# German notgeld bank notes



## Thorlifter (Jun 30, 2012)

While searching the web for notgeld for sale, I came across a website where I was stunned at their description of German labor/death camps. In their description, they wrote...

_
Far from being the "death camps" as you have heard so often, places like Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald were not in the business of extermination. They were work camps, critical to the German war effort. But did you know that the Jewish workers were compensated for their labor with scrip printed specifically for their use in stores, canteens and even brothels? The prisoner monetary system was conceived in ghettos such as Lodz, carried to camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau and still existed in the displaced persons camps that were established by the Allies after World War II. Here is the story of the money the court historians do not want you to even suspect existed.

Piles of incinerated corpses were indicting images at Nuremberg, used to prove that the German-run concentration camps during World War II were intended for purposes of exterminating the Jews of Europe. *However, a plethora of documentary evidence, long suppressed, shows that prisoners were relatively well-treated, compensated for their hard work and allowed to purchase luxuries to which even the German public did not have ready access.* This is not the image of abject deprivation that the Holocaust lobby would like you to entertain._

I guess the word that just floored me was "well-treated". I know some were paid for their labor, but how this guy can suggest prisoners were well treated just makes my head spin.

So, I present this to this site for your reference and, heck, maybe I'm wrong and need to be enlightened.


----------



## GrauGeist (Jun 30, 2012)

WoW...

It would interesting to see thier plethora of "suppressed documents" stacks up higher than the pile of gold fillings found at Dachau...


----------



## davebender (Jun 30, 2012)

German work camps were not death camps. That would have been counter-productive. Many of the larger concentration camp systems such as Auschwitz contained both work camps and extermination camps. The web site you found is probably talking about work camps only.


----------



## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 30, 2012)

Come on now Dave. Read it again. It is rather obvious what they are saying. Dont stoop that low. 

Labor camps were brutal, nothing like the neo nazi bullshit being spread above. You know that as well. You are smarter than that.


----------



## GrauGeist (Jun 30, 2012)

Interestingly enough, the sign at the entrance to Auschwitz reads: "Work Sets You Free"...


----------



## stona (Jun 30, 2012)

I find posts on this thread very disturbing already.
Steve


----------



## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 30, 2012)

Anyone who thinks that labor camps were not bad, and that prisoners were treated well is disturbing.


----------



## GrauGeist (Jun 30, 2012)

It is true that large populations of workers were relocated for Labor and that in it's own right is inexcusable, because nobody should be forced from thier home and way of life for any reason.

But millions went to thier deaths simply because they were "inferior" and that is unforgivable. And it is up to us to remember that terrible tragedy, no matter how unpleasant the truth is, so that it NEVER happens again...


----------



## davebender (Jun 30, 2012)

Who made that claim?

My point is German labor camps were not designed to kill prisoners as was normal in the Soviet Gulag system. Germany had special camps whose only purpose was extermination.


----------



## GrauGeist (Jun 30, 2012)

davebender said:


> Who made that claim?


In the original post, the quoted paragraph:


> Far from being the "death camps" as you have heard so often, places like *Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald were not in the business of extermination*. They were work camps, critical to the German war effort.


That right there, is extremely dangerous revisionism


----------



## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jun 30, 2012)

Enough said...


----------



## tyrodtom (Jun 30, 2012)

Work camps couldn't be death camps " because that would be counter-productive" ???

The workers in the work camps were treated as a very disposable, short term labor force. These were people the Nazi doctrine wanted to dissappear from the face of the earth, to leave living room for the master race. If they could get some work out of them while working them to death, by Nazi doctrine, that was productive. 

It would take hours to list all the policies of the 3rd Reich that were " counter productive " .


----------



## mikewint (Jun 30, 2012)

Tyrodtom, spot on


----------



## stona (Jul 1, 2012)

davebender said:


> Who made that claim?
> 
> My point is German labor camps were not designed to kill prisoners as was normal in the Soviet Gulag system. Germany had special camps whose only purpose was extermination.



Semantics.
It is true that there were only six camps specifically designed as extermination camps. Lets list them.

Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau)
Chełmno
Belzec
Majdanek
Sobibor
Treblinka

There are a couple of others that may be considered extermination camps today but they were not considered such by Eichmann's organisation at the time.

The rest are concentration/labour camps and the differentiation was made clear by various witnesses and defendants at Nuremberg.
These camps had no interest in preserving their prisoners. In fact it was part of their purpose to work these people to death. Their life expectancy was longer than the minutes of one of the six listed above ,they were murdered slowly.


