resistance to Nazis: Carl Lutz (born in Walzenhausen, Switzerland on 30 March 1895; died in Berne, Switzerland on 12 February 1975) was the Swiss Vice-Consul in Budapest, Hungary from 1942 until the end of World War II. He helped save tens of thousands of Jews from deportation to Nazi Extermination camps during the Holocaust. He is credited with saving over 62,000 Jews.[1] In 1964, he was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
Pius XI, is never mentioned as a candidate for Sainthood. Yet it is this Pope more than any other that many believe came closest to dramatically changing the course of WWII. Achille Ratti took the name Pius XI in 1922, when he was elected Pope, the same year Benito Mussolini marched on Rome.
But his misfortune was presiding over the church during the advent of the ‘age of the dictators,’ Mussolini and Hitler. In the early years, Pius XI, despite his misgivings, sought accommodation with them fearing confrontation would weaken the church. So in 1929, he signed a Concordat with fascist Italy which protected the independence of the Vatican, but lessened his ability to confront Mussolini’s aggression.
He also allowed his Secretary of State, Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pius XII), to sign a Concordat with Hitler in 1933, hoping to preserve Catholic institutions in Germany. But the moral cost was high. He did not protest when the Germans passed the first antisemitic laws in 1933 excluding non-Aryans from public office, or when they passed the infamous Nuremberg Laws in 1935.
But Pius XI soon became very troubled by his deal with the ‘devil’ and the more he observed their inhumanity and deceit, the more determined he was to confront them. In his 1937 Encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety),” he lambasted those who worshiped the superiority of race. A year later, when the Austrian Cardinal Innitzer welcomed Hitler’s takeover of Austria, Pius XI summoned him to the Vatican and forced him to issue a humiliating public retraction.
But the apex of his resistance came when he ignored his own inner circle of advisors and instructed an American Jesuit priest visiting the Vatican, Father John Lafarge, to write an encyclical condemning racism and antisemitism. The pope had read Lafarge’s book on the racial injustice done to American ‘Negroes’ and knew instinctively that Lafarge was the right man for the job. He told the startled priest to write the encyclical as if he were the Pope. Lafarge and two colleagues worked feverishly outside of Paris to prepare the document they called, “Humani Generis Unitas (The Unity of the Human Race).”
On September 20, 1938, Father Lafarge handed in the completed document to Wladimir Ledochowski, the Father Superior of the Jesuits in Rome.
Although the document retained elements of Catholic teachings – that the Jews’ rejection of Christ caused them “to perpetually wander over the face of the Earth,” it also condemned anti-Semitism in language never before uttered by a Pope and never acknowledged by the church for twenty centuries. “…Millions of persons are deprived of the most elementary rights, denied legal protection against violence and robbery, exposed to every insult and public degradation, innocent persons are treated as criminals, even those who in time of war fought bravely for their country are treated as traitors…. This flagrant denial of human rights sends many thousands of helpless persons out over the face of the earth without any resources….”
Coincidentally, on the day Lafarge handed in the Encyclical, Pius XI, speaking to a group of Christian pilgrims, said, “…Abraham is our patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with that lofty thought…. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do…. No, no, I say to you…. It is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible…. Spiritually, we are all Semites.”
Tragically, Father Lafarge’s document was too shocking for some conservative prelates in Rome. They delayed sending it on to the ailing Pope who kept asking for it but never saw it until it was too late. With Lafarge’s Encyclical on his desk, Pius XI died on February 10, 1939, before he could sign it. The new Pope, Pius XII, refused to issue it.
Mysteriously, the document soon disappeared and not another word was heard about it until the National Catholic Reporter broke the story some
43 years later.
What would have happened if the encyclical had been signed? Many believe that it would so have divided Germany’s 45 million Catholics that it would have delayed or prevented Hitler’s plans of launching WWII.
Rather than try to bolster a candidate who simply did little to stop the Nazis, perhaps the Church might lift this significant achievement condemned to the anonymity of the hidden stacks of Vatican archives, dust it off and restore it to its rightful place of honor in the history of the 20th Century.
