One of the widespread misconceptions about the Holocaust (there are many) is that the Shoah was the only genocide of the XX century. Or at least the only one worth remembering (hence there is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day but no Genocides Remembrance Day). Misconception implicitly spread by thousands of books and millions of papers, articles, blog posts, etc. on the Holocaust.
True, the Holocaust was a monstrous crime against humanity. In some aspects, the worst serial mass murder in the XX century (maybe in the whole human history). However, it was not the only such crime in the previous century (which could be rightfully labeled “the genocide age”).
In fact, the XX century witnessed not one, but seventeen genocides and democides (mass murders of individuals belonging to a certain demographic group):
1. Armenian genocide in Turkey (1915-16). In 1915, the Ottoman Empire was at war with Russia that also had a sizable Armenian population. All-Muslim Turkish government considered the Armenian citizens of Turkey the Russian ‘fifth column’ and a major security threat. Whether there was such a threat, is debatable but even if it was, the decision of the Turkish government to exterminate all of its 2 million Armenians was way out of proportion. The ‘Young Turks’ ended up killing 1.5 million – or three out of four Armenians. 25 years later, the Nazis used the same reasoning to arrive at the similar ‘final solution’ - of the ‘Jewish question’
2. Red Terror during the Civil War in Russia (1918 – 1922). The Bolsheviks conducted the brutal policy of democide, exterminating the whole social groups (businessmen, intellectuals, wealthy peasants, etc.). However, they also committed acts of genocide, murdering about 500,000 Cossacks (not surprisingly, in WWII the latter overwhelmingly supported Hitler). An estimated 1.5 million Russians perished in the Red Terror. To be honest, the opponents of Bolsheviks conducted their own ‘White Terror’, killing about 100,000 Jews and tens of thousands of Russians.
3. Forced Collectivization in the Soviet Union (1929 – 1935) which included deportation of the whole social group of wealthy farmers (the ‘kulaks’) to the inhospitable areas of the USSR. About 700,000 died as the result.
4. Holodomor in Ukraine (1933) – the artificial famine that Stalin and his cronies used to eliminate the (mostly imaginary) Ukrainian resistance movement. Death toll was around 2 million (half of the Holocaust)
5. Great Terror in the Soviet Union (1936 – 1938). It was essentially a Great Purge of the Communist Party, Soviet government, Red Army and security services from actual, potential and perceived opponents of Joseph Stalin who used it to obtain the absolute power and to become essentially the ‘Red Emperor’. About 1 million citizens of the Soviet Union lost their lives.
6. Gulag system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union (1930 – 1953). Estimated death toll – 1 million. Slave labor was the key tool of the ‘industrialization’ of the Soviet Union in 1929 – 1939 and in rebuilding of the Soviet economy after the World War II.
7. ‘Asian Holocaust’ (1937 – 1945). During the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, the Japanese military committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity which were often way worse than those of the Nazis. It is estimated that the Japanese have murdered around 6 million of Chinese, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, Malaysians, Indonesians, and Indochinese, and others, including Western POWs. Making it exactly the ‘Asian Holocaust’ – in terms of the death toll (only the methods were much more brutal)
8. Deportation of whole nations in the Soviet Union (1941 – 1949 mostly; although ethnic cleansing began in 1929). Around 3.3 million were deported to Siberia and other inhospitable regions and about 1.4 million died.
9. Mass murder of Soviet POWs by Germans (1941 – 1942). Death toll – 3.5 million. Holocaust was not the only mass murder committed by the Nazis; the tragic death of about 60% of Soviet POWs definitely qualifies as one. Regardless of whether it was the result of a criminal neglect or a deliberate extermination policy or (more likely) a bit of both, the Nazis are still responsible for these horrible crimes against humanity.
10. Mass murder of civilians in anti-guerilla warfare on German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union and other nations (1939 – 1944) by the Nazis. Estimated death toll – 4 million.
11. Allied firebombing of Germany (1943 – 1945). Both USAF and RAF deliberately targeted civilians – in blatant and brutal violation of the Hague convention on the laws of warfare, killing (mostly by burning alive) an estimated 600,000 No one was ever prosecuted for these crimes.
12. U.S. firebombing of Japan (March – August 1945), including nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Estimated death toll – 800,000 (equal to the number of victims in the Treblinka concentration camp). It took the USAF half as much time as the Nazis to claim the same number of victims. Again, no one was ever prosecuted for these crimes.
13. Expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe (1945 – 1950). 12 million deported to Germany and up to 2 million brutally killed (half of the Holocaust). These horrible crimes against humanity were being committed right parallel to the infamous Nuremberg farce, where Nazis were being tried for essentially the same crimes that the Allies and their puppets were committing.
14. Democide in Communist North Korea (1948 – 1987). Death toll: over 1.6 million. Other estimates run as high as 3.5 million. Persecutions and murder of ‘enemies of the people’ continue to this day.
15. Indonesian Genocide (1965-66) – mass murder of alleged Indonesian Communists, “communist sympathizers”, other alleged leftists and ethnic Chinese. Death toll – 500,000 (according to other estimates – about 1 million)
16. ‘Cultural Revolution’ in China (1966 – 1976). Death toll – 3 million (more than perished in Operation Reinhard). 36 million more were persecuted (beaten, imprisoned, sent to forced labor camps, exiled to rural areas, etc.). Large-scale human rights abuses are still a part of a supposedly modern China.
17. Khmer Rouge democide in Cambodia (1975 – 1979). Death toll – 2 million (about 25% of the total population). Pol Pot and his cronies would have killed a lot more, but, fortunately, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979 and quickly put an end to the Khmer Rouge bloody dictatorship and its crimes.
18. Tutsi genocide in Rwanda (1994). In just three months (April – July) about 1 million Tutsis (the same number of Jews have been killed in Auschwitz in three years) have been killed in unspeakably brutal ways. This massacre could have easily been prevented but no one cared a damn. It seems that nothing has changed in half a century.
Consequently, selecting just one of these genocides and democides for the International Remembrance Day is a loud and clear insult to the victims of these other mass murders. Because it implicitly declares that Jewish lives are more valuable and important than lives of individuals of other nations and nationalities.
Which is Nazism – plain and simple.
Wannsee Conference in 100 Facts
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RolandVT
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RolandVT
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Nuremberg Trial Did NOT Meet the Necessary Legal Standards
Unfortunately (actually, very unfortunately), it did not. The “main” (IMT) Nuremberg trial was a highly controversial event (to put it mildly). Mostly political event that had much less to do with justice than it should have had.
No one in his or her right mind would dispute the need for such a trial, given the enormity of war crimes committed in Europe during World War II. There was no doubt, either, that Nazi Germany committed the most heinous of these crimes and was responsible for the largest death toll (by far).
However, it did not mean that other belligerent nations did not commit war crimes and crimes against humanity (they did). Or that the trial should ignore the most basic and universally recognized principles of justice and due process (unfortunately, it did).
To ensure that the justice is done (with no miscarriages of the latter), victorious Allies should have done what was done half a century later – after the bloody civil war in (now former) Yugoslavia. Establish the International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) under the auspices of the United Nations that has been just established.
This Tribunal (actually, its investigative office) should have conducted a thorough investigation of all reports of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during World War II.
Information about all crimes committed during the war and about the perpetrators of these crimes (from both Axis and Allied nations) was to be handed to the prosecution for preparation of proper indictments for the criminal trial.
To adhere to the most fundamental principle of fairness and impartiality, all investigators and prosecutors (as well as judges, of course), should have been recruited from the neutral nations – Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland.
Given the fact that the gravity of crimes committed warranted capital punishment, the defendants should have been tried by the jury – twelve jurors from the neutral countries. Obviously, the defense should have been allowed to participate in jury selection.
To establish the proper legacy, the trial should have been conducted according to the highest standards of justice – defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond the reasonable doubt; ruthless cross-examination of witnesses by both prosecution and defense; and the highest possible legal requirements for the admission of evidence.
Unfortunately, nothing of that happened. There was no impartial investigation; it was explicitly forbidden even to mention the possibility of crimes committed by the Allies; both the prosecution and the judges were recruited from the victorious Allies – adversaries of Nazis during the war (impartiality tossed out of the window).
Defense was not allowed to cross-examine witnesses; evidence was accepted without any evaluation as to admissibility; defendants were not allowed to appeal or affect the selection of judges; there was no jury…
German defendants were indicted and prosecuted for the very same things the Allies have been doing themselves. For example, German defendants were indicted for conspiracy to commit aggression against Poland in 1939, while no one from the Soviet Union was charged for being part of the same conspiracy (Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939).
