Contest Winners, October 31, 2006
Holocaust Historiography Project is proud to announce the winners of the 3rd Annual David McCalden Most Macabre Halloween Holocaust Tale Challenge, which ended October 30, 2006.
Congratulations to each of our winners, and thanks to everyone who participated in our contest. Here are excerpts from our winning entries.
First Place — $200.00
An execution chamber built like a theatre with spectators’ seats for German officials on a dais was built in Pangrac Prison, Prague, in 1943. There the Nazis killed at least 1,078 Czechs, including 250 women. When a prisoner had heard the verdict in an adjoining criminal court, a black curtain was drawn aside and he was taken straight to the white-tiled place of execution.
[…]
At Buchenwald, in the “Little Camp,” where prisoners slept 16 to a shelf, an infraction of discipline — particularly an attempt to escape — not infrequently resulted in all 16 being condemned. Such persons were immediately marched to a small door in the fence of the back yard at a point immediately adjacent to the incinerator building. This door opened inward until it hit a door stop which held it in a position parallel to the building’s wall, thus creating a corridor 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep. At the far end was an opening about 4 feet by 4 feet, flush with the ground, the head of a concrete shaft, about 13 feet deep the bottom floor of which was a continuation of the concrete floor of the room at the front end of the basement. The condemned prisoners, on being hurried and pushed through the door in the fence, inevitably fell into this shaft and crashed 13 feet down to the cement cellar floor. This room, on the floor at one end of which they now found themselves, was the strangling room. As they hit the floor they were garroted, with a short double-end noose, by SS. guards and hung on hooks along the side walls, about 6½ feet above the floor. When a consignment had been hung up, any who were still struggling were stunned by a wooden mallet, which was exhibited to us in the chamber still bearing stains of blood. The bodies were left on the hooks until called for by the incinerator crew.
Clark Kinnaird, This Must Not Happen Again: The Black Book of Fascist Horror. New York: Pilot Press — distributed by Howell, Soskin, Inc.; 1945. Pages 41-42.
Submitted by an anonymous contestant
Second Place — $50.00
We began our work. Our team of seven included only real professionals. One had been given special hooks to hoist himself to the top of the posts. He disconnected the electricity and brought down the wires and the reflector. Then we got ourselves into position to pull out the posts. And then wallow in the red, and the red was blood. The first contact with it gave us the shivers and we lost the power to speak. And yet we already knew about it. But between knowing and experiencing there is just no comparison. Underneath us there were men like us and, for sure the team of our seven predecessors was also beneath our feet …
[…]
Then we went into action, wallowing in human blood to recover the lamp posts. I could not understand why the corpses bled. The pressure when they heaped earth on them? Or the effect of the gas? My six companions had received almost new shoes, but not me because my mountain shoes were still in good condition.
Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique of Operation of the Gas Chambers. New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation; 1989. Pages 163-164.
Submitted by an anonymous contestant
See the full text of these winning contest entries.
As in last year’s contest, each of the winning contestants asked that his winnings be donated to Ernst Zundel, currently imprisoned in Germany for thought crimes. Anyone else wishing to contribute to Ernst Zundel’s continuing fight for truth and freedom can send donations to:
Ingrid Zundel
3152 Parkway #13, PMB109
Pigeon Forge, TN 37863