THE HOLOCAUST JUST GOT MORE SHOCKING
Eric Lichtbau
The New York Times, March 1, 2013
Thirteen years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe. What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust. The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.
The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington. “The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data. “We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.”
The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel. Auschwitz and a handful of other concentration camps have come to symbolize the Nazi killing machine in the public consciousness. Likewise, the Nazi system for imprisoning Jewish families in hometown ghettos has become associated with a single site — the Warsaw Ghetto, famous for the 1943 uprising. But these sites, infamous though they are, represent only a minuscule fraction of the entire German network, the new research makes painfully clear.
The maps the researchers have created to identify the camps and ghettos turn wide sections of wartime Europe into black clusters of death, torture and slavery — centered in Germany and Poland, but reaching in all directions. The lead editors on the project, Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean, estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia. (The Holocaust museum has published the first two, with five more planned by 2025.)
The existence of many individual camps and ghettos was previously known only on a fragmented, region-by-region basis. But the researchers, using data from some 400 contributors, have been documenting the entire scale for the first time, studying where they were located, how they were run, and what their purpose was.
The brutal experience of Henry Greenbaum, an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor who lives outside Washington, typifies the wide range of Nazi sites. When Mr. Greenbaum, a volunteer at the Holocaust museum, tells visitors today about his wartime odyssey, listeners inevitably focus on his confinement of months at Auschwitz, the most notorious of all the camps. But the images of the other camps where the Nazis imprisoned him are ingrained in his memory as deeply as the concentration camp number — A188991 — tattooed on his left forearm.
In an interview, he ticked off the locations in rapid fire, the details still vivid. First came the Starachowice ghetto in his hometown in Poland, where the Germans herded his family and other local Jews in 1940, when he was just 12. Next came a slave labor camp with six-foot-high fences outside the town, where he and a sister were moved while the rest of the family was sent to die at Treblinka. After his regular work shift at a factory, the Germans would force him and other prisoners to dig trenches that were used for dumping the bodies of victims. He was sent to Auschwitz, then removed to work at a chemical manufacturing plant in Poland known as Buna Monowitz, where he and some 50 other prisoners who had been held at the main camp at Auschwitz were taken to manufacture rubber and synthetic oil. And last was another slave labor camp at Flossenbürg, near the Czech border, where food was so scarce that the weight on his 5-foot-8-inch frame fell away to less than 100 pounds. By the age of 17, Mr. Greenbaum had been enslaved in five camps in five years, and was on his way to a sixth, when American soldiers freed him in 1945. “Nobody even knows about these places,” Mr. Greenbaum said. “Everything should be documented. That’s very important. We try to tell the youngsters so that they know, and they’ll remember.”
The research could have legal implications as well by helping a small number of survivors document their continuing claims over unpaid insurance policies, looted property, seized land and other financial matters. “HOW many claims have been rejected because the victims were in a camp that we didn’t even know about?” asked Sam Dubbin, a Florida lawyer who represents a group of survivors who are seeking to bring claims against European insurance companies.
Dr. Megargee, the lead researcher, said the project was changing the understanding among Holocaust scholars of how the camps and ghettos evolved. As early as 1933, at the start of Hitler’s reign, the Third Reich established about 110 camps specifically designed to imprison some 10,000 political opponents and others, the researchers found. As Germany invaded and began occupying European neighbors, the use of camps and ghettos was expanded to confine and sometimes kill not only Jews but also homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. The camps and ghettos varied enormously in their mission, organization and size, depending on the Nazis’ needs, the researchers have found.
The biggest site identified is the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, which held about 500,000 people at its height. But as few as a dozen prisoners worked at one of the smallest camps, the München-Schwabing site in Germany. Small groups of prisoners were sent there from the Dachau concentration camp under armed guard. They were reportedly whipped and ordered to do manual labor at the home of a fervent Nazi patron known as “Sister Pia,” cleaning her house, tending her garden and even building children’s toys for her.
When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500. The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, “Germanizing” prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers. In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites.
Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time. “You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”
Defending Lars Hedegaard:
"A STEW OF ANTI-MUSLIM BILE AND CONSPIRACY-LADEN FORECASTS"
Daniel Pipes
FrontPage Magazine, March 6, 2013
At 11:20 a.m. on Feb. 5, Lars Hedegaard answered his door bell to an apparent mailman. Instead of receiving a package, however, the 70-year-old Danish historian and journalist found himself face to face with a would-be assassin about one third his age. The assailant shot him once, narrowly missing his head. The gun locked, Hedegaard wrestled with him, and the young man fled.
Given Hedegaard's criticism of Islam and his even being taken to court on criminal charges of "hate speech," the attack reverberated in Denmark and beyond. The Associated Press reported this incident, which was featured prominently in the British press, including the Guardian, the Daily Mail, and the Spectator, as well as in Canada's National Post. The Wall Street Journal published an article by him about his experience.
When the New York Times belatedly bestirred itself on Feb. 28 to inform its readership about the assassination attempt, it did not so much report the event itself but an alleged Muslim support for Hedegaard to express himself. As implied by the title of Andrew Higgins' article, "Danish Opponent of Islam Is Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak," he mainly celebrates Danish Islam: "Muslim groups in the country, which were often criticized during the cartoon furor for not speaking out against violence and even deliberately fanning the flames, raised their voices to condemn the attack on Mr. Hedegaard and support his right to express his views, no matter how odious [emphasis added]." This theme pervades the piece; for example, Karen Haekkerup, the minister of social affairs and integration, is quoted pleased that "the Muslim community is now active in the debate."
Secondarily Higgins delegitimizes Hedegaard, my topic here. In addition to the snarky "no matter how odious" reference, Higgins dismisses Hedegaard's "opinions" as "a stew of anti-Muslim bile and conspiracy-laden forecasts of a coming civil war" and claims the Dane has "fanned wild conspiracy theories and sometimes veered into calumny."
These characterizations of Hedegaard's work are a vicious travesty. A few specifics:
1. What Higgins airily dismisses as Hedegaard's "opinions" is in fact a substantial oeuvre in several academic books and articles laden with facts and references dealing with Islamic ideology, Muslim history, and Muslim immigration to Denmark. Those books include:
I krigens hus: Islams kolonisering af Vesten [In the House of War: Islam's colonization of the West] (with Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen). Aarhus, Hovedland, 2003
1400 års krigen: Islams strategi, EU og frihedens endeligt [The 1400 Year War: Islam's strategy, the EU and the demise of freedom] (with Mogens Camre). Odense, Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek, 2009
Muhammeds piger: Vold, mord og voldtægter i Islams Hus. [Muhammad's girls: Violence, murder and rape in the House of Islam] Odense, Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek, 2011
Hedegaard's major articles include:
"Den 11. september som historie" [September 11 as history] in Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen (eds.), Islam i Vesten: På Koranens vej? Copenhagen, Tiderne Skifter, 2002.
"The Growth of Islam in Denmark and the Future of Secularism" in Kurt Almqvist (ed.), The Secular State and Islam in Europe. Stockholm, Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, 2007
"Free Speech: Its Benefits and Limitations" in Süheyla Kirca and LuEtt Hanson (eds.), Freedom and Prejudice: Approaches to Media and Culture. Istanbul, Bahcesehir University Press, 2008
"De cartoon-jihad en de opkomst van parallelle samenlevingen" [The cartoon jihad and the emergence of parallel societies] in Hans Jansen and Bert Snel (eds.), Eindstrijd: De finale clash tussen het liberale Westen en een traditionele islam. Amsterdam, Uitgiverij Van Praag, 2009
To the best of my knowledge, no one has claimed these writings contain sloppy scholarship or wrong references. As Hedegaard puts it, "I am a university-trained historian and take my craft seriously." The real criticism of Hedegaard is not about his scholarship – but that he raises difficult and even unpleasant questions.
And, as someone who has written two books on conspiracy theories, I judge Hedegaard's writings innocent of that intellectual sin.
2. Higgins ascribes to him "forecasts of a coming war"; but these are not his forecasts, only his reporting what Islamist texts and spokesmen themselves predict and advocate.