The court agreed to relieve the Soviet leadership from attending these trials as war criminals in order to hide their own crimes that included carving up Poland in 1939 and attacking Finland three months later. This “exclusion request” was initiated by the Soviets and subsequently approved by the court’s administration.
No wonder prominent Western jurists were highly critical of the Nuremberg trial. For example, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone openly called the Nuremberg trials a fraud.
The Economist, a British weekly newspaper, criticized the hypocrisy of both Britain and France for supporting the expulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations over its unprovoked attack against Finland in 1939 and for six years later cooperating with the USSR as a respected equal at Nuremberg.
And – what was hypocrisy par excellence – right during the Nuremberg trial the Soviet Union and its East European puppets were committing a monstrous crime against humanity, deporting millions of Germans (who were guilty only of being German) from Eastern Europe.
Twelve million were deported and over two million murdered. It was genocide plain and simple, but no one was ever charged with this crime (let alone convicted).
To put it bluntly, in Nuremberg the infamous “victors’ justice” was unilaterally imposed on defendants by highly prejudiced judges and prosecutors.
No one in his or her right mind would dispute the need for such a trial, given the enormity of war crimes committed in Europe during World War II. There was no doubt, either, that Nazi Germany committed the most heinous of these crimes and was responsible for the largest death toll (by far).
However, it did not mean that other belligerent nations did not commit war crimes and crimes against humanity (they did). Or that the trial should ignore the most basic and universally recognized principles of justice and due process (unfortunately, it did).
To ensure that the justice is done (with no miscarriages of the latter), victorious Allies should have done what was done half a century later – after the bloody civil war in (now former) Yugoslavia. Establish the International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) under the auspices of the United Nations that has been just established.
This Tribunal (actually, its investigative office) should have conducted a thorough investigation of all reports of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during World War II.
Information about all crimes committed during the war and about the perpetrators of these crimes (from both Axis and Allied nations) was to be handed to the prosecution for preparation of proper indictments for the criminal trial.
To adhere to the most fundamental principle of fairness and impartiality, all investigators and prosecutors (as well as judges, of course), should have been recruited from the neutral nations – Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland.
Given the fact that the gravity of crimes committed warranted capital punishment, the defendants should have been tried by the jury – twelve jurors from the neutral countries. Obviously, the defense should have been allowed to participate in jury selection.
To establish the proper legacy, the trial should have been conducted according to the highest standards of justice – defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond the reasonable doubt; ruthless cross-examination of witnesses by both prosecution and defense; and the highest possible legal requirements for the admission of evidence.
Unfortunately, nothing of that happened. There was no impartial investigation; it was explicitly forbidden even to mention the possibility of crimes committed by the Allies; both the prosecution and the judges were recruited from the victorious Allies – adversaries of Nazis during the war (impartiality tossed out of the window).
Defense was not allowed to cross-examine witnesses; evidence was accepted without any evaluation as to admissibility; defendants were not allowed to appeal or affect the selection of judges; there was no jury…
German defendants were indicted and prosecuted for the very same things the Allies have been doing themselves. For example, German defendants were indicted for conspiracy to commit aggression against Poland in 1939, while no one from the Soviet Union was charged for being part of the same conspiracy (Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939).
The court agreed to relieve the Soviet leadership from attending these trials as war criminals in order to hide their own crimes that included carving up Poland in 1939 and attacking Finland three months later. This “exclusion request” was initiated by the Soviets and subsequently approved by the court’s administration.
No wonder prominent Western jurists were highly critical of the Nuremberg trial. For example, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone openly called the Nuremberg trials a fraud.
The Economist, a British weekly newspaper, criticized the hypocrisy of both Britain and France for supporting the expulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations over its unprovoked attack against Finland in 1939 and for six years later cooperating with the USSR as a respected equal at Nuremberg.
And – what was hypocrisy par excellence – right during the Nuremberg trial the Soviet Union and its East European puppets were committing a monstrous crime against humanity, deporting millions of Germans (who were guilty only of being German) from Eastern Europe.
Twelve million were deported and over two million murdered. It was genocide plain and simple, but no one was ever charged with this crime (let alone convicted).
To put it bluntly, in Nuremberg the infamous “victors’ justice” was unilaterally imposed on defendants by highly prejudiced judges and prosecutors.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Holocaust in Hungary Is an Enigma
Holocaust in Hungary was a very strange episode in the Shoah – and the deadliest outside Poland. It was the deadliest because of its enormous death toll – 564,000 with over 434,000 murdered (in Auschwitz-Birkenau) in less than two months, from May 15 to July 9 of 1944. And it was very strange because none of it made any sense at all (even in the perverted Nazi logic).
By spring of 1944, Hungary had a Jewish population of 825,000, the largest remaining in Europe, further swollen by Jews escaping from elsewhere to the relative safety of that country.
The Hungarian moderate Prime Minister Miklós Kállay had been reluctant to deport them and was supported by Hungarian Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy who had no desire to be involved in murderous endeavors of his Nazi allies which for him made no sense.
Actually, after failure of German blitzkrieg in December of 1941 (and American entry into the war), Horthy started to put some distance between himself and Hitler’s regime figuring (correctly) that after these disasters the war would not end well for the Axis powers.
By early 1944, he made a crucial mistake – instead of pursuing neutrality, he decided to switch sides and join the Allies (thus betraying Adolf Hitler). It was a catastrophic mistake which became one especially for the Jews.
Sensing that Hungary was trying to betray him (Kállay already negotiated conditions under which Hungary would switch sides), Hitler ordered the invasion and occupation of his ally codenamed Operation Margarethe.
Being a complete surprise, the occupation was quick and bloodless – and was complete in just one day – on March 19. Having no other choice, Horthy (to protect nominal independence of his country) promptly fired Kállay.
And replaced him with staunchly pro-German – he was ambassador to Berlin for many years – Döme Sztójay (interestingly, the latter was ethnic Serb – his real name was Dimitrije Stojakovic).
Sztójay immediately legalized the Arrow Cross Party. During the four days’ interregnum following the German occupation, the Ministry of the Interior was placed in the hands of László Endre and László Baky, known for their hostility to Jews. Their boss, Andor Jaross, was another committed anti-Semite. Both steps spelled a genuine catastrophe for Jews in Hungary.
Following the German occupation, Adolf Eichmann was dispatched to Hungary and ordered by Himmler to arrange the deportation of 550,000 Hungarian Jews – including Jews from territories that had been annexed from Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia – to Auschwitz-Birkenau for gassing. Hungarian authorities were expected to be fully cooperative.
The 550,000-lives question was: why on Earth would want to murder more than half a million of Hungarian Jews (and in such a short time) when it made no sense at all even in a perverted logic of the Nazis?
It is highly unlikely that he acted on Hitler’s orders: first, by that time Hitler did not care about anything outside purely military matters (even about the Jews); and second, later events directly contradicted this theory.
Contrary to a widespread misconception, Himmler was no Nazi fanatic – he was a highly pragmatic politician and statesman. True, in 1941 he most likely subscribed to the idea that in order to win the existential war with the Bolshevist USSR and its Western Allies, the Nazis had to exterminate all Jews under their control… but by March 1944 it was painfully (literally) obvious that the war was lost – regardless of what would happen to the Jews under German control.
So why bother – and waste critically valuable resources on a totally useless job? And then again – if he held this belief, why did he stop on July 7th? Officially, Horthy stopped them… but at that time he was already powerless so Himmler could have simply ignored his orders (and the Arrow Cross boys would be happy to help him – as would the pro-Nazi Hungarian police and Ministry of the Interior)?
Still, Himmler gave his orders – and trains with Hungarian Jews began rolling into Auschwitz-Birkenau on a daily basis – like clockwork.
Adolf Eichmann set up his office in the Majestic Hotel in Budapest (no surprise here). The Yellow Star and ghettoization laws, and the deportations, were accomplished in less than eight weeks, with the enthusiastic help of the Hungarian authorities, particularly the gendarmerie (so much for the power of Horthy).
The plan was to use 45 cattle cars per train, four trains a day, to deport 12,000 Jews from the countryside every day, starting in mid-May; this was to be followed by the deportation of Jews from Budapest from about 15 July.
Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of Auschwitz, returned to the camp on May 8 to oversee the Hungarian Jews’ arrival and immediate gassing. As a result, the Hungarian operation got the name Aktion Höss.
The first (“pilot”) train left Budapest on April 29, 1944 carrying 1,800 Jewish men and women aged 16–50 who were (initially) deemed fit to work. A second train left Topolya (now in Serbia) on the next day carrying 2,000. The transports went through “selection”; 616 women and 486 men were selected for work duties, and 2,698 (71%) were sent straight to gas chambers.
