Human Rights Essays IX
Human Rights Essays IX

Concentration Camps,
Myths and Realities

                  By Karl Hausner

For the average Westerner, especially the American people, concentration camp means Nazi
Germany and Holocaust.  This, as Rabbi Lapin stated, is unfair and counter-productive.  
"History is written by the Mighty," stated Paul Harvey, and as he would say, "Let us look at
the rest of the story".

For those of us who have been imprisoned in such a camp will have learned, by experience, that
man can be extremely brutal when given excessive power, and when such power comes from a
too-powerful government.  On the other hand, those of us who have been in such a camp have
also experienced moments of kindness from people who extended these kindnesses, from just a
smile, to a slice of bread or even hiding us at the risk of endangering themselves.


Although concentration camps and forced labor lamps are often the same, there is a significant
difference.  TThe concentration camps operated by the Nazis and the Communists were actually
forced or slave labor camps.

With regard to classical concentration camps, we must look at different times and occasions.  
The Indian Reservations during the Nineteenth Century, the internment camps of the
Japanese, German and Italian-Americans, especially during World War II, and the camps
operated by the British during the South African War early in the Twentieth Century were
concentration camps.  To some degree the prisoner-of-war camps, and in particular, the camps
operated during the bloodshed in Yugoslavia were concentration camps, whose primary purpose
was to isolate certain groups of people from the rest of society.

During the Bolshevik Revolution, and especially thereafter, up to the end of their regime in
1990, millions of Russians and other ethnic people in the Soviet Union were thrown into labor
camps, not just operated in Siberia.  Nazi concentration camps were also located near factories
and the inmates were exploited to labor for the cause of the State.  In China such camps are
still in operation at this time.

Shortly after Hitler took power in 1933, thousands of German citizens were arrested and
thrown into concentration camps.  One of the oldest and first camps was at Dachau near
Munich.  There the inmates had to dig drainage ditches for the purpose of draining the swamps
that surrounded the campsite.  The inmates consisted of labor leaders, leaders of the opposition
parties, the clergy who spoke out against the regime, and some Jewish and other ethnic leaders
which did not support the State.

Since most Austrian and German Jews were relatively wealthy and well educated, the
immigrated prior to World War II.  In our village there were no Jews, but the nearby town of
Bautsch there were twelve families.  All but one immigrated during the spring of 1939.  At the
time, they were permitted to take along most of their tangible property.  Only one family, the
Schnabel sisters, advanced in  age, remained until 1943.  After the armed uprising in the
Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, they were also arrested and no one knows whether they survived.

Every German knew of the existence of concentration camps, because it was made clear that
anyone who resisted the regime would be punished by concentration camp labor.  The pastor of
our nearby city, Wigstadtl, was arrested in 1941, and spent the rest of his years at the Dachau
Camp, as did the Social Democratic mayor.

Hatred Escalated Hatred

Shortly before World War II, the German Ambassador to France, Dr. Von Rath, was
assassinated by a militant Jew, which led to the well-known Nazi mob action known as
"Kristallnacht", (Crystal Night), whereby this mob burned synagogues and tortured Jews.  As a
result of this foolish act of terror, any Jews, who still lived in Germany, were arrested and
thrown into concentration camps.

It is untrue that the average Austrian or German was anti-Semitic.  As a matter of fact, the
Jews in our homeland were well-educated persons, either in business, banking, or in academic
professions.  In contrast, in Eastern countries, or even in Hungary, the Jews had to live in
ghettos, which had nothing to do with German people or German laws.

In 1939, when Hitler and Stalin jointly attacked Poland, which started World War II, the Jews
in this country could not flee.  They were either in German or Soviet occupied Poland.  Most of
these Jewish people were confined and had to remain in their ghetto and, of course, had to
work.  They were not, at that time, thrown into concentration camps.

In January of 1943, the Jews conducted an armed uprising at the Warsaw Ghetto.  This was also
irresponsible and foolish because no military could tolerate an armed uprising.  The German
Army crushed the uprising and most of the Jews were arrested and thrown into the various
concentration camps in Poland, of which Auschwitz became the most infamous one.  If the
German or Japanese people, after World War II, would have conducted a military uprising
against the occupation forces of America, without question, the American military would have
crushed it.  Even in Waco, where a group pf eccentric sectarians staged an armed uprising, the
United States Government used brutal force to crush it.

