This Holocaust Author's Auschwitz Blog

It is Tuesday September 26th. 2017 and for me, Chelmno awaits and it is weighing heavily. I have taken my leisurely 4 miles stroll to the Centralna train station and I will have walked my usual 8 miles by my return. Any walking in pursuit of Memory, which will involve today’s walk around Chelmno, cannot ever be counted. Also, and this might seem ironic to many, but my walk into Warsaw Centralna for my visit to the Death Camp throws up a strange anomaly. This will see me on a Train bound for Berlin. I can hardly believe it.

Admittedly, I will get off at Kutno to journey on toward Kolo and then to Chelmno. But this Train heads direct to Berlin, the heart of where Hitler’s plan to Destroy all of European Jewry was conceived of and largely conducted. Direct from Hitler, the plan to murder the ill and the infirm of Germany and Austria, had its genesis in Berlin too and then, so as to alleviate the symptoms of der Einsatzgruppe’s psychological well being, a more mechanised approach was conceived. Chelmno was the first Death Camp established by Hitler in German Occupied Poland.

As such, the terrible lessons to be learned would be experienced by Lodz Jews. Whatever else, a target was set for The Jewish People, a marker was agreed that 11,293,300 Jews, as adjudged by The Wannsee Conference, would be sought out and The Holocaust Slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews would be realised. Hitler moved no further than his desk to share details in voiced undertones of all he had planned. So here, on these platforms in the Centralna station, every Train has a significance.

Each destination has a meaning in our reach for comprehending the entirety of The Holocaust. Bydgoszcz, Cracow, Czestichowa, Katowice, Kielce, Kutno, Lodz, Lowicz-Glowny, Piotrkow-Trybalinski, Tychy and especially Warsaw, all flash up recalcitrant images of everything I have been steeped in for more than 20 years now. The shock I am feeling is quite palpable. There is a whirring sense that I am in the midst of a cauldron which was deadly for the Jewish People, and this was merely 70 to 80 years ago.

But for Warsaw, as I leave it slowly behind, this was the largest contained, brutalised and Destroyed Jewish Community in all of Europe. It pauses me to consider how many of The Holocaust’s Jews had merged with their Polish neighbours to board trains for far away places. Here, where a place like Treblinka beckoned, how we now wish the Jews could have gotten onto trains bound elsewhere. But with Treblinka, it functioned fully upon the transportation of Jews from Warsaw, and while other Jews had been expelled from other communities, Treblinka was Warsaw’s nemesis.

So while I speed in the opposite direction, and toward Kutno, my mind looks out upon a landscape drenched with the blood of Jewish lives. It is troubling, knowing Chelmno approaches, and I will once again stand on the very space, where the epitome of all hatreds was conducted. Chelmno, which still secretes to the mind the missing presence of more than 152,000 to 400,000 Jews, taken and transported from the Countryside this Train is travelling through.

I am troubled as we travel and as I see order, with life continuing without a flicker of recognition for what must have been so obvious during those times. If it is to be said then it is going to be a pleasure to walk amongst those I can feel close to. In some strange and uniquely personal way, these Murdered Jews have given me cause to accuse, reflect and look far more deeper into humanity’s gravest wrongs, for an answer.

I will not measure such reverence in other that the consumption of concerns for the passing of Human Beings, and regardless of the Fact that their Jewish designation ensured their destruction, my concern is a purely human response to an awful atrocity. Today, I will have travelled some 388 more Miles and will have looked across open Countryside, purged of all Jewish presence. But, to reach this Death Camp on the Ner River, it is an accomplishment I have neared for 12 years.

Chelmno itself is a sterile ground transformed into a visitor center, a form of museum. It has nothing really to suggest that murders took place here. Hitler established this Death Camp on German Occupied Polish land and this too is a strange anomaly. Different from all other Death Camps, though in a similar way to Treblinka, in that Murder and interring were achieved in situ and removed elsewhere for interring. Chelmno’s Death Camp is x2 distinct sites and the Murders were largely achieved en-route from one site to the other.

The site of the killing is separated by a journey through hell for those Jews encased in Gassing Vans augmented purely for killing those who entered. I perhaps journey here the wrong way round, visiting the containment site first and then the transporting and loading area, as it was, secondly. But along that road from one place to another space, Jews were gassed and their lifeless bodies removed to where they awaited, no final resting space.

The feverish attempts to finally disinter and destroy the evidence of their detailed mass Murder would seek to dislodge from Memory the place were these Jews were laid to no rest. I have walked and walked. I have been from every corner of this containment centre and feel deeply that some force beckons which is intangible, yet still, it calls to those who seek the place where so many have failed to escape.

I am displeased with the loading area. Reconstructed and with no resemblance to what was the former place of such horror for the Jewish People, and others, brought there. My day is done. My head is done. I have nearly 200 miles to make a resolution with myself to add further to what needs to be said. I am weary. Tired. Not quite worn out and a walk back to my hotel, through night time Warsaw to confront the confusion. I am struck by the awe struck realisation of what humankind can accomplish against Humanity. I have Eugen Kogon’s The Theory and Practice of Hell to while away the coming hours, knowing full well, I have just visited a hellish place, and I have walked freely amongst lost but not Forgotten souls, and I manage to emerge.

It is Monday September 25th. and I have landed in Poland’s Capitol, Warsaw, or as I am hearing it, Varshava!! An injustice to linguists. My taxi takes me the 8 Miles to my Hotel, where the Logos stands alongside The Vistula River just across from their National Stadium. I am prepared, he says, for an avalanche of emotions. So many things sweep across me as I prepare to meet with the itinerary I had set before I set off. There is this deepening feeling that loss might just overtake me as I try once more, to make sense of the illogical theatre of Genocide Hitler brought to the ramparts of the x6 Death Camps he had established in German Occupied Poland.

The feeling of loss is, in itself, inexplicable as much as it is incomprehensible to any human being and I feel it, as wounding as any pain of grief. Grief, bound by humanity to add a memorial to a posterity we have been delivered, a sharply reminding stigma upon the very psyche of our humanity. Here, as I look back on the route from Warsawa Centralna Rail Station, I am guided by the missing Jewish presence which seems inextricably to draw me forward. Today I have travelled about 1,500 Miles. So I now submit to that feeling which suggests I am on the last leg of a journey, an odyssey of sorts which has accompanied me for so long. Or is this a pilgrimage and is that a correct term for what I must now accomplish.

Perhaps it is more honourable a visit I make because it is my choice to do so. What I consider correct however, is the truth and only the truth can truly inform History. I tread a fine line between what belongs to the Jewish World and what is owned by a Humanity which chose to abandon its responsibility to the Jewish People, who are The Holocaust. Sometimes, there are thoughts of a personal nature which transfer perfectly to how I feel, and it is deeply felt over a huge loss which should never have been delivered to History, let alone to 6,000,000 innocent Jewish People, all Men, Women and Their Children, for being Jews.

This World we occupy was thrown into a moral abyss along with 6,000,000 Jews, who were so immorally regarded, they were allowed to be destroyed without much protest or even the semblance of World concern. There are x6 very important reasons why Remembrance is centred in and around Poland. The establishment of Hitler’s Death Camps in German Occupied Poland has left a repository for memory in the most immense graveyard for the Jewish People ever devised. Thrown headlong into an abyss, and into which our own Humanity tumbled alongside these innocent Jews, the atrocity confronts us to this day.

What occurs to me in my search has been the shocking realisation that of these x6 Death Camps, there are x4 which remain almost forgotten when placed alongside Auschwitz/Birkenau, Treblinka or in fact, the Warsaw Ghetto. I realised this visiting Sobibor and more especially Belzec, where their status lay in out of the way community’s not readily as approachable as Auschwitz/Birkenau or Treblinka. For those of us seeking a time and place in time, they will be more easily forgotten if they are not reached. Wherever the Jews were slain, there is a need to approach these places with the same intensity of shock and horror, which not be reserved solely for the more infamous and known of the Death Camps.

Without any laudable concern forming over the negligible intervention we are witness to, and to this day, will we allow for these less visited Death Camps to simply fade from the landscape of The Holocaust. Then as we reach the reality of it all, that there was an imperative adopted by the few, who in order to save lives managed to save too few, what place can there be for sites of such depravity. We have secured for all posterity a precedent that was so depraved, the wrong lessons have been since learned, and all too often. I have learned from personal experience that the choices made can be wrong for the right reasons and can hurt, can cause pain and can ensure to make distance less fonder from what is known.

I had a feeling all 6,000,000 of these Jews, who are The Holocaust were joined together at the same time in this carnage and we have been left with a very difficult prospect of finding them in the detail that has been hidden from us. I was making plans to visit the Polin Museum and I wish I had just sat down and let the entire feeling for the Catastrophe, an experience I felt deeply, could it just wash over me and give me the answers I sought. I was time constrained by other official timetables and then again, one can have too much time to mull over pasts and as they confuse the present give a differing meaning to all of our futures. I guess ones soul lays exposed and thoughts impose their own agenda. You have to choose your direction for whatever reason, only for it to then smack you straight in the face.

You remember all you forgot to say or do! You give up everything you are and have Nothing left only to find it is not enough that time has taken everything with it!! I took a x4 hour walk around this City to take in a flavour of a Jewish Past which was not here anymore. I met a hint of a Jewish past in both Cracow and Lublin. It was not here in Warsaw. If you share x2 pictures to illustrate this, there is a plaque on a building, singularly pointing to when Jews once walked freely. What then struck me, the Umschlagplatz Memorial, so desolate and tucked away so out of sight as to be a forgotten reminder of what it is meant to add in memory for us. Also, and clearly the Polish People, and their government, have an awareness problem with the word ‘collaboration’.

They do not see the word in isolation and that those who ‘collaborated’ are being accused of what they did. Yet there is this position where they choose to feel the term accuses all of Poland for what some Poles did, and to far too many of their Jewish neighbours. Of course many forms of collaboration existed without Poles dealing directly with German occupying forces. Informing on a Jewish neighbour was collaborating in their very destruction. But Jews too have to accept the Fact, while not all Poles were Bad, some clearly were. I have much to unravel in these thought processes, but the unfortunate aspect in this, given that Poland is for the Jews their Largest graveyard, and as such, Jews need to visit these Graves. This is more of an imperative than for Poles to have any need to alter their relative position toward accepting some responsibility for what was done by certain Poles in their own backyard.

There is a conflicting synergy between the two positions of Grief and a supposed refusal to accept the fuller responsibility. But there are places like the Polin Museum and the Marek Edelman Centre which just might afford some solution. I deal in those words which seek to add meaning to a dialogue and both these places are constituted in affording dialogue their welcoming space. Dialogue too is about listening and if the concerns around a term such as ‘collaboration’ is focused upon, in a negative way, it will seek to dismiss an integrity that speaks of all rights for all and the wrongs which run counter to them adapted by the few. I could catalogue an accumulation of corroborative evidence that places Poles at German doors giving away Jewish neighbours.

But that is not my remit yet it is the purpose in History to state the factual integrity in all matters and if they are True, they will benefit all of History. I guess I am approaching some form of vindication for doubting the evidence I have become a witness to in which everyone accepts the responsibility that has been assigned to them. I cannot seem to get my thoughts in order at the moment. They are running away with the prospect that tomorrow, Chelmno will crush the formed opinion I had already gained and that there will be a coming together of what was not resolved in solving a solution for Hitler’s radical view in delivering The Holocaust. But, I doubt there will be any change other than a shift of emphasis in knowing Jews need to find their lost People and Poland, holding the soil of that search somehow captive have an interest in only securing .

Chaim Zalmen Gradowski was born in Suwalki in 1910 and was only allowed to live as a part of a Jewish Sonderkommando at the Birkenau Death Camp. He was transported to Auschwitz from Kelbasin and was selected for this gruesome work in Birkenau. But his description of the events within the Death Camp commenced along the journey which took him, his Wife Sarah and their Family from Kelbasin to certain death. On December 5th. 1942, Chaim Zalmen Gradowski and his Wife Sarah, formerly Zlotoyabko, were assembled amongst the Jews of Lunna-Wola. Together with Jews from the environs around their Town they were assembled and directed toward Kelbasin for future transport to Auschwitz. A convoy, Transport 3 consisting of 20 freight train carriages awaited them, and all told some 2,500 Jews were sealed inside. The journey took about 3 days from Kelbasin to Auschwitz, and typically of these resettlement trains, both Food and Water ran out for so many of the enclosed Jews.

