Correspondence
MIRACLE AT MAJDANEK?
The Majdanek “gas chambers” are no longer a mystery. Finally, after 3 talks with the Majdanek director, Mr. Edward Dziadosz, and the custos, Madam Henryka Telesz, it has at last been admitted that the “gas chambers” are not authentic. They were built and set in order after the war.
Dziadosz informed us that the “gas chambers” were erected after the war on the basis of witnessess' accounts. Who these witnesses are he has never told us and most likely never will. When we spoke to him for the first time in 1978 he could not give us even one person in Poland who had witnessed the gassings, so we can just imagine what kind of “witnesses” his “witnesses” really are.
While we were at Majdanek this year, we went into one of the “gas chambers” to study them closely and take additional detailed photographs. The area is closed off, but as before, we managed to sneak in. It so happened that while we were inside the “gas chambers,” the custos, Madam Telesz, came strutting along with a West German group she was “guiding.” Attentively, we listened to her telling her “true” story. We had to press our bodies tightly against the wall, lest the people and the custos herself would notice us as they were gazing into the “gas chamber.” This “gas chamber” by the way is one of the two with the holes on the ceiling where it is claimed Zyklon B was discharged. Not a word was mentioned by Telesz that this building had been altered after the war but she made it out as if everything was authentic. She even went so far as to fool the tourists into believing that inside this particular “gas chamber,” people were also shot, and that the bullet holes from these events were clearly visible on the wall. Why such shootings did not also take place in the other “gas chambers,” only she herself and her fellow Exterminationists would know. Evidently these holes were also made by the Majdanek, Hollywood stage artists and, of course, all based on some mysterious “witnesses.”
During an animated discussion in the summer of 1981 between myself, Mr. Edward Dziadosz and the custos Madam Henryka Telesz, a rather interesting thing happened which illustrates the point nicely how our rivals are using tress as evidence for extermination. Being unable to give us any proof of deliberate extermination at Majdanek, Madam Telesz, who was visibly shaken, retorted that the evidence for deliberate extermination was clearly proven by the fact the the Germans had planted trees. For my own sake, I just could not catch her reasoning, for if the planting of trees gave clear evidence of extermination, then anything can prove extermination. At any rate, I asked her: “Do you mean that the Germans planted trees here at Majdanek to cover up all the traces of their crimes?” “No, no, but at those other places,” Telesz said. “What places?” I asked her. Unable to give me an answer and as she, by this time, was thoroughly confused, I decided to help her. “Perhaps you mean such places as Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka?” “Yes, yes,” she nodded back to me. I then told her straight in her face: “Dear Madam, we have made tests of those tress and they are no older than 20 years, and using your logic that would mean it was the Poles who did the exterminating, in that, I assume, it must have been the Poles who planted those trees. Or are you suggesting that these camps were first liberated in the 1960's?” In the voice of an utterly defeated person she managed to reply: “NO-well,” and by this time she probably wished she had never brought up the matter about the final, clear evidence, those trees which by some strange fate constitute the absolute proof of mass extermination.
Ditlieb Felderer
Taby, Sweden
COMMENTS ON LAST ISSUE
With respect to The Journal, issue for Spring, 1982, Mr. Richard Landwehr’s detailed letter is excellent. One wishes the same could be said for the most recent letter of Dr. Wayland D. Smith. For one so easily irritated, as is Dr. Smith, how surprising is his contented purr on the subject of “psycho-history.” Except for its ostentatious jargon, there is nothing new in this latest “discipline.” Everything in Dr. Stein’s original article (Winter, 1980) can be fully explained by common sense and without resorting to the unhealthy and convoluted obsession with sex.
Dr. Stein and Dr. Smith both stress the importance of empathy in understanding. Empathy, in fact, is of little or no consequence. Understanding requires like-mindedness, not empathy. Like-mindedness means that the alien mind is not present, whereas empathy (often indistinguishable from sentimentality) implies sympathy for what is foreign. History shows us again and again that two peoples cannot understand each other: they are essentially, ineradicably, alien to each other. And this is generally true even if they are of the same race. How many Englishmen, even those who admire things German, have ever understood the German, entered into his spirit, and become one with him? Not even Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who married Wagner’s younger daughter, spoke and wrote perfect German, lived and died in Germany, could do that. Listen to how an English or a Jewish musician plays German music, and the listener will understand that empathy is a trivial factor. A German musician’s instinctive feeling for the music of his people constitutes an understanding in which empathy and intellectual comprehension play no role.
As for the source, of Dr. Smith’s irritation — namely Dr. Andreas, Wesserle’s letter (Winter, 1981) — it is impossible to understand his annoyance. Dr. Wesserle stresses (and rightly so) the incomparably more destructive nature of Allied bombing. In the context of his letter — and outside that context, as well! — his point is perfectly apt. Dr. Smith’s observation that Germany lacked the resources to answer in kind is not germane. It was never part of Germany’s strategy to commit such atrocities. Had it been, Germany would have manufactured the necessary bombers before the war. As it was, in fact, Germany’s intention to remain at peace, while redressing the viscious wrongs of the Versailles Treaty, her ornaments generally were scanty.
