Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Maidanek: Robbing the Prisoners  (7 of 7)
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project http://www.nizkor.org
Keywords: Lublin,Maidanek

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   VII. THE HITLERITES ROBBED THE PRISONERS
   IN THE CAMP OF THEIR VALUABLES AND
   BELONGINGS
   
           The Hitlerites reduced the robbing of the prisoners and those they
   tortured to death in the camp to a regular system.
           The material proof which the Commission discovered in the camp: the
   store of boots and shoes which had belonged to those who were shot or who
   died, the store of miscellaneous belongings of the prisoners, and also the
   Gestapo store in Chopin Street in Lublin, indicates that all the clothing
   and other belongings of thc prisoners were carefully sorted and shipped to
   Germany.
           The huge shoe store discovered in field No. 6 at the camp contains
   boots and shoes bearing the labels of shops in Paris, Vienna, Brussels,
   Warsaw, Triest, Prague, Riga, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Kiev, Cracow, Lublin,
   Lvov, and many other towns, shoes of different shapes and sizes, men's
   women's, juveniles' and infants', army boots, civilian town shoes and
   peasants' topboots. In addition to boots and shoes a large quantity of
   ripped footwear (separate soles, uppers and heels) were fouud, sorted and
   piled in stacks ready to be shipped to Germany.
           The Commission established that in the "Extermination Camp" alone
   the footwear of children, men and women who were tortured to death and
   killed in the camp runs into over eight hundred and twenty thousand pairs.
           In an enormous warehouse of the Gestapo in Chopin Street, in
   Lublin, the Commission found large stocks of various kinds of men's,
   women's and children's underclothing, and also a large variety of other
   personal belongings. For example: several shelves of balls of knitting
   wool, thousands of pairs of spectacles, tens of thousands of pairs of
   various kinds of men's, women's and children's footwear, tens of thousands
   of men's neckties bearing the labels of shops in different cities, such as
   Paris, Prague,
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   Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels, tens of thoueands of women's belts,
   part of which were sorted and ready for shipment, bath robes, pyjamas,
   bedroom slippers, numerous children's toys, rubber teats, shaving brushes,
   scissors, knives and a vast quantity of other household utensils. Here also
   were found numerous suitcases of various types belonging to Soviet
   citizens, Poles, Frenchmen, Czechs, Belgians, Netherlanders, Greeks,
   Croatians, Italians, Norwegians, Danes and also Jews from different
   countries.
           In the same warehouse the Commission found some of the books and
   papers of the warehouse, from which it is evident that this warohouse in
   Chopin Street was a base where these belongings were sorted and prepared
   for shipment to Germany.
           Concerning the shipment of the belongings of people shot in camps
   there was a special order couched in the following terms:
           "SS-Head Office of the Economic Administration.
           Chief of tho Administration of D-Conc. Camp.
           D/l Az: 14 D 3 (Ot) I.
           Oranienburg, July 11, 1942.
           To All Commandants Of Concentration Camps.
           "The Chief Administration of State Security reports that parcels of
   clothing have been sent from concentration camps, addressed mainly to the
   Gestapo Administration in the city of Bruenn, and that in some cases this
   clothing was perforated with bullet holes and blood stained. Some of these
   parcels were damaged and strangers were thus able to ascertain the nature
   of their contents.
           "In view of the fact that the Chief Administration of State
   Security will shortly issue regulations governing the handling of property
   left after the death of prisoners, the sending of articles must be stopped
   forthwith pending the final settlement of the question of how the property
   of executed prisoners is to be dealt with.
           Signed: Glicks
   SS Brigade Commander
   and Major General SS Troops."
   ------------------------------------------------------------pg 24--
           The evidence of SS prisoners of war who bad served in tho
   "Extermination Camp" proves that an organized system prevailed in the camps
   of robbing the prisoners of their personal belongings and property, and of
   the appropriation by camp officials of the property of prisoners who were
   tortured to death and shot.
           At a plenary meeting of the Commission, Rottenfuehrer SS Vogel, a
   German prisoner of war, stated:
           "I was Deputy Chief of the clothing warehouse at the Majdanek Camp.
   The clothing and footwear of exterminated prisouers was sorted and the best
   was shipped to Germany. In l944 alone, I myself shipped to Germany over
   eighteen carloads of clothing and footwear. I cannot say exactly how many
   pairs of boots and shoes and sets of clothing were despatched, but I assert
   that it was a very large quantity. What I sent off was only a part of what
   was shipped to Germany. Everything was shipped to the address:
   *** Pl=F6tzensee-Berlin, Strafanstalt."
           Obersturmfuehrer SS Ternes, a prisoner of war, officer of the German
   army, formerly a camp auditor, stated:
           "I know personally that the money and valuables taken from the
   prisoners were sent to Berlin. The gold taken from the prisoners and sent
   to Berlin was calculated by weight. Virtually, all this stolen property
   constituted an item of revenue of the German government A very large