Hygiene levels were minimal and sanitation plummeted them toward a debilitation ahead of their eventual destruction. Remember too, that there were those Elderly and the Children who could not be considered able to manage the survival expected of those purportedly still in their prime. These Jews then, as was the case for many such transports, and it was probably reasoned well by these Jews to be resettled that their fate would not be as the Nazis had had them imagine. Of course, the uncertainty, the need for hope and the essential of their protective arm for the most vulnerable of their Community’s, suggested that the Germans could not be other than civilised. Rumour had of course suggested there were places like Treblinka and that they were indeed Death Camps. It is somewhat of an irony that the final journey for the majority of these 2,500 Jews took them past the Bialystok Ghetto and on toward the station at Malkinia.

Here, the junction which serviced all of Warsaw Jewry, merged the Jews from all over Europe toward Treblinka and into a catastrophe we recognise as The Holocaust. As Chaim and his Family journeyed forth he wrote of the travels toward a hope for labour and this account, along with the detail I will present to you was subsequently discovered, buried beside the Birkenau Krematoria that he had been forced to work in. On the morning of December 8th. 1942, the transport arrived for selection at the Auschwitz Birkenau Death Camp and of those who had managed to Survive, 231 Jewish Men were selected for the work kommando and more than 2,000 Jewish Women and Their Children were immediately Gassed and Destroyed. The following day, December 9th. 1942 the SS made a selection of those arrivals for the Sonderkommando of the Death Detail, of about 120 Jewish Kommando per Krematoria.

These, some 80 new arrivals were brought to replenish the ritually liquidated Sonderkommando who had outlived their usefulness. Amongst these selected from Transport 3 were:

1) Berl Becker, (Krema IV)

2) Moshe Chernyawski, (Krema II)

3) Yosef Derewianski, (Krema II)

4) Eliezer Eisenshmidt, (Krema IV)

5) Shneur-Zalman Friedman, (Krema II)

6) Kalman Furman, (Krema IV)

7) Yehoshua Furman, (Did not Survive the Selection process)

8) Tewel Gisser, (Krema IV)

9) David Goland, (Krema II)

10) Zalman Gradowski, (Krema II)

11) Aron Leibowicz, (Krema IV)

12) Nissel Lewin, (Krema IV)

13) Aizik Nowik, (Krema IV)

14) Chaim Rochkin, (Did not Survive the Selection process)

15) Zalman Rochkin, (Krema IV)

16) Abba Suchowlanski, (Krema IV) and

17) Eliezer Welbel. (Krema IV)

The process of annihilation was unrelenting and as the remnants of European Jewry came under increasing scrutiny, it was the last vestiges of any large Jewish Community, that of Hungary, which had so far persisted, drew closer attention. By the end of September 1944, with even Auschwitz and Birkenau being called upon to destroy its very evidence of the atrocity and disguise the corroborating facts that would piece together what had happened to the Jews of Europe as we surveyed the remnants of these Jewish Community’s. The Sonderkommando knew full well its own demise was at hand. As the Russian Armies drew ever closer, there was a call to arms, and an armed insurrection was contemplated.

With no outside aid, the Jews of the Death Camp would struggle to act with little more than knives, axes, clubs, a few hand guns, a limited supply of munitions, molotov cocktails and their bare hands. My narrative detail for this insurrection is for another piece but amongst those who forfeited their lives was Chaim Zalman Gradowski, a leader of that effort. As 1945 arrived, with the Russian forces within earshot, on January 18th. 5,000 Jewish Survivors were force marched out of Auschwitz leaving about 7,000 so severely debilitated they were considered an incumbrance to the success of a Death March! On January 27th. Auschwitz Birkenau was liberated by the forces of the Russian State and Memory of The Holocaust began to be built upon. Most of these Books I have listed here are coloured by the experiences of those who Survived a fate worse than the Death.

“..They showed an immense courage refusing to budge from ..spot. They set up a loud shout ..hurled themselves upon ..guards with hammers and axes ..wounded some of them ..rest they beat with what they could get at ..they pelted them with stones without further ado. It is easy to imagine what was ..upshot of this. Few moments had passed when a whole detachment of SS men drove in ..armed with machine guns and grenades. There were so many of them that each had two machine guns for one prisoner. Even such an army was mobilised against them.” Zalman Lewental.

But all of these works represent a part of an archive which expands upon Auschwitz’s ability for an atrocity which was unprecedented in all of History and remains unparalleled within our Humanity. This destructive force, which was meted out to more than 1,100,000 Jews and countless other’s, Gypsies, Poles, nationals of every border, and the religious of many a persuasion, who did not fit Hitler’s requirement for life were singled out. These Books then are merely a subjective selection from my own Library and deliver to the reader what I consider is to be gained as insightful in the research of the atrocity that is Auschwitz. While aiming toward a comprehension we can barely come to terms with, we continue to seek out any form of comprehension. For me, I constantly read of the ordeal of other’s in the hope that I can understand a little of the Jewish suffering. It is in that compelling need to wonder as to why it happened in the first place and why we allowed it to happen at all that my search is insatiable.

1) Adelsberger, Lucie Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story.

2) Czech, Danuta Auschwitz Chronicle.

3) Delbo, Charlotte Auschwitz and After.

4) Dwork, Deborah Auschwitz.

5) Friedrich, Otto The Auschwitz Kingdom.

6) Hart, Kitty I Am Alive.

7) Hart, Kitty Return to Auschwitz.

8) Jacob, Lili The Auschwitz Album.

9) Klarsfeld, Serge French Children and The Holocaust.

10) Kulka, Erich Escape from Auschwitz.

11) Kulka, Otto Dov Landscapes of Metropolis of Death.

12) Langbein, Hermann People in Auschwitz.

13) Lengyel, Olga Five Chimneys.

14) Levi, Primo If This Is a Man.

15) Levi, Primo The Truce.

16) Levi, Primo The Wrench.

17) Levi, Primo The Periodic Table.

18) Levi, Primo If Not Now, When?

19) Levi, Primo Moments of Reprieve.

20) Levi, Primo The Mirror Maker.

21) Millu, Liana Smoke Over Birkenau.

22) Muller, Filip Eyewitness Auschwitz.

23) Nieuwsman, Milton. J Surviving Auschwitz.

24) Nomberg-Prestyk, Sarah Auschwitz.

25) Nyiszli, Dr. Miklos Auschwitz.

26) Schloss, Eva After Auschwitz.

27) Steinbacher, Sybille Auschwitz.

28) Szmaglewska, Seweryna Smoke Over Birkenau.

29) Venetzia, Shlomo Inside the Gas Chambers.

30) Vrba, Rudolf I Escaped from Auschwitz.

31) Wetzler, Alfred Escape from Hell.

32) Wiesel, Elie Night.

33) Wiesel, Elie A Jew Today.

34) Wiesel, Elie All River’s Run to The Sea.

There are also those who have managed to leave to posterity what is placed before you and here in the words of non-Survivors like Zalman Lewental and Chaim Zalmen Gradowski, I present them to you. During this period of The Holocaust therefore, from November 1942 until his death on October 7th. 1944, Chaim Zalmen Gradowski managed to Survive and inform us of an atrocity so brutal, it slays the heart that is rendered by its detail. But here, Chaim Zalmen Gradowski’s message is an immensely terrifying account of the very atrocity he was ordered to perform. These are Chaim Zalmen Gradowski’s words, not extinguished by time but distinguished by the necessity to recall, to remember and for us not to allow it all to be forgotten.

“..In ..big hall ..in ..middle 12 pillars are supporting ..load of ..building ..now shines a bright electric light. Along ..walls ..around ..pillars ..benches with hooks for ..clothes of ..victims are ready for a long time. On ..first pillar a sign is nailed in several languages ..advising newcomers as they arrived to ..bathroom ..and that they should take off their clothes for disinfection. ..doors are open. Hell is yawning in front of ..victims. ..representatives of ..great power are lined up like for a military parade in ..anteroom leading to ..tomb. ..entire Political Section is now coming to ..party. High ranking officers ..of which we have never seen ..face in ..course of ..last 16 months. Among them ..a woman ..SS ..commandant of ..women’s camp. .. last woman crept with difficulty into ..bunker. ..door already slams ..is hermetically sealed and locked ..that not a stream of air can enter. They are pressed together there ..victims ..like in a barrel. ..In ..light of ..moon we see ..2 silhouettes. They put on their masks to pour ..deadly gas. They carry 2 metal boxes ..which will kill 1,000’s of victims buried there. ..they go an innocent step to each eye of ..underground bunker ..pour ..gas ..then cover ..opened eye with a heavy lid so that ..gas cannot find back. ..Through ..peephole in ..door of ..tomb ..they themselves ..authorities ..big mass of men fall down dead as a result of ..deadly gas. ..Trembling hands ..brothers turn ..knobs and raise 4 latches. 2 doors opened 2 huge tombs. ..Here protrudes a pan back ..head and legs buried under other bodies. Here you can see a hand ..a leg ..pointing in ..air ..whole body ..engulfed in ..deep sea nudity. You only see bits and pieces of human bodies to ..surface of this world of nudity. On this vast sea naked floating heads. They are raised to ..surface of these bare waves. What it looks like swimming in ..vast deep sea ..and only ..heads emerge from these deep abysses nudity. Heads ..brown ..blond ..brown ..stand alone this general nudity. One should harden his heart ..stifle sensitivity blunt all painful feeling. One must drive back ..agony pounding like a hurricane in all ..members. One must be transformed into a machine ..see nothing ..feel nothing ..know nothing. ..legs and arms began to work. There is a group of comrades ..each divided into his task. One pulls ..one rips ..corpses out of this tangle by force ..one here by one foot ..one there by ..hand ..as it is better suited. It seems they will dismember through being pulled in every direction. One drags ..corpse on ..floor of glazed and stained cement. ..3 men stand there to prepare ..body. One with a cold pincers ..it sinks into ..beautiful mouth in search of treasure ..a gold tooth ..and when he finds it ..he tears it with ..flesh. ..second with scissors ..he cuts curly hair ..strips women of their crown. ..third tears earrings ..often stained with blood. And rings that will not leave are pulled off with pliers. Now it can be delivered to ..elevator. 2 men throw bodies like logs on ..platform ..and when their number reaches 7 or 8 ..give a signal with a stick ..and ..elevator rises. Up there ..near ..elevator ..were 4 men. 2 on one side ..pulling ..body to ..reserve. And 2 others who pull them directly to ..furnaces. One lays out 2 on 2 before each oven mouth. Small children are stacked on a large pile on ..side ..they are added ..thrown on 2 adults. ..bodies are placed one on ..other on ..iron stretcher ..mouth of hell is opened ..and ..stretcher is pushed into ..furnace. ..fire of hell sticks his tongue out like ..seized ..body as a treasure. Hair catches fire first. ..skin swells bubbles ..which burst in a few seconds. ..arms and legs writhe ..veins and nerves are tense and moving limbs. ..body is already ablaze all around ..skin is cracked ..grease flowing ..and you hear ..sizzle of burning fire. You can see more body ..only infernal furnace fire that consumes something in it. ..belly bursts. Intestines and bowels gush ..and within minutes it is still a trace. ..head takes longer to burn. 2 little blue flames shimmering in ..orbits ..eyes that burn with very bottom brains and mouth still calcined language. ..whole process lasts 20 minutes ..a body ..a world was reduced to ashes. You remain transfixed ..watching. Here we ask for 2 more on .. stretcher. 2 people ..2 worlds ..who held their place in humanity ..who lived and existed ..acted and created. Who worked for ..world and for themselves ..laid a brick on ..big building ..woven wire for ..world and for ..future ..and in 20 minutes there will be no trace of them any more. Here are 2 others now put there ..they were made to freshen up. 2 young and beautiful women ..they had to be splendid. They had a place on earth ..occupying 2 whole worlds ..so much happiness and pleasure have provided ..world ..every smile was a comfort ..a delight every look ..every word a delight ..like a heavenly song ..and where arose ..they brought them joy and happiness. So many hearts loved ..and now here they are extended to both on this board with iron ..and soon will open ..jaws of hell ..and in a few minutes there will be no trace of them more. Here we extend to 3 now. A child pressed on ..mother’s womb. So much happiness ..so much joy experienced his Mother ..his Father ..birth of their child. They built a home ..woven future ..world was for them an idyll ..and in 20 minutes there will be no trace of them more. ..elevator goes up and down ..carrying countless victims. As a huge slaughterhouse stacks there heaps of corpses ..waiting their turn ..waiting to be removed. ..30 infernal mouths blaze now in 2 large buildings and engulf countless victims. It will not take long for these 5,000 persons ..5,000 worlds ..are devoured by ..flames. turn ..knobs and raise 4 latches ..to open ..2 doors ..of crematoria 2 and 3.” Chaim Zalmen Gradowski.

