Today is a celebration of the day of my Birth, but it has become more than that ever since Tovah ‘Tokele’ Olshak became a part of my commitment to that life, its values and The Holocaust. It is safe to assume I have stumbled upon a path which has led me relentlessly on, meeting trauma, horror, catastrophe and the intentional hatred which drove one man to assure History of an atrocity Humanity will never recover from. For me! It is a matter of conscience to state that when so many lives were taken and so many other’s could not muster the compelling demand to lift themselves from such apathetic indifference, I assured myself and other’s, I would not let go of this journey until I had to. It is a remarkable truth too that while we recognise the darkness in people, we can begin to see the light pouring from many who judge the wrong that is not belonging to all people, when it is rightly attributed and owned by just some.
“..would never have thought that ..man ..given very inadequate nourishment ..insufficiently clothed ..slept little ..lived in ..worst possible hygienic circumstances ..exposed to all conditions of ..weather ..would have thought it impossible ..he would go on living. ..powers of adaptation ..endurance ..so great ..body is capable of efforts ..held to be impossible in normal life. ..many broke down ..perished ..but ..miracle is ..there are still Survivors.” Elie A. Cohen.
It is in that degree of certainty that I always search fully knowing I will find, along the way, more answers that need those questions as yet to be asked. When I come across a figure, an assessment of the very detail of the atrocity, it is marked by a grave atrocity History has become aware of and it is recognised. That atrocity is then governed by the degree to which 1,000’s upon 1,000’s of Jewish Men, Women and Their Children were deliberately delivered to some killing space, be it a Death Camp or Killing Site and intentionally murdered. These 6,000,000 Jews of Europe too are the cause of my accusing words and the effort afforded a brutalised People so cruelly abandoned by us. So when it comes to researching the very degree and detail of a particular atrocity, it is important to know that within that degree of atrocity, we are discussing the mass Slaughter of Human Beings, simply because they were Jews.
“..When I stand before you ..to lead ..Prosecution of Adolf Eichmann ..I am not standing alone. With me are 6,000,000 accusers. ..they cannot rise ..and point an accusing finger. ..For their ashes are piled up on ..hills of Auschwitz and ..fields of Treblinka ..and are strewn in ..forests of Poland. Their graves are scattered throughout ..length and breadth of Europe. Their blood cries out ..but their voice is not heard. ..I will be their spokesman and in their name I will unfold ..awesome indictment.” Gideon Hausner.
With the assessment then made, it can often be brought to my attention that I have under estimated, though never under valued my effort, and recognise there is a figure far greater than the one I arrived at. When that occurs, I go in search of the higher number to ensure to posterity, we have not failed in combining those who rightly are attributable to the most unprecedented and unparalleled atrocity in all History. Personally, I do not believe that we have come to a conclusive assessment of the full assessment to be attributable to The Holocaust. I do not accept that while 6,000,000 Murdered Jews, who are The Holocaust, has been settled upon, it is not correct that this will be any final assessment. While The Wannsee Conference sought out 11,293,300 Jews of Europe for Annihilation, the Survival of 5,000,000 European Jews would suggest that we are still in a search while looking for those 6,293,300 Murdered Jews.
“..Despite ..recent outpouring of popular and scholarly books on Hitler ..no work has yet been produced that satisfactorily explains Hitler’s obsessive ideas about ..Jews ..readiness of ..German people to accept these ideas ..and Hitler’s ability to harness an enormous apparatus of men ..institutions ..facilities just in order to murder ..Jews. Hitler has proved to be an elusive and unrewarding subject for conventional biography because ..explanations for ..baffling mystique he exercised ..for ..power he came to wield ..and for his unspeakable accomplishments are not to be found in ..facts of a banal life ..but in ..ideas and feelings that created ..symbiosis between him and ..German people. Their mutuality and interdependence thrived ..as Hitler first expressed and later gratified ..Germans’ most arrogant and abominable ambitions. He relieved their deepest fears and anxieties and ..near ..end ..disburdened them both of guilt and responsibility for ..wickedness they had given him warrant to commit.” Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz.