Ronald Klett
Greendale, Wis.
WHY CREMATE?
It is claimed that the Nazis used cremation- a very inefficient method for disposing of millions of corpses-for the purpose of causing the bodies to vanish without a trace, thus destroying evidence of the genocide crime.
Most people, not being familiar with the cremation process, assume that cremation reduces a corpse completely to ashes. This is not the case. I have been informed by an undertaker that cremation reduces the soft tissues to ash but not the bones. The bones must then be ground up in a machine built for the purpose. The “ashes” of a cremated corpse consist mostly of ground bone, some pieces being “as long as one-half inch.”
It would not make sense to cremate millions of corpses and then bury the bones in mass graves. One would simply bury the corpses, as the corpses would take up little more space, especially if emaciated, than the bones alone.
Therefore, if the Nazis had murdered and cremated millions of Jews, they must have ground the bones and there would exist today vast deposits of bone in areas where the camps were located.
Barbara B. Clarke
San Diego, Calif.
JUDICIAL BAMBOOZLE
I read with some amazement in your publication that “judicial notice” had been taken that “Jews were gassed to death at Auschwitz concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944.” 1 fear that such a “judicial notice” opens up what we common folk call “a can of worms.”
To begin, what is a Jew? No one seems to really know. A race? A religion? Judeans? Khazars? I believe a court in Israel declared that a Jew was a person born of a Jewish mother. But would that also apply if a Jewish woman were raped and impregnated by a Japanese or Negro?
Was Karl Marx a Jew? It is my recollection that he was a member of the Lutheran Church and wrote various anti-Jewish articles. What about Trotsky? A Communist and Atheist and also a Jew? What about the so-called “secret Jews” the Marranos. Are they Jews in fact?
“Gassed to death?” Perhaps by accident. Or murdered by other Jews. Or murdered by Poles or Russians. Or by SS men in violation of SS regulations. “Gassed to death” can mean anything. And how many? “Jews” could mean only two.
“Auschwitz concentration Camp?” Was Auschwitz really a “concentration Camp?” Was it not an industrial complex? Now this is nit-picking but when “judicial notice” is taken, that “judicial notice” must be carefully, even tediously, examined.
That Auschwitz was in Poland seems pretty safe, but, again, to nit-pick, was Auschwitz not actually in the so-called “General Government” which had been set up by the German Occupation authorities?
Why refer specifically to the “summer of 1944?” This seems to indicate that something special happened during that summer. Were Jews only “gassed to death” during the summer of 1944? If so, were they gassed during the entire summer? If only two Jews were involved then one day would have been enough. And the “judicial notice” gives us no reason to think that more than two were involved. If thousands or millions were involved, why does the “judicial notice” not say so?
Suppose we knew nothing about Auschwitz other than the information provided by the “judicial notice.” If that were true, we n-dght well think that the Jews involved were criminals executed by the Polish government. We would have no reason to think that the German government was involved in any way. What conclusions would we draw if told that “Jews were gassed to death at Sacramento, California?” We might well think the reference was to criminals executed by the State in that era when California used cyanide to remove unwanted members of society. We certainly would not think the German government or the Mexican government or the Chinese government was involved in the affair.
It would not help even if the “judicial notice” charged the German government and specifically the SS with having Jews “gassed to death.” We would have to have a copy of the order to do the gassing. And by whom were our two Jews dispatched? SS men in general could not have done the gassing, it would have to be a particular individual or group of individuals. Or maybe it was done by Himmler personally. We do not know because the “judicial notice” does not tell us anything at an about the circumstances.
Well, I think I have beat this dead horse long enough. I did want you to know that your publication stirred up my thinking and so put down these idle thoughts. Do not take “judicial notice” of them. They are too confused and too lacking in concrete data. If you take “judicial notice” of something make sure you are on firm ground. “Judicial, notice” that the Earth goes around the Sun seems safe enough. But to take “judicial notice” that water runs down hill might be less sure. I seem to remember that the famous “Believe or Not” man, Robert Ripley, found a river somewhere that ran uphill.
Best Wishes in your work. We must be free to question any event in history, and ready to change our minds if new information comes along.
W.E. Dudley
Las Vegas, Nev.
SEEDS OF WAR
As regards the Zionist provocation of Hitler & whether I subscribe to that viewpoint — I do believe that the ugly seeds of World War II were laid in the anti-Hitler barrage of 1933 & 1934. There were anti-Jewish incidents to be sure but nothing like the stuff put out by irresponsible journalists and people like Samuel Untermyer. Another case of making “political mountains out of racial molehills.” You can see the same process at work in the current “Timmerman affair.”
Bezalel Chaim
Brooklyn, New York