I want to make a few preliminary comments on the “holocaust” based entirely on my own experience. Please remember that this is an informal personal blog which bounces where it will and makes no pretense of being the equivalent of a thoroughly researched book on any subject. If someone challenges me I will do the research necessary to respond, but until then I will enjoy presenting my views and experiences in a sometimes impressionistic way – staying ahead of the holocausters by always trying to be honest and accurate and never publishing any alleged fact which I think is questionable.
As a university instructor in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s I was blessed with full summer vacations with pay. Presumably that was not just to help make up for the low salaries but also to allow experiences which would broaden the academic mind, and so I dutifully traveled in Europe for two whole summers. The first trip was so few years after the end of the war in 1945 that I saw many bombed buildings and much rubble in German cities.
In Munich we happened to meet an American man and his German wife. They kindly showed us around, and we attended a musical and comedy show in a Munich theater – replete with Spatenbrau and Munich delicacies. The program was quite different from the heavily Jewish-influenced vaudeville-type stage shows in America. It was more along the lines of Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion”: Country comedians, slap dancers, yodelers, bell ringers, singers, glockenspiel artists, Alpenhorn players . . .
Among the performing groups was a small, old-fashioned German band from the town of Dachau, about 20 kilometers from Munich. Our hostess whispered, “They’re very ashamed of what happened in their town.”
Of course I had heard of Dachau. It was the site of one of the “death camps” or "extermination camps" the public had been told were situated all over Germany, whose main business was the gassing of Jews. Its most distinctive, and undoubtedly most photographed feature, was the “Arbeit Macht Frei” (literally “Work Makes Free”) gate. The motto was accurate because Dachau was in fact a labor camp.
Taking a tour of the concentration camp at Dachau, we were led, along with many other visitors, into a huge shower room whose ceiling was covered with pipes and dozens of shower heads. I shuddered as we were told that crowds of Jews would be herded in for showers, the door would be locked, and then instead of water, poison gas would pour from the shower heads and asphyxiate all the prisoners, whose bodies would then be hauled out to the crematoria.
There was no doubt at all expressed in the guide’s lecture: We had seen a gas chamber, and Dachau was prominently listed for years a one of as number of concentration camps in Germany with a gas chamber kept busy exterminating Jews.
Well, it turns out that what we saw at Dachau was just what it looked like – a big shower room built for purposes of hygiene, not murder. Thoughtful inspection would have revealed, in fact, that the shower room could not have been used as a gas chamber, and bodies hauled from it, without killing people all over the neighborhood.
No one was ever gassed at Dachau.
It is an odd phenomenon that as the holocaust myth burgeoned after World War II into a full-fledged money-making industry and an argument for the Jewish colonization of Palestine, the number of concentration camps in Germany which were supposed to have had gas chambers shrank. At what point Dachau was removed from the “gas chamber” list I don’t know, but after awhile not ONE camp in Germany was seriously alleged to have used gas chambers to kill Jews.
The story told to me in the Dachau shower room was a bald faced lie. So were the stories about the other “gas chambers” in camps in Germany . “Simon Wiesenthal re-confirmed that "there were no extermination camps on German soil" during the Second World War.”
“What the ‘Nazi hunter’ now says contrasts sharply with what was authoritatively claimed in the decades following the Second World War. At the great Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945-1946, for example, Allied government officials presented apparently conclusive evidence to prove that camps ‘on German soil’ -- such as Dachau and Buchenwald -- were ‘extermination’ centers. Sir Hartley Shawcross, chief British prosecutor at the main Nuremberg trial, accordingly declared in his closing address on July 26, 1946, that ‘murder [was] conducted like some mass production industry in the gas chambers and the ovens’ of Buchenwald, Dachau, Oranienburg -- all 'on German soil' -- as well as at other German-run camps [such as Bergen-Belsen]. Abundant 'proof' that inmates were gassed at Dachau has been provided over the years, most notably at the main Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946. Former inmate Dr. Franz Blaha, for example, provided eyewitness testimony at Nuremberg about gas chamber killings there of 'many prisoners.'"
Nobody "made a mistake". The gas chamber stories were deliberately manufactured for propaganda purposes – in particular to make Germans look guilty (and falsely justify their executions) and to increase sympathy for the Jews.