For these past few weeks my search has been in the very detail of those French Convoi transporting French and other Nation’s Jews to the Death Camps. These French transports alone have thrown up such anomalies as would depress the search for the fullness of that truth we search for. Clearly, we must persevere with the search in the hope that more of the numbers we wish to avail of, will release more names of those Jews still missing from this catalogue of shame. Figures are all too often transcribed wrongly and can hide the full value of loss we seek to Remember. Parents have been known to shield their youngest about their person so as not to attract the attention of those seeking to isolate the numbers into impersonal statistical analysis. So even given the meticulous nature of the German adherence to exacting numbers, and here they are presented with what French officialdom complied to provide, we can be missing some of those included in a transport from the distorted matriculation that has been entered into by competing bureaucracies.
“..I have struggled hard to overcome ..hatred of those who cruelly destroyed my early life ..my family and almost succeeded in exterminating my people. ..I have come to realise ..there are no basically evil nations or racial groups. ..There are only evil people ..seekers after wealth or power.” Maja Abramowitch.
So on each and every occasion where there is a celebration of my own birth, there is also corresponding with that date an atrocity that will fundamentally fix us to that point in History we assign our research and responsibility toward. For me, this look back into History will forever belong to 6,000,000 Jewish People of Europe, be they Man, Woman or Their Child. It is important to always remember that alongside the fact that they were Human Beings, they were chosen because the were Jewish Human Beings who were murdered because they were Jews. For me, the accusation of many has often been made and it has been all too often centred on my choice to write. I have refuted so many times as to why I have chosen this well worn path from accusation of bias and even prejudice. I simply have no bias other than to ensure the truth delivers posthumously to 6,000,000 People what would not be given to them in life, and simply because they were Jews.
“..Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task. And I also learned that if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law ..same cruel mentality that made ..Holocaust possible might one day destroy ..entire human race.” Benjamin B. Ferencz.
That is also true of any attempt to confuse objectivity with a prejudice toward 6,000,000 Jews which is both ludicrous and wrong. Agreed, I have set out to write about 6,000,000 Murdered Jews, simply because of the enormous wrong this signifies for us all. My appreciation of the inherent and factual truth of all that happened is part of an integrity History must not be denied. Where truth resides, it becomes a distortion if we do not adopt its fullest detail as accurately as possible. So of course there is a slight connection to my past upbringing as a catholic, which ensured a moral and ethical grounding that would see purely the inherent wrong in the murder of a People based on anything, let alone Race of Creed. I have pursued this Holocaust course now for more than x20 years and I hope I have never deviated from that fundamental principle which defines what was wrong and what is wrong from any speculation over what is both eroding of that truth, if not strictly adhered to and illegitimate if not correct.
Wednesday June 10th. 1936 “..next generation will not belong to ..Party ..but I shall no longer be here to see ..reversal.” Victor Klemperer.
I have heard it said of Victor that he somehow emerged from the endless darkness of Hitlerite slavery into a post apocalyptic Germany fearing that outlook. Here, upon resurrecting some correlation between past and present, and where he managed to survive with his Wife Eva, we read that attempt to make sense in his Survival in diary form. He trained his sights not into some fashioned resemblance to mythic lands of fairies and ghosts, but at a landscape that was devoid of such reasoning as had devoured 6,000,000’s of his People. The truth was so much more tragic and bleaker than that sought after escape, as his soul fought to redefine what remained of his own humanity. Here, recovering into the vista of a bombed out, levelled and destroyed Dresden, which marginally saved him from his own destruction, he sought to live his life renewed. While his own nearness to death, both at Allied hands which could rein down upon him and more tangibly at Hitler’s behest, Victor still delivers for us a bibliographic landscape of words.
“..Government and with it ..great majority of ..German people ..are very conscious of ..appalling suffering brought to ..Jews in Germany and ..occupied territories. ..German people in their overwhelming majority ..disgusted by ..crimes perpetrated against ..Jews. ..in ..name of ..German people appalling crimes were committed ..that demand from us moral and material reparation ..not only as far as damages to ..individual ..but ..with regard to Jewish property.” Konrad Adenauer.
