Clayton Moore, Has the purpose for your posting of that wedding photo been guessed accurately by other posters on this topic? Would you like to rephrase anything from their recent contributions to this thread or are you content with the way a message has been articulated for you, Clayton Moore?
Philip Mechanicus' wrote a diary while in Westerbork, published in Dutch as "In dépôt". He included:
"Huwelijksaankondiging ‘an die Kamaraden Baracke 21’:
‘Es heiraten: Ella Silberstein - Oskar Biro.
Bürgerliche Trauung: Freitag, 24.9.43 um 4 Uhr Administratie.
Chuppoh: Sonntag, 26.9.43 um 3 Uhr Baracke 101
(eetzaal van het verplegend personeel en de artsen).
Empfang: Freitag Baracke 37 B, Sonntag Baracke 101.’" (Donderdag 23 September. page 169)
Was there a -self evident- message I didn't pick up when I first read this book? Mechanicus repeatedly speaks about marriages and mentions several other weddings that took place in Westerbork. Have you read his diary? Did you see implications there that so many people apparently miss when he posthumously shows them glimpses inside the Westerbork universe?
"Om drie uur, terwijl de nieuw aangekomenen werden geregistreerd en Lippmann & Rosenthal hen plunderden, een choeppoh (kerkelijke huwelijksinzegening) in barak 35. Hij in keurig colbert, met witte aster in het knoopsgat, zij met witte sluier, beiden ernstige mensen van distinctie. Een paar honderd belangstellenden. Kerkelijke gezangen, een toespraak, toepasselijk op deze tijd, plechtige voorlezing en tekening van het huwelijksverbond. Dit huwelijk is voorlopig slechts een getuigenis, want als man en vrouw mogen deze jonge mensen hier niet leven, daartoe bestaat niet de mogelijkheid." (Woensdag 29 September, Page 174)
I assume you didn't read his book in Dutch but there are English translations. Perhaps you can post the published English version of this passage?
In 1999 Chronos made a Westerbork documentary. After 40 minutes the German narrator, Harry Kühn, comments on scenes filmed by
Rudolf Breslauer in May 1944. Kühn explains to the viewers that young people fall in love, and people marry, as the film footage stops and is replaced with a photo, the wedding picture, you posted. But the Chronos documentary doesn't end there and the narrator doesn't fall into confused silence. For some reason they continue and a little later he narrates that over a 100.000 of the people were deported from Westerbork never to return. States that many of them died in extermination camps. Gas chambers. Why is that? These people looked at that wedding photo, selected it for their documentary and ... ? Did they miss something?
The monument at the end of their documentary, composed of a stone for each individual victim, is based on an idea of Louis de Wijze. A man who credits football as one of the things that allowed him to survive. Football in Westerbork and football in Auschwitz-Monowitz.
Breslauer filmed football and Mechanicus mentions football in his Westerbork diary. (Diary entries: Zondag 30 Mei page 18, Woensdag 7 Juli p. 73, Zondag 21 Augustus p. 135, Dinsdag 24 Augustus p. 138) That he attends matches. That
Han Hollander is the announcer in the camp during such games. Hollander was the first live radio reporter of an international football match in the Netherlands and had also been commentator for the Berlin Olympic games. In his diary Mechanicus relates how Hollander is deported -despite his prominent position- because of an unwise crack from his wife (p.73). Did Hartog "Han" Hollander announce anywhere else after that?
Has Philip Mechanicus himself reported anywhere after 1944? His diary and its publication history, are they from the old Holocaust or the new? Continuing citations from his work, where do they fit?
Louis de Wijze came back and talked a lot about football. Wrote about it in his memoirs - which have been translated. He was interviewed about it for a national TV broadcast in the Netherlands on the day people commemorate the dead there. Why can Louis de Wijze appear on national TV and talk about time on the football team and his participation in camp cabaret without turning a substantial portion of the watching population into Holocaust deniers?
Regarding football I mentioned Primo Levi. Have you read his books? The Italian original of "If this is a Man" was published in 1947. I have a 1987 English paperback. The page numbers are different in other editions but these words he wrote -about his experiences as a new arrival in Monowitz- are in the chapter "On the Bottom" (Abacus, London (1987) Page 31):
"We ask him many questions. He laughs, replies to some and not to others, and it is clear that he avoids certain subjects. He does not speak of the women : he says they are well, that we will see them again soon, but he does not say how or where. Instead he tells us other things, strange and crazy things, perhaps he too is playing with us. Perhaps he is mad - one goes mad in the Lager. He says that every Sunday there are concerts and football matches. He says that whoever boxes well can become cook. He says that whoever works well receives prize-coupons with which to buy tobacco and soap. [...] Some feel refreshed but I do not know. I still think that even this dentist, this incomprehensible person, wanted to amuse himself at our expense, and I do not want to believe a word of what he said."
Makes me wonder if Holocaust deniers take that literally from Levi? Is it from passages like these that their lists are drawn up? What happens, then, with the other chapters that follow? The rest of his writings - are they simply disregarded? Where does the information for such lists come from and why do interpretations of the original material differ when evaluated by Holocaust deniers? Why do their explanations -if provided at all- fall short as explanation of the whole?
Primo Levi's books, do they represent the old Holocaust or the new? Because of the length of his career as a writer, his writings must straddle some presumptive dividing line between these two periods that are frequently hinted at but never defined. At which point during reading of his works does one diverge from Primo Levi's own explanations? Why does he not conclude that coupons and football preclude the existence of gas chambers? Was he supposed to?
After looking over the rest of the list once more I wonder again if it ever occurs to Holocaust deniers that, perhaps, these examples and their lists aren't convincing? Not if that is the point they're hoping to make. Do they ever stop and think why not? If so, why are they still repeated?