This is a sane man [Eichmann], and a sane man is capable of unrepentant, unlimited, planned evil. He was the genius bureaucrat, he was the powerful frozen mind which directed a gigantic organization; he is the perfect model of inhumanness; but he was not alone. Eager thousands obeyed him. Everyone could not have his special talents; many people were needed to smash a baby’s head against the pavement before the mother’s eyes, to urge a sick old man to rest and shoot him in the back of the head; there was endless work for willing hands. How many more like these exist everywhere? (Nazis & Concentration Camp & Evil & Sanity) Martha Gellhorn, article Atlantic Monthly 1962, ‘Eichmann and the Private Conscience’
He [Eichmann] complained regularly about death-camp quotas not being fulfilled, about the problems of getting all French Jews to the death camps, and about the intermittent failure of the Italians to cooperate.
As late as 1944, he played a leading, and open, role in the killing of Hungarian Jews, and in August of that year he reported that four million Jews had died in the death camps and another two million at the hands of the Nazis’ mobile extermination units in Eastern Europe. At no point did he show the least compunction over the planning, organization and execution of what became known as the Holocaust. Roger Cohen, article The New York Times August 1999, ‘Why? New Eichmann Notes Try to Explain’
More than a hundred camps and sub-camps would be liberated. Ken Burns, The War: A Long Tough Road, PBS 2007
I was arrested. The accusation was that I was a dangerous activist. I was brought to the National Stadium. I never imagined that a place such as this could be made into a concentration camp. The Opposition ***** ESPN 2014
From September to November 1973 an estimated 40,000 people were imprisoned at Chile’s National Stadium. ibid.
The story begins in the present at Chelmno, on the Narew River, in Poland. Fifty miles northwest of Lodz, in the heart of a region that once had a large Jewish population, Chelmno was the place in Poland where Jews were first exterminated by gas. Extermination began on December 7 1941. Shoah, 1985, opening credits
He was thirteen and a half years. He had a lovely voice. ibid. of survivor
No-one has ever left here. Gas trucks came here. There were two huge ovens, and later the bodies were thrown into these furnaces, and the flames reached the sky. ibid. survivor boy revisits camp
In the first pit was 24,000 bodies. ibid. survivor
They expected, they cried, they asked for water, they died. ibid. witness close to camp
I saw many returning trains but the trains were empty. ibid.
Shrieks, screams: ‘Come down, everyone.’ ibid.
Mounds of clothes, shoes and other things. ibid.
Above I felt so lonely and so guilty for not going with them. ibid.
Were piled up here … thousands of humans stacked one over another … stacked like firewood. ibid.
Seven meters deep and all full of corpses. ibid.
Each crematorium had fifteen ovens … and a large gas chamber where they could kill up to 3,000 at once. ibid.
The new gas chambers … 3,000 people in two hours. ibid.
The SS man immediately told us, This is a top secret mission. ibid. conscripted security guard
They were beaten … Mobile trucks … with two rear doors … exhaust gases … ibid.
And the screams! It was horrible! Depressing. Day after day the same show. ibid.
12-15,000, but we had to spend half the night at it. ibid.
The men were chased through the funnel; the women had to wait. ibid.
The gas took about 10 to 15 minutes to kill. The most horrible thing was, once the doors of the gas chamber were opened, the unbearable sight: people were packed together like basalt, like blocks of stone. How they tumbled out of the gas chamber! ibid.
This was a self-financing principle … there was no budget for destruction – that was the reason confiscated property had to be used. ibid.
And the world said nothing. We felt abandoned by the world, by humanity. ibid.
