance into the Dachau gatehouse from the SS camp, which is behind the camera

This quote is at the end of the review of the book:

[Thaler] finally makes it home, back to the South Tyrol at the end of August 1945. In other words his suffering, this time at the hands of the Americans meant his war and imprisonment didn’t finish until many months after the war had ended in Europe.

Whilst in an American camp between Dachau and Munich, and after not being fed for 6 days he tells of his first food…

“When I opened the tins I heard and saw nothing around me any more. One tin contained green beans in oil, the other three biscuits, a small piece of chocolate and four sweets. Before I started eating I broke out in tears. I had not seen delicacies like this for a long time. After months of starvation and the last six days without food and without water, I began to eat. Tears kept on running down my face and I swallowed many a tear. According to a wise saying, you have to eat bread mixed with tears once in your life in order to be able to appreciate its true value.”

Note that Thaler wrote that he was not given any food, nor water, for SIX DAYS.  I find it hard to believe that a person could live without water for six days!  I once went on a  fast for 10 days, but I drank plenty of water. After 10 days, with no food, I could barely stand up.

Why was Thaler treated this way by the American liberators of Dachau?  It was because they mistakenly thought that he was an SS man, who had disguised himself by wearing prisoner clothes.  He was lucky that he wasn’t killed in the Dachau massacre.

The remarkable thing about this story is that Thaler gave testimony about how the Americans treated the SS men in the Dachau SS training camp, after the camp was liberated.

Arbeit macht Frei sign on the Dachau gatehouse was removed when the camp was turned into a prison enclosure for German war criminals

Several months after Dachau was liberated, the former camp was turned into War Crimes Enclosure No. 1.  You can read about how the German war criminals were treated, on this page of my website:  http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/NaziPrison.html

German SS soldiers fighting the American liberators with their hands in the air

The following quote is from a news article which you can read in full at http://www.yorkdispatch.com/breaking/ci_25635629/local-liberator-among-those-honored-at-holocaust-remembrance

Harold Campbell’s U.S. Army unit was on its way to battle Nazi soldiers in Munich, Germany, when it came face to face with horror.

“We came across the concentration camp in a town called Dachau, about nine miles northeast of Munich, on April 29, 1945,” recalled Campbell, 88, of Red Lion. “The guards were German SS troopers. They fought to the end.”

Survivors found: But the 42nd Infantry Rainbow Division “got rid of them” and found 32,000 camp prisoners who were still alive, Campbell said.
“We saw a train with 50 cars with people who starved to death and one person left alive in there,” he said. “We saw stacks of people that had died and (their bodies) waited to be cremated. I took a camera off a German that got killed and took pictures.”

Campbell said he and his fellow soldiers remained at the Dachau Concentration Camp for a day to keep the rescued people safe until U.S. Army officials and additional units arrived to further help them.

Dead bodies of German SS troopers who fought to the end at Dachau

My 1997 photo of the reconstructed wall around the Dachau camp

This quote is from a news article about Harold Campbell:

As [the American soldiers] approached the camp, the 42nd took heavy small-arms fire. Whoever was guarding the camp didn’t want the Americans coming anywhere near it. The troops guarding the camp, members of the SS, defended the camp with their lives. At least most of them did. As the Americans approached, the fence around the camp was lined with dead German guards [shown in the photo above].

The photo below shows a “German SS trooper” fighting to the end, as he surrenders the camp to American soldiers of the 42nd Division, accompanied by a Red Cross representative who is holding a white flag.

Famous photo of SS soldier surrendering the camp to American soldiers

This body of a German soldier  is believed to be the body of Lt. Wicker who surrendered the Dachau concentration camp to the Americans

After he surrendered the Dachau camp to the Americans, Lt. Wicker disappeared. It is believed that he was killed by the American liberators.

Some of the bodies of the SS troopers were mutilated by the American liberators after they were killed, as shown in the photo below.