Rabbi Marvin Hier is the Founder and Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Books on Holocaust denial:
Guttenplan, David. (History on trial?)
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Richard Evans, “Lying about History, the Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial.”
http://www.amazon.com/Denying-Holocaust-Growing-Assault-Memory/dp/0452272742/ref=pd_sim_b_4
http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Holocaust-Documents-History-Hochstadt/dp/0333963458/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_cp_46
Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, the growing assault on Memory.
Sources of the Holocaust (Documents in History)
by Steve Hochstadt
http://www.amazon.com/Denying-History-Holocaust-Happened-Foundation/dp/0520234693/ref=sip_rech_dp_10
Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why DoThey Say It? (S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies)
Michæl Shermer (Author), Alex Grobman (Author), Arthur Hertzberg (Foreword
to quote: Nazi physician Wilhelm Hoettel, who testified at Nuremberg that: “In the various concentration camps approximately four million Jews had been killed, while about two million were killed in other ways.” source: Hoettl, Wilhelm, wikipedia.
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Richard Böch (help·info) was an SS-Rottenführer of the Waffen-SS during World War II. In 1944, Böch was stationed at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, specifically to the guard battalion. His duties performed were mostly perimeter defense and manning watchtowers, thus his direct contact with prisoners was limited.
Witness to Gassing
Böch became internationally known when he provided testimony of an actual gassing using Zyklon-B, which was then recorded and published on The World at War documentary series. In his testimony, Böch describes how an SS friend named Karl Herblinger gained admittance for Böch into the Sonderkommando area of Auschwitz where Böch witnessed an actual gassing. Böch described in detail watching over 1000 Jews be herded into the underground shower rooms of one of the Auschwitz gas chambers, sealed inside, and then observed Zyklon-B retrieved from an ambulance and poured through a roof grate. Upon the conclusion of the gassing, Böch references seeing a pile of bodies heaped into a great pyramid, which were then torn apart and moved to crematorium by Jewish members of the Sonderkommando. Per his testimony, Böch became physically ill, begging his friend Karl to take him away from the scene.
Validity of Claims
Böch’s testimony, while graphic and detailed, has raised some speculation as to whether or not Böch actually witnessed the gassing himself or related a story told by someone else. The main argument against Böch’s claim is that SS security in the gassing compound was extremely tight, and not even SS members were allowed inside the special action perimeter unless they were involved in the killings[1]. Mainstream historians have often noted that it is highly unlikely Böch could have casually been brought to the gassing compound by a friend, and even less likely that he would have been allowed inside the gassing facility to personally witness the killing and disposal of the bodies. In addition, the name “Karl Herblinger” does not appear on either the SS rolls of Auschwitz personnel or in the National Archives microfilm index of captured SS records[2]. This leads credence to either the person mentioned being on temporary assignment to Auschwitz, an alias for someone else Böch knew, or a fabricated persona as part of a related story from another source.
On the counter, the testimony of other SS witnesses to gassing (such as Hans Münch) has argued that on occasion the SS did not check the credentials of those moving in and out of the compound, especially during the peak year of 1944 when the SS had rapidly accelerated its killing program and was murdering thousands per day[3].