The regular mass transports of the Jews, the first organized by the RSHA (still the lead agency in the “Holocaust Project”) began leaving Hungary for Auschwitz on May 14 1944. The Hungarian government was in charge of them up to the northern border – then the SS took over.
On a typical day, there were three or four trains, each carrying 3,000-4,000 Jews. There were 109 trains until June 16. On some days, there were six trains… the ten, then eighteen. Another ten trains were sent to Auschwitz via other routes.
The first three trains, each consisting of 40–50 cars, arrived at Auschwitz on May 16th. After unloading their belongings, the deportees were organized into rows of five, then led to the gas chambers.
By July 9, 1944, 434,351 Jews in 147 trains had been deported to Auschwitz, according to László Ferenczy of the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie. According to Edmund Veesenmayer, the Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary, the number was 437,402. About 80% were gassed on arrival. Because the crematoria were unable to cope with the number of corpses, pits were dug where bodies were burned.
The (temporarily) spared 20% were used as slave laborers or (a relatively small numbers) in medical experiments. On May 28th, 963 were transferred from Auschwitz I to Mauthausen; and on June 5th, 2,000 were sent to the Buchenwald. The following day, some were transferred to Auschwitz III, a labor camp for IG Farben, and another 2,000 were sent to Mauthausen that day and on June 13th.
Just before the deportations of Jews from Budapest began, the Vrba–Wetzler report reached the Allies. The report provided a detailed description of the gas chambers, and what was happening inside the camp; it had been dictated in April 1944 by two Auschwitz escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler.
However, the report was of little value – unlike with previous deportations, the SS did not even try to conceal these serial mass murders – everything was done in plain sight. Which made some sense – with Allied Air Forces ruling the skies, their recon planes saw pretty well what was happening to Hungarian Jews – and where.
World leaders, including Pope Pius XII on June 25th (Hungary was Roman Catholic), President Roosevelt on the next day June, and King Gustaf V of Sweden on June 30th, appealed to Horthy to stop the deportations.
Roosevelt threatened military retaliation; on July 7th, Horthy ordered an end to them… and they stopped. Which made no sense as Roosevelt’s threat was empty (his land forces were too far away – and his bombers were far too busy supporting Allied invasion of Western Europe).
And he had no power anyway – Hungary was an occupied nation and thus was run by Wehrmacht and the SS, not by Hungarian authorities. Still, the deportation stopped… but it did not put an end to Holocaust in Hungary.
In October 1944, Horthy negotiated a cease-fire with the Soviets and ordered Hungarian troops to lay down their arms. In response, on October 15th, Nazi Germany launched the covert Operation Panzerfaust which took Horthy into “protective custody” in Germany and forced him to abdicate on October 16th.
Szálasi (leader of ‘Arrow Cross Party far-right pro-Nazi ultranationalist party) was made “Leader of the Nation” and prime minister of an Arrow Cross-dominated “Government of National Unity” the same day.
His rule was short – but brutal. In under three months, their death squads killed as many as 38,000 Hungarian Jews and sent some 80,000 Jews out of the city on slave labor details (from which many did not return) and many more to SS camps in Germany (ditto). The Allies did not interfere in any way – and neither did Stalin.
Now the mystery deepens. First, there is a mystery of “Hungarian Gold Train”. A government official appointed by the SS, Árpád Toldi, concocted a plan to evacuate much of looted Jewish valuables out of Hungary… to no-one-knows-where.
Toldi ordered large amounts of the valuables loaded onto a 46-car freight train that headed for Germany via Austria. According to various reports about the train, the contents included gold, gold jewelry, gems, diamonds, pearls, watches, and currency (mostly US dollars and Swiss francs).
Jewish organizations and the Hungarian government estimated the total value of the train’s contents at $350 million in 1945 or almost $6 billion in 2024 adjusted for inflation. Toldi and his family left the train with a large amount of gold on March 30, 1945 – it was never recovered.
After passing from Hungary directly into Austria, the train stopped occasionally to transfer amounts of the gold to trucks. The fate of the gold on those trucks remains unknown. No one knows how much of value disappeared into thin year… except that it was in the US$ billions in today’s prices.
And now there is another mystery – the Budapest mission of one Raul Wallenberg… actually, it was not just him. Wallenberg, Carl Lutz (Swedish consul in Budapest), Angelo Rotta, the Apostolic nuncio of the Holy See and some others issued “protective papers” that allegedly protected Jews from deportations to Auschwitz allegedly saving tens of thousands of Jewish lives.
Allegedly because in 1944, the SS did not care a rat’s ass about “papers” issued by neutral countries (whose governments did not care much about the Jews). Still, the SS, including Eichmann (!!!) accepted these papers – and Jewish lives were saved.
Now the mystery deepens (there is always a room for that). On January 17th, 1945, Wallenberg was called to Soviet General Malinovsky’s headquarters in Debrecen to answer allegations that he was engaged in espionage… and just disappeared.
On 8 March 1945, Soviet-controlled Hungarian radio announced that Wallenberg and his driver had been murdered on their way to Debrecen, suggesting that they had been killed by the Arrow Cross Party or the Gestapo… and everyone accepted.
However, it was a lie – Wallenberg was arrested by NKVD (on orders from the very top) and transferred to infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow. According to Soviet authorities, he died from a heart attack on July 17, 1947… which is probably true.
Now why would Stalin risk good relationships with Sweden (at the time Wallenberg family owned half of Sweden) for… what? One alleged spy? Especially when everyone knew that Wallenberg had nothing to do with spying…
I have a theory – a conspiracy theory, sure – but it explains all these mysteries. By March 1944, Himmler knew that the war was lost for Germany – but he was not ready to give up on his SS.
So, he concocted a plan for the SS to go underground in post-war Europe to return to power when it becomes possible. In other words, to create a well-funded pan-European clandestine organization which subsequently became known as ODESSA.
However, he needed to transport the SS loot to Sweden and Switzerland; launder it – and equip hundreds of his trusted associates with passports of these nations. So, he started the new phase of Shoah – and offered to stop it is he gets what he wants.
And he got it; however, the Soviets got wind of it and wanted their piece of the pie. So, they arrested Wallenberg… but he knew nothing (he was a courier between Himmler and his family who delivered messages – not valuables).
So, ODESSA – or Die Neue SS, or whatever – is most likely alive and well today – waiting for a chance for a comeback. For a mighty comeback – and not just in Europe, but in the whole Western Civilization.
By spring of 1944, Hungary had a Jewish population of 825,000, the largest remaining in Europe, further swollen by Jews escaping from elsewhere to the relative safety of that country.
The Hungarian moderate Prime Minister Miklós Kállay had been reluctant to deport them and was supported by Hungarian Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy who had no desire to be involved in murderous endeavors of his Nazi allies which for him made no sense.
Actually, after failure of German blitzkrieg in December of 1941 (and American entry into the war), Horthy started to put some distance between himself and Hitler’s regime figuring (correctly) that after these disasters the war would not end well for the Axis powers.
By early 1944, he made a crucial mistake – instead of pursuing neutrality, he decided to switch sides and join the Allies (thus betraying Adolf Hitler). It was a catastrophic mistake which became one especially for the Jews.
Sensing that Hungary was trying to betray him (Kállay already negotiated conditions under which Hungary would switch sides), Hitler ordered the invasion and occupation of his ally codenamed Operation Margarethe.
Being a complete surprise, the occupation was quick and bloodless – and was complete in just one day – on March 19. Having no other choice, Horthy (to protect nominal independence of his country) promptly fired Kállay.
And replaced him with staunchly pro-German – he was ambassador to Berlin for many years – Döme Sztójay (interestingly, the latter was ethnic Serb – his real name was Dimitrije Stojakovic).
Sztójay immediately legalized the Arrow Cross Party. During the four days’ interregnum following the German occupation, the Ministry of the Interior was placed in the hands of László Endre and László Baky, known for their hostility to Jews. Their boss, Andor Jaross, was another committed anti-Semite. Both steps spelled a genuine catastrophe for Jews in Hungary.
Following the German occupation, Adolf Eichmann was dispatched to Hungary and ordered by Himmler to arrange the deportation of 550,000 Hungarian Jews – including Jews from territories that had been annexed from Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia – to Auschwitz-Birkenau for gassing. Hungarian authorities were expected to be fully cooperative.
The 550,000-lives question was: why on Earth would want to murder more than half a million of Hungarian Jews (and in such a short time) when it made no sense at all even in a perverted logic of the Nazis?
It is highly unlikely that he acted on Hitler’s orders: first, by that time Hitler did not care about anything outside purely military matters (even about the Jews); and second, later events directly contradicted this theory.