Heydrich,from the minutes of the Wannsee conference.

"Under suitable direction, the Jews should be brought to the East in the course of the Final Solution, for use as labour. In large labour gangs, with the sexes separated, the Jews capable of work will be transported to those areas and set to road-building, in the course of which, without doubt, a large part of them ("ein Großteil") will fall away through natural losses. The surviving remnant, surely those with the greatest powers of resistance, will be given special treatment, since, if freed, they would constitute the germinal cell for the re-creation of Jewry."

"Fall away through natural causes" is a euphemism which surely needs no explanation. It WAS part of the purpose of these camps.

I take it we've all seen the dreadful films made by the British at Belsen and the Americans at Dachau. Neither were extermination camps but the piles of bodies speak for themselves.

This thread should be closed.

Steve


----------



## delcyros (Jul 1, 2012)

Agreed, it´s not a place for revisionism.

Concentration camps for the purpose of exterminating people existed. Prisoner Camps which employed forced labour tolerated and at times even encouraged life threatening environmental and working conditions. This should never be questioned.


----------



## davebender (Jul 1, 2012)

> It would take hours to list all the policies of the 3rd Reich that were " counter productive " .


The same holds true for modern day USA and the EU.


----------



## tyrodtom (Jul 1, 2012)

davebender said:


> The same holds true for modern day USA and the EU.



Not even in the same league Dave. To say that is a gross understatement of just how wrong some of the Nazi policies were.


----------



## A4K (Jul 2, 2012)

davebender said:


> Who made that claim?
> 
> My point is German labor camps were not designed to kill prisoners as was normal in the Soviet Gulag system. Germany had special camps whose only purpose was extermination.



No, prisoners were just worked to death (or set aside for medical experiments in camps like Dachau). Sounds much better that way dosen't it?


----------



## stona (Jul 2, 2012)

davebender said:


> Who made that claim?
> 
> My point is German labor camps were not designed to kill prisoners as was normal in the Soviet Gulag system.



Yes they were.You are simply wrong and promoting an objectionable revisionist history.
Read the minutes of the Wannsee conference. Read comments by Himmler,Eichmann and many others. Maybe you could read through the testimonies of men like Speer and Sauckel at Nuremberg.
It was an accepted feature of these camps that the work force would die and need constant replenishment,something Speer moaned about (on economic not humanitarian grounds) and Sauckel had to fix. For this Sauckel was hanged.
Sauckel protested his innocence to the end claiming,like you,that it was not commonplace to work labour to death. I bet he wished that he hadn't written,earlier,that labourers be exploited "to the highest degree possible at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure." 
If you don't want to take their words for it you can look up the statistics for deaths in some of these camps. They were good record keepers in Nazi Germany and not everything was destroyed in the chaos of war's end.
That's me done with this.
Steve


----------



## Njaco (Jul 2, 2012)

davebender said:


> Who made that claim?
> 
> My point is German labor camps were not designed to kill prisoners as was normal in the Soviet Gulag system.



I don't think Erich Hartmann would have lasted 10 years in a German "work" camp like he did in the Russian camp system.


----------



## stona (Jul 2, 2012)

Njaco said:


> I don't think Erich Hartmann would have lasted 10 years in a German "work" camp like he did in the Russian camp system.



In 1943 a concentration camp prisoner had an average life expectancy of from three to nine months. This varied considerably from camp to camp and some prisoners managed to survive for several years.
In the Bunawerke (artificial rubber factory) belonging to I.G. Farben at Monowitz near Auschwitz, the manpower turnover was 300% per year.Not many can have been surviving more than four months.If that camp wasn't designed to kill the workforce it was doing a remarkably good job of it.
The death rate in concentration camps (not extermination camps where it was self evidently close to 100%) rose from about 60% in 1942 to 80% in the succeeding three years.
We'll never know,thankfully,if anyone could have survived for ten years but statistically it is virtually impossible.
History has to be based on facts not opinion and I hope I have entered a few salient facts into this thread.
I really am done with this now!
Cheers
Steve


----------



## vikingBerserker (Jul 2, 2012)

There is some validity to the original post, however it was a farce. In one of the books I have on Auschwitz it talks about a "camp" filled with Hungarian (?) Jews that was used as a show camp to the rest of the world which I believe did pay the people and they could buy stuff. However this camp was closed and the occupants were gassed at Auschwitz.


----------



## stona (Jul 2, 2012)

vikingBerserker said:


> There is some validity to the original post, however it was a farce. In one of the books I have on Auschwitz it talks about a "camp" filled with Hungarian (?) Jews that was used as a show camp to the rest of the world which I believe did pay the people and they could buy stuff. However this camp was closed and the occupants were gassed at Auschwitz.



