Are you kidding me? Belgian Euthanasia Doctors Seek Existential Answers at Auschwitz.

Are you Kidding me? Belgian Euthanasia Doctors Seek Existential Answers at Auschwitz. (Spiegel).

A group of Belgium's leading practitioners of euthanasia recently visited the Auschwitz concentration camp memorial to learn more about death and humanity. The trip proved to be just as controversial for the doctors as it did insightful. 

Some 70 people gradually gather around Distelmans. The group consists of doctors, psychologists and nurses from Belgium, most of whom work in the area of euthanasia. One of them is Eric Vandevelde, who during the course of his career has killed 20 people at their own request even as he helps women give birth every day. He's accompanied by his wife Colette, who was instrumental in introducing Belgium's euthanasia law 12 years ago. Manu Keirse, a psychologist, is also on hand. He's the author of 35 books, nearly all of which are on the topic of mourning. There's also Bea Verbeeck, a psychiatrist who is currently examining a request by a manic depressive man who gambles away tousands during his manic phases. Distelmans, who is the chairman of the Belgian government's Euthanasia Commission, has invited all of them on a trip to Poland.

Death with Dignity.

In Auschwitz he intends to reflect with them on the meaning of "death with dignity". That's also the title of the tour, which is printed on the program booklet. It has to do with existential questions: self-determination, fear and freedom -- and what these things mean to us today. And it concerns how far we go, should go, and should be allowed to go.

But the group is not limited to euthanasia specialists. A Belgian journalist is also standing at the gate. "I'm traveling as far as Birkenau, and when I have enough material, I'll go back home," he says. A tour operator accompanying the group says, "I normally do football trips."

There's also a homeopath who says: "A well-balanced individual has no need for euthanasia." Some of the medical professionals have taken along their wives, who are looking forward to seeing the picturesque medieval city of Krakow. A Jewish photographer named Guy Kleinblatt is also there. Members of his family died in Auschwitz and he is visiting the site for the first time. What all of these people have in common is that they support euthanasia and a liberal society.

They are following Distelmans to Auschwitz, they say, to learn more respect for their fellow human beings. In Auschwitz they intend to find out why the right of the individual to decide over his own life is inalienable -- and why people must be absolutely free to make their own decisions in this respect. Auschwitz, they say, is the antithesis of everything that they hope to achieve, and they are seeking to reflect there upon what it means to kill out of humility and love.

Protesting 'Dr. Death'.

There were protests in the run-up to this trip. The British Daily Mail Online dubbed Distelmans as "Dr. Death" and described his trip to Auschwitz as tasteless. 

Meanwhile, Belgian journalists have also picked up on the debate using the Dutch translation for the same moniker. In the northern Belgian city of Antwerp, ultra orthodox Jews staged protests to voice their outrage at Distelmans referring to Auschwitz in his travel itinerary as an "inspiring venue." 

They called him a "professional killer." Distelmans received an email from a German-speaking scholar that contained just one word: "murderer." After the trip was over, the deputy director of the Auschwitz memorial wrote an email in response to the protests in which he said: "We feel that the attempt to link the history of Auschwitz with the current debate about euthanasia is inappropriate." Hmmm......This is so wrong on so many levels i can't even find words for it. There is no 'Death with dignity in the NAZI extermination camps...... whats next Follow the Nazi way of exterminating disabled and mental patients.....Why stop there?Read the full story here.

Himmler Documentary 'Decent One' Reflects Evil of Banality.

A recently discovered cache of hundreds of personal letters, diaries and photos belonging to the Nazi Gestapo chief seems to reveal a thoughtful, loving husband and devoted father to his daughter. The documents first found in the Himmler family house in 1945 were hidden in Tel Aviv for decades and sold to the father of the Israeli documentary filmmaker, Vanessa Lapa. Through readings of Himmler's and his family's most personal writings and rarely seen restored film footage from key German archives, Lapa has fashioned a fascinating case study: a portrait of the man responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War, who thought of himself in heroic terms.

Himmler Documentary 'Decent One' Reflects Evil of Banality.HT: Forward.

'Decent One' Shows How Ordinary Men Could Become Monsters.

Hannah Arendt’s embattled phrase, “banality of evil,” describing Nazi master murderer Adolf Eichmann, may go a long way to illuminate his colleague in Hitler-era genocide, Heinrich Himmler.

The documentary “The Decent One,” based on a cache of memorabilia including letters, diaries, and photos belonging to this proud Nazi, somehow private since the war, shows him foremost a Catholic family man with a job to do.

Read straightforward in voiceover over black and white archival footage, Himmler’s words, written to parents, wife Marga, and mistress Hedwig, take us into his mindset without judgment or irony.

Filmmaker Vanessa Lapa’s deft juxtaposition of pictures some familiar, as in heaped up bones, with his romantic musings on how these times will be deemed, (“As to what is said about us: These German soldiers — they were decent,”), with Jonathan Sheffer’s evocative score in background, effect a retelling of this history in riveting detail.

The idealistic Himmler rose through the Nazi ranks and further rose to the occasion of mass murder proclaiming it only right, and a duty: “A master race must be able to eliminate those who are inferior.” His early anti-Semitism, from pre-war letters, is, like the old joke, only slightly more than is appropriate, as when he depicts an attractive dancer he met in a café: “There was nothing Jewish in her behavior. She deserved respect.” 

He is not keen on homosexuals either, but “the Jews are our misfortune.” Fast forward to the building of concentration camps, a creative solution. He may have experienced a pang of conscience about sending a stolen fur and gold bracelet back home to family, Jewish wealth that should have gone to the Reich. The term “decent” (entshtendlich) — his, sprinkled often in his words — becomes a refrain of self-proclaimed honor.