In a diary form, which was punishable by death for a Jew under Hitler’s yoke, Victor bears witness to the bitter end. We who share a gratitude in the words we select to ensure that his gift is forwarded on, do so with appreciation. At this time, and while Hitler is still in the ascendency, it is people like Victor Klemperer who view the pervasive scene of growing and mounting fear amongst the Germans and the German Jewish People in particular. While it is true at this time that the Germans have embraced fully the promises Hitler is keen to make, not everyone sees this in technicolour. Victor, though he converted to the Christian faith, was always considered as a Jew and thus, un-German. However, Victor’s own antecedent descent had ensured he fitted the Hitler agenda, which saw him in Germany not as a German but should be treated accordingly as a Jew. Victor witnessed first hand what for Jewry in the Reich amounted to, and the troubling status they were being denied, deprived of and then destroyed by. Germany would eventually grow afterwards to endorse that their own wrongs were done and make restitution in part for what was staged in its name.
Friday June 10th. 1938 “..Zurich ..Switzerland ..sanity ..civilisation.” William L. Shirer.
Another diarist, William L. Shirer, gifts to the world his first hand evidence, in his Berlin Diary, of a journey through the rise to power of Hitler. We observe the growth of Nazi Germany and the infinite threat Hitler brings to the World stage. As War again certainly looms, Hitler is the orchestrater of all that is being proposed to the World. There is one telling point in Shirer’s assessment alone, which deals a withering blow to Polish morals of the time. All told, and while there is a burgeoning apathy that is spreading throughout Europe, Poland is prepared to deal in the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. While this precipitates a failing moral correctness, Poland has not even begun to recognise that Poland itself is in Hitler’s direct line of fire. As a correspondent for CBS, Shirer opens a door to an edifice which sees German’s in Germany slipping from the civilised mantle it had once occupied. Ahead of them they plunge into an abyss of atrocity and hate with the annihilation of 6,000,000 of the Jewish People, who are the very reason we have The Holocaust term.
“..Auschwitz may be 100’s of kilometres from Hungary but it is part of Hungarian history. ..This Death Camp was ..scene of ..inhumane suffering ..humiliation and death of nearly 500,000 of our compatriots.” Janos Ader.
Amongst the many assessments to emerge from the period is also the catalogue of grief and suffering that has become witness to the 50/70 million dead of World War II. From the vantage point of Berlin and Zurich, and though Auschwitz and the assault upon the integrity of Hungarian Jewry is in the future, there is the brutal rise of Hitler’s Reich which truly assured us of that premise of the annihilation of the Jewish People would be reached. Where Jewish existence is to be crushed and World indifference toward that growing atrocity is to be exposed, Europe settled into a malaise of appeasing apathy and disregard. While Germany and the Nazi Germans motioned forward exacting what Hitler fully proposed for the Jews of Europe, we see Switzerland begin to renege upon its own duty to offer solace and sufferance, and not just to the Jewish People. All the while the Jews of Austria, Germany and then the wider European Continent were becoming refugees ahead of the destruction which then followed them toward destruction.
Monday June 10th. 1940 “..German Army closes in on Paris. ..dark for ..Allies.” William L. Shirer.
The very expression of another World War is an insanity that was so clearly evident and as the supposed German Teuton’s brought havoc to bear toward Jews, and all those other’s who opposed the will of der Fuhrer, such mayhem caused would be monumentally deadly. By now Poland had fully succumbed to satellite status, which Hitler had required for it and 3,000,000 Polish Jews were under direct threat of destruction. Almost immediately, and upon the unprovoked Invasion of Poland on September 1st. 1939, Hitler’s formative der Einsatzgruppe began its work dissolving the Jewish hold on existence. That precarious life status too was to be true of some 3 million non-Jewish Poles who would perish in work details so severe, replenishment from human stock was a relentless abuse. While it was recognised that Poland had consoled itself in abusing Czech lands, its own government resigned to exile what authority it had laced together.
Monday June 10th. 1940 “..Italy is in ..War. ..stabbed France in ..back at ..moment ..Germans are at ..gates of Paris ..and France appears ..down.” William L. Shirer.
