+40 more
posted on Apr, 13 2008 @ 07:37 AM
The motto of ATS is "Deny Ignorance", so lets do that, shall we?
When Hitler became chancellor in 1933 one of the first things he did - on the 1st April - was to launch, and support a boycott of Jewish businesses.
This "launch" was carried out by the Brownshirts, co-ordinatied by Julius Striecher, under the name "Juden unerwunscht" (Jews not wanted). This
"boycott" involved the Nazi party's Brownshirts physically blocking accessways to businesses, snashing shop windows and painting slogans on the
shop fronts.
On the 7th April Hitler banned all persons of "non-arayan" descent from serving in Government or in legal practices, and placed restrictions on the
numbers of jews allowed to attend schools and universities, and refused permission for jewish people to work in the health sector.
On 29th September 1933, Hitler forbade jews, from being involved in German culture by establishing the Reich Chambers of Culture, of which they were
not allowed to attend.
Jews were also restricted, by law, from serving in the Military.
And that was 1933.
From '33 to 39 400 seperate anti-jewish laws were bought into force, the peak of which came by 1935. The "Nuremberg Laws" removed the right of free
movement from jewish people, prevented them from marrying or even having sex with non-jewish people. The laws set out to decree who was and who
wasn't a jew, and who was or was not of "Arayan descent" (this law didn't only affect jews, it affected people of Gypsy and Romany descent)
Between '37 and '38 the Nazis seized businesses and property, medical practices and shops from Jewish people.
In 1938 the Nazis's forceably deported over 17,000 Polish Jews across the border. In November that year the Brownshirts were out in force, burning
down over 200 synagogues, smashing jewish homes and property (in some cases throwing the occupants bodily out of upstairs windows). Then Himmler
rounded up nearly 30,000 jewish men and sent them to the Dachau Concentration Camp. In order to cover claims for "damages" carried out by the
Brownshirts, Himmler also imposed a one billion mark fine collectively on remaining jewish population.
When the Germans invaded Poland in '39 they realised that they had conquered a country holding 3.3 milion Jewish people. The initial plan had been to
forcibly deport every single jew to Madagascar, but that relied on Britain not entering the war, and the French colony recognising German control
after the planned invasion of France (neither happened).
When Britain declared war, the concentration began and the Germans annexed North Western Poland and started to move 600,000 people from Poland and
400,000 from Germany into that area, forcing them into ghettos and making them wear special insignia to indicate their race and religion. Some of the
ghettos were walled in, and the population density worked out at about 6 people per room per household. Food was also rationed into the ghettos, and
clothing was restricted. Starvation became an issue with over 2,000 people dying per month in the Warsaw ghetto.
Starting in the Spring 1940 the Einsatzgruppen began a campaign against the Polish elite and jewish gentiles - murdering over 3,500 of them, usually
by taking them out into the local square and machine gunning them. People were shot in the street, where they worked, and at home. Those who were not
killed were sent to the ghettos or to the camps in the "resettlement zone"
Prior to this, in '39 Hitler had decreed that those people who were mentally unstable, physically disabled, senile and not "pure" were to be
euthanised, and this became the basis of the extermination process. These people were killed in smaller centres, by pumping carbon monoxide into gas
chambers. By '41 70,000 had died, and the process had been "perfected". The operation paid for itself by the confiscation of jewellery and gold
fillings from the victims.
In '41, as Hitler planned Barbarossa - the invasion of the Soviet Union , he stressed to his commanders that the invasion was final battle between
"Jewish Bolshevism" and Nazi Socialism, that Russians were sub-human, that the soldiers were not bound by any laws on Russian territory and could
act as they saw fit. He also saw Communism as a Jewish conspiracy and therefore declared by proxy that all Jews could be exterminated as enemies of
the Nazi state.
As Barbarossa started, the majority of Russian Jews lived directly in the first areas to be attacked. The Germans overran the Red Army and then the
Einstatzgruppen moved in behind, often working under the pretext of asking for help from local jews on reconstruction projects so that numbers of them
could be gathered up, and then taking them off to areas where they were machine gunned.
When the Germans reached Kiev in September '41, they told the local Jews they were going to be resettled, and posted that all those of Jewish descent
should arrive at the local cemetary the following day before being put onto trains to move to their new areas. Those arriving were funnelled into line
and taken in groups to a clearing where the local police forced them to strip. They were then led into another clearing where they were machine gunned
and dumped into a natural deep earth cleft called Babi-Yar. Small children and babies were thrown into the mass grave still alive. non-jewish
spectators who stumbled onto the event were also rounded up and executed. That operation claimed the lives of over 33,000 people over two days. By the
time the operation had finished between 150,000 and 200,000 people had been killed at Babi-Yar.
In 1942 Operation Reinhard began, which was the codename for the systematic extermination of the Jews at Dachau, Buchenwald, Belzec, Sobibor,
Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz.
Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were pure killing centres, "processing" 25,000 people a day. The other camps also had forced labour programmes in
place where inmates were worked to death.
Gassing was initially carried out by carbom monoxide poisoning, but the frail, young and infirm were usually shot. The bodies were dumped into a pit
which was kept constantly burning. The gassed bodies were thrown into the pit, but only after gold fillings were extracted. 400 people were gassed at
a time at the camps at this stage.
In '43 Himmler destroyed the Warsaw ghetto by systematically destroying and burning buildings and shipping those who survived into the concentration
camps.
Auschwitz became the centre of Jewish Exterminations by Himmlers decree. The commandant, Rudolf Hoss thought the use of Carbon Monoxide impracticable
and slow, and after experimeting on killing Soviet prisoners of war Zyklon B was found to be most effective, as the pellets released hydrogen-cyanide
gas when they came into contact with air. Death was almost immediate - as opposed to taking 12/15 minutes with Carbon Monoxide.
At its "peak" Auschwitz covered nearly 20 square miles and held 160,000 square people waiting disposal, or working producing sythetic rubber or
mining coal. The camp grew in size from killing 1,200 people initially in May '42 through an expansion scheme and "inauguration" program in 1943
when four new chambers and crematoria came into operation working with the initial two to kill 8,000 people per day. The camp killed every day of its
operation.
Think about that - 8000*365 is 2,920,000 people a year - at one camp.
Does that put the holocaust total in better perspective I wonder?
The killing at Auschwitz stopped by Himmlers decree in November '44 - probably because he knew the war was lost, but also because the Reich needed
slave labour and the process was proving to be too efficient in removing it. He may also have been trying to set up an excuse that he was "merciful"
following the end of the war.
All but one of the crematoria were dismantled and the gassing equipment moved back into Germany
The Russians liberated the camp on 27th January 1945. They discovered that the Germans had failed to burn over 1.2 million items of clothing of the
deceased, they also discovered remains and other evidence. That pattern was repeated across all of the liberated camps.
Now I would respectfully say that, given the history of the Nazis when they came into power, their actions before the war, and their actions during
the war, the evidence gathered by the allies, and the actual witness testimonies of captured Nazis and camp survivors, that Auschwitz was most
definitely not some kind of "holiday camp" with a swimming pool, but was in fact a haven for one of the most sickening acts of genocide in human
history, and that anyone who looks at the actual history and facts can't really draw any other conclusion.
Learn some proper history. Deny Ignorance.