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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24590 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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From the 'Blue Series', the official record of the trial of the major civilian and military leaders of Nazi Germany who were accused of war crimes.

Twelve million murders! Two thirds of the Jews in Europe exterminated, more than six million of them on the killers' own figures. Murder conducted like some mass production industry in the gas chambers and the ovens of Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Majdanek, and Oranienburg.

Sir Hartley Shawcross, Britain's chief prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials. Pay no heed to the other camps that are also not death camps anymore.

A distinguishing feature of the Dachau Camp was the gas chamber for the execution of prisoners and the somewhat elaborate facilities for execution by shooting. The gas chamber was located in the center of a large room in the crematory building. It was built of concrete. Its dimensions were about 20 feet by 20 feet, and the ceiling was some 10 feet in height! In two opposite walls of the chamber were air tight doors through which condemned prisoners could be taken into the chamber for execution and removed after execution. The supply of gas into the chamber was controlled by means of two valves on one of the outer walls, and beneath the valves was a small glass-covered peephole through which the operator could watch the victims die. The gas was let into the chamber through pipes terminating in perforated brass fixtures set into the ceiling. The chamber was of size sufficient to execute probably a hundred men at one time.

The room in which the gas chamber stood was flanked on both ends by warerooms in which the bodies were placed after execution to await cremation. The size of each room was approximately 30 by 50 feet. At the time we visited the camp these warerooms were piled high with dead bodies. In one of the rooms the bodies were thrown in an irregular heap. In the other room they were neatly stacked like cordwood. The irregular pile of bodies was perhaps 10 feet high, covering most of the floor space. All of them were naked.

DOCUMENT 159-L ATROCITIES AND OTHER CONDITIONS IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN GERMANY

When I said "Dachau was not presented as an extermination camp with gas chambers," I did not mean "no one or any document claimed gassings at Dachau," since I mentioned that at least one (Blaha) did. I meant that murder by gassings at Dachau were not part of any official charges against anyone, and no Dachau guard was ever accused of or executed for gassing prisoners, nor did any ever admit to it. Likewise, there were no "hundreds of jews who testified to American detectives about the killings," assuming that by 'killings' you mean 'gassings.' There was a single eyewitness who claimed one small-scale gassing at Dachau. It is not comparable to a place like Treblinka, where every single eyewitness, wither victim or perpetrator, was in accord that it was an extermination facility, and where every guard who ever spoke on the matter admitted to the fact.

I'd be inclined to say that the aforementioned quotes do show that Dachau was presented as an extermination camp with gas chambers by very relevant forces at the trial, so your assertion here would be wrong. I'd also argue that it was considered for at least a decade or two after the war to be a death camp. Which is why, for instance, Martin Broszat wrote specifically about it being problematic, and other publications, like the 7th Army OSS report, made great hay about gas chambers used for killing. So whilst there was no specific charge, there was certainly very clear belief that people in Dachau were killed by the use of 'gas chambers'.

Likewise, there were no "hundreds of jews who testified to American detectives about the killings," assuming that by 'killings' you mean 'gassings.'

That's true, I'm confusing it with another event.

I'd also argue that it was considered for at least a decade or two after the war to be a death camp.

Considered by who? Not the inmates or the guards, who never claimed Dachau to have been a "death camp" if by "death camp" we mean a camp where people were systematically murdered in gas chambers.

And once more, no Dachau guard was ever executed on the basis of later repudiated gas chamber allegations.

Considered by who?

The American prosecution, along with the aforementioned people and organizations that did, as demonstrated earlier.

Not the inmates or the guards, who never claimed Dachau to have been a "death camp" if by "death camp" we mean a camp where people were systematically murdered in gas chambers.

I never insinuated that they did, nor did I comment on it, as they were not exactly representative of the views of those who prosecuted them.

And once more, no Dachau guard was ever executed on the basis of later repudiated gas chamber allegations.

I agree they were not executed on specific counts, but I don't believe the way you phrase things now is accurate. Considering the fervor shown by the prosecution, the element of intentional mass killings by gas was obviously there, even if it was not brought up as a specific charge. Had the assumption of the prosecution been that there were no mass killings through gas or any large scale demonstrably intentional killings, as was the case in Dachau, I'd expect some form of differentiation between Dachau and alleged death camps. That was not the case, as demonstrated by the verbiage of the British prosecutor.

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