Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: "Death by Typhus?" Polish Jews murdered on death march.
Followup-To: alt.revisionism

Archive/File: holocaust/poland/lublin lublin.001
Last-Modified: 1995/01/09

   Mark Weber, whose connections to the German neo-nazi political
   movement were firmly established by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre
   (Los Angeles) in the Spring of 1993, has this to say about
   Auschwitz:

      Astonishing as it may seem, more and more historians and
      engineers have been challenging the widely accepted Auschwitz
      story.  These "revisionist" scholars do not dispute the fact
      that large numbers of Jews were deported to the camp, or that
      many died there, particularly of typhus and other diseases.  But
      the compelling evidence they present shows that Auschwitz was
      not an extermination center and that the story of mass killings
      in "gas chambers" is a myth. (Raven, Auschwitz)

   Theodore O'Keefe, an editor with the Institute for Historical
   Review, echoed this "typhus excuse" in his article entitled "The
   Liberation of the Camps: Facts vs. Lies":

                         Typhus, Not Poison Gas

      If not by gassing, how did the unfortunate victims at Dachau,
      Buchenwald, and Bergen- Belsen perish?  Were they tortured to
      death?  Deliberately starved?  The answers to these questions
      are known as well.  As Dr.  Larson and other Allied medical men
      discovered, the chief cause of death at Dachau, Belsen, and the
      other camps was disease, above all typhus, an old and terrible
      scourge of mankind which until recently flourished in places
      where populations were crowded together in circumstances where
      public health measures were unknown or had broken down.  Such
      was the case in the overcrowded internment camps in Germany at
      war's end, where, despite such measures as systematic delousing,
      quarantine of the sick, and cremation of the dead, the virtual
      collapse of Germany's food, transport, and public health systems
      led to catastrophe. (Raven, Liberation)

   In light of such assertions, which attempt to whitewash the
   deliberate murder of millions, it might be worthwhile to consider
   the following incident, which took place near Lublin, in Poland, in
   early 1940:

   "On January 14 a group of former soldiers in the Polish army, 880
   Jews in all, were taken from the prisoner-of-war camp in Lublin and
   told that they were to be marched to the Soviet border where, as
   Jews born east of the new Nazi-Soviet demarcation line, they would
   be transferred to Soviet authority.

   The 880 prisoners were escorted on the march by SS men armed with
   rifles and machine guns.  Just before the town of Lubartow, the SS
   men opened fire, and more than a hundred of the prisoners-of-war
   were killed.  'The invalids were the first to be shot at,' one of
   the [prisoners], Avraham Buchman, later recalled, 'because they
   were too weak to walk.  There was one man who was shot in the
   lung.'<7>

   The [prisoners] thought seriously of rebelling; there were only
   thirteen guards, albeit armed.  But, as Ringelblum [Archival note:
   Emanuel Ringelblum was a young historian who began recording Nazi
   actions against Jews in 1933.  He was executed by the Nazis in
   1944, after three days of savage beatings.  His diaries survived.
   knm] later learned, the guards told them that if any tried to
   escape 'that would be a great catastrophe for all the Jews of
   Poland'.  Some twenty prisoners-of-war did manage to escape.  But
   the retaliation was immediate: three men were killed 'with one
   bullet', while the cruellest of the guards 'wantonly killed people
   walking along the road'.<8>

   That night the [prisoners] were locked in an abandoned stable, and
   in the local synagogue.  One the following day, between Lubartow
   and Parczew, a second massacre took place: only 400 of the 880
   reached the outskirts of Parczew alive.  There, Arieh Helfgot, one
   of the survivors, later recalled, 'a delegation of Jews came out to
   meet us in order to conduct negotiations with our murderers.  We
   were astonished at their courage, as they could quite easily have
   died together with us.'

   These local Jews gave the SS men money, in return for permission to
   provide the [prisoners] with food.  That night the [prisoners]
   were again locked in the local synagogue.  But during the night,
   with the help of the same local Jews who had come so bravely to
   intercede for them, forty of the prisoners managed to escape.  The
   local Jews then found them civilian clothers, and hiding places.

   On the following morning the remaining 360 [prisoners] were again
   marched off, and once more subjected to bursts of machine-gun fire;
   less than two hundred survived, to be imprisoned in another
   prisoner-of-war camp, at Biala Podlaska. The transfer to Soviet
   territory never took place. At Biala Podlaska, refused medical
   attention, most of the survivors of the march died of typhus.<9>"
   (Gilbert, 110-111)

   When Mr. O'Keefe and Mr. Weber, therefore, speak casually (and
   callously, I might add) of "deaths from typhus," one would be well
   advised to consider the reality, as outlined above. One need not
   research the era a great deal to realize that the conditions which
   led directly to tens of thousands of deaths from disease and
   starvation were deliberately and systematically encouraged by the
   Nazi legions.

   Gilbert's Notes:

   <7> Testimony of Avraham Buchman: Eichmann Trial, 2 June 1961,
       session 63.  
   <8> Ringelblum notes, 6 March 1940: Jacob Sloan (editor), Notes
       from the Warsaw Ghetto: the Journal of Emanuel Ringelblum, New
       York 1958, page 25.  
   <9> Testimonies of Arieh Helfgot, Nachum Perelman and Joseph
       Grosfeld, Yad Vashem archive: Krakowski, 'The Fate of Jewish
       Prisoners of War in the 1939 Campaign,' Yad Vashem Studies,
       XII, Jerusalem 1977, pages 316-17.

                           Work Cited

   Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe
   during the Second World War. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
   1985

   Raven, Greg.  UseNet alt.revisionism.  Subject: "Auschwitz Myths
   and Facts," December 18, 1994.  Message-ID:
   

   -----------.  UseNet alt.revisionism.  Subject: "Liberation of the
   Camps: Facts vs.  Lies," December 20, 1994.  Message-ID:
   

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