Contrary to a widespread misconception, Himmler was no Nazi fanatic – he was a highly pragmatic politician and statesman. True, in 1941 he most likely subscribed to the idea that in order to win the existential war with the Bolshevist USSR and its Western Allies, the Nazis had to exterminate all Jews under their control… but by March 1944 it was painfully (literally) obvious that the war was lost – regardless of what would happen to the Jews under German control.
So why bother – and waste critically valuable resources on a totally useless job? And then again – if he held this belief, why did he stop on July 7th? Officially, Horthy stopped them… but at that time he was already powerless so Himmler could have simply ignored his orders (and the Arrow Cross boys would be happy to help him – as would the pro-Nazi Hungarian police and Ministry of the Interior)?
Still, Himmler gave his orders – and trains with Hungarian Jews began rolling into Auschwitz-Birkenau on a daily basis – like clockwork.
Adolf Eichmann set up his office in the Majestic Hotel in Budapest (no surprise here). The Yellow Star and ghettoization laws, and the deportations, were accomplished in less than eight weeks, with the enthusiastic help of the Hungarian authorities, particularly the gendarmerie (so much for the power of Horthy).
The plan was to use 45 cattle cars per train, four trains a day, to deport 12,000 Jews from the countryside every day, starting in mid-May; this was to be followed by the deportation of Jews from Budapest from about 15 July.
Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of Auschwitz, returned to the camp on May 8 to oversee the Hungarian Jews’ arrival and immediate gassing. As a result, the Hungarian operation got the name Aktion Höss.
The first (“pilot”) train left Budapest on April 29, 1944 carrying 1,800 Jewish men and women aged 16–50 who were (initially) deemed fit to work. A second train left Topolya (now in Serbia) on the next day carrying 2,000. The transports went through “selection”; 616 women and 486 men were selected for work duties, and 2,698 (71%) were sent straight to gas chambers.
The regular mass transports of the Jews, the first organized by the RSHA (still the lead agency in the “Holocaust Project”) began leaving Hungary for Auschwitz on May 14 1944. The Hungarian government was in charge of them up to the northern border – then the SS took over.
On a typical day, there were three or four trains, each carrying 3,000-4,000 Jews. There were 109 trains until June 16. On some days, there were six trains… the ten, then eighteen. Another ten trains were sent to Auschwitz via other routes.
The first three trains, each consisting of 40–50 cars, arrived at Auschwitz on May 16th. After unloading their belongings, the deportees were organized into rows of five, then led to the gas chambers.
By July 9, 1944, 434,351 Jews in 147 trains had been deported to Auschwitz, according to László Ferenczy of the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie. According to Edmund Veesenmayer, the Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary, the number was 437,402. About 80% were gassed on arrival. Because the crematoria were unable to cope with the number of corpses, pits were dug where bodies were burned.
The (temporarily) spared 20% were used as slave laborers or (a relatively small numbers) in medical experiments. On May 28th, 963 were transferred from Auschwitz I to Mauthausen; and on June 5th, 2,000 were sent to the Buchenwald. The following day, some were transferred to Auschwitz III, a labor camp for IG Farben, and another 2,000 were sent to Mauthausen that day and on June 13th.
Just before the deportations of Jews from Budapest began, the Vrba–Wetzler report reached the Allies. The report provided a detailed description of the gas chambers, and what was happening inside the camp; it had been dictated in April 1944 by two Auschwitz escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler.
However, the report was of little value – unlike with previous deportations, the SS did not even try to conceal these serial mass murders – everything was done in plain sight. Which made some sense – with Allied Air Forces ruling the skies, their recon planes saw pretty well what was happening to Hungarian Jews – and where.
World leaders, including Pope Pius XII on June 25th (Hungary was Roman Catholic), President Roosevelt on the next day June, and King Gustaf V of Sweden on June 30th, appealed to Horthy to stop the deportations.
Roosevelt threatened military retaliation; on July 7th, Horthy ordered an end to them… and they stopped. Which made no sense as Roosevelt’s threat was empty (his land forces were too far away – and his bombers were far too busy supporting Allied invasion of Western Europe).
And he had no power anyway – Hungary was an occupied nation and thus was run by Wehrmacht and the SS, not by Hungarian authorities. Still, the deportation stopped… but it did not put an end to Holocaust in Hungary.
In October 1944, Horthy negotiated a cease-fire with the Soviets and ordered Hungarian troops to lay down their arms. In response, on October 15th, Nazi Germany launched the covert Operation Panzerfaust which took Horthy into “protective custody” in Germany and forced him to abdicate on October 16th.
Szálasi (leader of ‘Arrow Cross Party far-right pro-Nazi ultranationalist party) was made “Leader of the Nation” and prime minister of an Arrow Cross-dominated “Government of National Unity” the same day.
His rule was short – but brutal. In under three months, their death squads killed as many as 38,000 Hungarian Jews and sent some 80,000 Jews out of the city on slave labor details (from which many did not return) and many more to SS camps in Germany (ditto). The Allies did not interfere in any way – and neither did Stalin.
Now the mystery deepens. First, there is a mystery of “Hungarian Gold Train”. A government official appointed by the SS, Árpád Toldi, concocted a plan to evacuate much of looted Jewish valuables out of Hungary… to no-one-knows-where.
Toldi ordered large amounts of the valuables loaded onto a 46-car freight train that headed for Germany via Austria. According to various reports about the train, the contents included gold, gold jewelry, gems, diamonds, pearls, watches, and currency (mostly US dollars and Swiss francs).
Jewish organizations and the Hungarian government estimated the total value of the train’s contents at $350 million in 1945 or almost $6 billion in 2024 adjusted for inflation. Toldi and his family left the train with a large amount of gold on March 30, 1945 – it was never recovered.
After passing from Hungary directly into Austria, the train stopped occasionally to transfer amounts of the gold to trucks. The fate of the gold on those trucks remains unknown. No one knows how much of value disappeared into thin year… except that it was in the US$ billions in today’s prices.
And now there is another mystery – the Budapest mission of one Raul Wallenberg… actually, it was not just him. Wallenberg, Carl Lutz (Swedish consul in Budapest), Angelo Rotta, the Apostolic nuncio of the Holy See and some others issued “protective papers” that allegedly protected Jews from deportations to Auschwitz allegedly saving tens of thousands of Jewish lives.
Allegedly because in 1944, the SS did not care a rat’s ass about “papers” issued by neutral countries (whose governments did not care much about the Jews). Still, the SS, including Eichmann (!!!) accepted these papers – and Jewish lives were saved.
Now the mystery deepens (there is always a room for that). On January 17th, 1945, Wallenberg was called to Soviet General Malinovsky’s headquarters in Debrecen to answer allegations that he was engaged in espionage… and just disappeared.
On 8 March 1945, Soviet-controlled Hungarian radio announced that Wallenberg and his driver had been murdered on their way to Debrecen, suggesting that they had been killed by the Arrow Cross Party or the Gestapo… and everyone accepted.
However, it was a lie – Wallenberg was arrested by NKVD (on orders from the very top) and transferred to infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow. According to Soviet authorities, he died from a heart attack on July 17, 1947… which is probably true.
Now why would Stalin risk good relationships with Sweden (at the time Wallenberg family owned half of Sweden) for… what? One alleged spy? Especially when everyone knew that Wallenberg had nothing to do with spying…
I have a theory – a conspiracy theory, sure – but it explains all these mysteries. By March 1944, Himmler knew that the war was lost for Germany – but he was not ready to give up on his SS.
So, he concocted a plan for the SS to go underground in post-war Europe to return to power when it becomes possible. In other words, to create a well-funded pan-European clandestine organization which subsequently became known as ODESSA.
However, he needed to transport the SS loot to Sweden and Switzerland; launder it – and equip hundreds of his trusted associates with passports of these nations. So, he started the new phase of Shoah – and offered to stop it is he gets what he wants.
And he got it; however, the Soviets got wind of it and wanted their piece of the pie. So, they arrested Wallenberg… but he knew nothing (he was a courier between Himmler and his family who delivered messages – not valuables).
So, ODESSA – or Die Neue SS, or whatever – is most likely alive and well today – waiting for a chance for a comeback. For a mighty comeback – and not just in Europe, but in the whole Western Civilization.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Suppliers of Zyklon B Were as Guilty as its Users
Legally, the one who supplies the killer with the weapon, is considered an accomplice (accessory to murder) and is punished not as severely as the murderer proper. However, with the crime so monstrous as the Holocaust, suppliers of Zyklon B (used to kill Jews in Auschwitz and Majdanek) are as guilty as those who used it to kill over a million human beings. Guilty as sin. Literally deadly sin.