This hideous detail is all that Hitler ordained for the Jewish People and this is what those who followed Hitler without morality or ethical probity perpetrated in his name. Please, as you read and consume the obscenity that this piece presents to you, know that it is not the detail described by Chaim Zalmen Gradowski that is obscene. It is before the detail, for what Gradowski wishes you to know was what Hitler achieved, that detailed fact is what is obscene. This is the truth that in our time, a person such as Hitler was given the manoeuvrability in which to destroy in excess of 6,000,000 Jews of Europe. This depiction here is a rendition of only a part of that immense account but is of such an prodigious pain and obvious torture for Chaim, that he must have sensed the extreme detail would choke our emotion. Chaim assessed that he had measured our future accusation of those who ensured that Chaim had a deadly task to perform would not be as slight as it has been.

This horror of a depiction, a graphic obscenity is only a small part of The Final Solution of The Jewish Question, die Endlosung der Judenfrage which escalated the capacity for annihilation to 6,000,000 Murdered Jewish People of Europe. That these Jews were all Murdered Men and Women with Their Children is obscene enough. That it was ordered and carried out by those for whom Hitler commanded, and given the desire of so many to achieve all that Hitler so wished, is a rancid indictment of a grave wrong. Here, before you in words presented by a man of enormous bravery is the decapitation of God, the demise of religion in the face of an affront to any God who could stand as idly by as this World did!

Poland Must Not be Succoured into any Denial!

“..This was a particularly cruel crime. It was justified by nothing. ..victims were helpless and defenceless. For this crime ..we should beg ..souls of ..dead and their families for forgiveness. This is why today ..as a citizen and as president of ..Republic of Poland ..I apologise.” President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

The President of the Polish Republic apologises for what was committed during Hitler’s onslaught against the Jewish People. In fact, when Polish community’s sought their own rage against the Jewish People in places like Jedwabne, Kielce and Sokoly and Murdered their former neighbours, the Nazi presence had gone in many instances, replaced by a millennia of old hatred’s. In some of these Community’s identified here, the Murdered Jews had already Survived what Hitler had resolved for them and returned to their former homes in the hpe of healing their bitter wounds. In Jedwabne for instance, where more than 340 Jews of the Town were driven into a barn and burned alive, the blame had fallen upon the Nazi’s for years. While it is true that the main protagonist’s were compiled of local people, their instigators were German. So those who immersed themselves in this particular atrocity were not exclusively German or even Nazi.

In viewing the landscape of The Holocaust, there can be no discolouration of the very truth which has painted it. As there can be no History which is not truthful, any form of distortion cannot be allowed to prevail. There is erected in Jedwabne now, a newly erected Monument which seeks to memorialise those who were Murdered and to remember what occurred here and to express a regret for what happened.

“..In memory of ..Jews of Jedwabne and surrounding areas ..men ..women ..children, fellow dwellers of this land ..murdered and burned alive at this site on 10 July 1941.”

Throughout The Holocaust realm, as we move from such sites and we visit not just places and community’s where atrocities were piled high upon the Jews who once resided there, but we have a system of Camps that Hitler had built to ensure atrocity was piled ever higher upon atrocity. As we know for certain that there were numerous Camps dotted around all Poland, in which all manner of assistance was delivered by many Poles, History expects a regret as to what local Poles also achieved. All copoperation, which finally led toward Hitler’s final resolve to Murder all the Jews of Europe, was not exempting of an atrocity attributed to local Polish citizenry. Specifically though, and in these particularly Camps designated as Death Camps, and there were only 6 such locations in the whole of Hitler’s Reich, these were placed firmly in Poland and have become entrenched in the psyche of both the Jewish and Polish Peoples.

It must be a considered fact here that a distinction must be made in which is a system which Hitler created and is delivered away from the immediate Reich was done for obvious reasons. Where these 6 Death Camps dealt exclusively in the destructive capacity to annihilate the Jews sent there, the Final Solutio which had put in place had its final resolve in Poland largely, and in many other nations also. But these 6 Death Camps were Hitler’s Death Camps. They were erected by organs of Hitler’s Reich for the eventual resolve of Hitler’s Final Solution. The shift of emphasis here, taking the Jewish People away from Reich territory was a deliberate attempt to not only contaminate the lands of Poland with the blood of Polish Jewry ostensibly, but with the combined weight of all of European Jewry finally being resettled, evacuated to be confined there.

The is no such thing as a Polish Death Camp so the term, Polish ‘death camps’ has to be seen as an attempt by apologist’s for Hitler’s blood letting. The effort to clearly shift the intention away from Hitler, who actually sought to fully effect the spoiling of Polish lands with the blood of the European Jews, has been the right of the Polish Government to respond to. For this contamination of The Holocaust intention cannot allow for anything other than the affirmation of Hitler’s guilt. Clearly, in both Auschwitz and Majdanek, while some of these Jewish People were afforded a temporary reprieve and given forced labour until they could work no longer, the term of Death Camp still speaks specifically of Hitler’s final intention. At Auschwitz, those who were transferred to nearby Birkenau had reached the end of the line and the final moments of their existence was treated both methodically and mechanically. Those remaining behind within auschwitz were left to face a debilitating existence which would severely limit their ability to survive.

But the clear intention always was to create an uncertainty related to Hitler’s so cruelly chosen place for Poland in being the Jewish Cemetery of the World. That is what is at stake and it is necessary to confront that clearest of intentions here. Once the term of Polish ‘death camps’ had been constructed however, and it must be recognised that it is an illegitimate attempt to shift the emphasis of Hitler’s clear policy of Final Solution, the term must be stricken from the conscious assurance given to the veracity of all Holocaust literature, statements and intentions. The attempt to move any and all accusation away from Hitler, Germany and those Nazi’s who were obsessed and predicated on delivering for Hitler all that he demanded of them, must be returned to its rightful owner, the originator of The Final Solution, Hitler. Of course the term of Polish ‘death camp’ itself has vented its way into The Holocaust description incorrectly and needs to be replaced by a more tangible meaning! We can never allow for the deliberately orchestrated attempt to negate the fundamental strivance by Hitler to destroy all of European Jewry, and mainly within Poland.

As the term lends itself as such incorrectly to what Auschwitz and Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka must insist, we take back its fullest meaning in the context of Hitler’s intention. And that is a simple fact that while these Camps were indeed on Polish soil, they were the initial construct of Hitler, his invasive and murderous regime. Previously, I have clearly been at fault in this, but never in asserting other than these Death Camps were Hitler owned. The distinction has been so obviously made, that in the level of mechanised and systematic destruction of the Jewish People, for which these Death Camps were raised in Poland, they are of an entirely Hitlerian construct. While the Polish Government has every right to be affronted by anyone who might insist that, with other than their geographical placement, The Death Camps are in Poland, and there were x6 of these, they were other than an organ of Hitler’s criminal Reich. That fundamentally means that these Death Camps had their genesis with Hitler and none other than Hitler.

That they were manufactured under Hitler’s approval, and as they were conducted for the mass Slaughter of Human Beings, because they were Jewish, they were clearly ordained by Hitler. This is not to say either that Jews alone were Murdered within these Camps and Death Camps, or indeed were alone in being assailed by Hitler’s legions. As Hitler and his Wehrmacht, SS, Gestapo, Waffen SS, der Einsatzgruppe and all other arms of Hitler’s Reich traversed the length and breadth of Europe, any presence of Jews was quarterised from their local community’s and other’s for whom Hitler might have the slightest annoyance. The Jews of Europe were then force fed toward Poland and their eventual decapitation from the body of existence was made final. Here, evidence of that Fact has been reduced to an irreducible truth, Hitler is the cause, the motivating force and with the conclusive hatred that led 6,000,000 Jews toward destruction. Within that capacity to Slaughter human beings without human concern, it is understood that:

“..While not all ..victims of ..Nazi’s were Jews ..all Jews were victims.” Elie Wiesel.

When that is all said and done, History cannot then ever deny that it was for Hitler a priority to destroy the antecedence of all Jewish existence. That any Jewish presence from amongst the Jewish People might escape Hitler’s final goal is clearly out of the question. It is with the Jewish Faith which Hitler determined must be singularly sought out, and for all those who participated or proscribed any form of Judaism, they were all to be destroyed. That statement of fact too is proven, for as many converts who chose to move away from their Judaism were dragged back into the conflagration simply on the pretext and certainty of their Jewish descent.

“..As a child of ..Jewish people who ..by ..grace of God ..for ..past 11 years has also been a child of ..Catholic Church ..I dare to speak to ..Father of Christianity about that which oppresses 1,000,000’s of Germans. For weeks we have seen deeds perpetrated in Germany which mock any sense of justice and humanity ..not to mention love of neighbour. For years ..leaders of National Socialism have been preaching hatred of ..Jews. But ..responsibility must fall ..after all ..on those who brought them to this point and it also falls on those who keep silent in ..face of such happenings. Everything that happened and continues to happen on a daily basis originates with a government that calls itself ‘Christian.’ For weeks not only Jews but also 1,000’s of faithful Catholics in Germany ..and ..I believe ..all over ..world ..have been waiting and hoping for ..Church of Christ to raise its voice to put a stop to this abuse of Christ’s name.” Edith Stein,

As a some what lapsed Catholic I am all too aware that the Sainthood of a person is both reverential and special within the Catholic Church. But for me, it is incumbent upon those denoting saintliness and warranting the Sainthood of anyone, that the importance attributes to them is in stressing the reason of that ordaining position. For me, Edith Stein, while she was a remarkably reverent and theological Christian, her Murder at the hands of Hitler and his Reich was due to her status as a Jew. This was not her former status as a Jew, but that proclivity under Hitler which sought the fullest identification of a Jew as a Jew and which belonged to a Jew. This remained with the Jewish People until they had been fully destroyed by Hitler. Here, and what I have often found in the denial lobby is a very inarticulate distortion to claim what just is not so. Even when, in Edith’s case, the denier clearly sees her Jewish status first and foremost, they will deny or attribute her destruction to Hitler not to his antisemitic hatred.

Nor is it possible from this particular time span to future proof an atrocity because of the hatred for a Jewish People. In the case of The Holocaust, 6,000,000 Jews of Europe were destroyed and it appears to be a continuous issue for all manner of haters, antisemites and various other miscreants to look to present day Israel to seek a past justification. For all the wrongly inarticulate reasons and so that deniers can state the cause of extremist hatred within Palestinian for instance, they do so to justify their own antisemitism. Where the lands of the State of Israel and its People are to be fought over, an irreverence to the factual truth that these 6,000,000 Jews were Murdered is to be denied. Not withstanding this form of negation there is a link with anything that gives doubt to those who will seek any doubt to issue a blanket rebuttal of the entire truth. It is apparent to me, in the attempt by this present Polish Government to redirect historical attention away from the Polish collaboration in the midst of The Holocaust, more can be gained by the denier than the veracity of History has to gain.

