Hargis's favorite argument is that Auschwitz prisoners on evacuation where given a choice to be set free but all chose to go with the Germans rather than wait to be liberated by the Russians.
He keeps repeating this stupidity in many of the his posting and in this thread dedicated to the subject :
Did inmates of Auschwitz choose to be evacuated ?
See here :
https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1372
What next ? a thread titled " did inmates of Auschwitz choose to be Gassed "
Wish someone would join that thread and put these liars cheering crowd in their place,
Hargis's favorite argument is that Auschwitz prisoners on evacuation where given a choice to be set free but all chose to go with the Germans rather than wait to be liberated by the Russians.
He keeps repeating this stupidity in many of the his posting and in this thread dedicated to the subject :
Did inmates of Auschwitz choose to be evacuated ?
See here :
https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1372
What next ? a thread titled " did inmates of Auschwitz choose to be Gassed "
Wish someone would join that thread and put these liars cheering crowd in their place,
The matter is, indeed, somewhat complicated. I studied in great detail the evacuation of the Mittelbau camps in my PhD dissertation (published 1997). I found out that in two cases the SS guards at a certain time declared the transport "finished" and told the prisoners that they were free. The Reichsdeutsch (!) prisoners, however, being afraid of getting lynched (as it did happen e.g. at Bergen-Belsen and Gunskirchen), preferred to stay with their guards and continued the evacuation march.
Similarly, Helen "Tzipi" Tichauer, a Slovak Jewish prisoner who had been employed at the Birkenau administration, told me in 2002 that, on the eve of the evacuation of Birkenau, the camp commandant called the Reichsdeutsch (!) female prisoners and offered them Entlassungsscheine (documents stating that they were released from camp), so they could leave and be free. After a lengthy discussion together with the other women prisoners, the Reichsdeutsch women decided to reject this offer. They were afraid of falling into the hands of the rapidly advancing Red Army (unfortunately, being women, this fear not without reason) and therefore preferred to stay with the SS and go on transport into the Reich.
Of course these were exceptions and concerned only "Reichsdeutsch" prisoners, i.e. "Aryans" with Reich citizenship, who generally enjoyed some privileges. As a rule, all concentration camps that could be evacuated were evacuated and only those prisoners who were unable to walk were left behind. As the prisoners feared (not without reason) that those left behind would be killed, even very sick prisoners volunteered for joining an evacuation transport. "It was always safest to stay with the crowd," a Camp Dora survivor told me in the 1990s.
Hargis's favorite argument is that Auschwitz prisoners on evacuation where given a choice to be set free but all chose to go with the Germans rather than wait to be liberated by the Russians.
ReplyDeleteHe keeps repeating this stupidity in many of the his posting and in this thread dedicated to the subject :
Did inmates of Auschwitz choose to be evacuated ?
See here :
https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1372
What next ? a thread titled " did inmates of Auschwitz choose to be Gassed "
Wish someone would join that thread and put these liars cheering crowd in their place,
Hargis's favorite argument is that Auschwitz prisoners on evacuation where given a choice to be set free but all chose to go with the Germans rather than wait to be liberated by the Russians.
ReplyDeleteHe keeps repeating this stupidity in many of the his posting and in this thread dedicated to the subject :
Did inmates of Auschwitz choose to be evacuated ?
See here :
https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1372
What next ? a thread titled " did inmates of Auschwitz choose to be Gassed "
Wish someone would join that thread and put these liars cheering crowd in their place,
The matter is, indeed, somewhat complicated. I studied in great detail the evacuation of the Mittelbau camps in my PhD dissertation (published 1997). I found out that in two cases the SS guards at a certain time declared the transport "finished" and told the prisoners that they were free. The Reichsdeutsch (!) prisoners, however, being afraid of getting lynched (as it did happen e.g. at Bergen-Belsen and Gunskirchen), preferred to stay with their guards and continued the evacuation march.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, Helen "Tzipi" Tichauer, a Slovak Jewish prisoner who had been employed at the Birkenau administration, told me in 2002 that, on the eve of the evacuation of Birkenau, the camp commandant called the Reichsdeutsch (!) female prisoners and offered them Entlassungsscheine (documents stating that they were released from camp), so they could leave and be free. After a lengthy discussion together with the other women prisoners, the Reichsdeutsch women decided to reject this offer. They were afraid of falling into the hands of the rapidly advancing Red Army (unfortunately, being women, this fear not without reason) and therefore preferred to stay with the SS and go on transport into the Reich.
Of course these were exceptions and concerned only "Reichsdeutsch" prisoners, i.e. "Aryans" with Reich citizenship, who generally enjoyed some privileges. As a rule, all concentration camps that could be evacuated were evacuated and only those prisoners who were unable to walk were left behind. As the prisoners feared (not without reason) that those left behind would be killed, even very sick prisoners volunteered for joining an evacuation transport. "It was always safest to stay with the crowd," a Camp Dora survivor told me in the 1990s.