Bodies of guards who were killed at Dachau during the liberation of the camp

German SS troopers fighting to the end with their hands in the air

Photo of starving prisoners at Dachau taken by Harold Campbell

You can read about another American liberator of Dachau who took photos of the camp on another blog post, which I wrote about the camp at https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/tag/dachau-liberation/

You can read another news article about Harold Campbell at http://www.ydr.com/local/ci_25637096/wwii-vet-who-liberated-dachau-cant-imagine-people

As they approached the camp, they came under heavy small-arms fire. The firefight was fierce. The German soldiers guarding the camp, members of Hitler’s SS, had pledged to fight to the death. And they did.  [...]

As they approached the camp, the 42nd took heavy small-arms fire. Whoever was guarding the camp didn’t want the Americans coming anywhere near it. The troops guarding the camp, members of the SS, defended the camp with their lives. At least most of them did. As the Americans approached, the fence around the camp was lined with dead German guards.  [...]

Campbell recorded what he saw. He took a Leca (sic) camera off of the body of a dead German officer. It had a full roll of film, eight shots. He took the photos and saved them to show others what he had seen.

Tomorrow will be the anniversary of the liberation of Dachau on April 29, 1945, and there will be many news stories about the American soldiers who liberated the  camp.

You can read about an SS soldier who survived the liberation of the camp on this page of my website:  http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/SoldiersKilled2.html

You can read about the famous “Death Train” on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/DeathTrain.html

The first SS soldiers who surrendered at Dachau were taken to the death train and shot

The famous photo of the “lone survivor” of the train is shown on this page of my website:  http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/DeathTrain3.html

Today is the anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp by American soldiers on April 29, 1945.  Many of these soldiers are still alive and will be attending memorial services around the USA, telling their stories about the emaciated inmates, who barely survived their ordeal in the Dachau horror camp.

I am putting up some photos of the Dachau survivors, taken after the liberation of the camp.

Polish political prisoners celebrate their liberation from Dachau

Dachau survivors salute their liberators; note American soldier in the background, who was not a prisoner

Most of the Dachau survivors were emaciated and weighed barely 70 pounds. Many of them had to crawl up to the barbed wire fence to greet the American liberators — NOT!

Dachau prisoners greet the American liberators

The photo below shows young survivors posing inside one of the Dachau barracks.

Dachau survivors pose inside one of the barracks

There were several British SOE agents at Dachau when it was liberated. The Nazis only killed the women SOE agents, letting the men live to tell the story. You can read about the fate of the female SOE agents at Dachau on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/BritishSOEagents.html

The photo below shows some of the political prisoners at Dachau, including SOE agents.

Captured British SOE agents were prisoners at Dachau when it was liberated

French resistance fighters who survived the horror of Dachau

Where were all the sick prisoners at Dachau when the camp was liberated.  They were in the infirmary barracks. Just before the Americans arrived, there were 400 prisoners per day dying of typhus.

The photo below shows two sick prisoners in the infirmary barracks.

Two sick prisoners in the Dachau infirmary

There were a few babies at Dachau when the camp was liberated.  They had been brought, from one of the sub-camps, to the Dachau main camp, to be turned over to the Americans.  All of the babies survived and lived to the age of 65, at least.

Mothers with babies who were liberated at Dachau

I have been searching my fingers to the bone, but I cannot find any recent news on the Internet about Martin Zaidenstadt, the Jew who pan-handled at the Dachau Memorial Site for many years. Zaidenstadt claimed that he had been a prisoner at Dachau for three years; he told the tourists all about the Dachau gas chamber, which he had somehow escaped during his three years of confinement.

My 1997 photo of Martin Zaidenstadt

There is currently only one Internet article about Zaidenstadt, which was written by Mark Weber on the IHR website, at http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v19/v19n2p60_Weber.html

This quote is from the article written by Mark Weber several years ago:

Each year many thousands of tourists visit the site of the notorious Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany, not far from Munich. They see the crematory, the memorial shrines, and the museum. And in recent years, as an almost daily fixture, they see Martin Zaidenstadt. This elderly Jewish man lectures visitors to Dachau on his experiences as a wartime prisoner there. He is particularly passionate about the horrors of the camp’s gas chamber where, he explains, many prisoners were put to death with poison gas. He even claims that this gas chamber served as a model for Auschwitz (New York Times, Oct. 26, 1997). Zaidenstadt’s listeners respond to his heart-rending testimony with unquestioning sympathy. Many reach generously into their wallets.