What no one can refute is the truth and what no one debates is The Holocaust. That factual truth of the Slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews in The Holocaust is no more debatable than the very fact of our own existence. For the Polish position, which should clearly point to cases where Poles were instrumental in the identification of Jews for abuse, atrocity and their eventual destruction, the academic World cannot simply accept an attempt which might conspire to corrupt our past any further. The Polish position does warrant a response and as they have made the case in defence of their forebears, it should be stressed that 3,000,000 Polish Jews do not have this luxury. Nor do any of those Jews who were transported into Poland to be resettled by Hitler’s volition to face complete annihilation. Any attempt to then obliterate these Polish Jews and the Jews of Europe from all existence is all Hitler’s. The Polish position though is thus:

“..It wasn’t our mothers ..nor our fathers ..who are responsible for ..crimes of ..Holocaust ..which were committed by German and Nazi criminals on occupied Polish territory. Our responsibility is to defend ..truth and dignity of ..Polish State and ..Polish Nation ..as well as our Fathers ..our Mothers ..our Grandparents.” Polish Justice Minister Zbignew Ziobro

While it is most certainly true that many of the Parents of Poland, and even the Granparents of Poland were of the Jewish Faith, these were not offered the full and requisite protection of the Polish State. Nor, from all of those Poles within the Polish Nation of the time could the Jews count on either. Truth and dignity must be bestowed where Truth and Dignity belongs, and as with those Poles who assisted and aided, for those Poles who helped and hid those Jews they either knew or did not know, theirs was a matter of human conscience. It is fair to state, that while those proven Righteous before the World, those who have been proven culpable and complicit in the Crimes of The Holocaust must be clearly identified, even if they are Polish. However, I fully agree with the Polish position which sees rightly that within Hitler’s orchestrated assault and the subsequent Nazi occupation of Poland, it was Hitler who drove the frenzy of annihilation forward.

That said we cannot then deny the use made of Polish informants, Polish Police, Railroad workers and others who were instrumental in the containment and distribution of Polish Jewry toward these Killing Centres. While it is necessary to ensure that former Nazi’s are not allowed to deflect their substantial perpetration and participation in the annihilation of the Jews on Polish soil, it should not be considered that Poles had no part in the tragedy at all. While German knowledge of Polish Jewry had a reliance upon the well established antisemitic and inter relationship between Poles and Jews, and the somewhat intuitive recognition of Polish Jews, this effort was collaborative. That antisemitism within Poland had existed between Poles and Jews for millennia, it must be made clear that Poles identified Jews and Poles were certainly paid to do so. Poles have since plundered the possessions of the Jewish Slaughter and to this day they retain what ostensibly remains stolen.

Clearly, Poles hid Jews and understandably Poles who took an enormous risk in denying Hitler any assistance in claiming even more Jewish lives, are commendable. But the one position only adds as a counter weight to the atrocious enabling of Hitler’s murderer’s to achieve their end goal. What cannot be denied either is that some Polish priests led this charge toward Jewish destruction. A Polish ministry that was steeped in an antisemitism that is in contravention of the priesthood’s ethical, moral and Christian duty. In Christ’s name the Christian commandment is to ‘Love thy Neighbour as thy self’ and with this too many of these priests failed to do. The collaborative, antisemitic remonstrations are the scenes which are repeated the length and breadth of Hitler’s Final Solution in Poland, in so many sites, camps and Death Camps. The depiction’s of what has emanated from within Poland also share’s the concerted nature of that widespread atrocity that Hitler had sought.

It has to be commented upon, that whatever some Poles did in not assisting the Jews, there are many more Poles who are to be commended for doing so much to assist their Jewish neighbours. These Jewish neighbours were under direct threat and under the direst intimidation to their own lives and the lives of their Family’s. Of course, Poland was first to feel the effects of WWII as Hitler’s invading Armies crushed all Polish Resistance and within a matter of days. As the assault rang out on September 1st. 1939, for the Jews of Cities, Towns, Villages and Shtetl’s, they were now forced to live through those initial days, alarmed and even terrified. Sporadic attacks on Jewish community’s were widespread and on September 2nd. there were some 30 Jews of Piotrkow who were Murdered. But this was only the beginning as the plunder of Jewish existence was orchestrated on a massive and co-ordinated scale.

The following day, September 3rd. some 180 of Czestochowa’s Jews were murdered as were 17 of Wieruszow’s Jews, 4 of Lelow’s Jews and 3 of Zdunska Wola’s Jews. All murdered as a consequence of birth, antecedence and progeny. Meanwhile the tempo of the atrocity increased with such intensity that when Russia enjoined the conflict on September 17th., and as 20 of Laskarzew’s Jews are murdered, Jewish hope had all but dwindled and died. As Russia moves to occupy most of Eastern Poland, with this Hitler pact and without any formal declaration of War, Jewish life East of the divide settled into a bearable routine. Towns then enjoyed a relative quiet as the population gradually adjusted to Russian influences in this Eastern sector of Poland. It was a different story under Nazi control though as pogroms and assaults upon the integrity of the Jewish Community continued in the Western sector of Poland.

“..war with ..Soviet Union has ..created ..possibility of disposing of other territories for ..Final Solution. ..Fuhrer has decided ..Jews should be evacuated ..East. ..Madagascar ..no longer ..considered in connection with Final Solution.” Franz Rademacher. (Foreign Office Department Chief.)

All of this changed again when on June 22nd. 1941 Hitler turned against his erstwhile ally and Barbarossa was launched against Russia and the forces of Stalin. The move into Eastern Poland was rapid and what descended upon those Jewish Communities who had suffered fewer ill effects from the partition up to that point, it all now went toward the unimaginable cruelties that had been systematic for the Jewish People West of that divide. The impoverished Jews of Eastern Poland now became the decimated Jews of all of Poland. The dying Jews languished in certain knowledge that their time had been clearly fixed. There was an agenda of destruction that had now commenced, without subtlety and with a forceful direction. Immediately, an avalanche of anti Jewish assault fell upon all of these Jewish Community’s, whether Jews felt randomly or with a sense that some form of collective aggression had breached all civilised restraint, it stretched across all the Jews of Poland.

However, much of this newer assault was driven by the local Polish population who had taken over the administrative power from the fleeing Russian’s. These Eastern regions began their own torture and brutal repression of their now former Jewish neighbours in concert with an all consuming hatred. The story has been told and it has been well written and documented, but with such a systematic reign of violence against frightened, innocent and seemingly helpless Jewish People, the attacks became unrelenting. Entire Jewish Community’s in the entire Polish Country, more than 3,000,000 Jewish Men, Women and Their Children now fell under this catastrophic yoke of oppression. While it was fixed by Hitler’s influence, it fed through all too often to some in the Polish community who took refuge in this detailed assault to deliver their own injustices. The accusation of History does not stop at just a few local antisemitic, though ignorant Poles either.

Before Hitler’s move toward the programme for his Final Solution, almost any murder could be attributed to Polish excess. Even from amongst the local priest’s and the so called intelligentsia, pogroms unleashed had less of an unintelligent lead. Many Jews were ritually abused and were forced to shave off their beards and remove all identifying artefacts of their Jewish Faith. Those who barely clung onto life were forced to endure unspeakable torments, merciless torture, physical restraint and an immoral degradation of their basic humanitarian rights. Polish Council’s too took liberty to daily harangue and expropriate what was not theirs. Many Poles took stock of what Jewish Citizens would now forfeit to enrich their own existence. Until a time came when Hitler’s control loosened the slip knot and a stillness went before the newer storm that soon arrived, and with a vented fury, History still reels from The Holocaust.

What Hitler perpetrated here in Europe, though largely within Poland, has been fundamentally exposing the latent genocidal tendencies of human beings to excel where atrocity leads. With that in mind, Poland owes to its own History that certainty which composes a rightful telling of the truth. For the fact of its veracity, Poland needs to ensure History is correct. Poland has led the way forward for the Jews of the World to ensure memory of the catastrophe is never to be forgotten. In places like the Death Camps, Polish soil is run deep with the blood of innocents. While that fact remains, it is important that Poland seeks to identify the blood of those interred there and also, the attributing accusation for all of those who ensured the blood which saturated the Polish ground, was Jewish blood.

An Open Letter to Klara Polzl and Alois Schicklgruber.

The World would have been a better place without someone like Adolf Hitler having ever entered it. The World could have been saved from a terrible tragedy, a Catastrophe, an affront to all of humanity. These two people atop of the page could have foregone a union which would have saved somewhere in the region of 50 to 70 Million people. A chance to cheer? From the debilitating effects of war and death attributable to a debased human being, humanity has come to know the depths to which mankind can truly plunge. If only this suspended union could have been effected, what we would then have come to learn would have saved the World entire. For these two future parents, no doubt ignorant of what was to come, own a responsibility they had no warning of. The premise then, for us to ensure that the World does not have to attempt to comprehend what the Slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews in The Holocaust has come to mean, Hitler should not have been born.

Tragically, it was far too late once Hitler strode the world stage to attach any regret to what a Parent of his should or shouldn’t have done. From a 2,000 year old hatred so vile and vitriolic, Hitler brought that antisemitic hatred to new lows. It is Hitler’s final solution which engaged in antisemitism’s abhorrent nature. What then emerged under Hitler’s tutelage is an atrocity that has exposed the World to further Genocides. Ever since the certain product of Hitler’s Parental union, and once Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, the history of mankind has been degraded by this very debased human being. What Hitler delivered to the World, and much of his venom was the particularly inflicted atrocity upon the Jewish People that is The Holocaust sheds a shocking light upon human brutality.

A World War would well and truly have been prevented without Hitler being alive. Ever since his emergence, conflicts have raged in various guises which are now measured in Genocidal terms. Even when warfare continues to rage and newer genocides ravage the outposts of our society, and with gathering momentum, a finger is squarely pointed at the attributably bad lessons brought to us by Hitler and his regime. Today the detailed lessons of The Holocaust are to be learned and though this is what presents all of History with some falsely amicable settlement of what to say and what to do, The Holocaust cannot fail to outrage. So as to approach The Holocaust with feeling and understanding, we must respect the fact of the horror for the victims. This for me is what History should look like, attempting to comprehend what it is we need to know. What we need to know is how, in this age of Civilisation and Culture, could the World stand by and allow what happened to the Jews of Europe to occur?

There should be no litigating any of that remedy for which humanity seeks a resolution with this past. Where a common bond of decency should have prevailed, we have to face the facts that people behaved without conscience toward a beleaguered, debilitated and distraught Jewish community. Of course this astonishing reckoning is all before we came to know the evidence we are aware of now. That such a startled world would become witness to the most excessive destruction of a single people in all of history is a brutal reality enough. But back before the terror, there was no Court dictating to future Parents on how best to treat their Child. No life force could ensure that Hitler would still not emerge hate filled and reviled. Hitler was the author of his own hatred and he certainly was the orchestrator of that plunge which Germany – with the Germans – took.

It was an ignominious descent into which 6,000,000 Jews of Europe were pitched as part of a human deficit of 50 to 70 Million human beings. All of these human beings were dead, killed or murdered during World War II, and the rampant race creed of antisemitism was mixed with Hitler’s worldview to achieve such destruction. Of course children are resilient and they manage the extremes of emotional trauma, each in their own separate ways. The loss of a Mother at any age is no reason to lose the element of compassion and empathy which such a Mother’s bond brings to a home. True! Hitler lost his Mother at a tender age, merging into teen aged life without that certain rudder. That loss is never an excuse for the derailing of all of his moral and ethical probity. Such guidance has not been totally effaced by Hitler’s loss, and though many are encouraged to state that was so in Hitler’s case, we must realise that it was Hitler’s choice to leave all the guiding principles of humanity behind.

Not all children losing a Parent at this age turn their loss into an aberration, or a monstrous construct, or becomes a distortion in human form. That such trauma and dilemma proves the resilience of most children, even at the worst of times, all goes on to prove that children have to be pliable in order to combat the rigours of normal life. But will the World ever understand why Hitler took the route he seized upon when the proof of a Child’s resilience has been so well documented? Children grow and emerge so as to become the building blocks on which all of society is built. Each child has materialised and moved into a mainstream of certainty and unity. However, which route do we expect all children to take when faced with what is a deeply saddening tragedy. The loss of a parent is certainly a trauma and the loss of a Mother, more so.

The umbilical cord is never more severed than when a child loses its Mother. The psychological trauma, which some in history seek so as to abandon the norms of a common ascendance, is never more true than with regard to Hitler. It must not be ignored that Hitler shifted in favour of what must have been a conversion from rights to wrongs. This anomaly was at his own behest and the World around him emerged a darker space. Meanwhile, others have used their bereft emotion, from that same deeply traumatic event, to become better and more accomplished human beings. But Hitler took a deviant course which will forever have the German people and Germany to answer for what he called for. We are each responsible not only for what we say but for how those words are heard.