In abandoning the Polish people to a device which Hitler fully exploited, any moral probity by a fleeing Polish administration was shelved upon the destruction, both intended and otherwise, of some 6 million Poles, 3,000,000 of those for being Poland’s Jews. Also, and as we are made fully aware of the very progress Hitler makes in his aggressor form, here from Shirer’s own entry as he has penned it into his Diary, we become aware that France is doomed. That very Monday June 10th. 1940, and by this time this has also now meant that both Denmark and Norway had been formerly defeated in another unprovoked aggression. As Hitler’s erstwhile ally, Mussolini’s Italy had declared war on both Britain and France, the stage was being set for a calamitous War that would become the vehicle by which the annihilation of the Jewish People would be sought. Impulsively, Mussolini was so quick so as to take full advantage of the swiftness of Hitler’s ‘blitzkrieg’ operations.
Tuesday June 10th. 1941 “..famous ..Igo Sym ..collaborated ..with ..Nazis ..executed recently. ..Nazis posted ..placards promising ..reward of 10,000 zlotys for ..delivery of ..traitors.” Mary Berg.
Europe was being trodden underfoot by jackboot and Italian loafer. That such alliances would devour the weak and the strong in equal measure, would judge unfavourably the route taken by those who strode the same path Hitler had urged them to take. This was to be a coldly calculated assessment written in terms so bloody, a word such as Genocide needed to be invented to harness its fullest implications. Then, from a diary of a different persuasion, we learn that Polish collaboration or collusion is equally met with a deadly response. Karol Juliusz ‘Igo’ Sym was a Polish actor who had collaborated with Hitler’s Nazi’s. After having served his Country in the Polish Army for 3 years after World War I, it is not easily explained why an obvious patriot might abandon his Nation to collude with an aggressor country?
“..Auschwitz ..world’s largest cemetery ..without a single grave. I held tight to 3 dreams. ..first living through ..nightmare ..surviving ..camp. ..second was to tell ..even though it ..cannot be explained. There was no reason whatsoever for what was done. ..I knew I had to tell ..to as many people as possible. ..third was that ..if I managed to accomplish ..first two ..I would do anything and everything to bring about ..establishment of State of Israel. ..I realised all three dreams.” Noah Klieger.
Sym was assassinated for assisting Hitler’s effort on March 7th. 1941 and this was right outside Mary Berg’s back door of Warsaw. What perhaps is unusual in the aspect of this diarist’s life, Miriam Wattenberg, better known as Mary Berg emerges from War torn Poland, a Survivor. She was a Polish Jew of Lodz who lived and then Survived in the Warsaw Ghetto. Clearly though, her status as the Child of Lena, an American Mother, is what afforded Mary what many will wrongly endorse as a privileged status. True, she was held aside from what she evidenced was the relentless tide of her fellow Jews being transported to Treblinka and destruction there, she was one lucky enough to have gained a chance against all the odds Hitler had placed before her. For 6 months in Pawiak jail this could not have been an easy comfort zone for anyone, let alone a 17 year old Jewish Child. With all that amounted to uncertainty for Polish Jewry, and while awaiting what might be the same fate of all of her fellow Jews, Mary marks her time with recalling words we still observe.
Wednesday June 10th. 1942 “..Kropotkin. ..reread his first reaction to ..prison cell in which he was to spend several years. ..that account can still teach us how to cope with ..measures by which our own freedom of movement is ..being restricted. to take what little space we are left with ..to fathom its possibilities and ..use them to ..full.” Etty Hillesum.
For more than 3 years also, Mary had witnessed what she would describe as a ‘Warsaw drowning in blood’ before being sent to a detention centre in France. I am not too sure if Etty was planning to utilise the anarchic lessons which Prince Peter Alexeievich Kropotkin enhanced in his workings though it is intriguing for me to be allowed to assess her words with hints of other’s influence. But while it is with an almost revealing sense of foreboding that she sought out such social philosophies, Etty harbours her own warmth and security in life and gifts us with certainty. However, Etty was always concerned with the inequality that life threw up for people and sought to equate those concerns in the words she used and I am keen to reread and relearn them. Meanwhile further East, Hitler’s Wehrmacht has commenced its hopeful offensive along the Don River Front as 13 Polish prisoners are shot while attempting to escape from Auschwitz.