The US rounded up tens of thousands of [Filipino] peasants into concentration camps. Abby Martin: The Empire Files: The Roots of the Philippines Trafficking Epidemic, Abby Martin online 2017
When they started the programmes of chemical warfare to destroy crops and ground cover they started rounding people up and driving them into what were concentration camps, ultimately millions of people into strategic hamlets and urban slums and authorising napalm – really big attack – and nobody even cared. Noam Chomsky, Interventions, lecture Back Page Books January 2008, Youtube 1.06.26
The concentration camp is established specifically to detain enemies of the Nazi state, near Munich and Dachau. The majority are left-wing political opponents along with some Jewish activists. Hitler’s Circle of Evil IV: The Rise of Anti-Semitism, Netflix 2017
Hundreds of synagogues are burnt to the ground. Houses and businesses are ransacked. Nearly 100 Jews are murdered. Over 30,000 are dragged off to concentration camps: for them the horrors have only just begun. ibid.
Nazi occupied Poland: In April 1944 with the outcome of World War II hanging in the balance two Jewish prisoners lay hidden near the outer fence of Auschwitz concentration camp. On 10th April 1944 they abandoned their hiding place and cut through the fence … ‘They escaped in order to warn the world that Auschwitz was a killing mechanism.’ 1944: Should We Bomb Auschwitz? Professor Michael Berenbaum, historian, BBC 2019
One of the greatest moral questions of the 20th century: 1944: Should we bomb Auschwitz? ibid.
‘Auschwitz should have had the most outrageous response while it was happening, and that’s a moral failure on the West.’ ibid. Barenbaum
Why was the greatest crime of the 20th crime of modern history allowed to proceed unimpeded for almost two years? A million Jews perish there by gas. It wasn’t because of lack of evidence. ibid.
‘Some of the groups would be frightened and disorientated, others would be almost relieved.’ ibid. prisoner eye-witness escapee
Rabbi Weissmandl: An appeal for help but also a rebuke for those who refuse … He demanded that the Allied air forces bomb Auschwitz. He was the first to do so. ibid.
June 1944: A month after the deportations from Hungary began, 109 trains had arrived at Auschwitz, with an average of 2975 Jews per train. ibid. caption
‘The first thing was – you breathe in and there’s a very strange smell. It was sort of sweetish and burning.’ ibid. on arrival at Auschwitz
The truth about China’s secret indoctrination camps. Leaked documents reveal how a superpower is trying to brainwash a million people. We’ve obtained secret government instructions to those who run the camps. And we confront the Chinese state with our evidence. Panorama: How to Brainwash a Million People, BBC 2019
China has built hundreds of them in the last three years … Each of these camps has hundreds of detainees held without charge. Some hold thousands. There’s one for every town. ibid.
‘Never allow escapes. Increase discipline and punishment … Strict secrecy … The work policy of the … centres is strong and highly sensitive’. ibid. government document
Sometime after the War a holocaust survivor dies and goes to heaven. When he gets there, God asks this man to tell a Holocaust joke. So he does. God says, That’s not funny. And the survivor says, Well I guess you had to be there. Confronting Holocaust Denial with David Baddiel, BBC 2020
I’ve never understood how the Holocaust could possibly be denied. But today, one in six people around the world believe it has been exaggerated or claim it never happened … I’m going to delve into the dark world of Holocaust denial. ibid.
The Nazis weren’t the only one manipulating truth about the Holocaust. Early in the War, the British were receiving reports of Nazi atrocities in Europe. But there was concern at the Ministry of Information – the Government Propaganda Machine – about how the public would react. ibid.
The authors of these pamphlets called themselves revisionists: self-styled maverick historians arguing against the established narrative of the Holocaust. ibid.
In her book Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt accused British historian David Irvin of being a denier … Irvin was a rabble-rouser for Holocaust denial. ibid.
Thousands of people lose their lives and the main sports stadiums are turned into concentration camps. The Battle of Chile II: The Coup D’Etat ***** 1976
Up to the 1930s they were open about their practices. In Europe at least the reason they went underground was because of Adolf Hitler. It’s estimated that at least 80,000 Freemasons died in Nazi concentration camps. Freemasons on Trial