I recall that, for many years, there were numerous photos of Zaidenstadt on the Internet; these photos have now disappeared. His favorite place to pose was at the statue of the unknown prisoner; Zaidenstadt claimed that he had posed for this statue.

Statue of the Unknown Prisoner at Dachau

I previously blogged about Martin Zaidenstadt at http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/martin-zaidenstadt-the-fake-holocaust-survivor-who-pan-handled-at-dachau/

Has Martin Zaidenstadt become an embarrassment to the Jews? His name has been completely removed from search results, and I cannot find anything on him any more, except on my own website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauSurvivor.html

If Zaidenstadt is still alive, he is now 103 years old, but I have been unable to find anything on the Internet about his death.

When I visited the town of Dachau, several years ago, I was told by a Dachau resident, that the house in the photo below was where Martin Zaidenstadt lived in luxury when he was not out pan-handling at the Dachau Memorial Site.

Courtyard of the house in the town of Dachau where Martin Zaidenstadt allegedly lived

The title of my blog post today includes a quote from a recent news article which you can read in full at http://www.northjersey.com/news/teaching-the-holocaust-passaic-county-community-college-students-confront-horror-1.1004635

This quote is from the article:

Speaking to the initial location of major concentration and extermination camps outside of Germany, he said “Hitler didn’t want to contaminate German soil.”

It is true that some of the extermination camps (Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Auschwitz, and Majdanek) were outside of Germany, but what about the Dachau gas chamber, which was in Germany. Is he denying the Dachau gas chamber?

What about Chelmno, which was located in the Greater German Reich, as was Mauthausen?

The words in the quote were spoken by Professor Elliot S. Pollack, an adjunct professor of English Competition at Passaic County Community College, who used to teach at Ridgefield Park High School. In 1993, after Governor Christie Whitman signed legislation mandating Holocaust education in New Jersey public schools, Pollack visited concentration camp sites at Terezin, outside Prague, Czechoslovakia, and Auschwitz in Poland to make a video, which he recently showed to his class.

According to the news article, “the video reveals Terezin (Theresienstadt) and Auschwitz in all their horror.”

The following quote is from the news article about Professor Pollack’s lecture to his class:

“The gas chambers were a labyrinth of darkened corridors where thousands were led to their deaths, some scratching at the walls in their final moments.”

The scratches, which can be seen today, are on the walls of a gas chamber at Auschwitz, but I don’t know of any gas chambers in a “labyrinth of darkened corridors.”  That must have been at Theresienstadt.

I blogged about the gas chambers at Theresienstadt on this post: http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/gas-chamber-at-theresienstadt/

I blogged about the scratches on the wall of the Auschwitz gas chamber on this post: http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/dying-victims-scratched-the-walls-of-the-auschwitz-gas-chamber-with-their-fingernails/

The article also mentions “human ashes dumped into urns and stacked against a wall.”

I previously blogged about the ashes that were put into urns at http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/the-urns-used-for-ashes-at-dachau-and-other-concentration-camps/

What’s wrong with the quote, from a Santa Barbara newspaper, in the title of my blog post?

Men were NOT imprisoned at Dachau for being gay. In the old days, gay men in Germany were arrested for breaking the German law called Paragraph 175 which banned homosexual acts in public, as well as banning men from soliciting other men in public for gay sex.  Paragragh 175 had been on the books in Germany since 1871, but it was not being enforced until the Nazis took over.  Even then, gay men who were not having sex in pubic were not arrested.

I previously blogged about the Monument at Dachau which shows the triangles worn by the prisoners, except for the black triangle worn by criminals and the pink triangle worn by gay prisoners.

In a Santa Barbara newspaper article, which you can see in full here, this quote caught my attention:

How the community of [Dachau] survivors chooses to commemorate is yet another issue. At Dachau, men imprisoned for being gay were required to wear a badge featuring a pink downward-pointing triangle (Jews wore two triangles superimposed to create a yellow star). The pink triangle has since been reclaimed as an international symbol of gay pride and the gay rights movement. A memorial sculpture commissioned in the 1960s features colored triangles that represent the various categories of prisoners. Conspicuously absent, however, was the pink one.