Hence, in my not-so-humble-opinion, when Bruno Tesch (who invented and supplied Zyklon B to Nazi serial mass murderers), and his deputy Karl Weinbacher were sentenced to death by the British and executed, justice was properly served.
Hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous gas that interferes with cellular respiration, was first used as a pesticide in California in the 1880s. Research at Degesch of Germany led to the development of Zyklon (later known as Zyklon A), a pesticide that released hydrogen cyanide upon exposure to water and heat. It was banned after World War I, when Germany (not very successfully as it proved to be unstable) used gaseous hydrogen cyanide as a chemical weapon.
In 1922, Degesch was purchased by Degussa – another German chemical company. Their team of chemists, which included Walter Heerdt and Bruno Tesch, devised a method of packaging hydrogen cyanide in sealed canisters along with a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such as diatomaceous earth.
The new product (in the form of pellets) was also named Zyklon, but it became known as Zyklon B to distinguish it from the earlier version. It was widely used for delousing clothing and fumigating ships, warehouses, and trains as insecticide. Beginning in the 1920s, Zyklon B was used at U.S. Customs facilities along the Mexican border to fumigate the clothing of border crossers.
The Nazis started using Zyklon B in Auschwitz in early 1942 to murder prisoners during the Holocaust. Tesch and his deputy executive, Karl Weinbacher, were executed in 1946 for knowingly selling the product to the SS for use on humans.
Hydrogen cyanide is now rarely used as a pesticide but still has industrial applications. Firms in several countries continue to produce Zyklon B under alternative brand names, including Detia-Degesch, the successor to Degesch, who renamed the product Cyanosil in 1974.
In 1930, Degussa ceded 42.5% ownership of Degesch to IG Farben (no surprise here) and 15% to Th. Goldschmidt AG, in exchange for the right to market pesticide products of those two companies through Degesch. Degussa retained managerial control, though.
The finished product produced by Degussa were sent to Degesch, who forwarded the product to two companies that acted as distributors: Heerdt-Linger GmbH (Heli) of Frankfurt and Tesch & Stabenow (Testa) of Hamburg.
Distributor Heli supplied Zyklon B to Mauthausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald (as an insecticide), and Testa supplied it to Auschwitz and Majdanek (ditto initially); camps also occasionally bought it directly from the manufacturers.
Use of Zyklon B for serial mass murder in gas chambers was a no-brainer: after the decision to kill all Jews under German control in Europe was made (by Himmler and Heydrich) and approved (by Göring and Hitler) sometime in August of 1941, it was obvious that it could be done only with poison gas. Mass shootings of that magnitude were impossible both operationally and politically.
Zyklon B was a natural choice because it was readily available and camp personnel had extensive experience using it (prior to the first experimental gassing at Auschwitz it was in use as an insecticide for months).
However, Aktion T4 personnel transferred to Chelmno and Operation Reinhard death camps had no such experience so they stuck to familiar (to them) method of “Holocaust by Gas”: carbon monoxide generated by exhaust fumes of internal combustion engine (petrol in gas vans and diesel in stationary gas chambers).
Some 56 tons of the 729 tons of Zyklon B (7.7%) sold in Germany in 1942-44 were sold to SS concentration camps. Auschwitz received almost half, of which six tons were used for fumigation.
The remainder was used in the gas chambers or lost to spoilage (the product had a stated shelf life of only three months). In April 1941, the German agriculture and interior ministries designated the SS as an authorized applier of the chemical, so they were able to use it without any further training or governmental oversight.
The first (experimental) gassing at Auschwitz with Zyklon B took place in late August 1941 in the basement of Block 11 in the main camp. The experiment was repeated in September, with Höss watching.
However, Block 11 proved unsuitable, as the basement was difficult to air out afterwards and the crematorium (Crematorium I, which operated until July 1942) was some distance away.
So further gassings took place in makeshift gas chamber in Crematorium I, where more than 700 victims could be murdered at once. By the middle of 1942, the operation was moved to Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a nearby satellite camp that had been under construction since October 1941 specifically as a killing center.
Auschwitz II–Birkenau had two gas chambers with a capacity of 800 and 1,200 victims. These structures were in use for mass-murder until early 1943. At that point, the SS decided to greatly increase the gassing capacity of Birkenau.
Crematorium II was originally designed as a mortuary with morgues in the basement and ground-level incinerators; the SS converted it into a death factory by installing gas-tight doors, vents for the Zyklon B to be dropped into the chamber, and ventilation equipment to remove the gas afterwards.
Crematorium III was built using the same design. Crematoria IV and V, designed from the beginning as gassing centers, were also constructed that spring. By June 1943, all four crematoria were operational. Most of the victims of Auschwitz were murdered using these four structures.
A special SS bureau known as the Hygienic Institute delivered the Zyklon B to the crematoria by ambulance. The actual delivery of the gas to the victims (i.e., mass murder) was always handled by the SS, on the order of the supervising SS doctor.
After World War II ended in 1945, Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher of Tesch & Stabenow were tried in a British military court and executed for knowingly providing Zyklon B to the SS for use on humans.
Gerhard Peters, who served as Chief Operating Officer of Degesch and Heli and also held posts in the Nazi government, served two years and eight months in prison as an accessory before being released due to amendments to the penal code.
Hence, in my not-so-humble-opinion, when Bruno Tesch (who invented and supplied Zyklon B to Nazi serial mass murderers), and his deputy Karl Weinbacher were sentenced to death by the British and executed, justice was properly served.
Hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous gas that interferes with cellular respiration, was first used as a pesticide in California in the 1880s. Research at Degesch of Germany led to the development of Zyklon (later known as Zyklon A), a pesticide that released hydrogen cyanide upon exposure to water and heat. It was banned after World War I, when Germany (not very successfully as it proved to be unstable) used gaseous hydrogen cyanide as a chemical weapon.
In 1922, Degesch was purchased by Degussa – another German chemical company. Their team of chemists, which included Walter Heerdt and Bruno Tesch, devised a method of packaging hydrogen cyanide in sealed canisters along with a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such as diatomaceous earth.
The new product (in the form of pellets) was also named Zyklon, but it became known as Zyklon B to distinguish it from the earlier version. It was widely used for delousing clothing and fumigating ships, warehouses, and trains as insecticide. Beginning in the 1920s, Zyklon B was used at U.S. Customs facilities along the Mexican border to fumigate the clothing of border crossers.
The Nazis started using Zyklon B in Auschwitz in early 1942 to murder prisoners during the Holocaust. Tesch and his deputy executive, Karl Weinbacher, were executed in 1946 for knowingly selling the product to the SS for use on humans.
Hydrogen cyanide is now rarely used as a pesticide but still has industrial applications. Firms in several countries continue to produce Zyklon B under alternative brand names, including Detia-Degesch, the successor to Degesch, who renamed the product Cyanosil in 1974.
In 1930, Degussa ceded 42.5% ownership of Degesch to IG Farben (no surprise here) and 15% to Th. Goldschmidt AG, in exchange for the right to market pesticide products of those two companies through Degesch. Degussa retained managerial control, though.
The finished product produced by Degussa were sent to Degesch, who forwarded the product to two companies that acted as distributors: Heerdt-Linger GmbH (Heli) of Frankfurt and Tesch & Stabenow (Testa) of Hamburg.
Distributor Heli supplied Zyklon B to Mauthausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald (as an insecticide), and Testa supplied it to Auschwitz and Majdanek (ditto initially); camps also occasionally bought it directly from the manufacturers.
Use of Zyklon B for serial mass murder in gas chambers was a no-brainer: after the decision to kill all Jews under German control in Europe was made (by Himmler and Heydrich) and approved (by Göring and Hitler) sometime in August of 1941, it was obvious that it could be done only with poison gas. Mass shootings of that magnitude were impossible both operationally and politically.
Zyklon B was a natural choice because it was readily available and camp personnel had extensive experience using it (prior to the first experimental gassing at Auschwitz it was in use as an insecticide for months).
However, Aktion T4 personnel transferred to Chelmno and Operation Reinhard death camps had no such experience so they stuck to familiar (to them) method of “Holocaust by Gas”: carbon monoxide generated by exhaust fumes of internal combustion engine (petrol in gas vans and diesel in stationary gas chambers).
Some 56 tons of the 729 tons of Zyklon B (7.7%) sold in Germany in 1942-44 were sold to SS concentration camps. Auschwitz received almost half, of which six tons were used for fumigation.
The remainder was used in the gas chambers or lost to spoilage (the product had a stated shelf life of only three months). In April 1941, the German agriculture and interior ministries designated the SS as an authorized applier of the chemical, so they were able to use it without any further training or governmental oversight.
