“Germantsev Nyet, You’re free!”
Reprinted in its entirety from distributorcap NY:
Despite what seems like a losing battle, we continue to call out Rush Limbaugh, Sarah “Blood Libel” Palin, Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin and others like them for their words. Why? – because there was time not too long ago when the same kind of hate, fear, anger and intolerance currently preached by the above crowd ultimately led to a destruction that still remains hard to comprehend.
Thursday Jan. 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
After their defeats in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk in 1942-43, the great offensive machine of the dreaded Nazi Wehrmacht was forever halted. Hitler’s dream of a German victory over the much-hated Communists in the Soviet Union was crushed. Slowly the Red Army began an offensive against the Nazis, forcing the Germans to draw back towards Germany.
After Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the conquered lands between Germany and Russia were chosen to serve as the “home base” for the Nazi war against the Jews. Inside Poland, the Nazis under the direction of Hitler’s henchmen (led by Henrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich), built six major centers that would serve as “relocation camps” for the Jews being rounded up and deported from all over Europe. In reality, these six camps – Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, Chelmno, Belzec and Auschwitz were not transit stops to the east – they were factories of mass murder.
After 1943, the Red Army began to push westward toward Poland and Third Reich. As the Soviets advanced and the Germans retreated, the leadership in Berlin realized they had to eliminate (dismantle, blow-up or hide) any and all evidence of these death camps disguised as concentration camps – and they had to do it quickly. The Nazis quickly realized their implacable thirst for genocide made cover-up of these monstrous crimes nearly impossible.
The first camp reached by the Soviets was Majdanek on July 23, 1944. The rapidly advancing Red Army caught the SS guards at the camp by surprise. They set fire to the crematoria, but the Nazis had to flee the encroaching Soviets before they could destroy the gas chambers. A few weeks later the Soviets entered what remained of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka (an estimated 800,000 Jews were murdered at Treblinka, the second largest death camp). All three of those concentration camps were closed and dismantled in 1943. The fifth death camp reached by the Soviets was Chelmno on January 17, 1945. While the final killings at Chelmno occurred in July 1944, groups of Jewish prisoners arrived in the fall of 1944 to dispose of the evidence – by exhuming the buried corpses and cremating the remains before the Russians arrived.
The largest of the Nazi extermination camps was the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex outside of Krakow. From March 1942 until October 1944 the mass killing of Jews, Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners and other ‘undesirables’ went on relentlessly. After the final “selections for de-lousing” on October 30, Himmler ordered the camp to be obliterated before the Red Army reached the complex. The crematoria were removed in November. The gas chambers were destroyed in January 1945. On January 17, the SS ordered the prison guards to kill all the remaining prisoners – but as Nazi Germany was imploding from all sides, these orders never were carried out. The SS guards took 60,000 prisoners out of the camp and marched them to the Loslau camp, 40 miles away. Over 15,000 died or were shot on this infamous “death march.” According to Otto Frank (father of Anne Frank who was in Auschwitz that time), the prisoners were actually given a choice of whether to stay and take their chances with the Red Army or march.
On January 27, 1945, the Red Army rolled into Auschwitz and found 7,500 prisoners who were left behind, including 611 children. Also remaining in Auschwitz were the VIP prisoners – scientists and intellects. Otto Frank chose to stay and was liberated. What the Germans did not do was destroy all the evidence.
Russian poet, Yuri Ilinsky was a Red Army lieutenant in 1945 when his unit marched into Auschwitz. He wrote that none of his war experience could compare to the horror he witnessed the moment he walked into Auschwitz. Under the thin snow covering the grounds, Ilinsky saw stacks of twisted bodies piled outside the barracks. He then saw 2 and 3-year old emaciated children in rags standing behind the barbed wire.