There are excellent sources which expose concentration camp and gas chamber legends. For now I will end with just this thought:
If someone tells you a dozen lies about something, and then admits reluctantly and gradually that every lie was a lie, would you believe the liar if he clung to a last remaining similar story and said, “But this one really IS true?”
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9 comments:
Are you quite sure that you saw "a huge shower room whose ceiling was covered with pipes?" And this was in the late 50ies? Today, there are no PIPES on the ceiling of the Dachau gas chamber; the shower heads are stuck into the 7.6 foot high ceiling and are not connected to any pipes at all. Are you trying to say that the concrete ceiling was installed AFTER the late 1950ies and that you saw the original ceiling with shower heads attached to visible pipes? Now visitors are told that the gas did not come through the pipes and the shower heads, but instead, gas pellets were poured onto the floor through two bins on the outside wall. Did your guide really tell you, in the late 1950ies, that the gas was in liquid form and that it came through the shower heads? What about the bins? Did you see them? Did the guide tell you what they were used for?
Anonymous, thank you for visiting and commenting.
It has been almost half a century since I took that tour of Dachau, but the visit made a great and lasting impression on me, and I’ve always remembered seeing the shower heads on exposed pipes rather than emerging from a concrete ceiling. Since you question that, I can't say with absolutely certainty that my memory of the pipes as exposed was correct; I don’t why my memory would have mentally transformed a concrete ceiling into exposed pipes, but I suppose it’s possible. Remember, I was not there as an analyst but as a gullible tourist just taking in what he was told, and so I did not have the critical eye or the interest in details I would have today. Neither did the guide supply technical details – just a frightening story about people coming into the “shower room” and gas coming out of the shower heads to kill them.
No, I am not “trying to say that the concrete ceiling was installed AFTER the late 1950ies”, but if my memory of the pipes is correct that would seem to be the case.
It seems to me that the accuracy of my memory of exposed pipes is supported by the fact that it would have been cheaper and more practical to build the shower room with an “open” ceiling instead of a concrete ceiling. (After all, it was a prison camp, not a hotel.) What purpose would a costly concrete ceiling have served other than to make inspection and repair of the plumbing more difficult?
I’m simply telling you my recollection, and what you’ve told me about the present ceiling is very interesting to me. As for the date, I’ve checked on that since receiving your comment, and it would have been 1959 or 1960.
As for your other questions:
The guide definitely told us that the poison gas came through the showerheads; my impression was that it supposedly came out as gas and not as liquid.
The guide indicated the shower heads as the conduit of the poison gas and said nothing about gas pellets or bins on the outside wall.
No, I don’t recall seeing any bins, but I wasn't looking for them. Nothing like that was pointed out as part of the gassing story. If the bins had existed then, wouldn't they have played a part in the guide's narrative?
I want to thank you for your interest. Are you sure that present day visitors to Dachau are being told that it had a gas chamber? I think I can substantiate that all claims to gas chambers at Dachau and other locations in Germany have been abandoned.
In 2003, the Dachau Memorial Site opened a new museum to replace the one that was set up in 1965. The new museum has a display that says that the gas chamber in Dachau was used a few times. The new museum includes space in the administration building that was formerly used as a shower room. The pipes and control wheels have been removed, so that visitors cannot see what a real German shower room looked like.
For years, there was a sign in the Dachau gas chamber which said in English that it was never used and in German that it was never put into operation. The sign also included three other languages which I couldn't read. That sign had been removed by 2003 and instead, there was a display on the wall of the undressing room that said that gas pellets "could have been" thrown onto the floor of the gas chamber through two bins on the outside wall.
At the Nuremberg trial, the American prosecutors played a film in which pipes were shown going into the gas chamber from the hallway behind the west wall of the gas chamber. The narrator said that the gas came out of the shower heads and also out of two of the light fixture boxes from which the light had been removed. Nothing was said about any bins on the outside wall.
So the question is: When did someone finally notice these bins? The Army Report about the gas chamber said that there was a piece of machinery against the outside wall where the bins are located. So when was the piece of machinery removed to expose the bins?
