Kyle Snyder 26 October 2006 The Holocaust Professor Brumlik Proof of the Holocaust The German military had

become an effective killing device by the 1940s. It not only was able to bounce back from economic problems but Germany was able to develop into one of the strongest countries on the planet. It had also become one of the most efficient killing machines the world has ever seen. Over six million Jewish people were killed by their own people by wars end in 1945. The truth that the Holocaust was actually occurring and to the extremes that it was taking place has become a recent topic for debate worldwide. In 1991 a group of revisionists started to question the facts of the Holocaust and began to trying to prove that the historical recounts were inaccurate or false. The evidence for the Holocaust is far more numerous than the evidence that the Holocaust never occurred. The truth of the matter is that the German and European Jewish population did not simply disappear as some claim; it was eradicate by a war machine focused on achieving racial superiority. Faced with the economic adversity of 1929, the German society lost confidence in its democratic Republic. The middle and working classes were the most dissatisfied groups because they had been bankrupted by two economic failures in a short timeframe. These classes turned to the two extreme parties for desperate solutions: the Nazis and the Communists. The National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis for short, were a right-wing, jingoistic, and anti-Semantic political party whose leader,

Adolph Hitler, a great orator, was able to provide an answer that persuaded the German people that the Nazi party could save them. They quickly began to gain membership and became a major political party in the democratic Germany. In the election of September 1930, the Nazis won 6.5 million votes and became the second largest party in the country, while the Communists obtained 4.5 million votes. The Social Democrats still remained the largest party, but it had lost much of its popularity and support from the German public. Since the Social Democrats could not command a majority in the Reichstag, Dr. Bruning the Chancellor from 1930 to 1932, could only maintain control by issuing emergency decrees. These unconstitutional and undemocratic rulings made him increasingly unpopular. In the presidential election of April 1932, German President Paul von Hindenburg was re-elected with nineteen million votes, but Hitler earned thirteen and a half million votes. Franz von Papen, the chancellor of Germany in 1932, wanted to exploit the strength of the Nazis to rid Germany of the Communist threat. He made an agreement with Hitler stating that Hitler would be appointed Chancellor, and Von Papen would be appointed Vice-Chancellor. Hindenburg, who despised Hitler, agreed to the deal because the Nazis looked as if they were the only well-backed right-wing party which could protect Germany from the assault of the Communist Revolution. On January 28, 1933, Hindenburg invited Hitler to be the new German Chancellor. On January 30th 1933, Adolph Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. This appointment marked the beginning of the end for the once democratic Germany. It would not be long before the Nazi party began to create a world of hate and terrorize not only Germany but all European countries with fear and the threat of force.

The Nazi implementation of concentration camps actually began shortly after Hitlers appointment to chancellor to Germany. The first concentration camp to open was located at Dachau on March 22, 1933.1 Its first inmates included primarily political prisoners such as Communists or Social Democrats, habitual criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and "anti-socials" such as beggars, vagrants, as well as others deemed problematic such as Jewish writers and journalists, lawyers, unpopular industrialists, and political officials.2 It was here that the basis for the Holocaust began as hate for everyone not part of the ideal German society was forced into slave labor. The Final Solution, was not always considered to be the extermination of the Jewish society. One of the first solutions to the Jewish question was deportation to Madagascar, North Africa, and the east. [Heynrich] Himmler told Greiser that it was his intention to deport Jews first into the polish territoriesthen next spring to expel them further to the east. With this in mind, he was sending 60,000 Jews to the Lodz ghettofor the winter.3 After the Night of the Long Knives, the Death Heads, SSTotenkopfverbnde (SS-TV), were formed to become the police force at the new concentration camps set up by Himmler. The SSs own intelligence force, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), was tasked with finding the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, priests, communist or anyone else deemed by the Nazi regime to be against the regime or of a subhuman religious, race, political, or cultural association and placing them in the concentration camps. By the beginning of World War Two, these concentration camps were increasingly being filled with the enemies of the Nazi regime to include the Jewish race and Prisoners of War. These individuals were either killed or forced to
1 2

Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000), 463. Ibid., 465-475. 3 Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945 Nemesis (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000), 479.