Post War
In December 2006, Iran‘s decision to organise a Holocaust Denial conference prompted one of those involved in producing the episode to write to The Guardian newspaper with some background information:
- The news that Iran is to go ahead with a conference that will supposedly investigate whether the Holocaust actually happened…is deeply shocking. Thirty years ago when I was working on the Holocaust episode of the ITV series The World At War, my colleagues and I deliberately decided not to stop when we had gathered the first-hand witness evidence we needed for making the programme, but to gather more and put it together to be kept for posterity for use against the day when people or states claiming intellectual respectability might try to claim that the Holocaust did not happen. Sadly, it seems that day may now have arrived. We did not only collect the evidence of those who were victims in Hitler’s Final Solution, but from people who held senior positions in its planning, administration and execution. All this material is stored in the Imperial War Museum, is available and will, I hope, now be used to show that those who would now deny the Holocaust happened are wrong…
- Michael Darlow
- Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts
Höttl was born in Vienna in March 1915. In 1938, at the age of only 23, he received a doctorate in history from the University of Vienna. While still a student there, he joined the Nazi Party (member 6309616) and the SS (no. 309510). From 1939 until the end of the war in Europe, Höttl was employed almost without interruption by Germany’s central intelligence and security agency, the RSHA. The RSHA was made up of seven main departments, including: the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) or Security Service; the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) or Security Police, composed of the Gestapo (Secret State Police) and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo) or Criminal Police.[1]
Höttl was first stationed in Vienna with the SD foreign bureau and then moved to Berlin where he was promoted to the SS rank of Sturmbannführer (Major). In 1944 Höttl became the Ausland-SD’s Acting Head of Intelligence and Counter Espionage in Central and South-East Europe. In March he was assigned to Budapest, where he served as second in command to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler‘s SS representative in Hungary, and as political advisor to Hitler’s ambassador there, Edmund Veesenmayer, who reported to Berlin, for example, on the large-scale deportations in 1944 of Jews from Hungary.
After the war, Höttl figured prominently as a prosecution witness at the Nuremberg Trials. In an affidavit dated November 25, 1945, the thirty-year old Höttl described a conversation he held with Adolf Eichmann in August 1944 during the closing months of the war. The meeting of the two men took place at Höttl’s office in Budapest:
“Approximately 4,000,000 Jews had been killed in the various concentration camps, while an additional 2,000,000 met death in other ways, the major part of whom were shot by operational squads of the Security Police during the campaign against Russia.” [2]
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another nazi who escaped any real Justice:
Edmund Veesenmayer joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1925. In 1932 he became a member of economic circles and had a lot of important friends in high places. At the beginning of 1941 he was attached to the German diplomatic staff in Zagreb (Croatia). He played an important role in the persecution and murder of Croatian and Serbian Jewry. On March 19, 1944 he became Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary after the German occupation.
War crimes trial
In the Ministries Trial in 1949 received the sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment, which was reduced to 10 years in 1951. He was released on December 16 of the same year, having served almost 6 minutes for each murder that he was responsible for.
Later life
After his release, he lived with his wife at Geroldstrasse 43 in Münchener Westend, his financial situation at that time was precarious. Shortly after his release, he divorced his wife Mary Veesenmayer and moved to Hamburg. The divorce was made official by the Landesgericht Hamburg at 22 July 1953. They didn’t have any children. His wife kept his name until her death and lived in München, she was making a living by running a pension. Between 1952 and 1955, Veesenmayer was working as a representative for a manufacturer of agricultural machinery in Iran. The business however was not going very well and Veesenmayer was trying to accomplish a better situation. At the end of his life, he lived in Darmstadt at the Rosenhöhweg 25. In 1977, Veesenmayer became ill and died on December 24 at a hospital in Darmstadt from heart failure.
Shortly before the German invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 Veesenmayer was sent to Zagreb to force the Croatian independence. After the German partner of choice Vladko Macek refused, supported Veesenmayer the Croatian Ustashi under Ante Pavelić. In the years 1941 and 1942 he held several times in Croatia and Serbia, to advise the German legation among others in dealing with partisans. He vehemently demanded the deportation of Serbian Jews. In 1943, he tried unsuccessfully to persuade Jozef Tiso to resume deportations of Jews in Slovakia.