“At that time, many still saw homosexuality as a crime,” [Harold] Marcuse said. “Pink was banned by the survivors who commissioned the memorial. When gay activists wanted to put up a pink granite triangle memorial in that space in the 1970s, they were refused. It had to be placed in the Protestant memorial church at the far end of the former camp.”

Twenty years later, that granite panel was moved to a special memorial room in the museum.

Pink triangle in “special memorial room” of Dachau museum

The Jews at Dachau did not wear two triangles superimposed to create a yellow star.

I took the photo below in the Dachau Museum in 1997.  It shows all the triangles used for badges in the Dachau camp.

A poster in the 1965 Dachau Museum

Chart show the badges worn by concentration camp prisoners in all the camps

The following explanation of the Dachau badges is from my own website scrapbookpages.com:

The top row of triangles in the photo above shows all the colors of the badges worn by the prisoners in all the Nazi concentration camps. Red was for Communists, Social Democrats, anarchists, and other “enemies of the state”; green was for German criminals; blue was for foreign forced laborers; brown was for Gypsies; pink was for homosexuals; purple was for Jehovah’s Witnesses and black was for asocials, a catch-all term for vagrants, bums, prostitutes, hobos, perverts, alcoholics who were living on the streets, or anyone who didn’t have a permanent address. The “work-shy,” or those who were arrested because they refused to work, wore a black badge.

The second row on the chart shows the same colors with a matching bar over the triangle. The bar denoted a “second-timer” or a prisoner who had been released and was then arrested again for a second offense. These prisoners were isolated from the general camp population and were not allowed privileges. Their work assignments were much more difficult. Many of the prisoners, including some Jews in the early days at Dachau, were released after they had been “rehabilitated.”

The black circles under the badges in the third row denote prisoners who were assigned to the penal colony. They were given the most difficult work assignments, usually in a rock quarry or gravel pit. Many of the camp locations were chosen because they were near a quarry which could furnish building materials for the new buildings Hitler was planning for Berlin and Linz, Austria, his former home town. Dachau had a gravel pit which was located where the Carmelite convent now stands.

The fourth row shows yellow triangles with each of the regular triangle colors placed on the top, forming a six-pointed star. These badges were worn by the Jews and showed their classification as political prisoners, criminals, foreign forced laborers, homosexuals or asocials.

A combination of a red triangle over a yellow triangle meant a Jewish political prisoner. The black dot below it meant that the Jewish prisoner had been assigned to the punishment detail.

A red triangle pointing upward designated a non-Jewish German political prisoner. The letter P on a red triangle pointing downward designated a Polish political prisoner.

My 2007 photo of the Dachau gas chamber

According to Pfc. Harold Porter, a medic with the U.S. Army’s 116th Evacuation Hospital, the gas chamber found by the American liberators of Dachau, on April 29, 1945, was a “windowless room.”

You can read the entire letter, which Pfc. Porter wrote to his parents from Dachau here.

This quote from the letter, which Pfc. Porter wrote to his parents, describes what he called the “execution chamber” at Dachau:

Behind the furnace was the execution chamber, a windowless cell twenty feet square with gas nozzles every few feet across the ceiling. Outside, in addition to the huge mound of charred bone fragments, were the carefully sorted and stacked clothes of the victims – which obviously numbered in the thousands. Although I stood there looking at it, I couldn’t believe it. The realness of the whole mess is just gradually dawning on me, and I doubt if it will ever on you.

What in the hell is he talking about?  Of course, there were windows in the gas chamber. I photographed the two little windows, shown below, in the Dachau gas chamber in 2007.

My 2007 photo of one of the openings on the wall of the Dachau gas chamber

Another opening on the wall of the Dachau gas chamber

Technically, these two openings on the wall of the Dachau gas chamber are not windows; there is no glass covering the openings. The openings were connected to chutes on the wall outside the gas chamber.  According to the tour guides at Dachau, these openings were used to put Zyklon-B pellets into the gas chamber.

According to Pfc. Porter, the gas came through “gas nozzles” on the ceiling.  Actually, the Zyklon-B gas was in the  form of pellets, which could not go through a nozzle. My photo below shows one of the nozzles on the ceiling of the Dachau gas chamber.