3. Higgins writes that Hedegaard "for several years edited a mainstream Danish daily, Information, is a major figure in what a study last year by a British group, Hope Not Hate, identified as a global movement of 'Islamophobic' writers, bloggers and activists whose 'anti-Muslim rhetoric poisons the political discourse, sometimes with deadly effect'."
"Islamophobia" is a silly neologism intended to vilify anyone who criticizes Islam or even Islamism.
As for "sometimes with deadly effect": that is applied to the whole group of 100 organizations and individuals in the Hate not Hope listing, not to Hedegaard individually. Higgins nastily insinuates that Hedegaard is responsible for deadly attacks on Muslims when, in fact, he was the victim not the perpetrator of an attack. (Hope not Hate, by the way, lists both the Middle East Forum and me in its Counter-Jihad Report; it flatters me as the "Powerhouse behind the international counter-jihadist movement.")
In conclusion, it's not "a stew of anti-Muslim bile and conspiracy-laden forecasts" but "a cocktail of sensible critiques and unsettling analyses." Higgins has written a stew of shoddy aspersions of a brave, distinguished, and accomplished writer with whom I co-authored an article "Something Rotten in Denmark?" in 2002 and who is currently a colleague at the Middle East Forum.
A BAR MITZVA IN VIENNA
Stuart Geller
Jerusalem Post, March 6, 2013
The Anschluss was the beginning of the end of one of the most vibrant and forward thinking Jewish communities in the world. This year is the 75th anniversary of the unification of Germany and Austria – the well known Anschluss, even though the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St. Germain had explicitly forbidden such an act.
Kurt Schuschnigg, the Austrian prime minister, had tried to ban pro-Hitler activities, but in the end he was forced to resign on March 11, 1938, and the next day German troops occupied Austria without firing a shot. It was the beginning of the end of one of the most vibrant and forward thinking Jewish communities in the world.
The only synagogue that survived the Nazis is the Stadttempel, built in 1825/26. From the outside the doorway looks like most of the buildings in that part of town. Inside is the opposite: very ornate.
The synagogue was built inside a block of apartment houses and almost completely hidden from the street. Emperor Joseph II (d. 1790) ordered that only Roman Catholic Churches could be allowed to face a public street. Thus, Emperor Joseph’s prejudices ironically saved the Stadttempel on Kristallnacht in November 1938, since if the synagogue had been set afire all the attached buildings, housing non-Jews, would also have gone up in flames.
It was in this synagogue that I was honored to serve as rabbi for the bar mitzva of a very special young man, Daniel Schneider, whose family is part of the history of the Stadttempel.
Actually, I had been to Vienna twice before to serve as the High Holy Days rabbi for the Or Hadash Synagogue, the only liberal synagogue in all of Austria. It was during these visits that I learned about the history of the Jews in Vienna and what happened to them during the Nazi regime. This was a powerful lesson told by those who lived through it.
Rose, a member of the synagogue, took us on what she explained would be an unusual tour, as there was nothing left to see. Rose had done extensive research and had photographs to show us. As we walked around the old Jewish neighborhood, she pointed out places where once stood a synagogue, a butcher, a restaurant, a home, etc. Once in a while there was a plaque indicating what was once there, often placed so high one would have to know of its existence to spot it.
We ended our tour on a little train going through a large park near what was once the old Jewish neighborhood. “I’m sure you are wondering what we are doing here,” said Rose. “This is the park where all of the Jews gathered on the day of the Anschluss.” What a powerful moment, and there are no words to express our feelings. Soon after these visits to Vienna, I met a wonderful family from Los Angles.
Their oldest son chose to celebrate his bar mitzva at Masada in Israel, a place with its own story to tell. I talked about Jewish survival, and afterwards, the boy’s grandfather said he had a story of Jewish survival to tell as well. He became a bar mitzva in the Stadttempel in Vienna a few days after Kristallnacht, and then fortunately escaped Austria. His younger grandson, Daniel, was very much inspired by this story and wanted to know if he could return with his grandmother and grandfather to Vienna to become a bar mitzva in that very synagogue. I was so honored to be asked once again to serve as rabbi for this family.