The film was shot at Theresienstadt. 

The Germans had cleaned the camp up in order to dupe visiting members of the IRC who visited on June 23rd 1944. These Red Cross representatives would not have been happy to know that in order to reduce the population of the camp for their visit several "shipments" were made to Auschwitz.
The ruse was so successful that Hans Guenther, the head of the regional SS-Zentralamt zur Regelung der Judenfrage (Central Office for the Regulation of the Jewish Question) in Prague decided to make a propaganda film for screening abroad to counter act what they saw as increasingly effective propaganda from Jewish organisations about the fate of European Jewry.

The film was even directed by a Jewish director,Kurt Gerron,and released under the title "Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet" ("Theresienstadt: a documentary film about the Jewish settlement") 

The infamous title "Der Fuehrer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt" ("The Fuehrer Donates a City to the Jews") is not original - it was given by survivors of Theresienstadt later.


The film was shot over 11 days between August 16 to September 11, 1944. Shortly after filming was complete the cast and crew,including Gerron,were shipped to Auschwitz.
After the film was finished and edited on March 28, 1945 the Czech company Aktualita received RM 35,000 from Guenther's office for the production of the film.
It was to be shown in neutral countries but the end of the war came before it was widely distributed. 

Only a fraction (less than twenty minutes) of the film survives in various archives. The largest segment was found in Czechslovakia in 1964.

Short extracts have been used in documentaries,usually the scene of the childrens' production of "Brundibar" or scenes shot in the "fully equipped" hospital.

It's a nasty bit of propaganda,only a child would be fooled by such nonsense.

Cheers
Steve

Edit As far as I can tell most of the people appearing in the film are Czech,Austrian and German rather than Hungarian,but most are not identified or identifiable by name.


----------



## Thorlifter (Jul 2, 2012)

I'm glad your not "done with this" as I am really getting a lot from your knowledge and insight. Thanks for your contributions to the thread.


----------



## stona (Jul 2, 2012)

Thorlifter said:


> I'm glad your not "done with this" as I am really getting a lot from your knowledge and insight. Thanks for your contributions to the thread.



Thanks.
The truth is revisionism in many forms becomes more and more popular as time goes by and these events pass from living memory.
The facts are out there and I've spent quite a chunk of my life making sure that they are kept in the light of day. 

It is important to refute statements that would imply that a nazi concentration camp was in some way not as lethal as the Soviet Gulag. 

This is not to diminish the atrocity that the Soviet system inflicted through the Gulag. My knowledge of the figures (frankly of most things Soviet) is limited but I understand that somewhere between 1 and 1.6 million people perished in the Gulag between 1929 and 1953.

IIRC the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has all the surviving footage of the Theriesenstadt/Terezin film in its archive. Various clips are available online.