My 2001 photo of the last remaining shower nozzle in Dachau gas chamber

Is it possible that the US Army constructed the two little windows on the wall of the Dachau gas chamber, after they learned that the gas could not have come  through the shower heads?  No, no, no! Americans would never do something like that.  Don’t even suggest this in the 19 countries which have laws against Holocaust denial, or you might end up in prison for 5 years.

The family of Harold Porter should keep his letter private, lest he be indicted for Holocaust denial posthumously. Even worse, he could be accused of implicating the US Army in the construction of the little windows in the Dachau “execution room” AFTER the camp was liberated.

This morning, I read an article, entitled “Shoes bear witness to Nazi horrors,” in the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper here. The following quote is from the article:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — There are pictures, videos and reams of information and items on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., yet somehow nothing seems more powerful than a room full of dusty, abandoned shoes.

There are thousands of pairs — some had heels, some were sandals — but all covered the feet of Jewish men, women and children before they were sent to the Nazi gas chambers. A visitor gets chills thinking of so many people obeying the command to remove their footwear, likely not knowing what was about to happen to them.

The photo below, taken at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,  DC, is shown in the newspaper article.

Display of shoes at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

How do we know that these shoes “covered the feet of Jewish men, women and children before they were sent to the Nazi gas chambers,” as stated in the article?

The Nazis did not keep records of the names of the Jews, who were sent to the gas chamber, but they wanted the world to know that they were gassing the Jews, so they devised a plan to save the shoes as evidence.

Even at Bergen-Belsen, an exchange camp, which did not have gas chambers, the shoes were saved in huge piles, as shown in the photo below.

Piles of shoes at the Bergen-Belsen exchange camp

The largest piles of shoes, an estimated 800,000 pairs, were found at the Majdanek death camp, where it was originally claimed by the Soviet union that 1.5 million Jews had died.  Now, it is claimed that only 59,000 Jews died at Majdanek.

Why were so many shoes found at Majdanek? It could be that each of the 59,000 Jews, who died there, brought several pairs of shoes with them. You never know when you might need a change of shoes.

The photo below was taken by Simon Robertson at the Majdanek Memorial Site.

Thousands of shoes, taken from the prisoners at Majdanek, are still stored there

Pile of shoes at Majdanek when the camp was liberated in 1944

A huge pile of shoes, which included baby shoes, was found by the American liberators of Dachau in April 1945. These shoes are shown in the photo below.

Pile of shoes found at the Dachau concentration camp

At Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 900,000 Jews were killed, according to the latest figures, there were more shoes found.

Old photo shows shoes found in a warehouse at Auschwitz

My 1998 photo of the shoes on display in the Auschwitz Museum

What were the Nazis planning to do with all these shoes? Were they saving them for future museums to display as evidence of the gassing of the Jews?  During World War II, the Germany people had plenty of shoes; they were not suffering at all during the bombing of German cities — NOT!  The German soldiers had plenty of good shoes; the Nazis didn’t need to recycle shoes for their soldiers — NOT!   Use your heads, people.  Don’t write silly news stories like the one cited above.

The quote below is from a Nebraska newspaper article, entitled “My Hero,” in the McCook Daily Gazette.  The article was written by Dick Trail about an American soldier, named Merle Teel, who was taken on a trip, organized by the U.S. Army in 1957, to see the former Dachau concentration camp.  I was in Germany in 1957 and I had a chance to see the Dachau camp, possibly on this same trip.  I decided not to go, and now I regret that I didn’t get to see the camp in 1957.

Quote from newspaper article, written by Dick Trail:

Crossing the Rhine into Germany [during World War II] shortly before the end of hostilities [Merle Teel's] troop happened to liberate a Camp named Dachau. Capture, is a little misnomer as when the American Army approached the German guards changed into civilian garb and hightailed out of Dodge. Merle’s troops were then confronted with the sickening sight of hundreds of emaciated Jews living in fetid dormitories awaiting the “final solution” their trip to the gas-chambers and still warm crematorium. When the inhumanity of the scene confronted [Merle Teel's] troops they were horrified and angry. His guys ransacked the German guard’s quarters and “liberated” such supplies they could find and did what they could to comfort the poor inmates.