And so, on a Thursday this past August, we all assembled in Vienna. The family came from all over the world, along with several diplomats from the Austrian Foreign Service. Before the service began I showed a photograph the coffins of Theodor Herzl and his parents as they laid in state before they were reburied in Israel. And I told those gathered that the music for the “Shema,” written by Solomon Sulzer, that is sung all over the world, was written and sung here first. The Torah portion was the Ten Commandments and so our bar mitzva gave a sermon about the meaning of numbers in Jewish life and in his life.
He listed many well know numbers in Judaism; 613 commandments, five books of the Torah, 12 tribes, seven days of the week, and so on. Then he went on to say the number 93 – the number of synagogues in Vienna in October, 1938, and 180,000 – the number of Jews living in Vienna before the war, when his grandfather became bar mitzva. Finally, 27,293, a number not be found in any history textbook, on Google, not even in the Torah. This number, he said, was deep in his heart and in the hearts of all the Schneiders. “This is the number of days since my grandfather last stood on this bima to celebrate his bar mitzva.” “Today, the circle is completed. A Schneider stands in front of the ark at the Stadttempel, worshiping in a place where 75 years ago I would have been persecuted. Being back, worshiping here with all of you, is just plain incredible. 74 years and 82 days.”
He went on to tell the following story: “Five months after my grandfather became bar mitzva here, his father, my great-grandfather, was arrested by the Nazis. Ten days after the Nazis invaded Vienna, my great-grandfather was placed on the same transport as other prominent Viennese Jews (including Sigmund Freud) and taken away to prison. “One week after being placed in, ‘protective custody’ by the Nazis, he was released and went home. He never told anyone what happened to him while he was in prison.
Immediately after arriving home my great-grandfather told my grandfather, my great-grandmother and my great-aunt simply that they had to leave Vienna, their home. So, like the ancient Israelites leaving Egypt with Moses, the generations before me packed their bags and left for Antwerp, Belgium.” At the Kiddush the shamas came forward with a very large Kiddush cup, which, he told us, every bar mitzva boy had held for the past 80 years. Fred Schneider, the grandfather, nodded yes, he remembered. Daniel proudly held this beautiful Kiddush cup, as his grandfather had so many years before, and began to chant the Kiddush.
Sometimes I am asked, “How did you Jews survive 2,000 years of exile?” There are probably many answers, but I always tell them because we put so much emphasis on teaching our children. Part of our story is telling our story.
Islamization of Europe:
THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE
Bruce Bawer
September 10, 2012
Few readers of this website will be unaware that over the last several years plenty of books, including my own While Europe Slept, have warned about the present and future effects of the rise of Islam in Europe. Some writers, notably Christopher Caldwell and Mark Steyn, have gone into considerable detail about the now widely recognized fact that the low birth rate among ethnic Europeans, the high birth rate among European Muslims, and the steady arrival of new Muslim immigrants on the continent will mean an increasingly Muslim Europe in the decades to come and, ultimately, a majority Muslim population in one country after another.
FrontPage readers will also likely be aware that ever since these books starting coming off the presses, any number of supposedly intelligent and well-informed critics have vehemently dismissed such prognostications as alarmist nonsense, noting that in this or that European country the Muslim percentage of the population is still quite modest, and suggesting that there is no reason to expect the current numbers to climb very drastically in the years to come. The fact that these critics actually appear to buy their own arguments, and that they are able to persuade other reasonably intelligent people to believe them as well, only demonstrates the remarkable level of ignorance of basic math on the part of many individuals with pricey liberal educations.
A few recent news stories out of Europe confirm that concerns about the continent’s skyrocketing Muslim populations are, in fact, anything but alarmist. On August 8, for example, Britain’sDaily Telegraph actually permitted into its pages an article reporting that “Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it.” According to theTelegraph, Spain’s foreign-born population rose from 3.2% in 1998 to 13.4% in 2007, and in Brussels, “the top seven baby boys’ names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.” The Telegraph cited the highly euphemistic conclusion of a recent report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life that the rapid introduction of large numbers of Muslims into Europe results in “a difficult social fit.”