Cheers
Steve


----------



## mikewint (Jul 2, 2012)

Not to in any way diminish any of the above in any way shape or form, Hitler and his death/consentration camps was a minor league piker compared to Joseph Stalin. Starting in 1930, Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, set in motion events designed to cause a famine in the Ukraine in order to destroy the people there seeking independence from his rule. As a result, an estimated 7,000,000 persons perished in this farming area, known as the breadbasket of Europe, with the people deprived of the food they had grown with their own hands.
Stalin also imposed the Soviet system of land management known as collectivization. This resulted in the seizure of all privately owned farmlands and livestock, in a country where 80 percent of the people were traditional village farmers. Among those farmers, were a class of people called Kulaks by the Communists. They were formerly wealthy farmers that had owned 24 or more acres, or had employed farm workers. Stalin believed any future insurrection would be led by the Kulaks, thus he proclaimed a policy aimed at "liquidating the Kulaks as a class."
Declared "enemies of the people," the Kulaks were left homeless and without a single possession as everything was taken from them, even their pots and pans. It was also forbidden by law for anyone to aid dispossessed Kulak families. Some researchers estimate that ten million persons were thrown out of their homes, put on railroad box cars and deported to "special settlements" in the wilderness of Siberia during this era, with up to a third of them perishing amid the frigid living conditions. Men and older boys, along with childless women and unmarried girls, also became slave-workers in Soviet-run mines and big industrial projects.
By mid 1932, nearly 75 percent of the farms in the Ukraine had been forcibly collectivized. On Stalin's orders, mandatory quotas of foodstuffs to be shipped out to the Soviet Union were drastically increased in August, October and again in January 1933, until there was simply no food remaining to feed the people of the Ukraine. By the spring of 1933, the height of the famine, an estimated 25,000 persons died every day in the Ukraine. Entire villages were perishing. In Europe, America and Canada, persons of Ukrainian descent and others responded to news reports of the famine by sending in food supplies. But Soviet authorities halted all food shipments at the border. It was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of a famine and thus to refuse any outside assistance. Anyone claiming that there was in fact a famine was accused of spreading anti-Soviet propaganda. Inside the Soviet Union, a person could be arrested for even using the word 'famine' or 'hunger' or 'starvation' in a sentence.
Outside the Soviet Union, governments of the West adopted a passive attitude toward the famine, although most of them had become aware of the true suffering in the Ukraine through confidential diplomatic channels. In November 1933, the United States, under its new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, even chose to formally recognized Stalin's Communist government and also negotiated a sweeping new trade agreement. The following year, the pattern of denial in the West culminated with the admission of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations. 
By the end of 1933, nearly 25 percent of the population of the Ukraine, including three million children, had perished. The Kulaks as a class were destroyed and an entire nation of village farmers had been laid low. With his immediate objectives now achieved, Stalin allowed food distribution to resume inside the Ukraine and the famine subsided. However, political persecutions and further round-ups of 'enemies' continued unchecked in the years following the famine, interrupted only in June 1941 when Nazi troops stormed into the country. 
Soviet Gulags (Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies)
On the eve of World War II, Soviet archives indicate a combined camp and colony population upwards of 1.6 million in 1939. After the German invasion of Poland that marked the start of WWII, the Soviet Union invaded and annexed eastern parts of the Second Polish Republic. In 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia and Bukovina. Hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens and inhabitants of the other annexed lands, regardless of their ethnic origin, were arrested and sent to the gulag camps. However, according to the official data, the total number of sentences for political and antistate (espionage, terrorism) crimes in USSR in 1939-41 was 211,106.
Approximately 300,000 Polish prisoners of war were captured by the USSR during and after the 'Polish Defensive War'. Almost all of the captured officers and a large number of ordinary soldiers were then murdered (Katyn massacre) or sent to Gulag. Of the 10,000-12,000 Poles sent to Kolyma in 1940-1941, most POWs, only 583 men survived.
During the war, Gulag populations declined sharply due to a steep rise in mortality in 1942–43. In the winter of 1941 a quarter of the Gulag's population died of starvation . 516,841 prisoners died in prison camps in 1941-43.
But Stalin did not stop with his own countrymen. As Soviet troops invaded Germany they captured German POW camps holding American and British troops. Stalin had these American and British soldiers shipped to the Soviet Union where they lived the rest of their lives in the Russian gulags. Over 20,000 Americans and over 30,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers never left these camps! In fact, as the authors of Soldiers of Misfortune point out: "Starting in 1945, the Soviet Union became the second-largest employer of American servicemen in the world."
According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag system from 1934 to 1953. However, taking into account that it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or on the point of death, the actual Gulag death toll was somewhat higher, amounting to 1,258,537 in 1934-53, or 1.6 million casualties during the whole period from 1929 to 1953.
Stalin’s grand total can only be a rough estimate but Russian writer Vadim Erlikman, for example, makes the following estimates: executions, 1.5 million; gulags, 5 million; deportations, 1.7 million out of 7.5 million deported; and POWs and German civilians, 1 million – a total of about 9 million victims of repression. If famine victims are included, a minimum of around 10 million deaths (6 million from famine and 4 million from other causes) would yield a total of between 15 and 17 million victims.
.


----------



## tyrodtom (Jul 2, 2012)

Hitler was in power from 1933-45, and never really set free the full force of the "final solution" against the Jews AND OTHER PEOPLE until after WW2 started. But still murdered between 10-12 million people, in 6 years. 
Thank God, we don't have to estimate how many he killed if he had been in power for 23 -24 years as Stalin was.


----------



## Thorlifter (Jul 2, 2012)

VERY interesting Mike. I can't wait to get home and study this further.


----------



## stona (Jul 2, 2012)

I think those figures for the USSR are generally accepted,in fact the final total might be on the conservative side. I don't know how and by what mechanisms the Soviet systems worked,unlike the German systems,but they both inflicted appalling atrocities on humanity.
I'm not sure that a sort of macabre numbers game is particularly useful.

It is worth remembering that well before the end of the war (late '43) the extermination camps of "Aktion Reinhardt" had been dismantled and landscaped as if they had never existed....job done. Roughly two million people,mostly Polish Jews,had perished in less than two years in these facilities alone. 
That I would suggest is not the actions of "a minor league piker".