The first (experimental) gassing at Auschwitz with Zyklon B took place in late August 1941 in the basement of Block 11 in the main camp. The experiment was repeated in September, with Höss watching.
However, Block 11 proved unsuitable, as the basement was difficult to air out afterwards and the crematorium (Crematorium I, which operated until July 1942) was some distance away.
So further gassings took place in makeshift gas chamber in Crematorium I, where more than 700 victims could be murdered at once. By the middle of 1942, the operation was moved to Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a nearby satellite camp that had been under construction since October 1941 specifically as a killing center.
Auschwitz II–Birkenau had two gas chambers with a capacity of 800 and 1,200 victims. These structures were in use for mass-murder until early 1943. At that point, the SS decided to greatly increase the gassing capacity of Birkenau.
Crematorium II was originally designed as a mortuary with morgues in the basement and ground-level incinerators; the SS converted it into a death factory by installing gas-tight doors, vents for the Zyklon B to be dropped into the chamber, and ventilation equipment to remove the gas afterwards.
Crematorium III was built using the same design. Crematoria IV and V, designed from the beginning as gassing centers, were also constructed that spring. By June 1943, all four crematoria were operational. Most of the victims of Auschwitz were murdered using these four structures.
A special SS bureau known as the Hygienic Institute delivered the Zyklon B to the crematoria by ambulance. The actual delivery of the gas to the victims (i.e., mass murder) was always handled by the SS, on the order of the supervising SS doctor.
After World War II ended in 1945, Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher of Tesch & Stabenow were tried in a British military court and executed for knowingly providing Zyklon B to the SS for use on humans.
Gerhard Peters, who served as Chief Operating Officer of Degesch and Heli and also held posts in the Nazi government, served two years and eight months in prison as an accessory before being released due to amendments to the penal code.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Crematoria Builders Were Accessories to Mass Murder
While crematorium oven is (obviously) not a murder weapon, all twelve German companies that that designed and built crematorium ovens for SS concentration camps and death factories were still accessories to murder – and not just “accessories after the fact”. Accessories because they used their considerable expertise to assist the Nazi regime to make serial mass murder into a highly efficient, industrial process.
The largest and the most prominent of these companies was Erfurt-based J. A. Topf and Sons (J. A. Topf & Söhne) was an engineering company, founded in 1878. Originally, it made heating systems and brewing and malting equipment.
Later, the company diversified into silos, chimneys, incinerators for burning municipal waste, and crematoria. During World War I, it made weapons shells, limbers (carts for carrying artillery) and other military vehicles. In World War II, it also made weapons shells and aircraft parts for the Luftwaffe.
The company not only made crematorium ovens, it also made ventilation systems for the gas chambers at Auschwitz II. Topf & Söhne’s main competitor in making concentration camp ovens was the Berlin firm H. Kori GmbH, founded in 1887.
At its peak, Topf & Söhne was the largest company of its type in the world. It sold its products globally, as far afield as Russia, Asia, North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand. In the 1940s, less than 2% of its total business came from its concentration camp contracts.
In addition to Auschwitz and Auschwitz II–Birkenau, Topf & Söhne built crematorium ovens for Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen-Gusen, Mogilev ghetto, and the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.
Out of the five ovens at Dachau concentration camp, four were made by H. Kori and one by Topf & Söhne. In all, Topf built 25 crematorium ovens which had a total of 76 incineration chambers (called ‘muffles’) for concentration camps. H. Kori built 42 single-chamber ovens at various camps.
From 1941, Topf & Söhne used forced labor in its factory, as did many other German firms in the Nazi period. At least 620 foreigners were forced to work for the company. They received wages, but they were paid 25-30% less than the German employees. After the war, the company was confiscated and nationalized by the Soviet occupation administration.
Kurt Prüfer, the head of Topf & Söhne’s small crematoria department, was the main oven designer. He developed a two-muffle transportable oven in September 1939, which was delivered to Dachau concentration camp in November 1939.
A ‘muffle’ is the incineration chamber where the body is put. In order to improve the speed at which bodies burned, the muffles were internally joined, resulting in the ashes of individual bodies being mixed.
This was illegal, but all subsequent multi-muffle ovens built for the concentration camps were designed in the same way. A further four, single-muffle ovens were built at Dachau by Topf & Söhne’s competitor H. Kori.
The muffles of the concentration camp ovens were smaller than those for civil crematoria, because no space for a coffin was needed, which saved both space and fuel. Prüfer later designed ovens with muffles large enough for several bodies to be burned simultaneously.
Later, Topf & Söhne’s instructions on using the ovens, advised adding bodies to the muffles at 20-minute intervals as the previous body burned down. Bodies were often pushed in four, five or even six at a time.
In addition to making ovens for Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Dachau, Topf & Söhne also supplied a transportable double-muffle oven and a stationary double-muffle oven to Mauthausen-Gusen; a triple-muffle oven to Gross-Rosen and a four-muffle oven to Mogilev ghetto. It is also believed that they supplied transportable ovens to at least one of the Nazi euthanasia institutions (Aktion T4 killing centers).
From August 1940 to May 1942, Topf & Söhne built three double-muffle ovens at Auschwitz I. In October 1941, the SS placed an order for five three-muffle ovens for the Auschwitz II) where it was initially estimated that over 1000 people per day would be gassed.
According to calculations made by the Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz on June 28, 1943, its crematoria could burn 4,416 corpses per day -1,440 each in crematoria II and III, and 768 each in crematoria IV and V. This meant that the crematoria could potentially burn over 1.6 million corpses per year, however, the actual numbers were much lower.
The first transport of Jewish victims arrived at Auschwitz II on March 26, 1942. To deal with the increased demand for body disposal, Topf & Söhne installed a further two 8-muffle ovens in September 1942. An additional five triple-muffle ovens were installed at Auschwitz II by mid-March 1943.
Surviving Sonderkommando prisoners assigned to burn the bodies stated that all four of Auschwitz II’s crematoria had the capacity to cremate a total of 8000 bodies per day, although the actual numbers were usually lower.
The largest and the most prominent of these companies was Erfurt-based J. A. Topf and Sons (J. A. Topf & Söhne) was an engineering company, founded in 1878. Originally, it made heating systems and brewing and malting equipment.
Later, the company diversified into silos, chimneys, incinerators for burning municipal waste, and crematoria. During World War I, it made weapons shells, limbers (carts for carrying artillery) and other military vehicles. In World War II, it also made weapons shells and aircraft parts for the Luftwaffe.
The company not only made crematorium ovens, it also made ventilation systems for the gas chambers at Auschwitz II. Topf & Söhne’s main competitor in making concentration camp ovens was the Berlin firm H. Kori GmbH, founded in 1887.
At its peak, Topf & Söhne was the largest company of its type in the world. It sold its products globally, as far afield as Russia, Asia, North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand. In the 1940s, less than 2% of its total business came from its concentration camp contracts.
In addition to Auschwitz and Auschwitz II–Birkenau, Topf & Söhne built crematorium ovens for Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen-Gusen, Mogilev ghetto, and the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.
Out of the five ovens at Dachau concentration camp, four were made by H. Kori and one by Topf & Söhne. In all, Topf built 25 crematorium ovens which had a total of 76 incineration chambers (called ‘muffles’) for concentration camps. H. Kori built 42 single-chamber ovens at various camps.
From 1941, Topf & Söhne used forced labor in its factory, as did many other German firms in the Nazi period. At least 620 foreigners were forced to work for the company. They received wages, but they were paid 25-30% less than the German employees. After the war, the company was confiscated and nationalized by the Soviet occupation administration.
Kurt Prüfer, the head of Topf & Söhne’s small crematoria department, was the main oven designer. He developed a two-muffle transportable oven in September 1939, which was delivered to Dachau concentration camp in November 1939.
A ‘muffle’ is the incineration chamber where the body is put. In order to improve the speed at which bodies burned, the muffles were internally joined, resulting in the ashes of individual bodies being mixed.
This was illegal, but all subsequent multi-muffle ovens built for the concentration camps were designed in the same way. A further four, single-muffle ovens were built at Dachau by Topf & Söhne’s competitor H. Kori.
The muffles of the concentration camp ovens were smaller than those for civil crematoria, because no space for a coffin was needed, which saved both space and fuel. Prüfer later designed ovens with muffles large enough for several bodies to be burned simultaneously.
Later, Topf & Söhne’s instructions on using the ovens, advised adding bodies to the muffles at 20-minute intervals as the previous body burned down. Bodies were often pushed in four, five or even six at a time.