Similarly, an August 26 article in Denmark’s Dispatch International revealed that the number of Muslims in Denmark and Sweden, which had previously been uncertain (with estimates ranging widely), could now be stated with an unprecedented degree of precision, based on a meticulous study of the records of given names in the two countries. Within ten or twenty thousand, the real number of Muslims (not including unregistered illegal aliens) was about “574,000…in Sweden and 256,000 in Denmark,” meaning “that Muslims make up 6.05% of Sweden’s population and 4.59% of Denmark’s.” The Swedish figure was up from around 3.21% in 1998: “In other words, the number of Muslims has roughly doubled over the period 1998-2011.” As for Denmark, although the climb was less precipitous, that country’s center-right governments between 2001 and 2011, while often criticized as Islamophobic, turned out to have “hardly made a dent in the Muslim growth rate.” As for Norway, the Norwegian website document.no reported on September 5 that just over 38% of all newborn babies in Oslo now have “mothers with foreign national backgrounds.”
Europe is on a journey, and the destination is clear. Just a few days ago it was reported that Kiwi, one of Norway’s largest grocery-store chains, has introduced a version of its employee uniform that comes equipped with a hijab. This summer in Marseilles, a city that some observers have long pointed to as cheering evidence that Islamic integration in Europe can work, a woman wearing a niqab, or full-face veil, in public – which, of course, violates French law – was confronted by a cop, who was, in turn, according to the Washington Post, confronted by a “youth” who informed him that the police “had no business patrolling the neighborhood and accosting its predominantly Muslim residents.” Next thing you know, this tête-à-tête-à-tête erupted into a full-scale riot, requiring “carloads of police reinforcements,” in which no fewer than three gendermes sustained injuries. The only surprises in the whole story are (a) that a French cop was actually on patrol in a “predominantly Muslim” neighborhood to begin with and (b) that he dared to confront a woman in niqab. This time, thankfully, the cops managed to get things under control: but how long will it be before the numbers have tilted to a point where control is impossible?
September 5 was Flag Day in Denmark. Outside Christianborg Place in Copenhagen, a formal ceremony was held paying tribute to members of the Danish military, living and dead; meanwhile, across the canal, a sizable mob of Muslims gathered, holding up signs reading “To hell with Danish soldiers” and “Islam will dominate the whole world” and howling out “Allah akbar” and various anti-Danish, anti-Christian, and anti-Western slogans in an effort to disrupt the commemoration. In an impromptu response, hundreds of the Danish soldiers in attendance formed a “human shield” along the canal and drowned out the Muslims with shouts and applause. “The soldiers’ exemplary behavior and good humor turned the episode into an inspiration,” wrote one commentator. But what happens when the howling Muslims outnumber the soldiers?
Who has the answers to these questions? Not, you can be sure, the officially credentialed “Europe experts,” whose heads, even now, remain firmly buried in the sand. On September 1, one of the most respected of those “experts,” Timothy Garton Ash – who bestrides the Western academy like a colossus, with faculty positions at both Oxford and Stanford, but who, for all his purported expertise, has long managed to either ignore or minimize the threat of Islam to the glorious European future he envisions – offered yet another of his ridiculous, self-deluding paeans to Europe. Although (for the hundredth time) turning discreetly away from Europe’s ongoing Islamization, he did admit the seriousness of the Euro crisis, yet still refused to give up on the EU, instead offering what he calls a “new case for European unification”: namely that every European country, in the coming century, will be puny alongside China, India, and the U.S., so that if Europeans wish “to preserve the remarkable combination of prosperity, peace, relative social security and quality of life that they have achieved over the last 60 years, they need the scale that only the European Union can provide.”
Great point. The only thing it overlooks is reality – indeed, a long list of realities, among them the fact that most Europeans never wanted to join the EU (which was forced upon them by elite types like Garton Ash himself); the fact that the EU, far from bringing Europeans prosperity, peace, and so on, has proven to be a formula for economic disaster; and – above all, putting all else in the shade – the grim and looming reality that Europe is undergoing a relentless process of Islamization. The evidence, as we have seen, is accumulating apace, and most Europeans have recognized the truth for quite a while; yet the big-time, institutionally legitimized “experts” – along with most of the politicians whose job it should be to try to reverse this process – continue to pretend it’s a racist lie.