Wednesday June 10th. 1942 “..Prague immediately after ..assassination attempt ..Heydrich ..always taken ..well known route. ..newspaper ..published ..names of ..many who had been put in front of ..firing squad with their families ..intellectuals ..professors ..doctors.” Victor Klemperer.
Also, and while a further 9 prisoner’s remain at large, we cannot begin to imagine what faces those escapees who are then caught and brought back for execution. In France the Seine Prefecture issues regulations for all Jews to be assigned to only the last carriages of the Paris Metro system. Though the tide was relentlessly moving toward a more totalitarian Europe with Hitler as its charge, and a subjugated Continent all too willing to give up its Jewish Citizens, assaults upon Hitler’s designs were being made. While Jewish existence was under duress immediately and then threatened with extinction as time went by, the open secret of what was being executed was being concealed. Though with many reservations and non-compliance’s from individuals and even Country’s, it is clear that with 1,000 Prague Jews who can be too readily murdered in the East, not enough was being done to prevent Hitler achieving his final resolve for the Jews of Europe.
“..I have mixed emotions because although ..Germans took everything from me ..my family and my home ..on ..other side of things they allowed me to survive ..war.” Marie Supikova.
There was no concerted effort or a will by any of the League of Nations to stem the growing awareness of what Hitler was achieving against the Jewish People. Elsewhere the Germans destroyed the Town of Lidice and this complete and utter destruction of Lidice was in retaliation for the assassination of SS Oberguppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich in Prague six days earlier. Accomplished by member’s of the Czech resistance, retaliation was swift and brutal. Hitler had previously ordered the deaths of some 30,000 Czech’s, and while the German’s rampaged through some 5,000 Villages and Towns, the number of arrests and Murder’s did not finally tally with Hitler’s expectation’s. The previous day, on June 9th. a large contingent of Heydrich’s SD personnel arrived in Lidice and by noon on June 10th., some 173 of the Men of the Town had been murdered and 200 Women were shipped to the Ravensbrueck Concentration Camp.
“..That there has been and is being considered in Hitler’s headquarters a plan to exterminate all Jews from Germany and German controlled areas in Europe after they have been concentrated in ..East. ..numbers involved is said to be between 3,500,000 and 4,000,000 and ..object to permanently settle ..Jewish Question in Europe.” Dr. Gerhart Riegner.
As more murder’s of those Jews who were saved the initial onslaught would follow in the coming days, Jewish sought to settle into some semblance of normality. Here though, with the Lidice Children removed to Lodz, their temporary reprieve was merely a delay and for their execution to take place in Chelmno along with those remaining Jews who had seen the steady progress toward destruction completely consume their entire World. For Lidice itself, which was effectively removed from the map, it is a monument now to a darker time in our human history. For some however, survival was still possible and those like Marie Supikova, puts much of this down to luck and her looks as a Blond haired Blue eyed Child. For many Children who could be stolen to order and made aryan and even German, many never regained their former identity. Meanwhile, the clean up operation was accomplished by a 30 strong contingent of Jewish forced labourer’s from Theresienstadt who had dug the graves to bury the Murdered.
Wednesday June 10th. 1942 “..noon ..circulars ..posted ..a special food allocation for working people. ..a positive effect on ..populace. ..all other topics ..cares receded. ..universal joy. ..supplemental ration ..2 kilograms ..potatoes ..50 grams ..margarine ..100 grams ..white sugar ..100 grams ..rye flakes ..100 grams ..coffee ..100 grams ..marmalade. ..ration costs 2 marks.” S. Cygielman.
