German notgeld bank notes

[stona]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

 

[stona]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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