Indeed, how those words are ritually interpreted becomes a responsibility to check that we are not misconceived. Also, while no one has the right to ignore the iniquities which exist in this World, there are those who ignored Hitler’s hatred for the Jews and are somewhat culpable in what emerged as The Holocaust. We know all too well that Allied intelligence agencies had intercepted Hitler’s clear intentions, and not just for the Jewish People but for War also. It could not be possible that Hitler achieved his earlier goals, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and then sweeping any semblance of diplomacy aside to take Poland, and no bona fide intelligence was available? The enigma of ultra was working well into the emerging obscenity after Hitler swept into Russia. The German codes had been broken July 9th. 1941, less than 2 weeks after Operation Barbarossa barged across a 3,000 mile Russian front.

European Jewry was already under Hitler threat, now the Jewish fate took on a more precarious and catastrophic dimension. We are all obliged to speak out against any and all injustices, and indeed what happened to the Jewish People was both unjust, deadly and preventable. Perhaps though, the Jews have more of a right than anyone else to speak out about The Holocaust, and more so in light of what was known in advance of what was to come. So by the time Hitler had raged against the whole of World Jewry, the world of the Jews was already disappearing rapidly. Truly, and only an idealist would consider this as it appeared to me, that given the very extenuating experience of The Holocaust for the Jewish People, and then for the State of Israel, this catastrophe should have become a beacon of hope for us all.

We could each then shine a light on the evil deeds of Hitler and look to a better future guided by the vilified example of an atrocity we have no wish to repeat. Lessons learned, or so I thought, and we thereby would have our passage through a more tolerant understanding, illuminated by the concerns for a past we had neglected and which had allowed for this most brutal atrocity to occur. Enlightened as we should have become, we surely saw the intolerable lessons that these Jews of Europe had to endure. We would then begin to make all the necessary alterations to move us away from such a darkened period. That these Jews were deliberately driven toward an intended oblivion, this would garner for us all a genuine need to learn the positive lessons which tolerance will ensure? If we have not been provoked to act with charity and compassion toward those we share this planet with, what will it take for humanity to learn anything?

Clearly, as tolerant as we should have become, Wars should never have darkened our lives ever again. Ideally, and with a stinging rebuke unresolved by such an unprecedented and unparalleled atrocity as The Holocaust, we will all share more equally the space we inhabit. Can we now afford to be unresponsive to the requirements of our fellow human beings or ignore their moment of gravest need? Will the past ever forgive us if the present day lessons take us into a future marked by more atrocity and other extremes of intolerance? Latterly, Hitler has been caught in an ideological lie which led to a genocide on an unimaginable scale. He gifted himself with a larceny which ran rampant alongside this supposedly ideological program. The truth of Hitler however, remains one of a hate-filled individual imposing that exact same hatred upon a willing aggressor who adopted with blind fury, Hitler’s final resolve.

There were well worn paths toward enlightenment which were ritually abandoned. The very deep seated altruism of nations, which is no different in the Jewish Faith than it is for Catholics everywhere, failed all of humanity. The fact that kindness and charity are both termed in its total obligation to assist any human being in distress has apparently been lost to Hitler. That said, the same truth can be levelled at any and all Christians who failed in their moral duty to assist the Jewish People during The Holocaust. All assistance at any level must be administered if the fundamental belief system, adhering to Jesus’ teachings are to be adhered to. The Jews have every right to look to our Christ-based Faith system and question its relevance, especially when it ignores the core values of what Jesus was sent here to deliver for us all.

That is where Hitler got things squarely wrong. For more than 2,000 years antisemitism has labelled the Jews as Christ-killers when in fact, Jesus volunteered to do what God had demanded of Him! So we come to a conclusion which sites a parent who would have saved the World entire had they known what was to come. We then have the parent who sends his only Son to die to save us, for History to distort that and pressure the Jewish People with 2,000 years of antisemitism and a Hitler who developed that hatred into, The Holocaust.

Is it the truth that the Waffen SS units were utilised as a fire break and became cannon fodder as demanded by Wehrmacht Generals? There is no doubt that many fought with exemplary courage for the Fatherland, but became mired in atrocity, brutality and indeed The Holocaust. They were a so-called elite amongst the German military. With the inclusion of less-than supposed-strictly-aryan specimens, this then saw through the failed ideology Hitler had proposed. For the Muslim Brigades and Divisions, this is a contention which many who study the period of World War II are engaged in. I have no real interest in the relative status of these Divisions as fighting units. Some state the Waffen SS’s exemplary fighting nature prior to the inclusion of misfits, bandits and the Muslims, but they were an illegal body, cold hearted and ruthless.

The Waffen SS, as with their equally brutal Policing, Intelligence and Camp Guard ranks wore their humanity hidden beneath a specific uniform. These legions, their uniform ritually adorned with a skull, had a sinister acceptance that was selectively genocidal. I would state that with their immersion in all aspects of Hitler’s ideological hatred, they too mounted the plinth of an absurd dogma and acted in accordance with Hitler’s murderous wish. Without conscience and with little regard for the necessary compassion Humanity demands, they did their master’s bidding. Hitler unleashed his SS forces upon an unsuspecting world, in a military conflict that would be bound by no moral code or Convention. Here are but three of those Divisions and their role in an atrocity well recorded. The Waffen SS presence in the annals of The Holocaust is also well known. 3rd. Waffen SS trained at Majdanek. Their assistance of der Einsatzgruppe, at Babi Yar for instance has been well documented.

1st. SS Panzer Division (Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler)

On December 17th. 1944 members of a Kampfgruppe, of the 1st SS Panzer Division (Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler) Murdered 80 American Prisoners of War. Peiper’s Kampfgruppe did not restrict itself to this single Massacre. 73 Waffen SS personnel were held accountable. 43 received Death Sentences, which were later commuted, 22 gained Life Sentence tariffs and 8 were given lighter sentences. Also, units of the Division Murdered Mademoiselle Maujean in front of her 5 Children in Tavaux. They set her alight, locked the Children in the cellar and poured petrol down into it. The 9 year old put out the flames, saving the 4 other Children and himself.

2nd. SS Panzer Division (Das Reich)

On June 10th. 1944, the 642 inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane, Men, Women and their Children, were Murdered by a Waffen SS unit from 2nd. SS Panzer Division (Das Reich). The Oradour Community was forced into the local Church and incendiary devices were placed around the building! The Church 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 slaughtered.

3rd. SS Panzer Division (Totenkopf)

Theodor Eicke was the Dachau Kommandant before embarking upon his Waffen SS career. He became the Inspector of Concentration Camps. Rank and File members of the 3rd. SS Motorised Division were drawn from Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camps. Within nine months of operations in Russia Totenkopf was decimated to such a degree, 80% of its 17,200 force were casualties. On May 27th. 1940. the Le Paradis Massacre against British Prisoners of War was conducted by 14th Company, 3rd. SS Panzer Division (Totenkopf). British Forces were in retreat toward Dunkirk. Troops from the 2nd Battalion, of the Royal Norfolk Regiment were defending a farmhouse surrounded by the Waffen SS task force. Without ammunition, the British Troops surrendered. 97 British Prisoners of War were Machine Gunned against a wall. Murdered!

What drives a writer to write or do they even need a reason to write suggests I started young to consider consigning thoughts to words? The motive to put pen to paper, or touch the keys of a keyboard, to strike keys and see words come onto a computer is a mixture of demands and desires to state what may be obvious. Each demand is merely the method of applying that essential requirement to share words. My reasoning has been largely, a desired response to a terrible event in History, both unprecedented and unique, vying with the terrible and the horrible in equal measure. This is the atrocity of Hitler’s fluid yet fixed passage written into the terms that is The Holocaust. But how does one respond to such a catastrophic event? This fatal blow against all Jewish vibrancy as has ever been laid at the doorstep of our humanity, our civilisation or what humanises us, and all of this sorely accuses us.

But do we then approach this very awful place in our history knowing there is that reasoning which suggests there must be something worthy of writing? I cannot imagine anything less worthy to recall and remember and share a dismay at what was allowed to emerge. For these explicit reasons, none more so than the complete destruction of 6,000,000 Jewish People, I have it within me to vent my spleen and remark curtly upon a World which allowed this all to happen. Don’t even get me started on those ignorants who insist on attempting to rubbish the factual truth of what happened to these Jews of Europe. History has allowed the denial claim to gain a momentum, to form some sort of forum which predicated upon the right to free speech. But miscreants who choose to deny the truth and lay false claims before the veracity of honest historical relevance, have crossed a rubicon of deceit and hatred and as such relinquish all rights to state such an ignominious cause.

Such a subject as The Holocaust requires each of us to look deeper into our own reasoning to discover for ourselves why it is there are those who will deny the truth. The denier will obfuscate over the comprehending detail of what so few actually know and what we attempt to learn from. Of course, what we now know of, which 6,000,000 Jews of Europe know to their cost, and what so many of the Survivors have sought to impart, is a knowledge of what it is we have now come to learn. While it is true that I could have written another course or pathway for myself, I have gained an impassioned willingness to point toward remembrance in order to learn. I could have written about something less traumatic, but what is essential in the learning process is the lesson that needs to be learned for us all. Tolerance is a well-worn route occupied by many who seek to lay claim to the investment which humanity delivers for us all.

Religion has a fundamental flaw in its interpretation which allows for the dissemination of so many wrongs to further a failed ideal. Where religion in The Holocaust failed is in the essential requirement of Christianity to act with all moral probity toward a founding Faith of our forefathers’ Judaism. As luck would have it, I managed to stumble across a cause that arrived at my door in the frame of a photograph of a young Child. She was presented to me, as the image of a 4 year old Girl, who looked simply a 4 year old Girl sleeping. But no! She was not asleep. She was no ordinary Child. She was a murdered Jew! Tokele was the name of that 4 year old Jewish Girl and she, I imagine, is as she lay, prostrate before History, struck down for being of the Jewish Faith. Not that Tokele knew anything about Religion or the tenets of an antisemitic hatred which has emanated from Christianity for more than 2,000 years. What she met, as more than 1,000,000 other Jewish Children met within The Holocaust, was a rancid hatred inspired by Religious dogmas.

Not just that! The pronouncements by Religious leaders which became extracted in detail by those who used a twisted version of its doctrine and who sought to settle hate filled intolerances has a resonance even today. The rest, as they say, is the quest in which I am now steeped within The Holocaust History. This incident, let alone the fact that I was being given a share of an atrocity, required a response which I have applied to words, sentences and Books for the past 20 years. History now knows that Tokele was not alone amongst the Jewish Children of Europe to meet a violently similar fate. There are more than 1,000,000 such individuals from that expunged reservoir of 6,000,000 Jews who were also sought out for a systematic and unprecedented slaughter on the simple basis that they were Jews. For all too much of our History that exact same scene has been played out where intolerance has met with, and affronted, the Jewish People.

Our own belief system has not only plagiarised the Jewish Faith, it has roundly condemned Judaism for having been giving its very resonance and vitality from our God. Here in Ireland so much of the knowledge of Hitler’s great evil was denied to the general population on the basis of a wider support being denied to another allied power. That secretion of a necessary knowledge of grave offence was delivered simply because it was a British power which sought to confront Hitler on the European Continent. What then emerged within European Countryies comes as a shocking indictment of an awareness restricted to far too few. From the knowledge now gained, what had allowed for a greater evil than had ever been conceived of thrusts humanity back into a darker place. Such was the intolerance displayed, it was allowed to flourish and destroy, with intolerable impunity, 6,000,000 Human Beings because their antecedence had made them Jews.

The necessary will to confront such a despicable outrage was within the remit of all Irish politicians of the time. The Irish Government’s choice not to act was not our people’s resolve to not act as so many had chosen the good fight! However, there were consequences too for the many who sought out Hitler and his Nazi hatreds, upon their return to these shores. Their treatment has been a spoiled legacy for an altruistic people and not the damning response to an affront to even our own presence in the world. The pernicious nature of Hitler’s regime is also a rebuke to all that centres humanity in the midst of what should be both civilising and cultured. But there are other influences which infer we must stand with age old intolerances in order to benefit from it. What we allowed to happen in Ireland was a delivery of a perception which some see as acquiescent to a Hitlerite ideal that would have subverted all that Ireland and the Irish stood for. Such a stance, a seeming neutrality against an evil that would have destroyed the Ireland of the Irish along with 4,000 Irish Jews was as ludicrous of the time as it is perceived as criminal today.