Next morning, Merle told of a young German boy, about 16 who came out from the nearby town to exclaim that “The local people in the town really didn’t know what was happening in the camp. They were innocent! They didn’t have anything to do with what was happening in the camp there!” Merle’s first sergeant wasn’t buying any of the kids spiel. A large tough man the 1st Sgt grabbed the kid and tossed him up on the large pile of dead bodies piled and awaiting the ovens. Merle told me that it wasn’t a proper thing to do but he hoped that the young German remembered the horror of climbing down off that pile of dead humanity. It was a story that Merle could share once and I think only with me as I too had visited the camp.

Dick Trail’s article does not mention which outfit Merle Teel’s troop was with, when his “troop happened to liberate a Camp named Dachau.”  We only know that there was a pile of corpses, upon which a 16-year-old boy from the town of Dachau was thrown.

Pile of bodies at the crematorium the day after Dachau was liberated

On April 30, 1945, the day after the Dachau concentration camp was liberated, the 40th Combat Engineer Regiment, which was supporting the 45th Thunderbird Division, arrived to take over. The soldier in the photo above is Eldon Patterson of E Company, 40th Combat Engineers. In the background is a pile of naked dead bodies, stacked up outside the Dachau crematorium. Behind the bodies is Baracke X, the crematorium building. The bodies had been piled up because the Nazis had run out of coal to burn the bodies.

Two German civilians are shown on the left in the photo above. According to Donald E. Jackson, who took this photo in May 1945, “We used civilian wagons to haul the bodies [to Leitenberg where the bodies were buried] and you can see them in other photos. The civilians loaded the bodies and unloaded them into the trench [mass grave].”

In the month of May 1945, an additional 2,226 Dachau prisoners died AFTER the camp was liberated, in spite of the excellent care given to them by American military doctors. There were 196 more deaths in June before the typhus epidemic was finally stopped by the use of DDT and the vaccination of all the prisoners.

The photo below shows the bodies of prisoners, who died AFTER the Dachau camp was liberated.

Bodies of prisoners who died after Dachau was liberated

Note that the bodies, in the photo above, still have clothing on them, which indicates that these prisoners had died AFTER the camp was liberated on April 29, 1945. Was the 16-year-old German boy thrown on this pile? If so, this would not have been as horrible as being thrown on the pile of naked bodies.

The photo below shows some American soldiers looking at the pile of bodies at Dachau. On the left, in the photo, is a small pile of bodies of the SS men who were killed by the Americans when the camp was surrendered.  The most appropriate place to toss a 16-year-old German boy would have been on the pile of SS bodies.

Pile of corpses of SS men killed in the Dachau massacre

How did it happen that this 16-year-old boy, from the town, went to the camp after it was liberated? Was he among the men from the town who were forced to bring bread to the camp for the prisoners? Or did he just wander over to the liberated camp to tell the American soldiers that the people in the town didn’t know anything about the camp? Of course the people in the  town knew about the camp.  Many of them worked in the factories inside the camp, and many of the prisoners went to the town to work in the factories located there.

Citizens in the town of Dachau were forced to bring bread to the camp

On April 28, 1945, the day before the Dachau camp was liberated, acting Commandant Martin Gottfried Weiss had opened up the well-stocked warehouses in the SS Training Camp, which was next door to the prison camp, and the next day, the food and other supplies were distributed to the inmates by the Americans. Starving Dachau residents had to fend for themselves, and were forced to provide food for the released prisoners as well.

This quote is from the news article by Dick Trail:

I was a young cadet in 1957 when we toured the preserved Dachau Death Camp. To the credit of the post-war German government, West German at the time, they had preserved the place as a reminder of a sordid Nazi past. The concrete chambers, “showers,” where the stripped naked inmates were herded in to be gassed to death were open for inspection. The ovens, cleaned of ashes, were on display. A [building] representative of the dormitories was preserved with many pictures to show how the poor emaciated men, women and children were held before being executed. It was a sobering sight for a young group of us American youth about to become commissioned officers. Deny the holocaust, Ha! I witnessed the horror of it with my own eyes in and through the repressed memories of my hero [Meryl Teel] who suffered the horror of experiencing the real thing.