The camps liberated by the Americans and British (e.g. Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen) permitted the former prisoners to remain in the camps as Displaced Persons, cared for by the Allied troops. The former inmates at Auschwitz – from 29 countries – were not so lucky (using the term lucky very loosely). They were now free, but they were on their own. As many began their treks home, they were mistreated and abused by people in the neighboring towns and villages. Italian author Primo Levi wrote about his harrowing journey and how he went from one prison to another kind of jail. Some of the remaining prisoners went further to state that the camp really wasn’t liberated by the Soviets, but “it was happened upon by the Red Army.”
In their haste to flee the approaching Soviets, the Nazis left abundance evidence of their crimes. The Soviets expected to find gas chambers as they had at Majdanek – but all they saw were the ruins of the infamous “showers.” The SS set fire to clothing warehouses, to camp records and many of the barracks. When the Red Army entered the camp, some of the buildings were still burning or smoldering. In the warehouses that were not destroyed – there were over 800,000 pieces of women’s clothing, 43,000 pairs of shoes and 14,000 pounds of human hair.
The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess initially evaded capture by the Allies, He ultimately was caught, tried at Nuremberg and hanged in April 1947.
How many people actually died at Auschwitz will never be known. Adolf Eichmann, in charge of deportations, put the number at 2.5 million. Hoess first stated the figure was 4 million, mostly Jews. During his trial he changed the total to 1.1 million Jews. He said “during my tenure at Auschwitz, millions of people died, whose exact number I cannot determine.” Franciszek Piper, Director of the Auschwitz Museum wrote in 1980:
Any number is just unimaginable. Just before his hanging, Hoess signed a statement admitting his shame for committing Crimes Against Humanity. Part of it reads:
Mr. Hoess, you are not forgiven, but you are remembered.
As for the aforementioned crowd, don’t think that this country is immune from further steps into the gutter and don’t think your hate speech doesn’t contribute to a climate of fear, anger, hate and intolerance. In 1932, the Germans thought they were the land of Goethe, Schiller and Beethoven, not Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich.
Despite what seems like a losing battle, we continue to call out Rush Limbaugh, Sarah “Blood Libel” Palin, Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin and others like them for their words. Why? – because there was time not too long ago when the same kind of hate, fear, anger and intolerance currently preached by the above crowd ultimately led to a destruction that still remains hard to comprehend.
Historical Perspective
After their defeats in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk in 1942-43, the great offensive machine of the dreaded Nazi Wehrmacht was forever halted. Hitler’s dream of a German victory over the much-hated Communists in the Soviet Union was crushed. Slowly the Red Army began an offensive against the Nazis, forcing the Germans to draw back towards Germany.
After Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the conquered lands between Germany and Russia were chosen to serve as the “home base” for the Nazi war against the Jews. Inside Poland, the Nazis under the direction of Hitler’s henchmen (led by Henrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich), built six major centers that would serve as “relocation camps” for the Jews being rounded up and deported from all over Europe. In reality, these six camps – Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, Chelmno, Belzec and Auschwitz were not transit stops to the east – they were factories of mass murder.
After 1943, the Red Army began to push westward toward Poland and Third Reich. As the Soviets advanced and the Germans retreated, the leadership in Berlin realized they had to eliminate (dismantle, blow-up or hide) any and all evidence of these death camps disguised as concentration camps – and they had to do it quickly. The Nazis quickly realized their implacable thirst for genocide made cover-up of these monstrous crimes nearly impossible.The first camp reached by the Soviets was Majdanek on July 23, 1944. The rapidly advancing Red Army caught the SS guards at the camp by surprise. They set fire to the crematoria, but the Nazis had to flee the encroaching Soviets before they could destroy the gas chambers. A few weeks later the Soviets entered what remained of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka (an estimated 800,000 Jews were murdered at Treblinka, the second largest death camp). All three of those concentration camps were closed and dismantled in 1943. The fifth death camp reached by the Soviets was Chelmno on January 17, 1945. While the final killings at Chelmno occurred in July 1944, groups of Jewish prisoners arrived in the fall of 1944 to dispose of the evidence – by exhuming the buried corpses and cremating the remains before the Russians arrived.