The Exploitation of Inmates

Practically all concentration camps or slave labor camps were located next to manufacturing
facilities, or such facilities were built next to these camps.  Near Auschwitz was a large
ammunition factory, and the inmates had to work producing weaponry for the German army.  
It is therefore, questionable, since these inmates were exploited for labor, that plans were made
to kill them.  These campsites and nearby industrial centers also enjoyed the advantage of not
being direct targets of Allied air strikes, because they were so close to each other and bombing
the factories would have meant destroying concentration camp inmates.  In some instances,
though, this happened.

One must realize that thousands of people were housed in relatively small and poor facilities
with inadequate hygienic and sanitary facilities, inadequate medical care and malnutrition,
infestation of lice and other body parasites, infections, and even the flu killed thousands within
weeks, not to mention typhus.  All these camps were infested with lice, since DDT or other
chemicals did not exist.

My Personal Experience in a Slave Labor Camp

Shortly after the end of World War II, I, at age fifteen, along with everybody who could work,
were forced to work in  agriculture, collective farming.  In September of 1945, at age sixteen, I
and another young man, Ernst Frei, who had just returned from the army, were ordered to go
to Wigstadtl.  From there we were transported to the labor camp of Dombrova, a  mining camp
in the coal district near Oderberg.

Upon arrival, we had to surrender our civilian clothes and shoes and then we were given
uniforms, especially marked for prisoners.  Additionally, we were given shears and one had to
cut the other's hair as short as possible.  The purpose of cutting the hair was obviously to
humiliate the person, though we were told it was to control the lice.  Of course, civilian clothes
and a normal hairstyle would have  made an escape easier.  After World War II, and today at
some of these concentration camps, like Auschwitz, huge piles of hair and civilian clothes are
shown to the visitors, pointing out that these people were sent to the gas chamber.  In our case,
we were not sent to a gas chamber.  As far as I know, there was none in our camp, even though
the camp was built and operated by the Nazis prior to us coming there.  But piles of shoes,
clothing and hair were obviously available to look at.

We were housed in barracks with bunk beds and many, many men in one large room.  Within a
few days we also were infested with lice and other parasites, even though we showered after
every shift in the coal mine.  Our clothing was not very sophisticated.  Malnutrition and the
absence of medical care quickly made many of us sick and weak, and some died due to diarrhea
and other diseases.  I developed an eye infection, which was left untreated, and is blamed for
causing my blindness in later years.

We received a loaf of bread every four days and soup twice a day.  I was, at that time, sixteen
years old, and could eat one loaf of bread myself without stopping.  This was the big problem, we
ate more than we should have, and then for the next few days we had none.  After four months
in this mining camp and, because my eyesight had failed so that I was not very safe in the
mine, and obviously for other reasons, forty men from this camp were selected and sent to
Graez to cut trees for the mine.  This new assignment was a blessing for me, because there in
Graez we were not in a large camp, and after a few weeks we were more or less self-supporting.
 We could cook and were hardly ever locked up anymore.  The work was in fresh open air and
some Czech people brought us food to supplement what we received officially.  I stayed there
until our family was expelled in the summer of 1946.

After The Expulsion From The Sudetenland in 1946

As we came to Bavaria, which was the American zone of occupation, we heard about the
Nuremberg Trials, about the horrible stories of what had happened in the concentration camps.
At the Nuremberg Tribunal it was claimed that every German concentration camp had a
homicidal gas chamber where Jewish people were killed by the millions.  Auschwitz, it was
claimed had over four million people killed, mostly Jews.  Testimony by the Soviets stated that
the Nazis had destroyed all of the documents and the number of victims were estimated to be
over four million.  [A German soldier who was a prisoner-of-war under the Soviets was
imprisoned for about five years in a Russian Concentration Camp in Siberia.  This camp was
located adjacent to another camp which held Ukrainians and other Eastern European men and
women.   Each day and night for months on end, over the period of five years, the screams of
the men and women could be heard.   It was believed that the men held there from time to time
were tortured to daeath; and the women were raped and tortured continuously until they too
had died from these abuses.  There was always a new stream of men and women being
transported to this particular concentration camp, so that the torture, rapes and murders, could
be continued anew, every few days.]