Cheers
Steve


----------



## vikingBerserker (Jul 2, 2012)

stona said:


> The film was shot at Theresienstadt.
> 
> The Germans had cleaned the camp up in order to dupe visiting members of the IRC who visited on June 23rd 1944. These Red Cross representatives would not have been happy to know that in order to reduce the population of the camp for their visit several "shipments" were made to Auschwitz.
> The ruse was so successful that Hans Guenther, the head of the regional SS-Zentralamt zur Regelung der Judenfrage (Central Office for the Regulation of the Jewish Question) in Prague decided to make a propaganda film for screening abroad to counter act what they saw as increasingly effective propaganda from Jewish organisations about the fate of European Jewry.
> ...



Thanks Steve, I had no idea there was a propaganda movie about it as well, thanks for the info. Oh and you are probably right about them not being Hungarian as I really could not remember 100%


----------



## GrauGeist (Jul 2, 2012)

Stalin almost screwed himself into a corner with his purges of the Veteran military ranks prior to the War with Finland and eventually the war with Germany...

It's extremely unsettling how soon people tend to forget the monsterous horrors that fell upon civilians in the 20th century and rewriting history to "soften" the truth does nothing but open the way to a repeat of those tragedies.


----------



## stona (Jul 3, 2012)

vikingBerserker said:


> Thanks Steve, I had no idea there was a propaganda movie about it as well, thanks for the info. Oh and you are probably right about them not being Hungarian as I really could not remember 100%



No worries,some people who appeared in the film are known. There were many well known artists and intellectuals from Germany and Austria's Jewish communities in the camp.

Most prisoners were German and Austrian with smaller minorities from the Sudetenland (whom I referred to as Czech when of course most would have been ethnic Germans),Luxembourg and Danzig.

The majority of Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz,mostly between May and July 1944. About 150 trains and nearly half a million people made that dreadful journey.

Sometimes it is not just the horrific numbers but the timelines that can be shocking today.

Cheers

Steve


----------



## tyrodtom (Jul 3, 2012)

This transport of Hungary's Jews was going on at the same time the eastern front was collasping, but those trains transport the Jews were utilized only for one thing, in other words, they returned from the extermination camps empty for the next load of people.
How's that for " counter productive" dave ?


----------



## stona (Jul 3, 2012)

davebender said:


> German work camps were not death camps. That would have been counter-productive.



Specially for Dave here is a picture of a prisoner taken in May 1945 at Theriesenstadt.
This not from a nazi propaganda film,this is for real,counter-productive or not.







Did the trains return from Auschwitz empty? I can't check at the moment but I wouldn't be surprised if the SS charged somebody for transporting something back on them.

Steve


----------



## Njaco (Jul 3, 2012)

Its amazing how everyone is comparing Hitler and Stalin as to who was the badder Bad Guy.

and its even more amazing that anyone can defend that first post/article.


----------



## stona (Jul 3, 2012)

Njaco said:


> Its amazing how everyone is comparing Hitler and Stalin as to who was the badder Bad Guy.
> 
> and its even more amazing that anyone can defend that first post/article.



I couldn't agree more. Some sort of macabre numbers game is pointless in the face of such suffering.
It is also pointless to personalise policies which,whilst certainly promulgated from the top,were carried out by regimes and nations.
Cheers
Steve