In addition to making ovens for Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Dachau, Topf & Söhne also supplied a transportable double-muffle oven and a stationary double-muffle oven to Mauthausen-Gusen; a triple-muffle oven to Gross-Rosen and a four-muffle oven to Mogilev ghetto. It is also believed that they supplied transportable ovens to at least one of the Nazi euthanasia institutions (Aktion T4 killing centers).
From August 1940 to May 1942, Topf & Söhne built three double-muffle ovens at Auschwitz I. In October 1941, the SS placed an order for five three-muffle ovens for the Auschwitz II) where it was initially estimated that over 1000 people per day would be gassed.
According to calculations made by the Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz on June 28, 1943, its crematoria could burn 4,416 corpses per day -1,440 each in crematoria II and III, and 768 each in crematoria IV and V. This meant that the crematoria could potentially burn over 1.6 million corpses per year, however, the actual numbers were much lower.
The first transport of Jewish victims arrived at Auschwitz II on March 26, 1942. To deal with the increased demand for body disposal, Topf & Söhne installed a further two 8-muffle ovens in September 1942. An additional five triple-muffle ovens were installed at Auschwitz II by mid-March 1943.
Surviving Sonderkommando prisoners assigned to burn the bodies stated that all four of Auschwitz II’s crematoria had the capacity to cremate a total of 8000 bodies per day, although the actual numbers were usually lower.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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The “Holocaust Project” Was the Industrial Process
One of the reasons the Holocaust is considered the worst and the most horrific genocide in human history is because for the first (and only) time in human history the perpetrators designed a highly efficient “industrial” process and created a very efficient “industrial” infrastructure to make it happen.
Which they had to do to accomplish the mammoth task that they needed (they deeply, sincerely, passionately and erroneously believed that they needed) to accomplish to win the existential racial war with Judeo-Bolshevist USSR.
To accomplish their objective, they had to first define who was Jewish and who wasn’t. In 1935, the infamous Nuremberg Laws took care of that. Then they had to identify all Jews that they needed to kill and record the necessary information about those Jews (IBM punch-card technology was the solution).
Then they had to intern Jews where it was convenient for the SS to keep an eye on them – and keep the Jews there (ghettos were the places) until the SS decides to kill them in a serial mass murder process. To commit serial mass murder, they had to put together death squads for the “Holocaust by Bullets” (SS Einsatzgruppen and Order Police Battalions were such units assisted by local auxiliaries in Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and other countries).
Then they had to design and implement the process of mass shooting (no problem here – after “pacification” of Poland when hundreds of Jews were massacred) – and build the death factories in necessary quantity (ultimately six were built). Complete with crematoria (twelve companies helped with that – mostly Topf) and with supplies of poison gas (Degussa and Tesch provided that).
Then they needed to design and implement the extermination process for “Holocaust by Gas”. Jews had to be assembled in batches, loaded onto trains, delivered to killing centers, gassed and their bodies buried or burned. All their valuables (even gold teeth) had to be transferred to Reich coffers.
To make it all happen, they needed to establish a criminal partnership that had to include a number of agencies: the SS (including its components – RSHA, Order Police, WVHA, Gestapo, HSSPF, RuSHA); NSDAP; Reich Chancellery, the Foreign Office, Ministries of Interior and Justice, Office of the Four-Year Plan, and the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Extermination would take place in Poland so the General Government had to be involved.
This criminal partnership was exactly what Wannsee Conference was all about.
Which they had to do to accomplish the mammoth task that they needed (they deeply, sincerely, passionately and erroneously believed that they needed) to accomplish to win the existential racial war with Judeo-Bolshevist USSR.
To accomplish their objective, they had to first define who was Jewish and who wasn’t. In 1935, the infamous Nuremberg Laws took care of that. Then they had to identify all Jews that they needed to kill and record the necessary information about those Jews (IBM punch-card technology was the solution).
Then they had to intern Jews where it was convenient for the SS to keep an eye on them – and keep the Jews there (ghettos were the places) until the SS decides to kill them in a serial mass murder process. To commit serial mass murder, they had to put together death squads for the “Holocaust by Bullets” (SS Einsatzgruppen and Order Police Battalions were such units assisted by local auxiliaries in Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and other countries).
Then they had to design and implement the process of mass shooting (no problem here – after “pacification” of Poland when hundreds of Jews were massacred) – and build the death factories in necessary quantity (ultimately six were built). Complete with crematoria (twelve companies helped with that – mostly Topf) and with supplies of poison gas (Degussa and Tesch provided that).
Then they needed to design and implement the extermination process for “Holocaust by Gas”. Jews had to be assembled in batches, loaded onto trains, delivered to killing centers, gassed and their bodies buried or burned. All their valuables (even gold teeth) had to be transferred to Reich coffers.
To make it all happen, they needed to establish a criminal partnership that had to include a number of agencies: the SS (including its components – RSHA, Order Police, WVHA, Gestapo, HSSPF, RuSHA); NSDAP; Reich Chancellery, the Foreign Office, Ministries of Interior and Justice, Office of the Four-Year Plan, and the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Extermination would take place in Poland so the General Government had to be involved.
This criminal partnership was exactly what Wannsee Conference was all about.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Nazis Were NOT Possessed by the Devil
Contrary to a popular misconception, demonic possession (i.e., possession of an individual by “evil spirits”) is not a myth. It does happen. Even prominent psychiatrists confirm that there are mental disorders that can only be explained by a demonic possession.
Nazis committed enormous and horrible crimes against humanity, murdering millions of people. Including four million or so of Jews – God’s chosen people. Which (especially the latter) was obviously very pleasing to the Devil.
Consequently, it is no surprise that many believe that Adolf Hitler (and possibly all Nazis involved in these crimes) were, indeed, possessed by the Prince of Darkness.
Even the late Father Gabriele Amorth (exorcist of the Diocese of Rome) who performed tens of thousands of exorcisms over his six decades of service as a Catholic Priest, stated in his 2006 Vatican Radio interview:
“I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed. All you have to do is think about what Hitler – and Stalin did. Almost certainly they were possessed by the Devil. You can tell by their behavior and their actions, from the horrors they committed and the atrocities that were committed on their orders”
There were even rumors that wartime pontiff Pope Pius XII attempted a “long distance” exorcism of Hitler (which, however, failed to have any effect).
Unfortunately, despite his impressive record as an exorcist (although he never was “the Vatican’s chief exorcist” despite popular media headlines), Father Gabriele Amorth was known to make highly controversial and unprofessional public statements.
The truth is that the Holy Roman Catholic Church has very strict rules for determining whether the individual in question is, indeed, possessed by an evil spirit (or spirits).
The first rule is that the individual must demonstrate one or more clear signs of demonic possession – supernatural strength, supernatural knowledge (that he had no way of acquiring via natural means), ability to fluently speak languages that he never learned, an aversion to the sacred objects (crucifix, holy water, Christian temples, Holy Bible, etc.), and speaking in a unnatural – and deeply frightening – “demonic” voice.
Adolf Hitler (or any other prominent Nazi) never demonstrated any of these signs. Consequently, no competent and responsible exorcist would have ever stated that The Führer was possessed by evil spirits.
And while a long-distance exorcism in something not unheard of, it can never replace the in-person ritual. It can only complement it after the in-person ritual has been successfully performed.
In fact, it is not really an exorcism, but simply a powerful and intense prayer for the liberation of the soul in question from the claws of evil spirits. It is also important to remember that Catholic exorcism can be performed only by a specially trained priest.
There is no evidence that Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) ever underwent such training. Which is not surprising at all – he was a Church lawyer, diplomat and politician – but no exorcist. Consequently, it is highly unlikely that he ever attempted a long-distance exorcism of Adolf Hitler.
Oh, and Joseph Stalin has never demonstrated any signs of demonic possession either. Consequently, although his objective of destroying the human civilization as we know it and replacing it with the alternative civilization (global Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was clearly demonic, he was definitely NOT possessed by the Devil. Or any other evil spirit, for that matter.
Nazis committed enormous and horrible crimes against humanity, murdering millions of people. Including four million or so of Jews – God’s chosen people. Which (especially the latter) was obviously very pleasing to the Devil.
Consequently, it is no surprise that many believe that Adolf Hitler (and possibly all Nazis involved in these crimes) were, indeed, possessed by the Prince of Darkness.
Even the late Father Gabriele Amorth (exorcist of the Diocese of Rome) who performed tens of thousands of exorcisms over his six decades of service as a Catholic Priest, stated in his 2006 Vatican Radio interview:
“I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed. All you have to do is think about what Hitler – and Stalin did. Almost certainly they were possessed by the Devil. You can tell by their behavior and their actions, from the horrors they committed and the atrocities that were committed on their orders”
There were even rumors that wartime pontiff Pope Pius XII attempted a “long distance” exorcism of Hitler (which, however, failed to have any effect).
