THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY ON PIERRE'S Myspace BLOG -- 12/22/06
For a few months now I've been trying to write a blog addressing Holocaust deniers and neo-nazis. I would start writing then think that these small minded, hate filled people don't deserve my attention. Why should I put fourth the effort to address them if it meant going past a few carefully chosen swear words. With the messages left by deniers in regards to my last blog and the conference for Holocaust revisionists held in Iran last week, I'm too damn angry to keep my stiff fingers from not typing my thoughts.
For a few months now I've been trying to write a blog addressing Holocaust deniers and neo-nazis. I would start writing then think that these small minded, hate filled people don't deserve my attention. Why should I put fourth the effort to address them if it meant going past a few carefully chosen swear words. With the messages left by deniers in regards to my last blog and the conference for Holocaust revisionists held in Iran last week, I'm too damn angry to keep my stiff fingers from not typing my thoughts.
Now, I know no matter how eloquently I turn a sentence in this blog, I will not change one denier's or neo-nazi's view on the Holocaust, Hitler or Jews, but sitting in silence was one of the reasons the "Final Solution" became a reality. I am a witness. I am a witness to the most horrific crime committed in the 20th century. For 18 months I was a Nazi slave; starved, beaten, humiliated and almost taken to my death twice. I watched butchery that is beyond the imagination of any decent human being. If I keep silent, I become an accomplice.
Not that it should matter, but for the record Mr. & Ms. Denier and Mr. & Ms. Neo-Nazi I was not a Yellow Triangle, so your "Jewish conspiracy" and "Zionist agents" rhetoric won't work with me. I have no agenda other than what any honest man would do when called a liar--confront his accusers.
Now it is here where I get stuck because all I feel I need to say, especially when I glance at my left forearm is, F-you! And I think, when my memoir is finally published it will be a big F-YOU to all you racist, anti-Semitic cowards. Well, I have to say I feel a little better having typed that..
Deniers and neo-nazis want to debate the number murdered, the existence of gas chambers, the existence of death camps and if Hitler and his goons ever mapped out a "Final Solution". They say we tattooed ourselves as part of an elaborate conspiracy to blackmail the German government out of millions of dollars. They say that their "experts" can prove that there is no way 6 million could have died, that the gas chambers were only showers and that photos and films of the nazi's crimes were staged or doctored. I've heard it all, especially now that I'm on My Space. Rearrange facts, leave out crucial details, tell a few outrageous lies and suddenly you have an alternative "truth" that just so happens to conveniently fit your agenda. That's what the president of Iran did with his conference, that's what Holocaust revisionists do with their books and websites and that's what Hitler did in his book Mein Kampf and with the Third Reich.
I'm an expert. I am an expert at what I saw and experienced from the time I was arrested by the Gestapo to the day I no longer wore those stripped pajamas. No, I never saw the gas chambers, but by my 2nd day in Auschwitz III (Monowitz) I was told all about them and many who arrived with me learned in the first week that they were now widowers, childless or orphans. It was then I understood why all of us healthy men (and women) were separated from the elderly, the very young and sick and why we were driven away in trucks while they were forced to walk in the mud to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
I know I didn't tattoo myself. I know that everyday while working at the I.G. Farben plant I could smell what seemed to be burnt pork. I knew what it was. We all knew what it was. There was a saying in the camp, "up the chimney". If you didn't make a "selection" you would go "up the chimney". I did see the crematoriums of Auschwitz-Birkenau with my own eyes. For two days I worked in my camp collecting the dead loading them onto a truck and accompanying them to Birkenau. I watched the Sonnderkommando unload the bodies and take them inside the brick crematorium and then I watched them fill the bed of the truck with sacks of human ashes (of the dead from the previous day) that we then delivered to female prisoners who used them to fertilize a field of cabbage.
I've seen starving men hung because they stole pieces of bread. I've seen a man with diarrhea have his brain bashed in with a shovel so only clean slaves would be observed by the high ranking Nazi official touring the I.G. Farben plant. I carried the body of a young woman down to a river so a Ukrainian SS guard could use her as bait to catch eels. One of my bunkmates was shot dead trying to escape. A 16 year old boy I had befriended and who was convinced he was going to be reunited with his father waved to me from the back of a truck bound for Birkenau. I stood next to young man, a mere skeleton, who was shot in the back of his head by an SS officer because he wasn't dying fast enough.