work under slave labor conditions and were commonly malnourished and tortured. Prisoners were often transported to these concentration camps by rail car under horrendous conditions such as freezing conditions and malnutrition. The euthanasia program was set up to terminate the lives of those individuals who were not deemed to be representations of Hitlers Aryan model. These individuals included those who were suffering from mental illness, disability, physical deformity, and the handicapped. The use of gas-vans, already deployed in East Prussia in 1940 to kill euthanasia victims4 was already in place. Throughout World War Two, over 200,000 people became victims of this program. The transportation of Jews to ghettos further east was extremely hard on the individuals being relocated. Once in these ghettos, Jews would remain there until they could eventually be shipped to death camps. Later on, July 19, 1942, Himmler had ordered the ghettos be emptied and Jews transported to death camps located throughout Europe. By wars end most of these ghettos had been depopulated of the Jewish race, and relocated to places such as Auschwitz, a Jewish concentration camp responsible seen as the model for the final solution. Another solution to the Jewish question was death squads. These death squads would take hundreds of Jews, Communists, and Poles and terminate their lives through horrific means. Some of these means included placing them into churches and burning the churches, filling them into huge pits, or shooting them. These acts were so appalling that even Himmler himself was disturbed by the sight. Immediately after witnessingan execution of Jews near Minsk Himmler was sick.5 Although this

4 5

Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000), 483. Ibid., 469.

image obviously disturbed Himmler, he instructed them to widen the slaughter, now to include women and children.6 The Final Solution to the Jewish dilemma was the mass extermination of Jews at extermination camps. The first of these camps, Chelmno, was designed for the strategic purpose of mass extermination. Soon many other camps would follow with the same purpose. Roughly one million people a year were executed at these camps. Upon arrival at these camps people were divided into two groups: those fit to work and those unfit to work. Those deemed unfit were immediately executed in the gas chambers and their bodies burned. The extermination camps worked with extreme German efficiency in providing the horrific Final Solution to the Jewish problem. With all of this said, it is hard to believe that fifty years later revisionist questioned the accuracy of the information on the Holocaust and even worse the fact that it actually happened. Many revisionists have a firm standing on their claims from the Holocaust on paper, but when one actually researches the events that unfolded and the stories of the populace involved, it is clear that these claims are unrehearsed. Understanding the Nazi regime, where it came from, and what all led up to the tragic destruction of over six million lives, is a crucial starting point in disproving the revisionist claims. One of the biggest revisionist claims is that there is not enough or no documentation of the Holocaust by either the Jewish society or the Nazi society. This is because many of the documents from the Holocaust are locked away in Bad Arolsen, Germany. In April 2006, the German Justice Minister, Brigitte Zypries stated, "We now agree to open the data in Bad Arolsen." By opening this information to the world, key facts such as who was executed, who were forced into labor by the Nazi war machine
6

Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000), 469.

or otherwise brutalized during the Holocaust will clearly emphasize the facts and the severity of the Holocaust. The information being released covers 15 miles of storage and contains over fifty million documents.7 Another reason this point of revisionists is invalid is because the Nazi regime were very precise, accurate, and consistent with their record keeping. The Nazis were actually one of the best record keepers of the twentieth century. They also were meticulous in what they kept records on, how it was kept, and where it was kept. This expert record keeping allowed for advances in medicine, science, and technology to be documented, tracked, and recorded allowing vital information to be utilized long after the Nazi regime had failed. The second point revisionist make quite often is that there is no evidence that the Holocaust actually occurred. This statement is preposterous because there are a variety of resources available that can disprove this comment. There are concentration camps still set up in Germany as museums, memorials, and other facilities that were not built by American soldiers to validate the claims of the world. These facilities were created to eliminate those who did not fit into Hitlers perfect society. Although some of these facilities did not contain gas chambers, they were still responsible for killing hundreds of these non conformers through malnutrition, over exposure, and other causes. Another form of proof is the gas chambers themselves. There are accurate blue prints of how to construct a gas chamber, how efficient it is, and what type of gas works

David Stoudt, Germany Will Open Records on Holocaust Victims, New York Times, April 18, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/world/18cndholocaust.html?ex=1303012800&en=6829e753eef6d823&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss (accessed 25 October 2006).

best. There is no other use for buildings like these then for the efficient destruction of human life. These Holocaust deniers also dispute that these gas chambers were never used to terminate human life. Too many eyewitnesses accounts and collaborating claims prove how these chambers were used and how efficient their destructive capability was. Filip Muller describes in his book Eyewitness Auschwitz an eyewitness account of how the Nazis executed one thousand individuals just because they could. 8 The testimony of Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, at the Nuremberg Trials is another form of evidence that the Holocaust actually occurred. Hoess blatantly admits to the systematic, knowledgeable, and desirability to take the life of a human being for his own good. This testimony was initiated after the defense brought him on the stand as a witness which eventually hurt the defenses case. Hoess stated that I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease making a total dead of about 3,000,000. He continued, The 'final solution' of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time, there were already in the General Government three other extermination camps: Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek. These camps were under the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD. I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations. The camp commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one-half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used monoxide gas, and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyklon B, which was a crystallized prussic acid which we dropped into
8