For me as an Irishman to then write, and given that there is so much expression to be gained from focusing upon an Irish theme of belonging, ownership and for being ultimately excluded from the club is hardly negligible. For me to decline such an invitation to write about the Irish situation must conclude for itself that there is a greater resource in the loss to us all which 6,000,000 murdered Jews suggests. The immediate nature of loss I have used to gain a perspective, gains an objectivity which allows for that requirement to speak against an intolerable hatred which surely infects us all. I use a voice which denounces the many who stood back from the abyss as all too many of their fellow human beings were consigned to the ignominy of annihilation. It is hoped that mine is an utterance above the quiet which was met by 6,000,000 Jews pushed along the road toward extinction.

If I could at least intone a criticism of what allows for anyone to see in a 4 year old Child a reason to destroy, I can find a vehemence which will articulate above the unreasonable which saw 6,000,000 Jews murdered. These Jews should not have been so willfully abandoned without more of a retort from more of us. That these Jews were condemned to their fate speaks volumes for an indifference that proved palpable. Far too many like minded bigots, racists and hate-filled have made an alliance with the hackneyed idioms of Hitler’s regime which sees no wrong in murdering a 4 year old Tokele simply because she was a Jew. Not only that, there is this sustaining outcrop of their support for Hitler’s position all of which negates the sacrifice and death of all of those who stood resolutely against him during World War 2. For me, it is imperative that I write about what it is in racial hatred that so stirs some to excess and others toward apathy. It is evident that so many of the positive aspects to have been written about The Holocaust has not emerged from an Irish literary genius which the Irish can exemplify.

Irish literary work excels at a level commensurate with altruism and a World standing clearly acknowledged. Despite what some still might call the Irish position, with the nuance of Catholic and Protestant antagonisms, we are a better people for having integrated many into our society who do not belong to either faction. Our own Catholicism did not become vocal during the period of The Holocaust until it was expressed in terms of a condolence for Hitler’s death. Our society must not allow for any form of intolerance to gain a foothold above and beyond what tolerance allows for us all. My own effort has been to redress the imbalance this form of intolerance presents itself and in terms of how The Holocaust is perceived here, it should matter more than is perceptible. This world has much to redress with regards to how each nation sees The Holocaust and still manages to allow for the ritual abuse of the memory of 6,000,000 Jews contained within its atrocity.

With regard to any attempt which seeks to alter that Historical fact, what happened to these Jews must be acknowledged as a debt of burden to our own futures. It will be in the forceful nature of our positive condemnation of any who would insist in denying the truth of The Holocaust which will shelve our lethargic resolve to confront such a discriminatory hatred. In considering what has personally affected my life I lend an empathy for the too high a burden placed upon 6,000,000 Jewish lives who were totally extinguished. It is particularly true for me, and for memory as a whole, to not only honour those we seek to remember, but on account of the ferocity in the greatest tragedy to ever infect all of humanity, mine is an impassioned plea to recall, to remember and to never forget. If I had started my effort with The Irish Famine, I would be clearly recognising a state which is reflective on a world stage. We have the words and the eloquence of many who will stir the world invective in assailing all terms which might seek to justify the damnable mistreatment of any people.

All of which has presented the Irish psyche with an appreciation of the human condition, and which renders us generous, altruistic and warm. This state categorically garners a concern as to how a world should and must treat all of its people. Those people are no less worthy of life because they are Jews than Jews are more eligible for destruction than we are. Both disparate and uniquely linked as human beings the Irish have the ability to render to The Holocaust what humanity owes to those Jews interred within is confines. I am here writing about a position which could so easily belong to any nation, any peoples within any nations on the basis of their differences. As I have sought to confront those intolerances and the indifference this has led to in The Holocaust, this has been an excursion for me into a dark realm which sheds a light only obvious to those who wish to see in its vibrancy a discriminatory rejection of all Tolerance.

“..Today I will once more be a prophet. If ..international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging nations once more into a world war then ..result will not be ..bolshevization of ..earth and ..victory of Jewry ..but ..annihilation of ..Jewish race in Europe!” Adolf Hitler.

Clearly what Hitler demanded from The Wannsee Conference is entered here in its Protocol. While Goebbels enumerated the achievement, The Death Camps, Ghetto’s, Killing Sites and the Concentration Camps all fed to deliver to Hitler The Final Solution. That eventual resolve, which fully transferred the vocal expression of Hitler into the atrocity that is The Holocaust.

Always to Remember, Never to Forget.

Country: The Accounting:

A. Germany proper 131,800

immer daran denken, nie vergessen

Austria 43,700

Eastern territories 420,000

General Government 2,284,000

Pamietaj zawsze, nigdy nie zapomniec

Bialystok 400,000

Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia 74,200

Estonia Free of Jews

alati meeles pidada , et ei unusta kunagi

Latvia 3,500

Vienmer atcereties , nekad neaizmirst

Lithuania 34,000

visada atminkite, niekada nepamiršiu

Belgium 43,000

Denmark 5,600

altid huske at aldrig glemme

France / occupied territory 165,000

unoccupied territory 700,000

Toujours Rappelez-vous, ne jamais oublier

Greece 69,600

Netherlands 160,800

altijd onthouden om nooit te vergeten

Norway 1,300

altid huske at aldrig glemme

B. Bulgaria 48,000

England 330,000

Always to Remember, Never to Forget.

Finland 2,300

Aina muistaa Koskaan Unohda

Ireland 4,000

I gcónaí a Cuimhnigh , Ná a Nábac.

Italy including Sardinia 58,000

Sempre da ricordare , non dimenticare mai

Albania 200

Gjithmonë për të kujtuar Never Forget të

Croatia 40,000

Uvijek se sjetiti da ne zaboravim

Portugal 3,000

Sempre a recordar nunca esquecer

Romania including Bessarabia 342,000

Întotdeauna sã Aminti i-vã, nu uita niciodatã

Sweden 8,000

alltid att komma ihåg att aldrig glömma

Switzerland 18,000

Serbia 10,000

Slovakia 88,000

Spain 6,000

Recuerde siempre que nunca para olvidar

Turkey (European portion) 55,500

Her zaman Forget Asla Remember

Hungary 742,800

Mindig to Remember , soha elfelejteni

USSR 5,000,000

Ukraine 2,994,684

White Russia

excluding Bialystok 446,484

Total: 11,293,300

“..Not much will remain of ..Jews. ..Sixty percent ..will ..be liquidated. ..whole series of possibilities presents itself for us in wartime that would be denied us in peacetime.” Josef Goebbels.

What Josef Goebbels knew of the awakening atrocity is an accurate assessment of the available Jews of Europe for Slaughter. While that assessment is based around whatHitler knew and what Hitler was prepared to divulge to his inner circle is known only to those who were permitted that knowledge. What is not in doubt is the myriad of Survivor’s, Perpetrator’s, Witnesses, Bureaucrats, Administrative staff, curious on-lookers, all the culpably guilty who did nothing to prevent this from happening. Of the 6,000,000 Murdered Jews of The Holocaust it could all too easily be 6,775,980 or what Goebbels knew was the 60% of the total number of Jews to be Murdered which Hitler had demanded from Wannsee.

“..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.

Can the Polish Government Dictate The Holocaust Narrative?

I have met some of the finest People I would ever care to meet as I journeyed to and within Poland. I have seen the work ethic of the Polish People as I have lived among them in the Countries I have resided in. When I have witnessed the abject failure of their Government to support its People, it is a sad indictment of the Polish political system. I have formed an awareness also of the irresolute way in which the Church does little to regain support from its disenfranchised Young. So it comes as no surprise when I am confronted with a Polish Government statement which, as an Historian, I am amazed by. History cannot be detained by the restrictions of Governments who wish to shackle the past to an absurd decree which is designed in response to a phrase. The Holocaust historian cannot therefore become censured by any wish to ensure the past in History is to be contained.

What appears to somehow absolve those whose participation in that past is somewhat criminal, immoral or against humanity, is to distort history all together. Here is where I am at odds as a Holocaust historian because I too have mistakenly used the term for those very Death Camps which Hitler had established on Polish soil. I stand corrected by a Polish student who reminded me that I conveyed the impression that these were Polish Death Camps. I understand the contentious nature of what I have said and accept the fundamental flaw in my statement. But it only reflects upon my own inability to see that failure as merely an error in its conveyance. What I have always expressly intended, in whatever I have to state of relevance to The Holocaust, is always and with equivocation, it is to ensure that Hitler is mentioned as he strides at the forefront of all that transpired with regard to The Jewish People. Whether those Jews were Polish or otherwise or whenever the assault occurred and wherever it took place we see History clearly as:

“..first and foremost perpetrator was Adolf Hitler. ..without him it would have been inconceivable.” Raul Hilberg.

It cannot be right then that the Polish Government plans to legislate against any who wish to remember what The Holocaust represents to all of History. For even if any inference might imply that Poland bears a responsibility for the atrocities that were carried out by Hitler or his regime on the national soil of Poland, it will be said because it needs to be heard. This supposed ‘law’ then, laden with a criminal charge, would I am sure expose even those Poles who aided Jews, who were betrayed by their fellow Poles and who suffered the consequences from charging these collaborators with any accusation. As we know, that while not all the victims of Hitler’s hatred were Jews, all Jews were the prey of Hitler’s hatred. Can it truly be that Poland does actually plan to make it law that implying that Poland or the Polish people had anything to do with any of the crimes against any of the Jewish People or any of these Polish citizens likewise murdered?

Does that intended ‘law’ in fact include an indictment of those making the accusation who are people whose Family, Friends or even acquaintances were killed on Polish soil during this period? How does making it a crime resolve the issues of a History of the very destructive capacity and enterprise of Hitler and his minions who chose to parade their hatred, and not just in Poland, but anywhere and on any one’s soil? The rationale clearly escapes me. It is suggested that people could be imprisoned for up to five years for issuance of any truth which might be accusing? When we consider this in relation to the imprisonment of an SS at Belzec, Josef Oberhauser, who was charged as an:

“..Accessory to 300,000 cases and charged with 450,000 crimes of collective murder.”

his sentence was a mere 1 month imprisonment for the Slaughter of over 8,300 Jews, we see the Polish law as a cynical endeavour. Can this really be an accurate assessment of what justice in Poland will imply? More than any Nation, Poland suffered by far the worst in terms of those Murdered. For its proximity to Germany and for the wealth of its Jewish presence there, Hitler chose to enact the final resolve of The Final Solution within Poland. In Community after Community, no Jewish life exists. Where Jewish life does persist, this has been as a consequence of a loss of more than 90% of all Jews who had resided within Poland prior to 1939. After Hitler invaded Poland September 1st. 1939, this act of aggression was encountered by a sovereign nation clearly abandoned by Treaty and conscience. Within this nation, a Jewish People was beleaguered, wholly ransacked, isolated, driven to despair and the drive toward extinction was almost complete.

Is this what Poland wishes to protest or protect? For me therefore, it would be a terrible mistake for the Polish Government to attack or threaten to sue People for stating any facts about The Holocaust that were played out on Polish soil. Poland is indeed the graveyard of European Jewry within Europe. That does not mean that 3 Million Poles are not buried alongside so many of these Polish Jews or the Jews of Europe. But this does not mean that the six Death Camps were not established by Hitler not to achieve the most certain results for The Holocaust. Poland was situated where Hitler not only saw an antisemitic host, but the Country was both near and isolated enough to gain a secrecy for what he planned. As to what Hitler saw would suit his own antisemitism, does the Polish Government now not recognise what the example of Jedwabne, Kielce or Sokoly implies, infers and states?

I am equally concerned that Poland sees fit to sue those who would claim any Polish assistance of Hitler during The Holocaust. I am an Author on The Holocaust and have made those assertions in my own work. I would ask the Government of Poland to rethink this position. It is credible for writers to confront the issues that pertain to what happened in The Holocaust. What was allowed to happen in The Holocaust and indeed who allowed that to happen is to be tackled if it is to be understood.