As a Lodz council member, Cygielman adds a dimension to the food rationing concern that takes place in a community being starved toward extinction, and this is the Ghetto of Lodz. As it all becomes clear that the gradual erosion of Jewish existence is taking place, life makes challenges events and events become reason to cheer or at least gain a positive few moments relief from the deeply impacting despair. With the arrival of those Children from Lidice, though well treated and cared for by the Jewish community and its leadership, the food rationing would not have stretched far enough to overcome or even sustain them from the obvious starvation of the Lodz Children. For the Lodz Jews as a whole, even when it was fully certain that these Czech Children would be removed further toward liquidation, words were present which might just ameliorate the immediate anxieties they must have felt. Removed from Family, removed from Community and removed from everything recognisable, we clearly hope they were removed from the knowledge of their final journey.
Thursday June 10th. 1943 “..Have ..last Jews not in mixed marriages been deported. What will happen to us. If I go to ..night shift ..will I ever come back.” Victor Klemperer.
The whole of Europe resonated at times with the faintest echo which must surely have presented itself to all those in the darkest days as hope was held to tightly. On Thursday June 10th. 1943 20 prisoners are shot at Auschwitz and tragically this almost seems too routine when dealing with the spectre of the enormous catastrophe to confront us. As 1,000’s of Murdered Jews turned into 1,000,000’s of Murdered Jews, and as other’s faced the rigours of survival, how does one look at the figures of 20 prisoners being shot. It has always been written into the psyche of the overall atrophy of the Jewish People marching toward destruction, that what Eichmann asserts in that known fact which could present 1,000,000’s to become all too easily a statistical analysis, this must be guarded against. These 20 prisoner’s are people, as are the 6,000,000 Murdered Jewish People who are The Holocaust of individually presented Men, Women and Their Children. We must Remember them for they are Jewish People.
Saturday June 10th. 1944 “..advances in Normandy. Goebbels wrote ..he had greater fear of ..invasion not taking place than of its occurrence. ..Hitler ..day before landing ..most crushing defeat would be inflicted on it at ..decisive point. ..I am certain of German defeat ..certain ..since 1st. ..September 1939 ..but when.” Victor Klemperer.
Seemingly, even as the tide is increasingly turning against Hitler’s Reich, on Saturday June 10th. 1944 642 inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane, Men, Women and Children, were Murdered by a Waffen SS der Fuhrer regiment from 2nd. SS Panzer Division (Das Reich). This is merely 4 days after it must have occurred to many in the Reich that the writing was on the wall, that defeat was coming and that Hitler’s judgement would be closely scrutinised and condemned. At Oradour though, the Community was forced into the local Catholic Church and incendiary devices were placed around the building! This had nothing to do with Hitler’s Final Solution, but clearly, the SS had become immune to the humanity they had dispensed with for more than 5 years and more of War and for 10 year prior to this. The Church itself was set alight and those who sought to escape were machine gunned. In total, 190 Men, 247 Women and 205 of Their Children, all Innocent Civilians, were murdered.
“..Hungary has been occupied by German troops. ..still a million Jews living there ..they too are doomed.” Anne Frank.
Almost a universe away Hitler’s resolve to conclusively have his final solution was being met that same Saturday June 10th. 1944. In Hungary however, a deal which could not be done, was somehow concocted with Adolf Eichmann. This to release just 200 Jews from the Hungarian Ghetto of Kolozsvar (Cluj) as part of a blood for goods deal. Rapidly, as the haemorrhage of Hungarian Jewry was bleeding out in Auschwitz and Birkenau, huge numbers of Hungarian Jews were being continuously transported away from Hungary and were totally decimated in Birkenau in quick order. Having commenced the Hungarian detail of The Final Solution the previous month, the pace was extraordinarily swift. Deep within this massive rage against what was left of the remaining large pocket of European Jewry, a method of relief was approached. For to gain any sort of alleviation from the crescendo of these transports, one man, Rudolf (Reszo) Kasztner forged the Kasztner Transport. This accumulation of 1,300 Jews was to be headed eventually toward the Yishuv, Palestine through Switzerland.