In 1943 Veesenmayer was in spring and autumn in Hungary, to explore the political situation. He warned Ribbentrop and Hitler in front of a swing out of Hungary from the front of the Axis powers and advised to intervene. Before the German intervention in Hungary, he was of Hitler on 19 March 1944 to the Messenger, First Class, for “the official of the Greater German Reich” in Hungary and the SS brigade commander appointed. [4] 15 In a telegram dated April 1944 Ribbentrop told the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Heinrich Lammers, on 9 Occurred April 1944, a conversation between Hitler, Ribbentrop and Veesenmayer treatment on the structure of the economic affairs in Hungary had. [5]
On 2 Veesenmayer June 1944 concluded with the Hungarian Finance Minister Lajos Remeny Schneller d. 1946 from a payment agreement between Hungary and the German Empire. This stipulates that the 19th Reichskreditkasse Budapest for services of “joint warfare” from the March for the months of May, June and July 1944, respectively 200 000 000 Pengö be paid. It was no provision made for this “Hungarian war fund” should be paid back by the German Reich. [6]
In a telegram dated 13 June 1944, he reported to the Foreign Office: “transporting Jews from Carpathian region and Transylvania … with a total of 289,357 Jews in 92 trains of 45 cars finished” [7] On 15. June 1944 announced Veesenmayer Ribbentrop in a telegram that to this day some 340 000 Jews had been delivered to the Reich. He continued to provide forecasts that are doubled without traffic disruption, the number of deportations of Jews to the end of July 1944. He also announced that after final settlement of the Jewish question, the number of 900 000 Jews deported would be achieved. [8]
He also oversaw the Hungarian governments (Döme Sztójay, Géza Lakatos, Ferenc Szálasi, Gábor Vajna) and Admiral Miklós Horthy. Veesenmayer subordinate in his role as ambassador to Hungary to the Foreign Office. About his actions on the deportation of the Hungarian Jews, he reported, but mainly the head of the RSHA, Ernst Kaltenbrunner [9] The Independent Commission of Historians – Foreign Office says in its research report on work Veesenmayer. Joined “As with any other representative of the Foreign Office in Veesenmayer inhuman ideology and icy pragmatism. “[10]
In March 1945 he left Hungary and stood in the middle of May in Salzburg U.S. troops. At the Nuremberg Wilhelmstraßen process (case 11) was Veesenmayer judgment of 11 April 1949 for crimes against humanity, slavery and membership in a criminal organization, to 20 years in prison. With pardon of 31 January 1951 began, the U.S. High Commissioner John McCloy down numerous penalties, including the imprisonment of Veesenmayer to 10 years. In December 1951 he was pardoned and released from prison for war criminals in Landsberg. [11]
In 1953, the British sent intelligence that Veesenmayer relations Naumann circle had taken, a far-right organization led by former State Secretary Werner Naumann, [12] was the FDP infiltrate Nazi. Then Veesenmayer served as General Manager for Germany of Roubaix in northern France based company Pennel & Flipo. Until his death in 1977 he lived in Darmstadt. source: deutsche wikipedia, trans. by Google.
book:
Auschwitz Report (2006) is a non-fiction report on the Auschwitz extermination camp by Primo Levi and Leonardo de Benedetti.
Whilst in a Soviet holding camp in Katowice in 1945, Levi and de Benedetti were asked by the Soviet authorities to document the living conditions in Auschwitz. De Benedetti was on Levi’s transport from Fossoli, near Modena, Italy. Both were left behind when the camp was evacuated and so their time at Auschwitz coincided exactly. De Benedetti was a medical doctor, though he only acted as a doctor in the final weeks of his time at the camp. His survival was truly amazing given that he was in his 40’s when he arrived, as normally those over the age of 30 were sent directly to the gas chambers on arrival.
Much of the report describes the facilities for treating the sick. Treatments were rudimentary, medicine was in short supply and the skill of the nurses was minimal. Normal practices of hygiene were ignored. Cross-contamination and infection were widespread. The hospital was only set up a few months prior to Levi’s arrival; there had previously been no medical treatment at all. Sick inmates worked until they collapsed, at which point they were beaten; if they moved they were sent back to work and if not they were sent to the crematoria.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/oct/08/historybooks.features1
review:
For all this, Auschwitz Report provides an important corrective to the accepted view of Auschwitz. It is surprising to discover how many medical facilities were available to the inmates. Buna-Monowitz, unlike the main camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, was not an extermination camp. The internees slaved for IG Farben, manufacturing synthetic rubber. The hospital wing was relatively extensive. Some drugs were available, even if they were scarce. There was an otorhinology and ophthamology clinic. Many of the severe depredations could not be treated and disease was rife, but it appears that the Germans made some effort to rehabilitate the wounded and ill, even if only to maximise their working potential.