At the Nuremberg Trials, "the American government provided evidence" that the Dachau
Camp also had a homicidal gas chamber, and thousands of Jews and Gypsies were killed there.  
I met a Catholic priest who was the pastor in Landsberg, Dr. Nicklas, who was in Dachau for
over four years.  He told me that Dachau did not have homicidal gas chambers, even though
many died there.  This was about 1950, and more and more people admitted that Dachau and
other concentration camps, operated by the Nazis during World War II, did not have homicidal
gas chambers.  However, since even prominent Christians such as Dr. Dobson, Focus on the
Family; Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council; Chuck Colson, former aide to President
Nixon, and many others still mention homicidal gas chambers and six million Jews, who were
killed in the Holocaust.  Dr. Dobson, in 1996, stated that Dachau was an extermination camp
for Jews.  Since I have whole sympathy, not only for the Jewish people, but also for every
human being, and as a Christian, I believe in the absolute truth.

On September 8, 1996, my wife and I visited the Dachau campsite.  Upon arrival we noticed that
only the front gete and part of the fence were still original.  All of the other buildings were built
after World War II, while the original buildings had been removed. Behind the entrance gate is
a large auditorium displaying thousands of documents and photographs of the Dachau Camp.  
There is also a film featuring the Dachau operation shown in both English and German and
presented every half hour.  We viewed all the documents, and then we watched the film.  Since
no mention was made of the extermination or mass murder in Dachau during the presentation
of the film or in these coduments, I approached the information center and asked this specific
question:  "Where is the homicidal gas chamber?"  I was specifically told:  "Dachau never had
any,"  This is the official statement now accepted internationally by Jewish, German and
American authorities that none of the concentration camps on German soil had homicidal gas
chambers.  Yet, hundreds of thousands died due to malnutrition, disease and all kinds of other
maladies.  At Dachau, members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi student  movement, and many
others were executed.  In Dachau alone 2,700 Catholic priests were imprisoned, which clearly
shows that the Catholic Church heavily resisted the Nazi Regime.  In addition to these priests
at Dachau, there were perhaps ten thousand others who were not permitted to preach a sermon
during church services.  They were only permitted to read the Mass.  We also visited a barrack.
 It is a reconstruction and, I would say, quite originally built.  It reminded me of the barrack
where I was after World War II in the Czech concentration camp of Dombrova.  If one realizes
how many persons were in one barrack, we can clearly understand why many inmates perished.
 Virtually everyone suffered from malnutrition, hard work, poor or non-existing medical care
and infestation of lice.  Infections spread like wildfire.

"If one also realizes that between seven hundred fifty thousand and one million soldiers died in
Allied prisoner-of-war camps between 1945 and 1946, one can easily understand the tragedies in
the Nazi  concentration camps during World War II.  These German POW's in Allied camps
died due to poor or non-existing shelter, poor or non-existing sanitary conditions, malnutrition,
and outright stavation caused by the orders of those in command, including General Eisenhower
who denied them food, and hence one million soldiers died as a course thereof.  "'In one case, a
deranged Italian Prisoner of War, somehow, obtained a loaded automatic machine weapon,
killing a number of German Prisoners of War.'  'The obvious results of treaties in Versailles,
Saint Germaine, and even the Swiss treaties forbidding inhuman treatment to civilians and
prisoners of war; making the issue of inhumanity to humans a paramount reflection on the
Allies, who individually, in groups, or by orders of 'out of order' commanders, decided to  
commit wholesale murder and atrocities against a subdued nation, classifying them 'if you will'
no better then the Nazis that they defeated."  My brother, whose battalion surrendered in 1945
at the end of May in the Austrian Alps, was imprisoned in one of those camps.  They did not
have any shelter for about two months.  They were exposed to the rain, snowfall and all of the
other conditions.  They were measily fed once a day and hundreds of those men died afterwards,
even  when they were transferred into a former concentration camp at Bad Ebensee.  Still more
died due to the same problems and same horrible conditions that existed in all the
concentration camps and labor camps or prisoner-of-war camps."