The largest of the Nazi extermination camps was the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex outside of Krakow. From March 1942 until October 1944 the mass killing of Jews, Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners and other ‘undesirables’ went on relentlessly. After the final “selections for de-lousing” on October 30, Himmler ordered the camp to be obliterated before the Red Army reached the complex. The crematoria were removed in November. The gas chambers were destroyed in January 1945. On January 17, the SS ordered the prison guards to kill all the remaining prisoners – but as Nazi Germany was imploding from all sides, these orders never were carried out. The SS guards took 60,000 prisoners out of the camp and marched them to the Loslau camp, 40 miles away. Over 15,000 died or were shot on this infamous “death march.” According to Otto Frank (father of Anne Frank who was in Auschwitz that time), the prisoners were actually given a choice of whether to stay and take their chances with the Red Army or march.
On January 27, 1945, the Red Army rolled into Auschwitz and found 7,500 prisoners who were left behind, including 611 children. Also remaining in Auschwitz were the VIP prisoners – scientists and intellects. Otto Frank chose to stay and was liberated. What the Germans did not do was destroy all the evidence.Russian poet, Yuri Ilinsky was a Red Army lieutenant in 1945 when his unit marched into Auschwitz. He wrote that none of his war experience could compare to the horror he witnessed the moment he walked into Auschwitz. Under the thin snow covering the grounds, Ilinsky saw stacks of twisted bodies piled outside the barracks. He then saw 2 and 3-year old emaciated children in rags standing behind the barbed wire.
The camps liberated by the Americans and British (e.g. Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen) permitted the former prisoners to remain in the camps as Displaced Persons, cared for by the Allied troops. The former inmates at Auschwitz – from 29 countries – were not so lucky (using the term lucky very loosely). They were now free, but they were on their own. As many began their treks home, they were mistreated and abused by people in the neighboring towns and villages. Italian author Primo Levi wrote about his harrowing journey and how he went from one prison to another kind of jail. Some of the remaining prisoners went further to state that the camp really wasn’t liberated by the Soviets, but “it was happened upon by the Red Army.”
In their haste to flee the approaching Soviets, the Nazis left abundance evidence of their crimes. The Soviets expected to find gas chambers as they had at Majdanek – but all they saw were the ruins of the infamous “showers.” The SS set fire to clothing warehouses, to camp records and many of the barracks. When the Red Army entered the camp, some of the buildings were still burning or smoldering. In the warehouses that were not destroyed – there were over 800,000 pieces of women’s clothing, 43,000 pairs of shoes and 14,000 pounds of human hair.The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess initially evaded capture by the Allies, He ultimately was caught, tried at Nuremberg and hanged in April 1947.
How many people actually died at Auschwitz will never be known. Adolf Eichmann, in charge of deportations, put the number at 2.5 million. Hoess first stated the figure was 4 million, mostly Jews. During his trial he changed the total to 1.1 million Jews. He said “during my tenure at Auschwitz, millions of people died, whose exact number I cannot determine.” Franciszek Piper, Director of the Auschwitz Museum wrote in 1980:
When the Soviet Army entered the camp on January 27, 1945, they did not find any German documents giving the number of victims or any that could be used for calculating the total. Such documents had been destroyed….
Any number is just unimaginable. Just before his hanging, Hoess signed a statement admitting his shame for committing Crimes Against Humanity. Part of it reads:
….For my responsibility, I am now paying with my life. Oh, that God would forgive me my deeds! People of Poland, I beg you to forgive me! Just now in the Polish prisons have I recognized what humanity really is…..
Mr. Hoess, you are not forgiven, but you are remembered.
As for the aforementioned crowd, don’t think that this country is immune from further steps into the gutter and don’t think your hate speech doesn’t contribute to a climate of fear, anger, hate and intolerance. In 1932, the Germans thought they were the land of Goethe, Schiller and Beethoven, not Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich.
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