Unfortunately, despite his impressive record as an exorcist (although he never was “the Vatican’s chief exorcist” despite popular media headlines), Father Gabriele Amorth was known to make highly controversial and unprofessional public statements.
The truth is that the Holy Roman Catholic Church has very strict rules for determining whether the individual in question is, indeed, possessed by an evil spirit (or spirits).
The first rule is that the individual must demonstrate one or more clear signs of demonic possession – supernatural strength, supernatural knowledge (that he had no way of acquiring via natural means), ability to fluently speak languages that he never learned, an aversion to the sacred objects (crucifix, holy water, Christian temples, Holy Bible, etc.), and speaking in a unnatural – and deeply frightening – “demonic” voice.
Adolf Hitler (or any other prominent Nazi) never demonstrated any of these signs. Consequently, no competent and responsible exorcist would have ever stated that The Führer was possessed by evil spirits.
And while a long-distance exorcism in something not unheard of, it can never replace the in-person ritual. It can only complement it after the in-person ritual has been successfully performed.
In fact, it is not really an exorcism, but simply a powerful and intense prayer for the liberation of the soul in question from the claws of evil spirits. It is also important to remember that Catholic exorcism can be performed only by a specially trained priest.
There is no evidence that Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) ever underwent such training. Which is not surprising at all – he was a Church lawyer, diplomat and politician – but no exorcist. Consequently, it is highly unlikely that he ever attempted a long-distance exorcism of Adolf Hitler.
Oh, and Joseph Stalin has never demonstrated any signs of demonic possession either. Consequently, although his objective of destroying the human civilization as we know it and replacing it with the alternative civilization (global Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was clearly demonic, he was definitely NOT possessed by the Devil. Or any other evil spirit, for that matter.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Nazis Were National-Sociopaths
Contrary to a popular misconception, the Nazis (even Adolf Hitler) were not monsters (evil or otherwise). They were human beings. Homo Sapiens. However, they were quite specific human beings.
They were national-sociopaths. And thus, were driven by two very different kinds of emotions – genuine patriotic love for Germany and German people and by virulent fear of, and hatred for some other nations (first and foremost, the Jews). And for their political opponents in Germany as well.
A classic sociopath (by definition) is an individual who loves only himself (or herself for that matter) and cares only about himself/herself. He/she considers all other individuals as tools that he/she uses to satisfy one’s needs, wants and desires. Often with devastating consequences for the tool in question.
The ‘morals’ and ‘ethics’ of a sociopath are short and simple: What is good for me is good; what is not good for me is bad. What is good for me is Good; what is not good for me is Evil. Thus, a sociopath does not give a rat’s ass about needs, wants, desires, well-being and happiness of other individuals.
A national-sociopath, again by definition, is the one who is a genuine patriot of his/her nation, loves it dearly, has an irresistible desire to serve it to make his nation happy – and even is consent to die for his/her Fatherland, if necessary. But he or she sees all other nations only as tools (servants or even slaves) that he/she uses to satisfy needs, wants and desires of his/her nation.
Thus, a national-sociopath does not give a rat’s ass about needs, wants, desires, well-being and happiness of other nations. He/she views some nations as partners (to be used and exploited nevertheless), others as servants or even slaves (ditto) and some others as mortal enemies (to be ruthlessly exterminated).
For Adolf Hitler and other Nazis, Japan, Italy, Romania, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia and Bulgaria were partners; Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, etc. were servants (or even slaves) and Jews were mortal enemies.
And that’s exactly who the Nazis really were and that’s exactly why they did what they did.
They were national-sociopaths. And thus, were driven by two very different kinds of emotions – genuine patriotic love for Germany and German people and by virulent fear of, and hatred for some other nations (first and foremost, the Jews). And for their political opponents in Germany as well.
A classic sociopath (by definition) is an individual who loves only himself (or herself for that matter) and cares only about himself/herself. He/she considers all other individuals as tools that he/she uses to satisfy one’s needs, wants and desires. Often with devastating consequences for the tool in question.
The ‘morals’ and ‘ethics’ of a sociopath are short and simple: What is good for me is good; what is not good for me is bad. What is good for me is Good; what is not good for me is Evil. Thus, a sociopath does not give a rat’s ass about needs, wants, desires, well-being and happiness of other individuals.
A national-sociopath, again by definition, is the one who is a genuine patriot of his/her nation, loves it dearly, has an irresistible desire to serve it to make his nation happy – and even is consent to die for his/her Fatherland, if necessary. But he or she sees all other nations only as tools (servants or even slaves) that he/she uses to satisfy needs, wants and desires of his/her nation.
Thus, a national-sociopath does not give a rat’s ass about needs, wants, desires, well-being and happiness of other nations. He/she views some nations as partners (to be used and exploited nevertheless), others as servants or even slaves (ditto) and some others as mortal enemies (to be ruthlessly exterminated).
For Adolf Hitler and other Nazis, Japan, Italy, Romania, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia and Bulgaria were partners; Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, etc. were servants (or even slaves) and Jews were mortal enemies.
And that’s exactly who the Nazis really were and that’s exactly why they did what they did.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Nazis Were NOT the Only Serial Mass Murderers in WW2
Not by a long shot (contrary to a very popular misconception). Although Nazi Germany was responsible for the highest death toll, all sides in the Second World War committed horrible serial mass murders in Europe before, during and after World War II.
Soviet Union (and personally Joseph Stalin) were responsible for Holodomor (3 million dead), post-war ethnical cleansing of German population from Eastern Europe (12 million deported and 2 million dead), Great Terror (1 million dead), Gulag (also 1 million dead), Katyn and related massacres (25,000 dead) and a number of smaller crimes. Expulsion of Germans was assisted by Stalin’s puppets in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia.
Western Allies were responsible for the deliberate and brutal murder of approximately 600,000 civilians via carpet bombing campaign that explicitly targeted its civilian population (and, therefore, was a war crime).
Ukrainian UPA freedom fighters (no irony) who fought for independence from both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, are responsible for the Volyn Massacre (100,000 dead).
During the ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia in 1941-45 pro-German Croats committed mass murder of Serbs (genocide, actually) murdering over 600,000 civilians. Serbs were not much better having murdered around 500,000 Croats and their political opponents. Immediately after the war, the Tito regime in Yugoslavia continued the democide killing (half a million victims).
Unfortunately, only German perpetrators of mass murders, war crimes and other crimes against humanity were ever brought to justice, tried, convicted and executed. All other criminals – Soviet, British, American, East European, etc. were never even charged with any crimes – and thus escaped unpunished.
Victor’s justice par excellence.
Soviet Union (and personally Joseph Stalin) were responsible for Holodomor (3 million dead), post-war ethnical cleansing of German population from Eastern Europe (12 million deported and 2 million dead), Great Terror (1 million dead), Gulag (also 1 million dead), Katyn and related massacres (25,000 dead) and a number of smaller crimes. Expulsion of Germans was assisted by Stalin’s puppets in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia.
Western Allies were responsible for the deliberate and brutal murder of approximately 600,000 civilians via carpet bombing campaign that explicitly targeted its civilian population (and, therefore, was a war crime).
Ukrainian UPA freedom fighters (no irony) who fought for independence from both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, are responsible for the Volyn Massacre (100,000 dead).
During the ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia in 1941-45 pro-German Croats committed mass murder of Serbs (genocide, actually) murdering over 600,000 civilians. Serbs were not much better having murdered around 500,000 Croats and their political opponents. Immediately after the war, the Tito regime in Yugoslavia continued the democide killing (half a million victims).
Unfortunately, only German perpetrators of mass murders, war crimes and other crimes against humanity were ever brought to justice, tried, convicted and executed. All other criminals – Soviet, British, American, East European, etc. were never even charged with any crimes – and thus escaped unpunished.
Victor’s justice par excellence.
Scribo, ergo sum
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bf-109
Re: Nazis Were NOT the Only Serial Mass Murderers in WW2
Там дох.я кто воевал за своё. Германия за свое, советские партизаны за свое, красная армия за свое, армия крайова за свое, упа за свое. Волынь в самой середине, а погибли все от УПА, а как же. Удивительное совпадение советской пропаганды с польской. Количество убитых в Волыни (100 тыс.) взято Вам по верхнему пределу из польской пропаганды диапазон которой которой колеблется от 50 тыс. до 100 тыс., а это означает что никто них не знает. Не только в количественном, но а так же кто, собственно, убивал. А 120 тыс. не хотите? Я и такую цифру видел. Тем не менее, факт геноцида это всё не отменяет, который безусловно был.