"Editorial Comment:  Today, especially in the United States of America, the news media and
others refer to all Germans and German-Americans collectively as Nazis.  This was not the case
years ago, but today, more than sixty years after the war, the word "Nazi" is stereotyping all of
us.   There may be no solution to ending this, but one thing can be done:  Any news media
program, or other selective programs, that uses the "Nazi" ideology in classifying all of us - a
boycott of all advertisers where this word is used, is a way of halting some of it. All of us use
these products, and not buying those products, will stop the money flow to the people involved.  
Let us as Germans and German-Americans, for once, stick together, and stop this yellow
journalistic ideology from existing."

Let's Establish Historic Truth

The time has come, after more than sixty years, to open all of the files and present the whole
truth, not just those truths which suit our politicians or even our government.  If we realize
that the Pentagon withheld such information as exposure to nerve gas during the Gulf War
from even the House and Senate for five years, one might appreciate how much false
information still exists about Nazi concentration camps and the Holocaust.  The crimes
committed by the Nazis are sufficiently grim so that no exaggeration or withholding of
information serves any good purpose.  We can only pray that no government shall exercise
such power as to engage in wars and then subject often innocent people to such crimes as were
committed during the Nazi Regime, and after the war by the Allies, by Eastern European
countries and the Soviet Union and right through the Vietnam War and, of course, in the
former Yugoslavia.   "But, be extra cautions, my American friends, there are people residing in
this Great Nation today, that by some means, could become our leaders, and an even greater
Holocaust could be the outcome."

Rabbi Lapin, an Orthodox Jew, was interviewed by Dr. Dobson, Focus on the Family, in 1996.  
During this discussion, he spoke very promising words, which are quoted in the following:

Dr. Dobson:  Explain this to me if you will.  I have probably read more about the World War II
era and the Holocaust than any other era of history because I was a young child at that time.  I
was born in 1936, and I've been trying to figure out what my childhood was like ever since.  The
horrors of that still overwhelm me.  Tell me why the people who were victimized by all that
would not identify with the helplessness of the unborn child and the pro-life community more
than it has.

Rabbi Lapin:  That's a hot topic, Dr. Dobson, and obviously one that we shouldn't shirk from,
but what happened there is that the Holocaust is one more way that we Jews have found to be
Jewish without God.  One of the great values in this purpose of the Holocaust, and this is why,
by the way, more universities in America offer courses in Holocaust studies than offer courses
in Jewish studies.  From a Jewish point of view, as an Orthodox Rabbi, I have to regard this as
deplorable because if I have an interest in young Jews growing up with a commitment to their
religion, why would I spend all my time telling that this is a religion whose central focus is gas
chambers and torture when it isn't.  The central focus of Judaism, as is the central focus of
Christianity, is a joyous life-affirming celebration of God and His relationship with us.  So, why
on earth would I want to dwell on this tragic and horrible episode in Jewish history?  Well,  the
answer is that it serves this very valuable function.  If you or somebody who wants to retain a
kind of ethnic and cultural commection with Judaism, but you don't want God around, then the
Holocaust is tailor-made, because it lets you speak about the one instance in history where it
seemed as if God hid Hiss face in accordance with the words of Deuteronomy.

Dr. Dodson:  I never thought of it that way.  Now link that over to the abortion movement.

Rabbi Lapin:  Yes, well there is a great Jewish indignation at using the term "holocaust" for
what we know it to be-an absolute massacre of the unborn in the United States.  And the reason
is because the organized and structured Jewish community and the leadership of the Jewish
community, have almost trademarked the term "holocaust" and regard its use in almost any
other context as an infringement of trademark rights.  That's kind of what's happening.  And
there are additional problems associated with this because there is a movie that was made of a
moral reprobate called Schindler, who saved a group of Jews.  Now, the movie is technically
spectacular and Jews were undeniably saved by Schindler, but the number of Jews that were
saved by the Schindlers of the Holocaust dwindles into utter insignificance when you compare it
with the number of Jews that were saved by Christians as a direct result of their Christian
faith.   So, I regard as one of the great marketing catastrophes in  post-World War II
American civilization the failure to get books like "The Hiding Place" byt Corrie Ten Boom
into Jewish schools.  It is unthinkable to me that the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
does not carry "The Hiding Place".

