Almost unnoticed, an Italian researcher made a surprising discovery on the route of Jewish transports to Auschwitz.
On 16 October 1942, a Jewish transport with 1,710 departed from the Netherlands (Westerbork camp) to Auschwitz. But the train did not only halt at the station Cosel in Upper Silesia, where 570 Jews were taken out for forced labour, as it is well-known so far.
According to this Italian researcher, the transport was diverted from its route to Auschwitz after reaching Cosel. Instead of going eastwards to Auschwitz, the train headed North-West to Gogolin, where some Jews were unloaded and admitted to the camps St. Annaberg or Sakrau. At Gogolin, the transport was either going further North to Oppeln and then East to take a halt at Voßwalde. Here, some more people got off to go to the camp Malapane between Oppeln and Voßwalde. The journey continued South to Blechhammer, some 5 km East of Cosel, where the train had started its detour and where more people were again taken out for forced labour. The train headed straight to Königshütte near Kattowitz, where it let off more forced labourers for the Bismarckhütte. Finally, the transport arrived at the Auschwitz camp.
Alternatively, the deportees were sent back from Gogolin to Cosel via Kattowitz to Auschwitz. But the transport was not unloaded at the Auschwitz camp. Instead, some Jews were selected for forced labour for the camp Bobrek. The rest of the people was taken back to Blechhammer (5 km East of Cosel, where they had been earlier the day), then to Königshütte (which they pass now for the third time) to sent Jews to Bismarckhütte and finally to the Auschwitz camp.
How does that sound? Incredible? Unbelievable? Well, perhaps I should have mentioned that this Italian "researcher" is not doing historical research in the proper sense, but he is just watching out for any straw - how matter far-fetched and absurd - to deny the Holocaust.
The crazy journey sketched above is suggested by the Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno:
On 16 October 1942, a Jewish transport with 1,710 departed from the Netherlands (Westerbork camp) to Auschwitz. But the train did not only halt at the station Cosel in Upper Silesia, where 570 Jews were taken out for forced labour, as it is well-known so far.
According to this Italian researcher, the transport was diverted from its route to Auschwitz after reaching Cosel. Instead of going eastwards to Auschwitz, the train headed North-West to Gogolin, where some Jews were unloaded and admitted to the camps St. Annaberg or Sakrau. At Gogolin, the transport was either going further North to Oppeln and then East to take a halt at Voßwalde. Here, some more people got off to go to the camp Malapane between Oppeln and Voßwalde. The journey continued South to Blechhammer, some 5 km East of Cosel, where the train had started its detour and where more people were again taken out for forced labour. The train headed straight to Königshütte near Kattowitz, where it let off more forced labourers for the Bismarckhütte. Finally, the transport arrived at the Auschwitz camp.
Alternatively, the deportees were sent back from Gogolin to Cosel via Kattowitz to Auschwitz. But the transport was not unloaded at the Auschwitz camp. Instead, some Jews were selected for forced labour for the camp Bobrek. The rest of the people was taken back to Blechhammer (5 km East of Cosel, where they had been earlier the day), then to Königshütte (which they pass now for the third time) to sent Jews to Bismarckhütte and finally to the Auschwitz camp.
How does that sound? Incredible? Unbelievable? Well, perhaps I should have mentioned that this Italian "researcher" is not doing historical research in the proper sense, but he is just watching out for any straw - how matter far-fetched and absurd - to deny the Holocaust.
The crazy journey sketched above is suggested by the Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno:
According to Czech’s Auschwitz Chronicle, a Jewish transport from Holland arrived on October 18, 1942, with 1,710 deportees, of whom only 116 women were registered, and the remaining 1,594 persons are supposed to havebeen gassed. The ‘special action’ mentioned by Kremer is supposed to have referred to this alleged gassing.
According to a Dutch Red Cross report, the transport in question, comprising 1,710 persons, departed from Westerbork on October 16 and stopped first in Kosel, where 570 persons were selected out. The rest continued on to the following camps:
“St. Annaberg or Sakrau – Bobrek or Malapane – Blechhammer and further some to Bismarckhütte/Monowitz. A separate group into the Groß-Rosen zone.”
A list of the transports from Westerbork to the east – probably prepared by Louis de Jong – names as the destinations of the October 16, 1942, transport “Sakrau, Blechhammer, Kosel.”