If what you say about the ceiling and the shower heads is true, it must have been around 1960 before the bins were even noticed. It was in 1960 that a German historian first said that the gas chamber at Dachau was never used. Did it take 15 years for someone to finally figure out that the pipes going into the gas chamber are really water pipes? Today, tourists are not allowed to go into the hallway where the pipes shown in the Nuremberg film are located, but a drawing of the pipes is shown in the display on the undressing room wall.
As far as claims about gas chambers in Germany are concerned, the Memorial Site at Sachsenhausen says that there was a gas chamber there which was blown up by the East German government before the site was opened to tourists. At Mauthausen in Austria, the claim is made that a fully functioning shower room, complete with real water pipes, was really a gas chamber. At Ravensbrück, the claim is still made that there was a gas chamber there, although it is gone now.
Anonymous, you've opened a fascinating line of discussion and inquiry. Your February 7 comment contains a number of facts that are new to me. You obviously are an expert in this area, and I wonder if you are associated with a website where I and others could read more about the things you discuss.
I would like to go much more into this with you, but for now I note that the film you describe which American prosecutors showed at the Nuremburg trial comports with what I saw and was told. That must have been the earliest version of the gas chamber story.
As for when the bins were "discovered", don't you think they were simply constructed when the shower pipes story proved untenable? Do you not agree with me that the entire succession of "gas chamber" fables were deliberate fabrications?
It would have been obvious from the beginning that the shower pipes were connected to a water source and were used to provide showers. Therefore the story I was told had to be a lie. Don't you agree that the history of changes in all the gas chamber stories is one of the best proofs of the nonexistence of gas chambers?
I hope I don't sound as if I'm challenging you. I'm just being rhetorical.
Please enable us to continue to connect with your valuable knowledge. I want to look into the topic you touched on -- the abandonment of allegations of gas chambers in Germany.
When American soldiers arrived at Dachau to accept the surrender of the camp, the prisoners had already formed an International Committee which had taken charge of the prisoners after the guards left. The leaders of the Committee took the Americans to see the gas chamber as soon as they arrived.
Eisenhower had already ordered that as many American soldiers as possible should be brought to see the camps. Eisenhower said that the American soldiers did not know what they were fighting for, but after seeing the concentration camps, they knew what they were fighting against. That's why truck loads of soldiers were brought to see the Dachau gas chamber so that they could be witnesses. The soldiers were all told that the gas came through the shower heads.
The wall where the bins are now located was hidden behind a wooden shed at that time. The shed had three sides and no roof. The fourth side was the wall of the gas chamber. The Army report said that there was a compressor inside the wooden shed. I don't know when the bins were discovered behind the compressor. The openings of the bins on the inside would have been visible, but it seems that none of the soldiers looked at the east wall. They were too busy looking at the shower heads.
It is against the law in 11 countries to deny that the gas chamber at Dachau is real. Any American citizen who would be foolish enough to say that the bins were built at a later time would be subject to arrest and imprisonment in Germany and would never be able to visit that country again.
I agree that the American soldiers should have been able to follow the pipes in the hallway to their source and determine if they were water pipes. We must assume that they didn't do this, otherwise it means that the American prosecutors at Nuremberg deliberately lied and framed the Nazis. They coud have just turned the control wheels and then looked inside the gas chamber through the peephole to see if water was coming out. Unfortunately, the Dachau camp had been bombed 3 weeks before and there was no running water in the gas chamber building because the water main had been hit. I assume that the water main was eventually repaired and then water would have come out, except that the gas chamber has a low ceiling with shower heads just stuck into it and not attached to any pipes. The film of the gas chamber was shown at Nuremberg on November 29, 1945 but it was taken on May 4, 1945. We know what date the film was taken because there are some Congressmen in the film who were visiting Dachau on that date. What we don't know is whether some of the footage was taken at a later date and spliced into the film. If the film is genuine, that means that the low ceiling was there on May 4, 1945. Numerous American soldiers later described visible pipes on the ceiling, which couldn't have been there, according to the film.
At the Nuremberg trial, several Catholic priests testified that there was a gas chamber at Buchenwald. In his closing statement at the trial, the British prosecutor said that there were gas chambers at Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen. Today, no one says that there were gas chambers at Buchenwald or Bergen-Belsen, so that means that there were a lot of people lying under oath at Nuremberg.