----------



## mikewint (Jul 3, 2012)

Njaco/Stona I guess it does seem that way. In my mind it is not a question of who is badder it is more of a question of not forgetting that Hitler and the Jews were not the only warcrimes in WWII. The 15 to 18 million killed by Stalin is conservatve. Some go as high as 30 million. The Western Allied powers turned a blind eye to Stalin's warcrimes 'cause he was one of the "good" guys fighting Hitler. History books seldom even mention Stalin's purges or the 50,000 allied POWs sent into Soviet Gulags.
In much the same fashion Japanese atrocities and warcrimes vanish from history. The Rape of Nanking comes to mind immediately as do Japanese "Human Experiments" conducted by Unit 731. Mention the Waffen-SS and most know something about them. KGB a bit vaguer. But the Kempeitai?
A Partial List of Japanese WWII actions:
Alexandra Hospital massacre
Banka Island massacre
Changjiao massacre
Kalagong massacre
Laha massacre
Manila massacre
Nanking Massacre
Palawan Massacre
Pantingan River Massacre
Parit Sulong Massacre
Sook Ching massacre
Tol Plantation massacre
Wake Island massacre
Units involved in Human Experiments (vivisection, amputation (no anesthesia), anthrax, ect)
Unit 100
Unit 200
Unit 516
Unit 543
Unit 731
Unit 773
Unit 1644
Unit 1855
Unit 2646
Unit 8604
Unit 9420
War crimes
Bataan Death March
Burma Railway
Comfort women
Hell ships
Panjiayu tragedy
Sandakan Death Marches
Three Alls Policy
War crimes in Manchukuo
Changteh chemical weapon attack
Kaimingye germ weapon attack
Japanese soldiers also enjoyed their prisoner games. These two had a contest to see who could kill (sword) 100 people first. Both officers surpassed their goal during the heat of battle, making it impossible to determine which officer had actually won the contest. Therefore (according to the journalists Asami Kazuo and Suzuki Jiro, writing in the Tokyo Nichi-Nichi Shimbun of December 13), they decided to begin another contest, with the aim being 150 kills. The Nichi Nichi headline of the story of December 13 read "'Incredible Record' [in the Contest to] Behead 100 People—Mukai 106 – 105 Noda—Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings"
To deny or lessen in any way the horrors of the Holocaust is revisionist history but it is also equaly revisinist to lessen or deny other equally horrible Holocausts


----------



## Njaco (Jul 3, 2012)

Mike, not gonna argue with that. In the context of the article, I'm miffed that it seems there are a lot of excuses going around.......or maybe not. Just my impression.

I have an idea: Its all semantics talking about work camps vs extermination camps. Just terminology. How about from now on we use the term "death camps". I think that about covers it.


----------



## A4K (Jul 4, 2012)

Njaco said:


> Its amazing how everyone is comparing Hitler and Stalin as to who was the badder Bad Guy.



I think I brought up Stalin first, purely because most people automatically associate WW II with 'Nazi atrocities against the jews'. My point was simply that the Russians and Japanese were just as guilty, and many victims were not jewish at all, rather political prisoners or POWs, whether military personnel or civilians.

(last in memory of a news item on Australian woman hospital workers captured by the Japanese. They were confined to a ward where they were regularly beaten and raped by the guards and visiting officers. They had monthly medical 'check ups', where they were often raped by the doctors aswell - not many lived to see war's end)

Another point worth mentioning is that camps like Dachau started in 1933 already (with political prisoners of the new regime), and that the Russians continued to establish and maintain such camps post war (including the Hungarian camp of Recsk, and the torture chambers under Andrassy St in Budapest). 
Seems people turned a blind eye until the early war years, then turned a blind eye again at cease of hostilities. Why???


----------



## stona (Jul 4, 2012)

Njaco said:


> I have an idea: Its all semantics talking about work camps vs extermination camps. Just terminology. How about from now on we use the term "death camps". I think that about covers it.



We have to be careful here. There are semantics involved as I said in my original reply to Davebender's ludicrous post. 

Nonetheless these distinctions did apply. These distinctions were made by the Germans at the time and later in their various testimonies at Nuremberg.
There were only six camps built for Aktion Reinhardt which were purely extermination camps (Vernichtungslager or Todeslager). With the exception of Auschwitz,which was actually a huge complex comprising two camps,they had no role in the supply of labour to German industry whatsoever. The vast majority of people arriving at these facilities were dead within half an hour.

There were many more concentration camps,hundreds of them. Another argument raises its head as these too had different functions,some for example serving as transit camps to ghettos or other labour camps.The Germans also distinguished between concentration camps (Konzentrationslager) and forced labour camps (Arbeitslager). Although not specifically extermination camps prisoners in this system had a typical life expectancy of between three and nine months. The overall war time mortality rates were never less than 50% and veered nearer 80% after 1942.They did a pretty good job of killing off their inmates.

Cheers

Steve


----------



## stona (Jul 4, 2012)

posted twice


----------



## A4K (Jul 4, 2012)

Better twice than not at all. 
Some very sad statistics in that and previous posts...


----------



## stona (Jul 4, 2012)

A4K said:


> Another point worth mentioning is that camps like Dachau started in 1933 already (with political prisoners of the new regime), and that the Russians continued to establish and maintain such camps post war (including the Hungarian camp of Recsk, and the torture chambers under Andrassy St in Budapest).
> Seems people turned a blind eye until the early war years, then turned a blind eye again at cease of hostilities. Why???



The apalling conditions in the camp system were not present in the original KZ like Dachau pre-war. These were not holiday camps but neither could we honestly call them death camps as we might later. That is not to suggest that people were not murdered in these camps,though usually under some dubious legal cover.