Dr. Dobson:  Now take that one step further and explain to me why the plight of the unborn
child does not resonate within the heart of liberal Jews.

Rabbi Lapin:  Because liberalism has derived incredible energy of the last three decades by
maintaining an absolutely consistent and integrated core philosophy and to see that clearly  you
really have to start off by asking yourself some funny questions.  You really have to ask
yourself what on earth do radical environmentalists have to do with the homosexual rights
movement.  Why is it that you can predict with utter certainty that all those people that want to
establish trade unions for cows and lumber marketing organizations for spotted owls.  Why is
that all those people are exactly the same people who are also in favor of the various attempts
to expand the civil rights for homosexuals.

Dr. Dobson:  That's true.  When there's a march, they're the same people.

Rabbi Lapin:  They call come out.  An even funnier question is why is it that all those people
who oppose the right of Americans to own weapons are exactly the same people who are eager
to expand abortion.  Either you're in favor of killing or you're not in favor of killing, but how
can it be one way and not the other?  You know, why is it that they have sex education in the
schools, which is nothing other than an indoctrination machine to strip our young people of that
education in school?  Why don't we say, "Hey, people are going to use them, you may as well
know how to use them safely."  Obviously there has to be a way of explaining these seeming
paradoxes.  What is the unifying thread that allows liberal politicians to know that they can
count with utter certainty on these various lobbies to support anything of the liberal agenda?

Dr. Dobson:  Answer you own questions.

Rabbi Lapin:  The answer is simple.  Every one of these issues is anti-scriptural.  The radical
environmentalist agenda is an attempt to strip the first few chapters of Genesis from the Bible.  
The first few chapters of Genesis indicate an ascending order of importance in the structure of
creation, by which way, of course, we have that God's last word of creation is woman and man.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin is President of TOWARD TRADITION, P.O. Box 58, Mercer Isle, WA 98040.

The "Holocaust" was introduced in 1968 by the concentration camp survivor, Elie Wiesel, and is
now a "trademark" as Rabbi Lapin points out.

Many sincere Jews, such as Rabbi Lapin, and other prominent persons, complain that the
Holocaust is discussed almost every day, while all the other atrocities committed during World
War II, and especially thereafter, are not even mentioned.  This campaign of hatred cannot
generate love and understanding.  It will only lead to more hatred and every sincere citizen has
the responsibility to seek and speak the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The Nuremberg Trials would have been an extraordinary opportunity for justice, if they had
only been held in a neutral country, by a neutral court, perhaps in Switzerland.  But if one
realizes that Joseph Stalin's henchmen were primary witnesses and prosecutors, we cannot help
but feel  sorry for justice in the future.   (Editorial Comment:  "And when can we expect justice
to be utilized against the Soviet Union, Communist International, the Partisans, and the Allies,
who elected in post World War II to butcher, maim, rape and torture, the innocent people that
were also victims of the war, which was followed by the expulsions from their hereditary
homeland of more than a thousand years.  When is an open-ended question?  But these
unbelievers will some day face another tribunal - when God passes judgement on the World!")

Auschwitz, The Most Famous Concentration Camp

Auschwitz, for example, was "liberated" by the
Soviets in January of 1945.  Within a few
weeks, the Auschwitz Camp was again filled
with prisoners, except that the guards and
inmates had been changed.  It became a
transit camp for millions of Eastern Europeans
who were in Germany as prisoners of war or
in labor camps and for hundreds of thousands
of German prisoners of war and civilians.  The
dying in Auschwitz continued, and perhaps if
all the deaths during the Nazi and Soviet
operations are added together, it might amount
to the four million deaths that are blamed on
the Nazis only.  ("Incidentally, this camp
under the Soviets was classified, almost as
though it was a country club for the Russian
Prisoners.  I'm sure that 'Arbeit Macht Frei'
even in Russian, was not in their vocabulary.")