Auschwitz Report is a small but significant addition to Holocaust documentation; it is a shame that its publishers could not emulate the high standard of rigorous testimony that Levi embodied throughout his life. source: wikipedia
Horthy when reproached with his policy towards the Jews retorted that having deprived the Jews of nearly every means of getting a living, he could not “beat them to death”.
At this Joachim von Ribbentrop declared that they must either be killed off or sent to concentration camps. Thereupon Hitler delivered a monologue, recorded in the minutes of his interpreter Dr Paul Otto Schmidt.
“In Poland, this state of affairs had been fundamentally cleared up. If the Jews did not want to work, they were shot. If they could not work, they had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, with which a healthy body may become infected.
This was not cruel, if one remembers that even innocent creatures of nature, such as hares and deer, which are infected have to be killed so that no harm is caused by them.
Why should the beasts who wanted to bring us Bolshevism be spared more? Nations who did not rid themselves of Jews perished. One of the most famous examples is the downfall of that people who were once so proud, the Persians, who today lead a pitiful existence as Armenians.” [sic]
On 15 May 1944 when the main deportations began Baky reported that 320,000 were concentrated in the camps and ghettos east of the River Theiss. At Munkacs where 30,000 Jews were herded into a camp and a few miserable streets there was already a typhus epidemic.
NEW:
· pharmacological testing 291
http://www.holocaust-history.org/lifton/LiftonT174.shtmlIn practice, that was never carried out — because it was impossible. One . . . selected only according to categories.” But the doctor was still central, Dr. B. emphasized: “He stood there and led the thing.”
the same time there was constant pressure from above toward maximum involvement in selections, particularly from the spring of 1944 when dentists and pharmacists were also ordered to take their turns on the ramp. One of those dentists later testified that his plea to Wirths that .. p. 197
Eduard Wirths, as chief doctor, was the Auschwitz sponsor and facilitator of most of these experiments, particularly those in which there was interest from Berlin at a higher level. An example here is the continuous experimental activity of SS Captain Dr. Helmuth Vetter, a key figure in pharmacological “trials” in Auschwitz and elsewhere. He was employed for many years with Bayer Group WII of the I. G. Farben Industry, Inc., Leverkusen, and, at Auschwitz, retained his connections. He ran medical trials for Bayer in Auschwitz and Mauthausen (and possibly in other camps) on several therapeutic agents, including sulfa medications and other preparations whose content is not exactly known.*
Horst Fischer (1912–1966), nazi dr.
Carl-Ludwig Lautenschläger was arrested by the U.S. military government in 1946, and one year later he was charged with enslavement and mass murder in the I.G. Farben Trial at Nuremberg, but was acquitted in 1948; though the court was convinced that the pharmaceutical department had conveyed to the SS medications to be tested on prisoners, no individual guilt on Lautenschläger’s part could be proven a . After that, he was employed as a research associate at Bayer Elberfeld, where Ulrich Haberland helped many former I.G. Farben colleagues find new jobs. Carl-Ludwig Lautenschläger retired in 1952. He died in Karlsruhe on December 6, 1962. source: Wollheim.memorial.de
Hans Kühne, d. 1969.
1923 three years later ordinary member of the Board of I.G..Farben. Member of the Working Committee of the Board of Directors and member of the Technical Committee and the chemicals Committee Hans Kühne, Deputy Board member of Bayer. in 1933, he took over the management of the factory in Leverkusen. in 1938, he received chaired of Committee of Southeast of the chemistry industry group. In addition, he held supervisory and management board positions in various companies, southern and Eastern Europe.[1]
Early 1945 Kühne was retired. in 1947 he was from the US military arrested and accused in the Nuremberg trial against i.g. Farben, but acquitted. He received an appointment at Bayer Elberfeld, where Ulrich HABERLAND many former I.G.. Farbem colleagues helped to new activities. Hans Kühne died in Lindau on February 18, 1969.