“..Let me explain that even though I had been in Auschwitz I did not know about ..gas chambers. Can you imagine that. We thought ..when we were there ..that our parents and ..children were taken to camps which were much better. We assumed that they couldn’t live through ..camp we were in. It was not until a large contingent from Auschwitz came to Belsen that I had to give up that idea that they were safe. I met 2 women in their 30’s who spoke Hungarian and they asked if it was true that ..Hungarian transports were so severely selected people to ..camps and ..others to be gassed. I said ..What are you saying. ..And they looked at me as if I were foolish ..but they didn’t want to destroy my hope and so didn’t try to explain. I ran back to ..tent and collapsed. I think I cried for weeks. I finally realized that everybody was killed.” Maria Frank Abrams.
After much manipulation, 388 of these Cluj Ghetto Jews were brought toward Budapest and a much hoped for reprieve from immediate destruction. Eventually, this was to be gained for them. Meanwhile, the detail for some 16,000 Jews in the Kolozsvar Ghetto, as the gates of Birkenau awaited them, was certainly a bleak one. Destructively so as it emerged, as they were to be part of the over 425,000 Jews from Hungary Murdered in such a short space of time. The emphasis on speed and efficiency in this final round of mass murder could be highlighted by the re-emergence of Rudolf Hoess onto the Auschwitz stage. Separately, the remainder of the Kolozsvar Ghetto had been liquidated over the course of a x2 week period. From May 25th. the entire Ghetto Jewish Population had been removed to Birkenau on x6 transports averaging 2,600 Jews in each of the x20 carriage transports. This final Eichmann effort was an accomplishment of all that Hitler demanded and Hoess assisted in achieving. With these 388 Cluj Jews spared this horror, and this was such a small prize, it is a significant deal to have been done with Eichmann, known for exacting every detail of Hitler’s command, to the very letter, that 1,300 more Hungarian Jews were saved.
“..I revisited Auschwitz. ..Our transport was among ..last ones ..from Hungary July 8th. 1944 ..and due to ..unusual number of arrivals ..SS were forced to change their customary procedures. ..gas chambers ..crematoria could not accommodate everyone judged unfit for work ..so 100’s were piled along ..railroad tracks to be immolated. ..due to ..heartless haste ..clothed in rags ..marked with ..painted red cross ..hardly any food or water ..also due to this haste ..escaped tattooing.” Judith Magyar Isaacson.
As we leave the complete, utter and devastating destruction of these 6,000,000 Jewish People, who are The Holocaust in the immediate past, with the commencing on November 20th. 1945 of The Nuremberg War Crimes of The Major German War Criminals, there is a significant hope that Justice will deliver for these failed Jews of Europe. On Monday June 10th. 1946 Arthur Seyss-Inquart testifies at his Nuremberg Trial. It might have escaped many peoples attention but Seyss-Inquart had many titles, chief of which was head of Southern Poland’s Civil Administration, Deputy to the Governor General of Occupied Poland and Holland’s Reich Commissioner. He was indicted for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. Clearly, the defence of following order’s, which permeates the awful tragedy that is to deny 6,000,000 Murdered Jews any form of Justice, is reprehensible, tawdry a lie. But in the stakes in which so many Jewish lives were taken from us, another lie to conceal the emerging truth is a further nail in the coffin of humanity and its ineffective response to the Catastrophe for 6,000,000 Jewish Men, Women and Their Children.
“..of ..1,300,000 deported to ..Camp ..from amongst 20 nationalities ..these nations gave up their Jews also. Of that total ..some 400,000 were registered and kept as Slave Labour and 900,000 were immediately Gassed. While Jews constituted 85% of all those deported here ..they represented more than 90% of all those who were murdered. ..400,000 Slave Labourers were gradually degraded till they could persist no longer and added finally to ..total number of those Jews and others Gassed or otherwise Murdered. That stated ..we assess that of ..1,100,000 who were Murdered from all 1,300,000 deported to ..Camp ..some 900,000 Jews were Gassed immediately or otherwise murdered in ..camp. Of ..400,000 of those registered for Slave Labour ..200,000 died or were otherwise Murdered. These included some 100,000 Jews ..64,000 Poles ..21,000 Gypsies ..14,000 Russian POW’s and a further 10,000 other nationals.” Auschwitz State Museum.
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