From our village, five farmers, as I mention in my documentary, 1945 In Memory, were taken
by the Soviets, along with thousands of other German men and women.  These people, were
sent to Auschwitz, and from there further into the Soviet Union.  Only one of these five
farmers survived and returned, stated that Auschwitz, at that time, did not have a homicidal
gas chamber as is so widely stated.

The historian, David Cole, who is Jewish, according to his description, and interested in the
truth of the Holocaust, visited Auschwitz in 1991 and 1992.  After the guidedm tour, he
interviewed the curator, Dr. Francis Piper.  The documentation is available on videotape,
audiotape and as a transcript from the Institute of Historic Review, Long Beach, California.

During this interview and videotaping, Dr. Piper admitted that the present homicidal gas
chamber did not exist between 1943 and 1945.  It was an air raid shelter for the Gestapo,
respectively the SS Guards.  It was "reconstructed", he stated by the Soviets after World War
II, that is, after it was not used as a concentration camp and converted into a State Museum.

During the Nuremberg Trials, the Soviets maintained that the Nazis had destroyed all of the
records of the concentration camps.  Yet, in 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all of
these records became available for inspection in Moscow.

The Holocaust expert, Pressak, wrote numerous books on the subject.  He is a Jew, living in
Paris.  In his latest book in 1992, and during a trial as a witness, he stated, according to his
assessment, about eight hundred thousand Jews perished in Auschwitz.  Now this is in contrast
to the over four million victims, who were mentioned during the Nuremberg Trials.

One must also take into consideration that after the unconditional surrender demand by
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, millions of unnecessary lives were sacrificed on  the battlefield,
in concentration camps, in cities and elsewhere, because the German opposition to Hitler had
nothing in their hands that guaranteed a reasonable settlement after Hitler was eliminated.  
Key figures such as General Rommel would have actively participated in the assassination of
Adolph Hitler.

                                                    The Morgenthau Plan, which was initiated in the fall of           
                                                    of 1944 by Churchill and Roosevelt, whereby
                                                     twenty million Germans were supposed to be
                                                      "eliminated" and the nation was to be turned
                                                      into an agricultural state, also gave the Nazis the
                                                      additional hatred for whose who were against their
                                                      regime.

                                                      We must not forget the agreements of Teheran,
                                                       Yalta and Potsdam between Churchill, Stalin,                      
                                                        Roosevelt and Truman, whereby Eastern Europe was
turned over to Stalin's control and millions, not just of German ancestry, were made homeless
or died in concentration or labor camps through the years after World War II, until the final
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990.

We must also realize that the expulsion  of sixteen million German people, who were made
homeless, of which two million perished, was the direct result of the Potsdam Accord and the
Benes Decrees.

The Cold War, the ten trillion dollars which the United States spent on military hardware, the
thousands of American soldiers who died in  Korea, Vietnam and in other conflicts in the world,
were also the result of these agreements, and now the war on terrorism.

What Happened With Nazi Concentration Camps

After World War II, all of the Nazi concentration camps and prisoner-of-war camps during 1945
and 1946 were in full operation by the Allies.  The Eastern European Nations were taken over
by the barbaric Russian Hordes, and forced into an enslavement of even greater proportions
then those ever conceived by the Third Reich.  In the western zones of occupation, American,
British and French, all German solders were processed for discharge or prosecution.  All known
Nazi officials were arrested and imprisoned and the dying, exections and even torture
continued.   For example, the British and American armies, shortly after surrender, had large
areas sealed off where thousands of German soldiers were kept.  They had to surrender their
weapons and food.  The food supplies were destroyed and then these men received starvation
diets.  They were told, and the guards meant it, that if these hungry soldiers were caught
searching in garbage cans, they would be shot and killed, and that threat was carried out.  In
Hamburg, Germany, which was under British control, the hungry citizens asked for food, but
none was given.   The British soldiers used butter to shine their shoes.  When Johannes
Rammund De Balliel-Lawrora proceeded to collect food and clothing for the destitute in
Germany and Austria; sending food parcels at that time was forbidden by the Government and
the Postal Authorities.  Clothing, however, was collected and baled, and sent via the
International Rescue Committee and received by the German Red Cross in Hamburg.

