Indeed, also known as a fact. And like many facts, this single fact shows the complete absurdity of the holohoax.
Really?
Typically deniers use
this quotation from Wiesel:
"The choice was in our hands. For once we could decide our fate for ourselves. We could both stay in the hospital, where I could, thanks to my doctor, get him (his father) entered as a patient or nurse. Or else we could follow the others. 'Well, what shall we do, father?' He was silent. 'Let's be evacuated with the others,' I told him."
The passage actually reads like this - looking at it in context, including the part deniers hope their marks won't be arsed to find:
The camp had become a hive. People ran about, shouting at one another. In all the blocks, preparations for the journey were going on. I had forgotten about my bad foot. A doctor came into the room and announced:
“Tomorrow, immediately after nightfall, the camp will set out. Block after block. Patients will stay in the infirmary. They will not be evacuated.”
This news made us think. Were the SS going to leave hundreds of prisoners to strut about in the hospital blocks, waiting for their liberators? Were they going to let the Jews hear the twelfth stroke sound? Obviously not. “All of the invalids will be summarily killed,” said the faceless one. “And sent to the crematory in a final batch.”
“The camp is certain to be mined,” said another. “The moment the evacuation's over, it'll blow up."
As for me, I was not thinking about death, but I did not want to be separated from my father. We had already suffered so much, borne so much together; this was not the time to be separated. I ran outside to look for him.
The snow was thick, and the windows of the blocks were veiled with frost. One shoe in myhand, because it would not go onto my right foot, I ran on, feeling neither pain nor cold.
“What shall we do?”
My father did not answer.
“What shall we do, father?”
He was lost in thought. The choice was in our hands. For once we could decide our fate for ourselves. We could both stay in the hospital, where I could, thanks to my doctor, get him entered as a patient or nurse. Or else we could follow the others.
“Well, what shall we do, father?’”
He was silent.
“Let's be evacuated with the others,” I said to him.
He did not answer. He looked at my foot.
“Do you think you can walk?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Let’s hope that we shan’t regret is Eliezer.”
I learned after the war the fate of those who had stayed behind in the hospital. They were quite simply liberated by the Russians two days after the evacuation. ...
No wonder deniers cut out the parts of the passage that speak to the uncertainty, the fear of staying as well as of leaving. Wiesel wrote just before this passage of the situation as follows:
“Perhaps the Russians will arrive first.”
“Perhaps.”
We knew perfectly well that they would not.
In other words, Wiesel and his father didn't expect Auschwitz to be liberated before the evacuation - and feared that those not leaving would be left to the SS who could be expected to "summarily" kill those not going on the march.
This is really basic stuff – what this meme does is try manufacturing a mystery by cherry-picking and decontextualizing to create a false impression. The circulation of the meme on dishonest websites is actually depressing enough without seeing the failed trick show up here.
What deniers are trying to argue is that a decision by any Jew imprisoned in Auschwitz to join the march - that is, not to stay behind - makes no sense in the light of the Germans’ treatment of the Jews there. But is that so?
”The prisoners left behind were convinced that they were fated to be murdered within the next few hours by the SS men. For this reason, quite a few made the effort to join the convoys of evacuees despite their poor physical condition. . . . To be left behind in the camp [Auschwitz] was frequently perceived as a certain death sentence." (p 81)
"The sick inmates watched as huts went up in flames, and they heard the explosives around them as the Germans made a last effort to destroy the camp, its buildings and contents. The sight convinced them that camp guards would be coming any minute to kill them all." (p 82)
"The last massacre of Jews in Birkenau took place between January 20 and 25. After most of the prisoners had been evacuated and only the sick and frail were left, a small group of SS and SD men from the Political Section (Gestapo) continued to destroy the remaining documents and other evidence that needed to be obliterated before the Russians arrived. . . . But before they left, they murdered some 300 sick Jews in Birkenau. The SD personnel separated the Jews from the other sick prisoners, who were not harmed. This was the last group of Jews murdered in Auschwitz." (pp 82-83)
". . . the actual exodus from the camp was unexpected and was carried out hastily and in an atmosphere of pandemonium. . . . The prisoners who received this briefing [on the evacuation] were afraid to leave the camp because they felt that what lurked beyond the camp gate was far more threatening than the familiar routine within. . . . Although some prisoners knew what was happening and prepared for the journey, others knew almost nothing and did not have time to make any preparations whatsoever before leaving." (pp 84-85)
At the Blechhammer camp, for example, "on January 26, 1945, a group of 100 to 150 SS troops arrived and began to destroy the deserted camp offices. Afterward they started to murder the weak prisoners who lay inert on straw-filled sacks in the sick bay. . . . The SS conducted a thorough search of the camp, and all those rounded up were shot on the spot. Apparently, fewer than 10 prisoners escaped this slaughter." (p 93)
(Daniel Blatman, The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide, 2011)
And so on. One could easily make a very long "wall of text" post with more and more such material, from many books, speaking to the crap shoot which prisoners faced, the “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” nature of the choice they faced, rumors and fears, "choiceless choices," lack of knowledge about what staying behind would mean and what leaving would mean, slaughters on the death marches of those who went/slaughters in the sick bays of those who stayed, etc. I will refrain from quoting more here now as Blatman is pretty clear about the situation. There are many sources on this, and in some camps, prisoners were slaughtered in the chaos before evacuation, whilst in others they were not.
