7. Who set up the first concentration camps, and where and when?

Ernst
Zündel Replies:

Rebuttal # 7

To know about precendents for concentration camps in war is important.
The point embedded in this question and amplification is not irrelevant,
because history is not irrelevant, for this reason:

One fraudulent bill of goods that is constantly sold to a gullible public -
namely that the concentration camps of Germany were somehow unique and
original, both in their bestial conception and in their genocidal function -
lies at the heart of moral condemnation.

That charge is not historically correct.

Nizkor claims: "We will not take part in this moral relativism, but will
merely present the historical facts . . . and let the reader make up his or her
own mind."

Why, kudos to your efforts! If done with honesty, that would be wonderful! That
is precisely what we're asking! Revisionism has to do with bringing history in
accord with the FACTS.

Nizkor does not have to reach back to the Boer Wars to see that concentration
camps of unimaginable brutality existed in countries that were American Allies
united only in the purpose of slaying Germany, ironically on "moral"
grounds! - one of the many charges being that Germany had "concentration
camps".

All Nizkor needs to do is to re-read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago about the
Soviet Camps - just who created them and who administered them for the
Stalinist Soviet Regime. Names like Yagoda, Frankl etc. come readily to mind -
many if not most of whom were Jews. (More about that in
QA # 9) If concentration camps were the incentive to send Americans into
that war, why not, then, go to war against the Soviet Union to
"liberate" the Stalin camps! What's this bombast about "moral
relativism"?

Nizkor's blatantly ignorant statement (dealt in detail in Question # 8,
but really addressing itself to "moral relativism" in this question)
is that, in part, ". . . The Americans did not starve millions of people
to death. . ." by a deliberate policy of neglect and starvation."

Oh, yes, they did! You bet they did!

One such series of camps were the infamous "Rhine
Meadows" camps run by the Eisenhower military Administration.

Go
to your nearest library and check out the fairly recent and rather well-known
book by Canadian author James Bacques who claims in his best selling book
"Other Losses" that between 1 and 2 million Germans were deliberately
killed in Eisenhower's
death camps after the war by deliberate neglect and starvation - after the
end of hostilities, when no more supply trains were being bombed, no bridges
and warehouses blown up, no water mains severed etc. The war had ended! James
Bacque has since published another book entitled "Of Crimes and
Mercies", which goes into even more grusome details.

Yet Germany's concentration camps are always portrayed as ". . . man's
darkest hour." Nothing could be farther from the truth.

That more people died - not only in German concentration camps during World War
II but in all concentration camps during and after that period - is
true. There were simply more people and nations involved in World War II;
therefore, it stands to reason there would be many more casualties.

..

Compare for yourself: [Left] Germans prisoners of war
living in holes in the ground, hardly any food or shelter and no heat in the
winter, with [right] so-called inhumanity of the Auschwitz Barracks with mowed
lawns, heated barracks, comfortable beds, flush toilets, running water, and
even a swimming pool for inmates. Who were the inhumane ones?

Auschwitz swimming pool from the

Globe and Mail - Canada's newspaper of record

Secondly, at no other time in history were the civilian population centers,
transportation system, industrial production bases, railroads and bridges
knocked out by a deliberate and near-genocidal bombing policy as happened to
the German cities.

James J. Martin in his essay "The Bombing and Negotiated Peace - in
1944" mentions some remarkable facts which seem to have disappeared down
the memory hole. They may bear being resurrected.

The following is direct citation from Martin's text:

". . . As for the total damage achieved in England by the Germans as
compared to that achieved in Germany, the summary by Allen A. Michie, a
one-time Time-Life reporter, in the Reader's Digest [of August 1945], is
particularly dramatic and succinct:

"The combined damaged areas of London, Bristol and Coventry and all the
blitzed cities of Britain could be dumped in the ruins of just one medium-sized
German city and hardly be noticed. . . ".

It was politically correct to cite Coventry in the popular propaganda as the
excuse for an obliteration strategy applied later on in Germany. Michie
estimated that, by comparison, Berlin suffered 363 Coventrys; Cologne, 269;
Hamburg, 200; and Bremen, 137.

Consider this: More bombs fell on Berlin in a single day than on England
during all of the war!

Toward the end of the war, there simply was no way for Germany to organize and
guarantee supplies and medication to the German concentration camps. The Allied
aereal terrorists bombed everything that moved on German rails, rivers or roads
- there simply was no way!

That is why many inmates died, largely of epicemics. And once again: NOT ONE OF
THEM BY GASSING!

This story is told without words in the graph below:

Dachau chart:

As a direct consequence of Allied bombings, people were
horribly crowded together as Germany shrunk more and more and as deadly
diseases and epidemics began to spread unchecked. One source has claimed that
Dachau, built for 3,000 inmates, housed 50,000 inmates!

If Nizkor would honestly factor in all the above facts pertaining to the
tragedy of the German concentration camps, particularly Dachau, a totally
different picture would emerge.

_____

May 4, 1996