Most Soviet prisoners-of-war and most East European laborers, who were forced to work in
Germany during the war, were forcefully deported to the Soviet Union in Cattle Cars.  None of
these people were permitted to go home. They were taken into Soviet concentration camps or
labor camps. A cousin of Mr. De Balliel-Lawrora spent five years in a Soviet Camp in Siberia.  
He was eventually supposedly released, but no one knows what happened to him.  Those who
sympathized with the German Army, such as General Vlassov's Troops, were executed.  Over
one million of those soldiers died within the first year after the war.  Perhaps thirty million or
even more, German people, ex-soldiers and civilians went through these concentration camps,
deportation camps, refugee camps or expulsons camps.  Of course, with unsanitary conditions,
poor or non-existent health care, and malnutrition, virtually millions died.   Many of the Soviet
Guards, when they executed people, for little or no excuse, partied afterwards, with their
Vodkas in hand.

In Eastern Europe, which the Soviet Union controlled, respectively its Allies, such as the
Czechoslovaks, Poles, Hungarians, usw, the situation was much worst and continued practically
throughout the Cold War until 1989.  Without question, more people died in concentration and
forced labor camps after World War II than during the Nazi Regime.  This is something that is
not known or is rarely discussed.  What is extremely deplorable
is the fact that concentration camps were operated by standards of
hatred, distrust, conspiracy and corruption.  For example, in a
typical concentration or labor camp there were the internal
informers.  These were inmates who received special treatment
if they would seek out information and persons who would not
collaborate.  They were the so-called Kapos who were either
inmates or persons of foreign nationality.  In a Nazi concen-
tration camp, Poles, Ukrainians, Baltic people or even Russian
Jews performed the dirty work of a Kapo, that is, organizing,
controlling and reporting.  Additionally, the guards often were sch people who were even more
brutal than the real masters (Ivan the Terrible).  That was not only true in Nazi concentration
camps, this was true in all the camps, whether they were operated by the Soviets, by the
Czechs, by the Poles or, more recently in Yugoslavia.

If we wish to improve upon the future, we must, first of all, seek and speak the whole truth.  
Hatred, propaganda and distortion of history have never worked and will never work.  
Therefore, we should open the files and let everyone know not only the real truth about what
happened in Nazi concentration camps, but also what happened in the Allied and Soviet
controlled camps.

Most Nazi concentration camp commandants, and many
guards, were hunted, arrested, tried and imprisoned or
executed.  To date, none have been found guilty or even
brought to trial in all of Eastern Europe, or for that matter,
in the West as well.  With such one-sided justice, it is no
wonder that the criminal justice system in the East and the
West is in a deplorable state.  In Russia, a person can be
killed for two hundred or five hundred dollars.  In New York,
Chicago and Los Angeles, the situation is not much better,
except there is a much higher price tag.

So let us, at least those of us who believe in Christian or humanitarian principles, speak
against these untruths and half-truths, not with emotion, but equipped with facts so that future
generations will have a more valuable and respectable life.

References:

1)  Karl Hausner, "1945 in Memory", Landsberger Brief 1995.

2)  Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War", Multinomah Publishers, Inc. 1997.

3)  Dr. Tomas Stanek, "Hoelle im Zentrum von Ostrava, Hanke Lager.

4)  Miroeschau ein Todeslager, Heimatkreis Mies-Pilsen, Dinkelsbuehl.

5)  Emil Trojan, "Tak prisahali" Usti nad Orlici.

6)  James Bacque, "Crimes and Mercies", IHR.

7)  U.S. House Resolutions No. 557, October 9, 1998 and No. 562, October 13, 1998.

8)  Alfred de Zayas, "A Terrible Revenge", St. Martin's Press, New York 1994.

9)  Alfred de Zayas, "Wehrmacht War Crime Tribunal 1934-1945".




















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































  
Entrance to Auschwitz
Concentration Camp
Their Motto: "Arbeit Macht Frei"
(Work Sets You Free)