For its false assertions regarding this transport, Czech’s Auschwitz Chronicle again cites the Kremer diary! Thus only a small percentage of the Jews deported from Holland on October 16, 1942, actually arrived in Auschwitz.
(Mattogno, Special Treatment in Auschwitz, p. 86)
(note that the a summary table in the Dutch Red Cross report, from which Mattogno has taken the quote, describes the entry as "route followed by most of the transport", i.e sequentially.)
This "discovery" may have gone unnoticed, if Germar Rudolf did not think to give it some more attention than in Mattogno's books, which are hardly read by anybody other than Holocaust Controversies and some "Revisionist" cheerleaders.
Rudolf featured the assertion in a last year's article:
"Here is what Carlo Mattogno has found out about that particular transport:[above quote from Mattogno, Special Treatment in Auschwitz, p. 86]So it wasn’t just Cosel where the trains stopped and deportees got off; they detrained at many stations."
(Rudolf, How Danuta Czech Invented 100,000 Gassing Victims)
Fact check: Hoax!
The transport with 1,710 Jewish people from Westerbork did not stop and unloaded Jewish people anywhere else than in Cosel and the old ramp near Auschwitz-Birkenau. On 18 October 1942, about 570 people were taken out in Cosel for forced labour in the camps of the so called Organisation Schmelt. In Auschwitz, 116 female Jews were selected for work and registered in the camp (Czech Kalendarium). The rest, more than 1000 people, were killed in the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The action was described by the Auschwitz doctor Johann Kremer in his contemporary diary:
Fact check: Hoax!
The transport with 1,710 Jewish people from Westerbork did not stop and unloaded Jewish people anywhere else than in Cosel and the old ramp near Auschwitz-Birkenau. On 18 October 1942, about 570 people were taken out in Cosel for forced labour in the camps of the so called Organisation Schmelt. In Auschwitz, 116 female Jews were selected for work and registered in the camp (Czech Kalendarium). The rest, more than 1000 people, were killed in the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The action was described by the Auschwitz doctor Johann Kremer in his contemporary diary:
18 October 1942
Wet and cold weather, today Sunday morning present at the 11th special action (Dutch). Horrible scenes with three women, who begged for bare survival"
(Auschwitz State Museum, Auschwitz in den Augen der SS, p.160; my translation)
At his examination in Poland on 18 July 1947, Kremer explained what happened on this day:
"In the course of the special action I described in the diary on 18 October 1942, three women from Holland did not want to go to the gas chamber and pleaded for their lives. They were young, healthy women, yet their requests were not answered, but SS men who participated in the action shot them on the spot."
(Auschwitz State Museum, Auschwitz in den Augen der SS, p.160; my translation)
Now it is clear why Mattogno and Rudolf desperately wanted the transport to take more stopovers and get more people off than it was actually the case. So they could deny that these Jewish people were exterminated in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Just what the hell did Mattogno think when he suggested that a large transport with 1,710 people after a two days journey from the Netherlands to Cosel would tour back and forth through Upper Silesia to deliver people to individual camps?
Worse than that Mattogno and Rudolf took a nonsensical view on the transport logistics, the cited source does not even describe any such stops.
Now it is clear why Mattogno and Rudolf desperately wanted the transport to take more stopovers and get more people off than it was actually the case. So they could deny that these Jewish people were exterminated in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Just what the hell did Mattogno think when he suggested that a large transport with 1,710 people after a two days journey from the Netherlands to Cosel would tour back and forth through Upper Silesia to deliver people to individual camps?
Worse than that Mattogno and Rudolf took a nonsensical view on the transport logistics, the cited source does not even describe any such stops.
Mattogno has presented his snippet from an overview table in the Dutch Red Cross Report as tour of the train after leaving Cosel, but it is actually describing what happened over the next two years to the group of 570 Jewish people selected for forced labour in Cosel, as explained in the following detailed extract (the chapter is all about the fate of the Jews who got off in Cosel and uses "transport" in the sense of transport of the Jews selected in Cosel):
There is also documentary evidence indicating that there were no stopovers of the transports from the Netherlands other than in Cosel:
Höß attempted (unsuccessfully) to cancel even the halt in Cosel to get all forced labourers exclusively to his camp.
We also know from the Korherr report that only 8,188 Jews were taken out to Schmelt labour camps from the transports to Auschwitz - out of a total of more than 150,000 Jews deported to the camp in 1942 (w/o the "stateless" Jews of Upper Silesia). Thus, the stopover of the Jewish deportees before Auschwitz does not explain what happened to the unregistered Jews in Auschwitz - let aside that people unfit for work were hardly the ones picked for work.