   quantity of gold and valuables was sent to Berlin. I know all about this
   because I worked as an auditor at the camp. I must emphasize that a great
   deal of the money and valuables that was taken from prisoners was not
   entered in the books, as they were appropriated by the Germans who took
   them from the prisoners."
           Thus, the robbing of the tortured prisoners in the Majdanek Gamp,
   as well as in other camps, constituted a definite item of income of the
   Hitlerite robbers of various ranks.
           On the basis of documentary evidence, the interrogation of
   witnesses and of eyewitnesses of the crimes committed
   ------------------------------------------------------------pg 25--
   by the Germans in thc city of Lublin, in the Majdanek Concentration Camp,
   in the Lublin prison and in the Krembecki Woods, on the basis of
   considerable material proof obtained by the Commission, and also on the
   basis of the findings of thc Committee of Medical Experts and the Committee
   of Technical and Chemical Experts, the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary
   Commission finds that:
           1) The Majdanek Concentration Camp, which the Germans called
   "Vernichtungslager," i.e., "Extermination Camp," was a place for the
   wholesale extermination of Soviet prisoners of war, prisoners of war of the
   former Polish army, and of civilian inhabitants of different European
   countries occupied by Hitler Germany and also of the temporarily occupied
   regions of Poland and the U.S.S.R.
           2) The prisoners at the Majdanek Camp were subject to a brutal
   system of treatment. The methods employed for the wholesale extermination
   of prisoners were: single and wholcsale shooting and killing, wholesale and
   single asphyxiation in gas chambers, hanging, torture, torment and
   organized starvation.
           In this camp the SS butchers and the Gestupo carried out the
   wholesale extermination of Poles, Frenchmen, Netherlanders, Italians,
   Serbs, Croatians and persons of other nationalities, and also Soviet
   prisoners of war and prisoners of war of the former Polish army confined as
   prisoners in this camp, as well as those transported to this camp from
   other camps and places especially for the purpose of being exterminated.
           3) In order to wipe out the traces of their criminal activities,
   the Hitler butchers resortcd to the following system of measures: burning
   the corpses of prisoners on gigantic bonfires in the Krembecki Woods and in
   the camp, burning the corpses in the crematorium especially built for the
   purpose, grinding up small bones, scattering ashes over the fields and
   vegetable plots belonging to thc Hitlerite officials of
   ------------------------------------------------------------pg 26--
   this camp, and preparing large manure heaps of human ashes and dung.   The
   Hitlerite robbers operated an entire system of robbing the people they
   tortured for the enrichment of the rank-and-file SS and Gestapo men as well
   as of the leading officials of this robber gang. The system of robbing the
   prisoners in this camp constituted an important item of rcvenue of the
   Hitler-government.
           The Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission finds that during the
   four years the Majdanek Extermination Camp was in existence the Hitlerite
   butchers, on thc direct orders of their criminal government, exterminated
   by means of wholesalc shooting and wholesale asphyxiation in gas chambers
   of about one million five hundred thousand persons-Soviet prisoners of war,
   prisoners of war of the former Polish army, and civilians of different
   nationalities, such as Poles, Frenchmen, Italians, Belgians, Netherlanders,
   Czechs, Serbs, Greeks, Croatians and a vast number of Jews.
           The Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission for the Investigation of
   the Crimes committcd by thc Germans in Lublin finds that the principle
   culprits in these crimes are the Hitler government, chief executioner
   Himmler, and his underlings of thc SS and SD in the area of the Lublin
   *** Wojew=F2dstwo.
           The principal instruments of these atrocitics are Obergruppanfuehrer
   Globocnik-Chief of the SS and SD in Lublin; Wendler-ex-Governor of the
   Lublin *** Wojew=F2dstwo; Sturmbannfuehrer Dominnik-Chief of thc SS and SD in
   Lublin; Sturmbannfuehrer Liski-Chief of Prisoner of War Camps in Poland;
   Standartenfuehrer Koch-Chief of Camps; Obersturmfuehrer Kegel;
   Hauptsturmfuehrer Melzer-Deputy Commandant of the camp; Hauptsturmfuehrer
   Kloppmann; Obersturmfuehrer Tumann; Oberscharfuehrer Musfeld; Oberscharfuehrer
   Kostial; camp doctors Hauptscharfuehrer Erich Gruen, Hauptscharfuehrer
   Rindfleisch and Hauptsturmfuerer Blanke; Untersturmfuehrer Wende, Chief of
   the
   ------------------------------------------------------------pg 27--
   crematorium and all the other persons acting in the role of executioners
   and guilty of exterminating innocent people.
   
   Signed:
   Chairman of Ihe Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission WITOS, Vice-Chairman
   of the Polish  Committee for National Liberation
   Vice-Chairman of the Commission
   D. I, KUDRYAYTSEV (U,S,S.R.)
   Members:
   SOMMERSTEIN, Member of the Polish Committee for National Liberatian
   Prof. N. I. GRASCHENKOV (U.S.S.R.)
   Prof. V. I. PROZOROVSKY (U.S.S.R.)
   The Rev. Dr. KRUSZYNSKI, Dean of The Lublin Catholic Cathedral
   CHRISTIANS, Chairman of the Lublin Red Cross Society
   Prof. BIALKOWSKI, Professor of thc Lublin  Catholic University
   Prof. POPLAWSKI, Professor of the Lublin University
   BALCERZAK, Procurator of The Lublin Appeal Court
   SZCZEPANSKI, President of the Lublin Circuit Court

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