Filip Muller, Eyewitness Auschwitz (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1979), 80.

the death chamber from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one-half hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special Kommandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses."9 The testimony of Hoess is clear evidence that these mass killings with the numbers to match were carried out. These actually were the men involved in the killings and this is how they performed their duties. Arguing this would be going against the man who was there doing the killing himself. Incase this still is not enough proof for the Holocaust doubter, there is still more evidence to be presented. To this day there are still Jewish individuals who have tattoos on their arms given to them by the Nazis in the concentration camps. Many survivors of the Holocaust were tattooed with a number by the Nazi regime. These numbers were used to track individuals across the Third Reich and classify them for record keeping purposes. This physical evidence is the greatest physical proof that any Holocaust denier can not disprove. This can also be seen with the patches that were required to be worn by concentration camp prisoners. Each color meant something different but these patches were required to be worn by all participants of concentration camps and ultimately the Holocaust. Throughout the whole debate of whether or not the Holocaust occurred will sometimes encounter those who believe it did happen, but the numbers of those killed were exaggerated to make it look like more went on then really did occur. These people claim that the numbers were more like a few hundred thousand individuals instead of
9

Nuremberg Trials, Testimony of Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, Morning session, April 15, 1946.

near six million Jewish people. To get an accurate number one must look at the number of European Jewish people before the Nazi rule, approximately nine and a half million, compared to the post World War Two number of just over three and a half million.10 This can easily be disputed by the disbeliever that Germany was exporting Jews to Madagascar and to the East before wars end. There is one flaw with this however; there was no significant increase in the Jewish religion in these areas after the war. It is believed that more people left from these locations then actually stayed. Also one can look at the Jewish population by country before and after the war and realize something big had happened. Another way to verify the total number is accurate is the human intelligence that was and has been gathered by historians. If one does not want to believe the people who were there, then one is ignoring his and her best source for information across the globe. As stated earlier, Filip Muller witnessed ten thousand killings in one day just for the pleasure of the guards. Another factor that gives creditability to the human aspect of this is that many of these inmates of these concentration camps may not have been in the same camp, never met, and may not have spoken the same language, but they all have similar stories to tell. They all can validate how the gas chamber was set up, who was chosen to go into there and when, who worked there, and the fear that came from those structures of death. These stories all coordinate with what the blue prints of the gas chambers show, yet these people may never have met each other a single day in their life. Another strong argument against the Holocaust was that there is no written order declaring the systematic execution of the Jewish society. This is a fact that cannot be
10

Robert Sackett, interview by author, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, June 27, 2006.

disproved because there is to this day no written record of anyone ordering this. There is, however, an accurate recurrence where the topic is tip toed around in verbal discussions recorded down. The words death, gas chambers, and other were considered taboo and not discussed. The main purpose was to keep the public blind to the behind-the-scenes killing of six million Jews while allowing for the men in charge of the Nazi machine to remain dumb to all that is happening even though their involvement may have been directly related to the killings. By talking around the topic, they were enforcing plausible deniability by never knowing this was going on. From the beginning the Nazi party used deception, hate and fear to enforce their objectives. That hate and fear led to the systematic killing of over six million European Jewish individuals in just over ten years. Although some modern revisionists may believe that the Holocaust never occurred or at the extent that it actually did, the facts clearly show that the Holocaust was not a made up story, but a horrendous example of human nature at its worst. By looking into both sides of the argument, one is able to find new and intriguing examples to prove that the Holocaust actually occurred and to an extent that some could never fathom.

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Bibliography Kershaw, Ian. Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler 1936-1945 Nemesis. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. Muller, Filip. Eyewitness Auschwitz. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1979. Nuremberg Trials. Testimony of Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz. Morning session, April 15, 1946. Stoudt, David. Germany Will Open Records on Holocaust Victims. New York Times. April 18, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/world/18cndholocaust.html?ex=1303012800&en=6829e753eef6d823&ei=5088&partner=rssn yt&emc=rss (accessed 25 October 2006).

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