Chapter 2. The Cosel-transports(Nederlandsche Roode Kruis, Auschwitz. Deel III: De Deportatietransporten in de zg. Cosel-Periode, p. 48-49; my translation)
[...]
Transport from 16-10-1942.
Also this large transport (± 570 people got off at Cosel) has been taken from Cosel half to St.Annaberg and the other half to Sakrau.
Subsequently in October 1942, the vast majority of the transport was distributed over the Bobrek and Malapane camps.
A smaller transport (a total of 70 men, 40 of them from Sakrau and 30 from St.Annaberg, but not all of the present transport; but partly of the transports from 23 and 30-10-1942 and from 16-11-1942) went on 22-11-42 to the Gross Rosen resort (Tränke and later to Wisau and Bunzlau; see State II).Thanks to extensive data provided by intelligent returnees, almost all names of their last transport and their (probable) death dates are known.
Even smaller groups and individuals in special positions have followed an exceptional route (via Reigersfeld, Anthoniehütte, Breslau-Hundsfeld, Laurahütte or Königshütte-Johannsdorf-Ludwigsdorf-Brande to Blechhammer, or via Ottmuth-Neukirch or Königshütte-Johannsdorf-Ludwigs-Ludwdorf Gross Rosen), but these are isolated cases which must be treated as such.
The main issue is therefore to draw a general conclusion for those who have been transported to Bobrek and Malapane. There are also fairly detailed data from these camps, from which the individual fate of many people can be determined. Many died in the mentioned camps or were put on sick transport.
The survivors were transferred to Blechhammer around 23 March 1944, when the Bobrek and Malapane camps were closed down (see State I).
A total of 129 men were found in Blechhammer. For those who have not been reported in Blechhammer and of whom nothing else is known, the conclusion can only be drawn that they must have died by the end of March 1944, while in view of possible unknown dislocations the place of death would have been to be noticed: one of the labor camps in Silesia (Poland).
After Blechhammer, groups were taken to Bismarckhütte / Monowitz.
There is also documentary evidence indicating that there were no stopovers of the transports from the Netherlands other than in Cosel:
OMA de OMF, 2 0700.3 239 249 250 46(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, volume16, p. 176, my translation)
RSHA IV B 4 Berlin, for the attention of SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann, for information to Amtsgruppe D, Oranienburg, for the attention of SS Obersturmbannführer Liebehenschel.
Subject. Removal of Jews from the polo-czeck-Dutch areas to Auschwitz.
Reference: your telex of 5.10.42, No. 181 212, 17.55 p.m. Secret.
Regarding the Jewish transports from Holland, please give us the train numbers and the expected arrival times by radio, so that on the basis of these documents the Oppeln Railway Directorate can arrange that these transports do not stop in Kosel, but pass through to Auschwitz to prevent access by the representatives of the action Schmelt, as was agreed.
Gez. Hoess, SS Obersturmbannführer
Höß attempted (unsuccessfully) to cancel even the halt in Cosel to get all forced labourers exclusively to his camp.
We also know from the Korherr report that only 8,188 Jews were taken out to Schmelt labour camps from the transports to Auschwitz - out of a total of more than 150,000 Jews deported to the camp in 1942 (w/o the "stateless" Jews of Upper Silesia). Thus, the stopover of the Jewish deportees before Auschwitz does not explain what happened to the unregistered Jews in Auschwitz - let aside that people unfit for work were hardly the ones picked for work.
By the way, the source cited by Mattogno is clear what happened to Jews not selected for work in Cosel:
(Nederlandsche Roode Kruis, Auschwitz. Deel III: De Deportatietransporten in de zg. Cosel-Periode, p. 8; my translation)
The "fit for work" men, who were taken off the train in Cosel, were in general of the age group of ± 15 to 50 years, in some individual cases a little older. Those who remained on the train to be transported to Auschwitz were thus, generally speaking, the older, weak or sick men and the women and children. In general it can be said that the latter groups were killed by gassing immediately upon arrival at Auschwitz.
So the Dutch Red Cross Report, which Mattogno and Rudolf considered reliable, does not only not support their fantasy tour of the Jewish transports to Auschwitz, this source also contradicts their denial of the gassing of unfit Jews in Auschwitz.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please read our Comments Policy