BURNED ALIVE; was there a holocaust at Birkenau
Was there a holocaust at Birkenau? Were people ever burned alive during a Zyklon shortage? You may say, who cares, but that sounds callous to me. The revisionists deny that there was a literal holocaust. Their motives are probably political: they want to discredit Elie Weisel, who in the public mind is Mr Holocaust. I hope they succeed. Zionists want to shut down the discussion of a literal holocaust, and their motives too are probably political. Any discrediting of Mr Holocaust would generally be bad for business, and might open disagreeable lines of thought in the public mind. The literal holocaust of course is not part of the scholars’ Holocaust, but that does not get rid of the matter. We shall be reminded (often!) that Wiesel’s memoirs are not among the canonical testimonies for gas chambers. That statement is only interesting if it has somewhere been denied. It does not mean these memoirs are not worth discussing. Wiesel is privately despised by some serious scholars but none of them has publicly disowned him. Until that happens, the possibility of a literal holocaust at Birkenau remains something to be discussed. Did it happen or did it not?
In 1945 stories of burning alive had wider currency than they later did. At the Wupperthal trial for the murder by execution of some British saboteurs it was alleged by Polish witnesses that three SOE heroines had been thrown into the cremation furnace at Natzweiler. The interesting thing about this case is that the military court’s Judge Advocate got into very hot water because he refused to believe it what he called “lurid tales” of people being thrown alive kicking and screaming into flames. He had to defend himself in the Times against the charge of being soft on Germans and hard on survivor witnesses. Public Opinion (meaning the press) had a large and hysterical influence on the British postwar trials. At the main Ravensbruck trial it was alleged in court by Odette Sansom/Churchill that masses of prisoners had been burned alive in the Krematorium, which she could see from her cell window. This Odette was by then a national treasure, so Judge Advocate in that case had to be diplomatic in his incredulity. The interesting thing about this case is that for evidence for burnings alive was treated as by the Prosecutor as evidence for the gas chamber, almost as if it were the same process. That people were burned alive under Odette’s cell window was evidence that 3000 people had been gassed to death under Odette’s cell window.
It would not, not have been physically impossible to throw SOE heroines kicking and screaming even into furnace at Natzweiler, though it would be a strange way to go about things. From the question of literal physical impossibility, Lemmy Caution on page 153 post 6117 steers the discussion toward the 1964 Frankfurt trial, as is his right. He accepts uncritically (as I would not) the judgment of that trial. But he does not mention the only testimony relevant to the subject I am here trying to stick to, the subject of burnings alive. The relevant witness is surely Filip Mueller.
In Naumann we find his account, complete with satanic dialogue.
“In 1944 scenes such as these happened under Obersharfhurer Moll. I saw him take a child from its mother a child from its mother, carry it over to Crematory 4 which had two big pits, and throw the child into the seething human fat. He then went up to his servant a former French featherweight boxing champion and told him “its possible to have ones fill.””
The witness confirms that members of the special detail who warned people selected for gassing were burned alive.
Wiesel’s fully-fledged holocaust - improbable dialogue from an SS guard, the usual close encounter with Dr Mengele, the living children thrown into flames in order to save costs - somehow never came to the attention of Mueller. He reported only about babies being occasionally thrown into cremation pits. Wiesel’ story would be easier to believe it were externally corroborated, or if it were internally coherent, or if Wiesel was known to be a scrupulous man with an unswerving regard for truth. None of these conditions is satisfied. Even Wiesel himself found it hard to believe
The boy that began to talk to you tonight, where is he? Did he dream or live his dreams of fear and fire? Did he really witness the agony of mankind, through the death of his community? Did he really see the triumph of brutality, did he hear or imagine the laughter of the executioner? Did he really see killers throwing children, Jewish children, into the flames alive? I rarely speak about this, but in this place we must. For a very long while I resisted accepting this story as mine. For years and years I clung to the belief that it was all a dream, a nightmare. No, I did not see the children. I did not see the flames.
It was no dream. It was real. Jewish children, living Jewish children were thrown into the flames in order to save money because the gas was costly. [Dimensions of the Holocaust, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, 1977, pp. 17-18
“Children, living children” would presumably not have brought out the full horror of it.
This suggests an orthodox line on the question of burnings alive. I offer it freely and generously. The scholars should stand by Mueller and publicly dump Wiesel. Mueller’s occasional babies thrown alive into cremation pits can be claimed as a real basis for Wiesel’s “dreams”. Orthodoxy must go with Mueller in any case, since he is one of their canonical witnesses. He is cited and approved by the very best scholars. The best scholars are unlikely to contemplate that he lied about babies burned alive. That might open up thoughts that he lied about other things. Where would it end?
So here is what I suggest might be said by aggressive spammers who are unable to find their own words. : “You revisionists always harp on the soft targets like Wiesel. In fact we scholars candidly and explicitly concede that his holocaust testimony as false, so there is no need to go on and on about it. But we do not concede that there were no burnings alive. You revisionists have never picked on a hard target like Filipe Mueller who, unlike Wiesel, was a scrupulously honest man with an unswerving regard for truth. Go!”