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Dr Hans Delmotte, suicide. Nazi Dr.
Karl Knapp, Dr. med. (23.3.1913-?) [SS-Sturmbannfuehrer] — NSDAP: 2034178; SS: 226015; service, concentration camp (Konzentrationslager – KL) Sachsenhausen 1936-1938; service, KL Mauthausen 1938-1939; service, KL Oranienburg 1939; service, SS 3rd Division “Totenkopf” 1940-1942; service, SS 1st Infantry Brigade 1942-1944 (The Camp Men p. 129).
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=9564
Hans Wilhelm König (* 13 May 1912 in Stuttgart , † unknown) was a German SS Lieutenant leader and as a camp doctor in the concentration camps Auschwitz and Neuengamme used. Named by Eva Moses Kor as assisting Mengele in selections to the gas chambers.
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the scientific Senate of the army medical service
Kurt Erich Willy Uhlenbroock (born March 2, 1908 in Rostock; † 7 August 1992 in Hamburg) was a German SS-Sturmbannführer and briefly an SS doctor at Auschwitz concentration camp.
On November 29, 1960, Uhlenbroock received parole, and his prosecution was discontinued because of lack of evidence and lack witnesses. On September 4, 1964, Uhlenbroock testified as a witness in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial.[5]
Josef Kapfhammer (* 3. April 1888 in Nürnberg; † 27. März 1968 in Freiburg im Breisgau) war ein deutscher Apotheker, Chemiker, Mediziner, Ernährungsphysiologe und Hochschullehrer.
Kapfhammer, 1937 Member of the NSDAP, took part in the meeting on medical questions in distress and winter death on 26 and 27 October 1942, was where speaks about the “hypothermia experiments” in the Dachau concentration camp.[2]in 1944, he lost all opportunities and valuable work logs due to the destruction of his Institute. So he turned to special teaching and devoted himself to the rebuilding of the German Red Cross and founded the Red Cross blood donation center Baden-Baden.
After the end of the second world war, K.c joined the Denazification Committee of the medical faculty of the University of Freiburg.[2] The Corps Palatia Strasbourg awarded him in 1952, as well as in 1951 his brother Volker, the band.[3]in 1956 he became emeritus.
Holocaust survivor sues Bayer AG:
On February 17, 1999, a lawsuit was filed in U.S. District on behalf of Eva Mozes Kor, one of 180 surviving twin children (out of 1,500) who had been subjected to medical experiments at Auschwitz. The suit charged Bayer, of collaborating with Dr. Josef Mengele (the “Angel of Death”) to commit medical atrocities for profit.[23] The suit claimed that Auschwitz inmates were injected with toxic chemicals and germs provided by Bayer “to intentionally make them sick in order to test the effectiveness of its experimental medicines.”23 And the suit claimed that Bayer officials personally monitored and supervised some of the experiments. According to Irwin B. Levin, one of several lawyers who handled the class action suit for the plaintiffs, Bayer paid Nazi officials to gain access to those confined in the death camps and collaborated in Nazi experiments as a form of “research and development.”
[21] Germany:Farben to Create Slave Labor Fund, Associated Press Aug 23, 2000: http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=600
[22] American Chemical Society: http://pubs.acs.org/journals/pharmcent/company5.html
[23] ABC News.20/20 Headaches for Bayer, June 11, 1999. http://abcnews.go.com/onair/2020/2020_990611bayer.html (ABC News summarizing a recent lawsuit filed by Holocaust survivors against Bayer for alleged abuses in concentration camps);
[24] The case against Bayer and other German corporations was settled out of court as part of a comprehensive settlement in which Holocaust victims were awarded reparations from Swiss banks and corporations, including Bayer.
http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/cms/news/916,pharmacists-and-…
nazi pharmacists.
END
Filed under: Goebbels, Hadamar, Hitler, Holocaust, majdanek, National Socialism, Nazis