Once more, I am thankful to that Polish Student who can remind us all that it is erroneous to state that there were Polish Death Camps. They were always Hitlerite Death Camps established by Hitler on Polish soil. That is without equivocation. I am obliged to state that and it is clear that the siting of All six Death Camps were Established by Hitler for his own ends but on Polish soil. I would never imply that Poland was anything other than a Victim of what Hitler intended for Her Jewish Citizens. That would be disingenuous and would not be of aid to those who wish to see The Holocaust as it is truthfully known and informed. Lest we forget also, what Hitler intended for the Jews of Poland that same fate would fall upon all Polish citizens once their labour had been exhausted. Maybe the Polish Government needs to take note that some of its own Citizens had an accusing voice for what transpired with relation to Polish Jewry.

“..There is a difference between ..German orchestrated systems of terror against ..Poles and ..Jews. ..Germans want to ruin ..Polish state as a state ..with regard ..Jews ..they want to devastate ..biological substance of ..Jewish nation. ..If ..Germans do not change their method of dealing with ..Jewish population ..if there is no effort at Allied intervention ..whether through reprisals or other action ..barring some unforeseen circumstance ..within a year and a half of ..time I left ..Homeland ..Jewish people of Poland will cease to exist.” Jan Karski.

Can we assume that Jan Karski also has an accusation that is levelled at the inactivity of his own Government in saving Jews. Would he be guilty of this newest crime? Also, and in the midst of The Holocaust, can we forget that the example set by Jedwabne, Kielce, Mordy, Piaski or Sokoly was both collaborative and deadly for Polish Jewry? I am merely stating these as a Fact. If I were to pen this to any form of written works, Poland could not then contaminate The Holocaust memory by denying the Fact of what these Perpetrations meant to Jews in Poland. If I were to ask the Polish Government to look to what a Polish Citizen stated he undertook, albeit demanded by the Nazis, this does not deny the basic fact that Belzec was built on behalf of Hitler, but built in part by a Pole, Stanislaw Kozak. Am I wrong or has the Polish Government forgotten that 3,000,000 Jews were its Citizens, Murdered alongside 3,000,000 Poles and all because Adolf Hitler knew he could do so and Hitler did what it was he had always intended!

“..After we had built ..three huts ..Germans dismissed us Poles from work on December 22nd. 1941.” Stanislaw Kozak.

Could this mean then that the Polish Government would make what Stanislaw Kozak stated an illegal act. To state that a worker of Poland was clearly involved, and we have no idea as to the manner of duress applied to Kozak, but he took part, assisted in the organisation of the construction at Belzec and was responsible for what then added to the crimes of Hitler’s Reich? Would such an act of implying illegality be made against any Polish Jewish Survivor, or even a non-Survivor who stated that they were affected abjectly by a Polish informer or a Polish collaborator? Do we ignore the evidence of Stefan Kirsz who delivered the Jews in transports all the way to destruction within Belzec? Does not Kirsz’s evidence imply a knowledge of the destruction that had been overlooked and even denied for years. Is his work as a train driver of those Death transports an accusation of his ability to assist the Germans or of his inability to deny the Germans what they demanded?

“..transports ..I drove from Rawa-Ruska to Belzec ..divided into three parts in Belzec ..each ..20 wagons ..rolled onto ..siding. ..emptied of Jews. 3 – 5 minutes ..20 wagons completely emptied of people ..luggage. ..corpses ..also taken out. ..ordered to place ..luggage on one side ..completely undress ..clothes laid on one side ..shoes on ..other ..then they went ..undressed ..pushed into ..gas chambers. ..able to see this ..pretended ..had to shovel coal nearer furnace door. ..Whenever I was in a locomotive near ..extermination camp ..tried to see something more.” Stefan Kirsz.

There are literally 1,000s of Books which will have some element of what the Polish Government sees fit to prosecute! There were Millions of Jews, Poles and other people from every corner of Europe who were brought toward the final conflagration within those six Death Camps and within Poland. These Jews from outside Poland were almost unaware of what lay ahead of them, though they knew full well that there existed Extermination Camps and they were in Poland. In any of these cases, will the Polish Government pursue all manner of civil action against the many Writers, far too many of whom are deceased now, but who might have ascertained a guess that resettlement East meant death and destruction within Poland. Will Poland demand to claim compensation from the narrative of a History that not only confronted the Jews of Poland within Poland, but for the Jews of Europe who gave their lives in being confronted by what awaited them in Poland? Outside the Walls of the Ghetto Bialystok, Cracow, Lodz, Lublin or Warsaw, do we ignore what was known by so many who could have alleviated even slightly the plight of those Jews incarcerated prior to their annihilation?

Are we to exonerate the guilty for fear of being subjected to a punishment for stating what is true, what is fact and for what became known to us? I am just back from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Majdanek and Sobibor. It is incumbent upon me to write of what I have come to know! I have used the good graces of Peter Draigh’s Publishing efforts to put my words to paper. I am thankful that the words I use to express my shame at what was allowed to happen to 6,000,000 Jews could so disconcert the sensibility of the Polish Government. My words have not always been received well but that is more the case for stating them than allowing for further hatred to frustrate their effect. Do not think that I see other than Hitler as solely responsible for The Holocaust, in all its manifesting moves. But while we see collaboration of Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and all too many others, we saw too that Jews were Murdered by some anti-Semitic Poles, abandoned by the will of a Catholic Poland and allowed by Hitler to see Poland, rightly or wrongly, as a pliable agent in his own desires for die Endlosung der Judenfrage!

“..Willingly or not we come to terms with power ..forgetting that we are all in ..ghetto. ..that ..ghetto is walled in. ..that outside ..ghetto reign ..lords of death ..and that close by ..train is waiting.” Primo Levi.

Firstly! I make no excuses for borrowing from those whose Survival has managed to inform, educate and even add a newer dimension of comprehension to a Catastrophe of monumental proportions. That monument to a failed ideology is the Catastrophe known to History as The Holocaust. That now represents what was Hitler’s world view and has been a part of setting a murderous precedence which has plagued the World ever since. Secondly! There is, in seeking any form of justice for what here was perpetrated, an unfortunate aspect to any form of retribution which manages to get even with all too many of those who are not guilty of the crimes we require this justice for. Even when the World is well aware of the full horrors to emerge from The Holocaust, justice was not served for 6,000,000 Murdered Jews of Europe.

“..Jews ..look. ..Look at ..fire. ..Look at ..flames. ..as ..train stopped ..this time we saw flames rising from a tall chimney into a black sky.” Elie Wiesel.

History will continually remind us however, of what happened in the Death Camps, Concentration Camps, Killing Sites, Cities, Towns, Shtetl’s and Ghetto’s, some pre-existing Hitler but all established by him to contain his prey until he could move relentlessly against them. The tempest which blew these Jewish People toward a significant conflagration, is a symbolic fire of immense hatred which then fully consumed them! That Hitler’s 8,000,000 Nazi ideologues remained, ostensibly unchallenged by the thematic resonance of any form of Justice, is a shocking detail in itself! But we must more closely explore that lack of judicial prudence, and with a not too exacting requirement to give the judicious term its full compliment! It is though perhaps, a lesson in all that we study, that we will learn even a little of why The Holocaust itself was allowed to happen.

“..when hatred and defamation quietly germinate ..we have to be alert ..on guard. ..legacy of ..victims of Auschwitz. ..dead were strong ..in their destruction they displayed a strength. ..Can ..living ..be any weaker?” Lucie Adelsberger.

For me, even if we never gain a full insight into why it was not prevented, we will learn more than we care to know it would appear. From those lucky enough and who Survived what was intended for them, and from those many who did not survive and have gifted what we have taken from the evidence’s they have left behind, it is mainly from those who did not Survive that we must learn the lesson’s of human tolerance. It is after all, that with an understanding and an appreciation for all those who might just differ from us that our humanity is borne. For those 6,000,000 Jews who reached the place of Destruction, it was there at journey’s end, where swift decisions had to be made. These conclusions had to be split second resolutions all the while gathering information at break neck speed. By sheer chance some managed to survive far longer than those whose misfortune it was that would send them, unwilling passenger’s all, left toward Destruction or right, only for a temporary stay of execution.

“..if ..world could become convinced ..Auschwitz never existed ..it would be easier to build ..second Auschwitz .. and ..no assurance it would devour only Jews”. Primo Levi.

Always remember, that deferment was always intended to be a temporary measure until those who had preceded them had been processed, dealt with and eliminated. As for those other’s, those who remained outside this realm of ruin, whose very journey caught a whiff of what met those selected Jews who would not survive, these sorry and weary traveller’s headed back on their journey’s end. They moved away from what was clearly not intended for other than the Jews. That this evolutionary resolve was so resolute in Hitler’s conviction is clear, and that it should be an exclusively Jewish fate! Make no mistake though, once Hitler had resolved the Jewish Question, he would return to affix other’s to that debauched article of rancid hatred for all whom he considered different and unworthy of life. But what of these other traveller’s who left the scene of pending destructiveness for those Jews sent there to Auschwitz and Birkenau. They too had come from all corners of Europe?

“..After we had heard ..account from Vilna ..on ..one hand ..and ..Chelmno on ..other ..we believed that this was being done systematically. I must say that in ..previous years ..even we could not picture to ourselves that a nation in ..20th. century would indeed execute a death sentence on an entire people. We asked ourselves more than once ..They are degrading us ..they are suppressing us ..are they truly thinking of destroying all of us? We did not believe it. ” Zivia Lubetkin.

Some of these other passengers, who had visited the area to meet as the Sons and Daughters of the Reich, may or may not have known what their Parents were Perpetrating? Some were merely local bystanders caught up in the flurry of travel to places of work, worship or enterprise. True, these might well be the innocent bystanders or relatives who saw practically nothing, but carried away with them the knowledge of what happened to a condemned People. That this was affixed with the ash of a conflagration they did not even sense, cannot be realistically acknowledged. These many also, who heard nothing of the tumult, became deaf to the turmoil of destruction which was clearly within earshot of their leisurely pursuits. Those other sounds, distracting in some capricious way, muffled the sheer indifference of what pervades the arena between life and destruction! For all of those, who witnessed nothing at all, but surely must have smelt the endeavour of those committed to Hitler’s radical solution to a Jewish concern, the scent has burned into them a lack of their own humanity!

“..Seventy years ago ..after our nation’s German occupation ..Nazi overlords and ..Hungarian authorities that collaborated with them seemed to fulfil ..will of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.” Janos Ader.

That sought after, selective, approached and approved solution, existed in more than the 6 Death Camps Hitler established in Poland. On Railway Stations alongside these Death Camps of systematic destruction, traveller’s were as visible to the Jewish victim’s as the Jews were so invisible to these so weary of journeying. This whole Hitler approach was a radical concern that would foment into a fully fledged Genocide. This was all as a consequence, and of an awareness by all too many who should have rebelled against the tide of horror and terror all of which proved indifferent to the very abject Jewish struggle stood before them. All at once, and as defined by Raphael Lemkin, who could barely comprehend nor appreciate the twisted logic of what was emerging, termed a reference to The Holocaust with a genocidal certainty. While contemplating the sordid barbarism of Hitler’s ‘Weltanschauung’, which merged the shield of a World War with a vengeful eradication of an innocent Jewish People, Lemkin has lent posterity a term that is now grossly overused, constantly utilised to issue retribution’s, and fixing future intolerance’s with further hatred’s.

“..pushed in ..cattle cars like sardines. We were dirty ..buckets for ..urine ..bowel movements. ..a small ..window ..barbed wire over it ..no air except ..from that little window. ..we travelled like this ..3 ..4 days. ..dawn. ..I saw lights ..fire from far away. ..a chimney ..with fire going. ..thought they were factories. ..We will be able to work. ..told ..to leave ..luggage. packages ..we had to leave on ..ground. ..separated ..men ..from ..women. ..didn’t ..have time to say goodbye to my uncle ..my aunt. ..in front of the Germans ..guided us ..right or ..left. ..told me to go to ..right ..told my aunt to go ..left. I never saw her again. ..15 years old ..all alone in this hell. ..told us to undress ..that we were going to be showered ..that they were going to give us clothes. ..place was freezing cold. ..stayed there for hours to wait for our clothes. No towels to dry ..no food. ..finally ..gave us ..clothes ..put us in barracks. ..tattooed. ..My name is A-5143.” Lily Appelbaum.