People did protest some pre-war Nazi policies. Both forced sterilisation and the euthenasing of the mentally or physically disabled stirred up considerable resistance from some sections of German society and the Churches. The program of euthenasia was suspended (I'd have to check the dates when I'm at home).

The nazification of German society was a concious effort to drag the people along with the NSDAP. It is difficult for us today to imagine just how successful this process was.
A majority of people in the UK support a death penalty today but parliament does not.Imagine that being the other way around. How long would it be before the penalty was restored?

After the war the atrocities were dragged into the light of day but you can't hold such things over the entire German people indefinitely. There was a supposed "de-nazification" of German institutions,though a quick look at the Judiciary where most judges simply moved into the new democratic German system would make you question how effective that really was. There was also a realisation that Germany would have to be rebuilt and developed to take its place alongside other Western European nations and on the front line against the Soviet Union. 
It is true that much dirt was swept under the carpet but it is only with the benefit of hindsight,a luxury afforded the historian,that we can question whether it should have been. At the time it was deemed expedient and in the interests of the victorious powers as well as Germany itself.
Cheers
Steve


----------



## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jul 4, 2012)

I think Germany is a perfect example of a nation being rebuilt, and taking its side among the worlds nations in peace. The nation has prospered and become a respectable nation. You can't condemn everyone for living in a country who's govt. committed such things, you also can not condemn people for being born in the nation during and after such things took place. 

Not saying that you or anyone else is doing such things.


----------



## stona (Jul 4, 2012)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> I think Germany is a perfect example of a nation being rebuilt, and taking its side among the worlds nations in peace. The nation has prospered and become a respectable nation. You can't condemn everyone for living in a country who's govt. committed such things, you also can not condemn people for being born in the nation during and after such things took place.
> 
> Not saying that you or anyone else is doing such things.



I agree.
We had the Nuremberg trials and these were and did draw a line under the whole question of "German guilt".

The issue is that it was accepted then that many guilty parties got away with it. This has become somehow less acceptable as time has passed.

It is only now,much too late,that some people question the lack of post war prosecutions in Germany. The lack of will,both in West Germany and other Western States to go after the guilty will always cause concern.

The problem is that a survivor or family member of a victim of the massacre of British (and some French) soldiers at Wourmhoudt would like to see the perpetrator brought to justice rather than living out his dotage near Munich,never having even been charged with an offence.

I understand why it was important to bring Eichmann or Barbie to trial, but Demjanjuk? I'm as anti-nazi as anyone but that was,to be polite,a thin case. How far must we go? 

Post war we had to move on and move on quickly. We could not spend fifty years going over these things time and time again. The morals of the argument are extremely dubious but it is the real world that we live in.

Cheers

Steve


----------



## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Jul 4, 2012)

I agree with you.


----------



## mikewint (Jul 4, 2012)

Don't poo-poo semantics. Humans love their word games. Visiting the former Loved one in the Slumber chamber. Sounds like Grandpa is just taking a nap. Recoiless rifles aren't and Friendly fire isn't.
If people die because of gas, bullets, or overwork and poor nutrition does it matter what the place it happened in is called? Call it Disneyland if you like. people are still dead


----------



## stona (Jul 5, 2012)

mikewint said:


> If people die because of gas, bullets, or overwork and poor nutrition does it matter what the place it happened in is called?



It does as a matter of historical accuracy.

I wouldn't call a Bf 109 E a Bf 109 F despite them being superficially the same,indistinguishable to most people. Neither would I call Treblinka a concentration camp or Belsen an extermination camp.

People died in the most dreadful circumstances in both but under different parts of the system. They are not the same.

Cheers

Steve


----------



## A4K (Jul 5, 2012)

Agreed. A name is just a technical detail, but not different for nothing.


----------



## stona (Jul 5, 2012)

The economics were different too. Aktion Reinhardt was accounted for seperately to other parts of the system. All those accounts and the enormous profits were published at Nuremberg.
I can't possibly post thousands of documents here but this one communique will give an idea of the sums involved.

TOP SECRET

The Higher SS and Police Chief in the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Coast

Trieste, 1/5/1944.

Gl./Go.-Diary No. 1/44 Top Secret PK.