The folks at the Dachau Museum abandoned the allegations of a gas chamber at Dachau in 1960, but now they say that the gas chamber was used "a few times." To deny the gas chamber at Dachau is the same as saying that the Americans lied and showed a bogus film at Nuremberg. Footage from the Nuremberg film is still shown in a movie at the Museum, while at the same time, guides tell visitors that the gas was put into the room through the bins on the outside wall.
Anonymous, I'm glad that you've
returned. What a fascinating history of inconsistencies is presented in your latest comment! I'm beginning to sense that you are wisely circumspect because you live in or visit one of the countries that has outlawed truth. What could be more medieval (in the worst sense) than laws criminalizing "questioning established historical fact"?
In the U.S. we don't YET has laws of that kind, but I'm glad you warned me about visiting Germany.
It is no surprise to me to read more evidence that, in my opinion, shows that "the American prosecutors at Nuremberg deliberately lied and framed the Nazis," or that "there were a lot of people lying under oath at Nuremberg." The whole proceedings at Nuremberg were a kangaroo court travesty.
In a VIEW FROM THE MOON post today I'm drawing attention to your valuable comments.
Thank you. I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping you will contribute further to this blog.
O.K. here is another contribution:
There were four major concentration camps in the Greater German Reich: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Mauthausen. There was also a women's camp at Ravensbrück and a holding camp at Bergen-Belsen where Jews were available for exchange for German citizens held by the Allies.
After the war, only one of these camps was in the Americn zone of occupation - Dachau. Bergen-Belsen was in the British zone and the others were in the zone of the Soviet Union. The British and Soviet prosecutors at Nuremberg charged that all of the camps in their zones had gas chambers, although no proof was offered. Their charges were based on the testimony of eye witnesses.
America could only bring charges against the Nazis at Nuremberg with regard to the Dachau camp. So they had to put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. That's why Dachau became the only camp that was known to Americans for many years after the war. Few people realized that the gas chamber at Dachau was not completed until 1943 and by that time, there were no more Jews at Dachau because they had all been sent to camps in eastern Europe.
There are several problems with the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal:
1. New laws had to be created because what the Nazis did in the concentration camps was not against international law. The Nazis were tried for crimes that were not crimes when they were committed.
2. The Nazis on trial were charged with participating in a "common design" to violate the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention and also to violate the newly-created laws. That means that they were guilty even if they had personally done nothing wrong.
3. No proof was required for any crime that was "common knowledge." The gas chambers were common knowledge throughout the world.
4. The accused were guilty until proven innocent. Hearsay evidence was allowed. Many witnesses testified by a sworn affidavit and never took the witness stand where they could have been cross examined.
5. The Nazis were not allowed access to the tons of documents that could have proved their case. These documents had been confiscated by the Allies. They were only allowed to use documents that were presented in court by the Allies.
The American Military also held tribunals at the former Dachau camp in which staff members of the Dachau, Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps were prosecuted. It is significant that the accused in these trials were never charged with gassing prisoners at Dachau. Why? Maybe because the defense could have said, "Let's go over to the gas chamber, which is only a few yards from the courtroom, and trace the source of those pipes in the hallway behind the gas chamber."
But maybe not, since the defense lawyers were all American Army officers. Maybe the American government didn't want to put these officers in the position of having to say that the American prosecutors had lied at Nuremberg about a gas chamber at Dachau.
What would happen now if the American govrnment would come clean and announce that they had known within a few hours that there was no gas chamber in Dachau, but in spite of this, they falsified evidence and brought false charges against the Nazis at Nuremberg? I can't even image the outrage that would result.
The Russians did admit, after the Soviet Union was no longer in existence, that the Soviets had lied at Nuremberg and wrongly accused the Germans of killing Polish Army officers in Katyn Forest that had really been killed by the Soviets. The Russians also released the camp records from Auschwitz which showed that the Soviets had lied at Nuremberg when they said that 4 million people had died at Auschwitz.
Anonymous, thank you for the very interesting additional contribution. I'm considering the idea of devoting an actual blog post (rather than Comments) to your historical facts, giving you credit of course. I've been reading about the "holocaust" myths for many years, mostly from sources obtained from the IHR, but I am not an expert -- as, for example, Mark Weber is.
My email is leef@cfl.rr.com if you'd like to contact me directly.
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