One very important thing, that Dick Trail left out of his article, is that the Dachau camp was, at that time in 1957, a Displaced Persons camp for the ethnic Germans, who had been expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II. These people were forced to walk all the way, from what is now The Czech Republic, to Germany.

After the war, there was a severe shortage of housing, due to the extensive bombing of Germany by the Allies. There was no housing for these pathetic people, who were called “the expellees.” They were forced to live in the barracks of the Dachau camp for the next 17 years. They were the lucky ones; some of the expellees were forced to live as homeless beggars on the streets of Germany for years.

According to an article in the Wisconsin Daily Union newspaper, which you can read in full here, Holocaust survivor Walter Peltz “hated Volkswagens, because that’s the company that made the gas chambers.”

1966 Volkswagen Beetle

This quote is from the news article:

At the end of his life, 84-year-old Walter Peltz found himself back in the Holocaust, reliving the horror years of his incarceration in the concentration camps of Majdanek, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen and Dachau.

Note that Walter Peltz survived four camps, all of which had gas chambers, according to official Holocaust history.  The remains of the gas chambers at Majdanek, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen and Dachau can still be seen today.  Curiously, the design of the gas chambers in these four camps are all different.

The Volkswagen was the people’s car, an inexpensive car designed for the German volk.

This quote is also from the article about Walter Peltz, and his widow Arleen, who spoke to children in the Jefferson Middle School in Jefferson, Wisconsin recently:

Soldiers had to volunteer to be a member of Hitler’s SS, however, and it was those “death squads” that served as guards in most of the major concentration camps, Arleen [Peltz] said.

The widow noted that much later in his life, Walter served as a witness against two former SS officers who made it to Milwaukee under false pretenses, and the officers were then deported.

“I feel sorry for their children, I really do,” Arleen said.

But, she noted, “The men claimed that they were forced to do what they did, but nobody forced them to whip people to death. Nobody forced them to kill infants for fun. Nobody forced them to use swords on pregnant women to kill their babies.”

Wisconsin and Missouri have the largest number of German-Americans today.  What will this do to the self esteem of the German-American students who have to listen to stories of German soldiers stabbing pregnant woman with a sword in order to kill their babies.

I previously blogged about the pregnant women who had their babies in a sub-camp of Dachau, and were then brought to the main Dachau camp: http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/its-a-miracle-seven-babies-slipped-through-the-nazi-killing-machine-at-dachau/

This quote is from the news article:

[Walter Peltz] spent 18 months at Majdanek, working in the gas chambers and crematoriums. Then he was transferred to Auschwitz as part of a labor force to build railroad tracks. He broke all of his toes on that project serving as a “human mule,” as prisoners did all the tasks animals would usually do.

Arleen said she has been to the former [Majdanek] camp. It’s disconcerting to realize it’s right in the middle of the city and people had to have some idea what was happening there, she said.

“People who told me they didn’t know — I wish they’d said nothing at all,” she said of her visit in latter years.

It was at this camp Dr. Joseph Mengele, famed for his inhuman medical experiments, used to stand, pointing his thumb one direction or the other to indicate whether each new arrival would live or die, Arleen said.

Walter then was transferred via Oranienburg to Sachsenhausen, a labor camp, and then on to Dachau.

Note that Arlene, the widow of Walter Peltz, told the 8th graders in the Jefferson Middle School that Dr. Joseph Mengele was at Majdanek, pointing his thumb to indicate who would live and who would die. According to the news article, her late husband Walter Peltz was working in the gas chambers at Majdanek during this time.

“But Dachau was worse, much worse, [Walter] said. [Arlene] recalled him describing whippings for nothing and prisoners being tortured by being forced to remain still for long periods between electrified wires.”

So Dachau was worse than Majdanek, according to Walter Peltz.  What about the orders given by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the concentration camps, who warned the guards in the camps that they were not allowed to “lay violent hands on the prisoners”?  There were 128 guards in the camp prison at Dachau when the camp was liberated. They were being punished for mistreating the prisoners.

What effect will Arlene’s lies have on the young German-American  students in the Jefferson Middle School?  There should be a law against Holocaust survivors and the widows of Holocaust survivors telling obvious lies to young children in American schools.