I don't need to prove anything to any denier or revisionists because the Hitler's stooges took care of that for me. The Nazis kept meticulous records to show their superiors, to show their glorious Fuehrer, what a spectacular job they were doing exterminating Jews and all the other "sub-humans". That is why I know that I was one of 1,155 that were stuffed into cattle cars outside of Paris and shipped to Auschwitz. That is why I know that I was 1 of the 236 men who were selected to be slave laborers in Auschwitz III. That is why I know that 55 women from those cattle cars became Auschwitz prisoners and 864 men, women and children (which included a Catholic priest I used to debate religion with while interned at Drancy). The records are so detailed that I know that I was the 38th man in my group to be tattooed. The Nazis, with their Teutonic discipline were as efficient in their record keeping as Auschwitz-Birkenau was a well-planned, efficient human disassembly line.
Why did most Nazis big shots commit suicide at the collapse of the Third Reich or before their trials ended at Nuremburg? Guilt? No. Shame? No. Why then? Because they hadn't destroyed most of the evidence in time. Why is the German government paying restitution to the Holocaust survivors? It is not because some international Jewish cabal is blackmailing them, but because the proof of the Third Reich's crimes are just so overwhelming.
Deny all you want. Air out your inner Fuehrer. In the end, it is a futile game you're playing. The only thing you will convince anyone (anyone with any intelligence) of is your ignorance. You can debate the policies of former leaders and governments and the strategies of generals and the circumstances of historical events, but you cannot debate cold, hard facts. Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Priests, Nuns, Anti-Nazis, conscientious objectors, Communists, partisans, from Holland to Romania and Greece to Norway--11 million inmates--were processed in a vast network of concentration camps. Gas chambers, bullets, nooses, starvation, disease, hard labor and beatings, eliminated a majority of them before the final curtain dropped on the Nazi scum. This is just a sad, cold, hard fact that will never be perverted.
What heartens me greatly that after all the remaining survivors and I are gone there are plenty of dedicated, intelligent and passionate young people who will step up and insure the world never forgets. Some of them are my friends here at My Space. To those of you who are going to university seeking a degree in Holocaust studies, you are my heroes. To you who have My Space groups discussing the Holocaust or fighting racism and nazism, you have my deepest respect. And to everyone who has sent me comments and letters I thank you for being my friend and giving me the encouragement to keep writing my blogs. I feel very lucky this year.
SIGNED COPIES OF SCHEISSHAUS LUCK FOR ONLY $9.99 including shipping. BUYING DIRECTLY FROM THE AUTHORS!
Not that it should matter, but for the record Mr. & Ms. Denier and Mr. & Ms. Neo-Nazi I was not a Yellow Triangle, so your "Jewish conspiracy" and "Zionist agents" rhetoric won't work with me. I have no agenda other than what any honest man would do when called a liar--confront his accusers.
Now it is here where I get stuck because all I feel I need to say, especially when I glance at my left forearm is, F-you! And I think, when my memoir is finally published it will be a big F-YOU to all you racist, anti-Semitic cowards. Well, I have to say I feel a little better having typed that..
Deniers and neo-nazis want to debate the number murdered, the existence of gas chambers, the existence of death camps and if Hitler and his goons ever mapped out a "Final Solution". They say we tattooed ourselves as part of an elaborate conspiracy to blackmail the German government out of millions of dollars. They say that their "experts" can prove that there is no way 6 million could have died, that the gas chambers were only showers and that photos and films of the nazi's crimes were staged or doctored. I've heard it all, especially now that I'm on My Space. Rearrange facts, leave out crucial details, tell a few outrageous lies and suddenly you have an alternative "truth" that just so happens to conveniently fit your agenda. That's what the president of Iran did with his conference, that's what Holocaust revisionists do with their books and websites and that's what Hitler did in his book Mein Kampf and with the Third Reich.
