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Holocaust Evident - For future generations....

For future generations....
To claim something on an enormous scale like the holocaust, didn't exist is illogical and ignorant. Millions were murdered by shooting, gassing, starving, etc. Given the multitude of forensic evidence, ie; corpses, ash/bone fragment field deposits, Zyklon-B agent evidence, witness testimony and testimony by several key German perpetrators (recorded)-- only the contrary can be true. Many believe that the holocaust was only about the extermination of the Jews as part of Hitler's "Final Solution." This is inaccurate. Also a small minority believe that the Holocaust was a hoax and some sort of cash machine for the Jewish state of Israel. This, of course is not true. Persons still alive in Poland alone can attest to their families (non-Jews) being taken into Auschwitz, witnessing the selections, executions and cremations. If there were no collaboration from the German officials, forensic evidence, and witnesses (non-Jews) then it would possible to shed only some doubt on the thousands of testimony given by Jews. However, such is not the case.

I offer the following for educational purposes:
To clarify the issue, although gassing was one method used by the Germans and their collaborators to kill millions of human beings during World War II, the Nazi leadership never developed a gas chamber program as such. Killing by poison gas was one of many tools employed to implement a program to physically annihilate Jews residing on German-occupied territory as well as non-Jews whom the Germans perceived to be a danger to permanent German rule.

Gassing was implemented for two main reasons; 1. Himmler believed the shooting of women and children to be too emotionally destabilizing for the SS and troops. 2. It was a more efficient (larger scale), less witnessed, and far more cost effective then the previous methods.

German authorities killed approximately 2.5 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of other victims in shooting operations in German-occupied Eastern Europe particularly in the Soviet Union, Serbia, and parts of German-occupied Poland. The SS killed Jews and other victims by poison gas in five killing centers and, on a smaller scale, in several concentration camps. At the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center, which was part of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp complex and at other concentration camps that were part of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, the SS staff used Zyclon-B gas as the killing agent. At the four other killing centers--Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, the SS and police staff used carbon monoxide gas generated by truck diesel engines to murder Jews and other victims.

Though the German authorities took pains to destroy most of the paper trail relating to their murderous population policies, much evidence concerning murder by gas survived, including multiple statements of the perpetrators as well as the physical remnants of gas chambers in Auschwitz and other camps.

While imprisoned after his trial and conviction, SS Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Hoess described the process of murder by gas on several occasions as a witness at the Nuremberg Trial, as a witness in his own trial in Krakow, and in his memoir, written in prison as he awaited his execution. Hoess memoirs, Kommandant in Auschwitz, were published in German in 1963 and are available in a recent English translation by Steven Paskuly: Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz (New York: Da Capo, 1996). In addition to Hoess' own statements, excerpts from the memoirs of Pery Broad and the diary of Johann Paul Kremer, two other Auschwitz officials, appear in Auschwitz in den Augen der SS: Hoess, Broad, Kremer, Jadwiga Bezwinska and Danuta Czech, eds. (Katowice: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1981).

Both killing center commandants and several members of their staffs testified after the war either as defendants or material witnesses in criminal proceedings in West Germany. Among these are the proceedings against:
Josef Kaspar Oberhauser (Belzec)
State Court in Munich, I 110 Ks 3/64, Record Group B 162
Verdict JuNS-V, Lfd. Nr. 585 (BA-L, B 162/14187);B 162/3172 (Indictment);
Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg, Germany
Proceedings against Kurt Bolender, Werner Dubois et al. (Sobibor)
State Court in Hagen, 11 Ks 1/64 Record Group B 162
Verdict JuNS-V, Lfd. Nr. 642
(against Dubois [Bolander committed suicide before indictment] B 162/14239)
Bundesarchiv-Ludwigsburg, Germany B 162/4434
BA-L, B 162/4500-45-2 (Indictment)
Proceedings against Kurt Hubert Franz (Treblinka)
State Court in Dusseldorf, 8 IKs 2/64, Record Group 162
Verdict JuNS-V, Lfd. Nr. 596 (B 162/14330-14332)
BA-L, B162/3817-3843
Proceedings against Franz Stangl (Treblinka)
State Court, Dusseldorf, 8 Ks 1/69, Record Group B-162
Bundesarchiv, Ludwigsburg, Germany
Proceedings against Hans Bothmann et al., (Chelmno)
State Court in Bonn, 8 Ks 3/62, Record Group, B-162
Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg.
Proceedings against Robert Mulka et al., (Auschwitz)
State Court in Frankfurt, 4 Ks 2/63, Record Group B-162
Bundesarchiv, Ludwigsburg, Germany.
Excerpts from the testimony in the Mulka Trial can be found in Hermann Langbein, Der Auschwitz- Prozess: Ein Dokumentation, 2 volumes (Frankfurt: Verlag Neue Kritik, 1995).

A forensic study of the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing facilities integrating photographic, chemical and physical perspectives appeared in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (vol. 18, Spring 2004). The authors were Daniel Keren, Jamie McCarthy, and Harry Mazal. I have attached this article for your convenience.

Selected documents relating to the transport of German, Austrian, Czech, and French Jews to Auschwitz and other camps appear in the volumes: Raul Hilberg, Sonderzuge nach Auschwitz (Mainz: Dumjahn, 1981) and Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy‚¬€Auschwitz: Die Zusammenarbeit der deutschen und franzosischen Behorden bei der Endlosung der Judenfrage in Frankreich (Nordlingen: Wagner, 1989).

The sources provided here are not exhaustive, but representative of the body of evidence surrounding gas chambers and the gassing of victims perpetrated by the German authorities and their collaborators.

To get access to the criminal trial records in Germany, I would suggest that you contact the Ludwigsburg branch of the German Federal Archives, also known as the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Violent Crimes. I have provided a link to their website for your convenience: http//:www.zentralestelle.de.

Research above was conducted by Division of the Senior Historian Intern Katherine Kitterman of USHMM.

Chris Prochownik