Germany and those of the German peoples who sank into an abyss of depravity, which will scold the History of the time with accusation and the betrayal of civilised humanity, have much to contend with. The historical damnation, and with a resolute urging to ensure that this must never happen again, which has so far failed, this is not for the want of Germany or the German attempt to place a marker and establish the Truth above all other consideration’s. Here at this juncture and with realisation, as Lemkin was not alone in appreciating the prescient nature of what he now surveyed, a conscious World has moved forward in remembering. With an immediate awareness that became totally shocked though and with the reality that the integrity of humanity was shredded, a World grew aghast. This World of ours was traumatically transfixed by the realisation, and that what Hitler had preached, Hitler had clearly delivered.

“..flames could be seen from 15 or 20 kilometres ..people knew ..human beings were being burned there.” Adolf Bartelmes.

This further sank civilisation into a mire of recrimination, accusation and even soul searching. How many though, of these Sons and Daughters of the Reich have failed to even acknowledge the unprecedented atrocity committed in their midst? In their name and even with their clear duplicity, those Children of the Nazi era have yet to deliver all the knowledge which we know is available. There is the Camp personnel, and even those active in der Einsatzgruppe upon returning to Auschwitz for recuperation or training, knew the truth and must have passed on that fact to some, or even all of those they knew or were acquainted with. For me, as I stand on this Station platform, it is clear, and not just to me, that there is much not to see for those too busy with sights they can shelter from. If it is necessary for travel to motion forward, it is essential to see all the way toward that eventual destination.

“..smokestacks ..KZ Auschwitz ..visible from IG Farben Auschwitz. ..IG people who visited Auschwitz ..Walter Duffield ..other engineers ..smelled ..odour of burning bodies. ..a terrible stench.” Christian Schneider.

One cannot perpetually move forward, for with a blinkered view of what surrounds us we allow ourselves to stagnate and even cease. But this moment for me is not just on a platform which led elsewhere, and remember, it was not that long ago that those other’s stood here to witness nothing at all. However, for this journey of mine, which is not toward the destruction that once awaited those Jews and other’s who moved incessantly toward a differing rail spur, it is a reminder of how close to the detail of what destruction met all those Jews and other’s who had passed them by along this very same route I now stood alongside. That other destination, which is further along, though within eyesight, earshot and merely a sensory perception away, is a motion, a moment further away from the Dworzec PKP Oswiecim Train Station. That another selected route could so resettle its human cargo finally, as it heads toward Auschwitz KL and then on to the Birkenau Death Camp, is a salutary reminder of what can be denied if it is not chosen as selected evidence.

“..While not all ..victims of ..Nazi’s were Jews ..all Jews were victims.” Elie Wiesel.

How many unwilling witnesses give even a glance in the Jews direction? From the relative safe distance, and from what transits as normal for the hundred’s of thousands of those who must have travelled past Oswiecim, this is a universe away from the planet where Hitler’s lackey’s engaged in all forms of terror and brutality. Also, it is not that far distant from the stench of a hatred imbued into a radical Hitlerite idea. It is a view that was to be shielded by a World War which was destined to be lost. In the mean time though, with a more ideological resolve that had been initiated by Hitler, there was a certain resolve which 6,000,000 Jews were affixed to in a very final solution. That hate filled answer to Hitler’s demands was so extreme, that History has required a Genocidal term to incorporate all that had been levelled against the Jews of Europe. That term which we know is The Holocaust has been the source of the gravest pain to reach a sensitised world.

“..Since ..campaigns of murder were conducted with ..strictest secrecy ..there was considerable temptation to delude one’s conscience into believing that ..deeds committed outside any social control never happened. Who was ..to ask at home ..what was done to ..unknown Jew in ..forest near Minsk or behind ..barbed wire of Auschwitz.” Hans Buckheim.

Here, as trains motioned effortlessly toward any and all conceivable destinations within Poland, and even the European Continent, these other passengers surely must have caught the stench of much that was omnipresent? But what had already been known to that wider World at other ends of this converging railway line, singles out those who have not delivered their evidence of what was known. Now though, and within the vicinity in which these other passengers entrained and came to rest at Oswiecim, not one of them who sensed anything, must now reflect perversely that today they do not know a thing about what was happening under their very noses? Curious! Meanwhile, the stench of hypocrisy permeates this atmosphere of sham failures, whether indifference occupied them as to what was clearly in evidence merely 1,000 metres from the centre of their own closed universe.

“..I was ..struck by ..enormous tongues of flame rising between ..lightning rods ..which were set at angles on ..square tops of ..chimney.” Miklos Nyiszli.

Tragically, what failed us all at such a propitious moment was the clear lack of humanity engaged by so many. It is clearly in the interests therefore, of those knowledgeable, who stood as witnesses to what we seek, for them not to acknowledge the weight of their guilt. But when the overwhelming evidence is so damning, and cannot be so simply denied, many choose to even ignore the truth, and convinced of this course of action, deny the authenticity of their own History and the veracity of our History that should have been assigned to it. Here, at this junction between what passed as normal, and what persisted as abnormal, a certain humanity is consumed, a hatred is shared, intolerance’s persist and a sheer indifference to what struggles for so many Jewish People, took place within all sensory perceptions and is supposed to become negated in time.

“..All things considered ..I would rather have been on Schindler’s list than on Mengele’s list. But I now know that it was better to be on Mengele’s list than on nobody’s list at all.” Eva Mozes Kor.

Also, and while this was merely 70 years ago, it is not credible to accept the shortness of sight which distance in time cannot engender! It is hardly a distance however, which the clearest conscience could satisfy itself with! Not even the blind could deny that not too much out of the ordinary stood barely a 10 minute walk away and could all too easily be ignored by so many. We even know from the Evidence of those rail road officials who testified to the fact, that not only could the smoke, which billowed forth in an endless smog of devastation and could be seen, but the flames could be discerned from a distance of 15 to 20 Kilometres away! Did I mention that the main platforms at the Train Station Oswiecim stood less that 1 Kilometre from the centre of this space of destruction? How then is it possible that none of the literally thousand’s, ten’s of thousand’s and even hundred’s of thousand’s of witnesses to The Holocaust, who passed by on a routine weekly transit did not see, did not attest, and even claimed that they did not know that they were in the vicinity of the most lethal Death Camp in all of Poland?

“..When 4,000,000 have died in Auschwitz ..I shall know how to die as well.” Hermann Langbein.

Surely someone saw what they should have been prepared to relay to other’s, rather than contain the information within themselves? On a Daily basis, 10,000 Jews of Europe were consumed in these flames, their smoke and ash filling the nostrils of every single passenger trying to ignore the fact of the atrocity they were being presented with. The ash of 1,100,000 Jews settled upon all those travellers who traversed Poland, passing Oswiecim, as they delivered the ash of these consumed Jews to every corner of that Country and to many parts of Europe which had already seen their Jews removed previously toward Auschwitz. It should be pointed out that we remain uncertain as to the exact detail of the Catastrophe. Estimates exist which are in excess of 4,000,000 Murdered Jews having been Gassed and otherwise killed within the confines of Auschwitz and certainly Birkenau.

“..gas chambers worked day and night. ..crematorium chimneys belched not only smoke ..but pillars of fire 3 ..4 metres high.” Filip Friedman.

These early assessments of the catastrophe, which were made in light of what Hoess himself acknowledged could all too easily be achieved, and as Camps the length and breadth of Hitler’s rampage through History brought their own resolve to the account, we might yet balk at the very conservative nature of the overall assessment. All of these Camps combined to give Hitler his overall objective and these have been made to shed further light on the atrocity of the Camp system and the Death Camps in particular. We do still have estimates made at the time which are more aligned with those we persist with today. The War Refugee Board has assessed this Final Solution at 1,765,000 Gassed Jews in Birkenau, and this was November 1944. As late as 1965, Dr. Rudolf Vrba confirmed his own assessment as being 1,760,000 Jews having been Gassed in Birkenau. Reluctantly we accept the assessment is 1,100,000 Jews Murdered in Auschwitz. We do so, as a measure which will draw a line from which we can then begin to access all the remaining relevant information and come up with a more comprehensive evaluation.

“..Our family was sent to Auschwitz. ..My sister and I ..sent to one side ..my mother ..my little brother to ..other. ..it all happened so fast ..I looked around ..they were already gone. To Birkenau. ..where gas chambers where. My little brother was 15.” Fela Drybus.

What certainly pollutes the mind of any Christian person, who once stood here as the smoke belched forward, as the stench of burning flesh burned the nostrils of passengers and as the decay of humanity was so literally destroyed, is that far too many present a smoke screen of denial. The picture today has altered the landscape of History in so many diverging though convergent ways. However, the stain of any failure to acknowledge the Truth of what was known, what was witnessed and what was definitely sensed will stunt the growth of any moral humanity. A people cannot grow that does not acknowledge its own place in real time! All of this supposedly forgotten evidence has emanated merely metres from this vantage point were I now stand.

“..Dear finder of these notes ..I have one request of you ..which is ..in fact ..practical objective for my writing ..that my days of Hell ..that my hopeless tomorrow will find a purpose in ..future. I am transmitting only a part of what happened in ..Birkenau ..Auschwitz Hell. You will realise what reality looked like. ..From all this you will have a picture of how our people perished.” Zalman Gradowski.

But, as these other travellers went on their merry way and these same others transgressed their presence into a cruel and shameful episode in all of our History, I take note and ensure my own self as to why I will seek Always to Remember, Never to Forget. It is essential therefore, that while we are not 6,000,000 miles away from the gates which mark the entrance to an estate, where work through freedom is defined in a destructive capacity, we ensure respect is maintained for the memory of those Jewish Citizens, and all other nationals consumed there. It is pure mockery however, of all those Jews and other’s who evidence the gate was not in the least a chance for life, though it was a working life, but a life none the less measured by the approach of destruction! I would like to conclude this offering, to all those who passed this way, those 6,000,000 Jews of The Holocaust, and as a reminder to posterity not to Forget them and always to Remember them.

“..These are ..experiences of one person alone ..a drop in ..vast immeasurable ocean. Without doubt there will be others who return alive from Oswiecim ..who will talk. There will be others who will come back from many other camps. ..majority will never return ..will never talk.” Seweryna Szmaglewska.

With having read so much that is available on the subject of The Holocaust, it was somewhat ironic, chilling in fact, that as I walked through Birkenau, and after I had been faced with the reality of some whose Survival was touching me directly, two Books sprang to mind, and they are both titled, Smoke Over Birkenau. The Authors of these two works, essential to grasp the depth of despair facing those on the other side of the tracks, and being amazed at the sheer lack of hatred, they are Liana Millu and Seweryna Szmaglewska. The reason I mention these two Books in particular is, in conversation with other’s I was walking alongside, as we struggled to come to terms with what happened here in Birkenau, and what struggles those seeking to survive must have met, I noticed in a far corner of the compound, workers were burning debris and leaves, and indeed there was Smoke Over Birkenau.

“..same old routine ..one foot in front ..other. Everything is forever ..same in ..lager ..pitilessly ..hopelessly ..same ..each hour brings ..same acts ..same commands ..same everything ..until soon even your thoughts take ..same predictable track ..making ..same fixed stops ..war ..home ..getting back ..a chronic sameness that becomes a torture.” Liana Millu.

This was a point of reference where History and I met, and it confirmed for me that I should continue my effort in the hope that more will learn from the destruction of the 6,000,000 Jews of Europe. It is striking that questions can still be asked in Class Rooms as to what The Holocaust was, and there are failings. Yet there are some who are far more able to state a lack of knowledge than to admit to that same incapacity which those other travellers could have so easily lent them. If we cannot yet learn from the attempted deconstruction of the past, what contrives the present will prevent the future from the knowledge of what was attempted, what was done and what was achieved by Hitler and his minions in The Holocaust!

“..You weigh on me ..you whom I lost in death. You’ve given me ..silent charge to live for you ..for me ..to erase ..debt of your extermination.” Viktor E. Frankl.