I'm an expert. I am an expert at what I saw and experienced from the time I was arrested by the Gestapo to the day I no longer wore those stripped pajamas. No, I never saw the gas chambers, but by my 2nd day in Auschwitz III (Monowitz) I was told all about them and many who arrived with me learned in the first week that they were now widowers, childless or orphans. It was then I understood why all of us healthy men (and women) were separated from the elderly, the very young and sick and why we were driven away in trucks while they were forced to walk in the mud to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
I know I didn't tattoo myself. I know that everyday while working at the I.G. Farben plant I could smell what seemed to be burnt pork. I knew what it was. We all knew what it was. There was a saying in the camp, "up the chimney". If you didn't make a "selection" you would go "up the chimney". I did see the crematoriums of Auschwitz-Birkenau with my own eyes. For two days I worked in my camp collecting the dead loading them onto a truck and accompanying them to Birkenau. I watched the Sonnderkommando unload the bodies and take them inside the brick crematorium and then I watched them fill the bed of the truck with sacks of human ashes (of the dead from the previous day) that we then delivered to female prisoners who used them to fertilize a field of cabbage.
I've seen starving men hung because they stole pieces of bread. I've seen a man with diarrhea have his brain bashed in with a shovel so only clean slaves would be observed by the high ranking Nazi official touring the I.G. Farben plant. I carried the body of a young woman down to a river so a Ukrainian SS guard could use her as bait to catch eels. One of my bunkmates was shot dead trying to escape. A 16 year old boy I had befriended and who was convinced he was going to be reunited with his father waved to me from the back of a truck bound for Birkenau. I stood next to young man, a mere skeleton, who was shot in the back of his head by an SS officer because he wasn't dying fast enough.
I don't need to prove anything to any denier or revisionists because the Hitler's stooges took care of that for me. The Nazis kept meticulous records to show their superiors, to show their glorious Fuehrer, what a spectacular job they were doing exterminating Jews and all the other "sub-humans". That is why I know that I was one of 1,155 that were stuffed into cattle cars outside of Paris and shipped to Auschwitz. That is why I know that I was 1 of the 236 men who were selected to be slave laborers in Auschwitz III. That is why I know that 55 women from those cattle cars became Auschwitz prisoners and 864 men, women and children (which included a Catholic priest I used to debate religion with while interned at Drancy). The records are so detailed that I know that I was the 38th man in my group to be tattooed. The Nazis, with their Teutonic discipline were as efficient in their record keeping as Auschwitz-Birkenau was a well-planned, efficient human disassembly line.
Why did most Nazis big shots commit suicide at the collapse of the Third Reich or before their trials ended at Nuremburg? Guilt? No. Shame? No. Why then? Because they hadn't destroyed most of the evidence in time. Why is the German government paying restitution to the Holocaust survivors? It is not because some international Jewish cabal is blackmailing them, but because the proof of the Third Reich's crimes are just so overwhelming.
Deny all you want. Air out your inner Fuehrer. In the end, it is a futile game you're playing. The only thing you will convince anyone (anyone with any intelligence) of is your ignorance. You can debate the policies of former leaders and governments and the strategies of generals and the circumstances of historical events, but you cannot debate cold, hard facts. Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Priests, Nuns, Anti-Nazis, conscientious objectors, Communists, partisans, from Holland to Romania and Greece to Norway--11 million inmates--were processed in a vast network of concentration camps. Gas chambers, bullets, nooses, starvation, disease, hard labor and beatings, eliminated a majority of them before the final curtain dropped on the Nazi scum. This is just a sad, cold, hard fact that will never be perverted.
What heartens me greatly that after all the remaining survivors and I are gone there are plenty of dedicated, intelligent and passionate young people who will step up and insure the world never forgets. Some of them are my friends here at My Space. To those of you who are going to university seeking a degree in Holocaust studies, you are my heroes. To you who have My Space groups discussing the Holocaust or fighting racism and nazism, you have my deepest respect. And to everyone who has sent me comments and letters I thank you for being my friend and giving me the encouragement to keep writing my blogs. I feel very lucky this year.
SIGNED COPIES OF SCHEISSHAUS LUCK FOR ONLY $9.99 including shipping. BUYING DIRECTLY FROM THE AUTHORS!
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