To the Reichsfuehrer SS and Reich Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler Berlin

Reichsfuehrer,

The following assets from the Action "Reinhard" were delivered to the SS Economic and Administrative Head Office, Berlin, for further transmission to the Reichsbank or to the Reich Ministry of Economics:

a. Reichsmark sums totaling RM 53,013,133.51 

Currency in Bank notes from all the principal countries in the world (half a million dollars being particularly to be noted) to a total value of RM 1,452,904.65 

Foreign currency in gold coins to a total value of RM 843,802.75 

Precious metals (about 1,800 kg. of gold and about 10,000 kg. of silver in bars) to a total value of RM 5,353,943.00 

Other valuables such as jewellery, watches, spectacles, etc. (the number of watches being particularly worthy of note - about 16,000 in working order and about 51,000 requiring repair: they have been placed at the disposal of the troops) RM 26,089,800.00 

About 1,000 wagons of textiles to a total value of RM 13,294,400.00 

Total RM 100,047,983.91

1,000 wagons of textiles and about another 50% of the above mentioned assets - which still have to be counted and valued - are warehoused here. It should be noted here that the estimated values were based on the officially established rates of exchange or prices, which however would be much higher on the open market, for instance in the sale of precious stones or precious metals abroad, as the flight to investments in articles whose value is not subject to much fluctuation is much greater there than with us. Besides these sales abroad bring us foreign currency. If these prices were taken as a basis of evaluation here, this was done in order to be able to give a picture of the assets delivered; in general this evaluation is not authoritative. The value of the acquisition lies principally in the fact that such large quantities of urgently needed raw materials can thereby be gained and that, on the basis of the assets obtained, foreign currency can be brought in, with which raw materials can in turn be bought by Reich authorities.

[Sgd.] Globocnik SS Gruppenfuehrer and Lieut. General of Police.


Remember that these accounts are specifically from Aktion Reinhardt comprising six camps. The figures for the entire system are enormous.

Luckily the Germans were conscientious accountants. There are mountains of such documents still in existence. Tough for the deniers but then they'll say everyone of the many thousands are fake!

The important figures in the administration of this mass murder process were men whose names most will not have heard, Hermann Höfle, Christian Wirth, Richard Thomalla, Georg Michalsen, Hermann Worthoff, and Amon Göth.

Less we forget. 


Steve


----------



## A4K (Jul 5, 2012)

Interesting Steve, thanks for posting.


----------



## Thorlifter (Jul 5, 2012)

Amon Goth I have heard of from the movie Schindler's List. The others I have not heard of but I will assume (before I look them up) they were also commandants of labor/death camps.

As a side note, I agree with both Mike and Steve. We all know the labor camps achieved the same end result as the death camps. Conditions were deplorable, people died, and those that couldn't work were shipped to the death camps for immediate termination. But I also agree that for historical accuracy that they should be labeled differently, as long as we and people are aware of the end result for both.

Mike, you made me do a lot of work over the 4th. Each item in that list you posted I looked up and did a little research on each. I read the book "Rape of Nanking" so I am familiar with that action, but most of the others I never heard of. Very interesting stuff.


----------



## stona (Jul 5, 2012)

They were not all in charge of concentration camps,though some were.

They were all on Globocnik's "Aktion Reinhardt" staff and were responsible for everything from the building of the camps (Thomalla) to the organisation of deportations from Warsaw,Bialystok and Lublin ghettos and the actual murders themselves. Wirth for example was originally a policeman who was selected due to his experience murdering disabled people using poison gases in the earlier euthanasia programs.

They met a variety of fates,the Soviets executed a couple,Hofle hanged himself in jail and Wirth was killed by partisans. Michalsen,having been released uncharged by the British in 1945 was finally collared in 1961 living in Hamburg!

They are a typical bunch of nazis,mostly thugs of limited ability but willing to do just about anything to further their cause. Wirth even seems to have disconcerted fellow nazis with his uncompromising and unscrupulous attitudes. 

They are a perfect illustration of Hannah Arendt's memorable phrase "the banality of evil".

Cheers
Steve


----------



## stona (Jul 5, 2012)

By an amazing coincidence,for those in the UK,a documentary about Amon Goth has just started (22.20) on BBC4.
Steve


----------



## mikewint (Jul 6, 2012)

Thor, did not want to go into detail, this thread is not about the Japanese. My interest stems from 3 of my uncles who fought in the Pacific. One was killed on Guadicanal, one on Iwo. The third survived two Kamikazi on his ship. His hatred of the Japanese lasted all his life. He passed many stories on to me.


----------



## tyrodtom (Jul 7, 2012)

My dad and 6 of my uncles fought in WW2, all but one in the Pacific. Some kept their hatred of the Japanese alive till the last day of their life. My Dad was badly wounded at Guadalcanal, and was back home by late 1943. But to him, hate was a waste of emotion, I try to remember that.

Three of those uncles died in the war, so I never got to know them.


----------