Ok, one more, I know Saggy wants more: Here's an excerpt from a letter from the files of the Location Services of the World Jewish Congress, written by an unnamed Jewish survivor on 22 June 1945 in Prague. The letter writer was initially interned in Theresienstadt:
On October 18, 1944, we were sent to the Birkenau-Oswieczim concentration camp [Auschwitz-Birkenau], and there I saw Suse and the children for the last time, at the train station. The men who were fit for work were separated from the others, and after a few days we were sent to the Fürstengrube-Ksieca camp near Kattowitz [a mining subcamp of Auschwitz supplying coal to the IG Farben works at Monowitz]. There I worked in a coal mine. The food was wretched, the work hard, and after a short time I weighed barely more than 50 kilos.
On January 18, 1945, our camp was vacated when the Red Army was approaching. About 250 people, invalids, etc., stayed behind, including me. Before the Russians arrived, another SS detachment attacked us, and around 220 people were killed, and 30 people escaped, again including me. On January 29, 1945, we were liberated by the Russians.
In May 1945, a former prisoner of the Fürstengrube camp, Rudolf Ehrlich, testified about the slaughter mentioned by the anonymous letter writer, apparently giving a figure of 20 survivors. In a memoir about the subcamp, Benjamin Jacobs quotes Tadeusz Iwaszko on the evacuation and massacre of some of those who remained in the camp:
The SS left with the groups of inmates, and only a couple of foremen were guarding us. Hunger was our only companion. The next day we found outside the fence two dead horses. Those and potatoes we found kept us alive. We heard that the Russians were near. It almost seemed as if they were deliberately passing us by.
On January 17 about twenty SS men came. At first we thought they were also retreating and would not harm us. Anyway, as they saw us, they began to shoot at our barracks. One threw a hand grenade into the KB, where we were. One of them looked in and shot whomever he saw move. I was hit with a bullet in my leg, and I faked death. The SS men then placed explosives at the barracks corners and set us afire. The roof soon caved in, and a part of it fell on me. Most in the block were dead by then. I feared moving, because if they saw me they would kill me. But I also knew that if I lay there I would burn to death. When the flames reached me I had a decision to make. I slowly crawled out on my hands and knees and hid behind a pillar. Then I saw the same SS men going into another barracks, where I knew a few inmates were hiding. This time they didn't bother to shoot them; they just burned the barracks down.
The people in the nearby villages must have known what was going on, yet no one came and stopped them. Finally, after the SS men left, a few of the villagers came to extinguish the fires. German soldiers in passing looked at us and said to them, "Don't bother, those are only stinking Jews." The 239 that were killed were buried afterward in one mass grave.
(Research for the USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos clarifies the testimonial discrepancies over dates, putting the massacre on the 27th and describing the Red Army's advance into the camp as the reason for the SS fleeing and the survival of about 20 prisoners. According to the USHMM entry on Fürstengrube, significant testimony on the murders was given by Piotr Olej, an employee of the mine - Olej was present for the burial of those murdered and gave the number of bodies as 239. USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, vol 1 part A, pp 240-241.)
To put it simply, Wiesel thought there was a strong risk that he and his father would be killed before the Russians arrived if they remained in Auschwitz - and those fears were well founded. In some cases, Jews who stayed behind were unharmed - but in other cases, as we've seen, they were massacred. There was no way for prisoners in Auschwitz, evacuated in haste, to know which outcome awaited them.
Wiesel’s narrative in “Night” makes clear what he felt at the time were his choices. It doesn’t matter what the outcome turned out to be when we’re discussing prisoners’ motivation on the eve of evacuation in January 1945. And Wiesel was clear: he felt one option, a potentially bad one, was to stay in the camp and in the hands of the SS (as he put it about the Russians, “We knew perfectly well that they would not” arrive before the evacuation - and thus Wiesel and his father believed that, as the “faceless one” said, “All of the invalids will be summarily killed. . . . And sent to the crematory in a final batch”). Or his other option, also potentially bad, was to be evacuated by the SS - an equally risky choice of which Wiesel’s father said, “Let’s hope that we shan’t regret it Eliezer.” Two risky choices, that’s how Wiesel put it - and that is what deniers hide by cherry-picking and lying.
It is interesting that deniers reserve their sense of ironic disapproval for Wiesel and not for the people who deported him from Sighet to Auschwitz and imprisoned him there. As a poster named DasPrussian asked F.P. Berg at RODOH about the "choice" which the Nazis gave the teenager Wiesel and his father, "why weren't the Jews given a third choice, of just leaving the camp and doing what they want?"