In Germany’s defeat, Himmler took cyanide two days after capture by the British. Interviewed in 1945, Marga, pained only by her husband’s infidelity, claims he never talked about the camps. Weren’t you interested? Shouldn’t you have asked? Asks an off-screen interrogator.

His daughter Gudrun carried on the important work, assisting Nazi war criminals through the “Silent Aid” organization. Villains rarely think they are bad. In Gudrun’s case, being politically incorrect may just be a way to stay a daddy’s girl, connected to the man and Fatherland she idolized. Himmler’s papers’ remarkable postwar journey could make another movie. This one is a bracing reminder of how monsters are made of ordinary men.

“The Decent One” opens October 1 at Film Forum in NYC.

Regina Weinreich is the author of Kerouac’s Spontaneous Poetics, editor of Kerouac’s Book of Haikus, and co-producer/director of the documentary, “Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider.” She writes frequently on Holocaust subjects.

Himmler did have 'friends' The photo is inscribed by Himmler: "To his eminence the Grand Mufti, 4 VII 1943, in remembrance H Himmler"

Polish Jews Split Over Exhuming Jewish Victims of Nazi era Polish Pogrom.

Source picture here.

Polish Jews Split Over Exhuming  Jewish Victims of Nazi era Polish Pogrom. HT: Forward.

In September 1941, a group of villagers wielding axes and other tools descended upon the homes of their Jewish neighbors and murdered every last one, according to testimonies gathered by Holocaust scholars.

Not much else is known about the massacre in Wasosz, a village 100 miles east of Warsaw, including basics like the number of victims. Current estimates range widely, from 180 to 1,200.

In an effort to provide conclusive forensic evidence about the massacre, in July a Polish prosecutor asked Jewish community leaders for permission to exhume the bodies. The plan has split the community, with some passionately supporting what they see as a last chance for justice and others claiming it would violate the dignity of the dead and Jewish religious law, or halachah.

“Once the bodies are in the ground, halachah teaches us they are not to be disturbed except when it is done to protect the dignity of the dead or to save lives,” Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told JTA. “I and other rabbis and the leadership of the Jewish community in Warsaw, among others, feel neither stipulation applies to Wasosz. A desire to clarify history is not enough.”

Piotr Kadlcik, president of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, the country’s main Jewish umbrella group, called Schudrich’s position “a serious mistake, with detrimental implications.”

“We have tools to determine details about both victims and perpetrators in a matter which is still a criminal matter,” said Kadlcik, who is seeking an exhumation followed by Jewish burial of the human remains. “If we let this chance go, the case of Wasosz will become history – an unclear one and subject to falsification.”

In a move to undermine opponents to exhumation, Kadlcik has requested an opinion from Rabbi Yakov Ruza, a prominent authority in Israel on forensic medicine. Polish prosecutors have also reviewed the Israeli law that permits exhumation in cases involving a murder investigation, Kadlcik said.

Meanwhile, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance – the government body whose prosecutor, Radoslaw Ignatiew, initiated the investigation of Wasosz – is holding off on any exhumation until at least 2015 while the issue is discussed within the Jewish community.

The debate has ramifications well beyond an internal Jewish dispute over halachah and forensics. In the background are echoes of Jedwabne, an earlier investigation of another wartime mass murder of Jews by Poles.

The opening of that probe in 2001 was a watershed moment for Poland, according to Joanna Michlic, a historian at Bristol University, who wrote a 43-page paper chronicling how the debate split the Catholic Church, generated ultranationalist protests featuring anti-Semitic hate speech, led to the replacement of a memorial plaque that blamed the Germans for the murders and, finally, yielded the first admission by a Polish president of Polish guilt.

Before Jedwabne, Holocaust-era crimes by Poles were taboo because they undermined the communist narrative that all Poles were equal victims of Nazism. The subject remains divisive today because it undermines the current government’s focus on Polish wartime heroism and resistance to totalitarianism.

From a forensic perspective, the dig in Jedwabne was inconclusive. Though an excavation of the site revealed some human remains, it never progressed to include exhumation – as per understandings reached between Polish authorities and rabbis, including Schudrich.

Without exhumation, it was impossible to answer such basic questions as how many people died, which in turn left the door open to revisionism in far-right circles. Several nationalist lawmakers, clergymen and journalists continue to dispute Polish complicity.

“Jedwabne was ultimately a missed opportunity,” Jan Gross, the Princeton historian whose research triggered the 2001 debate, told JTA. “Some important findings were recovered, but questions persisted because the probe was interrupted before basic facts could be recovered.”

For Kadlcik, Wasosz is a chance to correct the opportunity missed at Jedwabne.

“For the ultranationalists, the bottom line from Jedwabne is as follows: The Jews made accusations but hid behind their religious laws at the first attempt to corroborate,” Kadlcik said. “Well, this time we need to settle this and serve justice.”

But Schudrich also drew painful lessons from the Jedwabne probe.

“The entire place was littered with human remains – not just the area where we thought the bodies lay,” he said. “So as soon as the digging began, we saw bones fused together in fire, earrings of little girls. We found children’s bones. To any reasonable person, that settled any doubts there may have been about a massacre. There is no justification to violate the dignity of the dead.”

As for serving justice, Schudrich said, “The perpetrators will get justice from God. The small minority that refuses to face reality and historical evidence, no exhumation is going to change their minds.” Hmmm....The truth must be known, so we learn from our past , NEVER AGAIN.

Archeologists Find Gas Chamber at Sobibor Nazi Death Camp

Archeologists Find Gas Chamber at Sobibor Nazi Death Camp. Dig Uncovers Well-Preserved Nazi Horror. HT: Forward.

An archaeological dig at Sobibor has uncovered the Nazi death camp’s gas chambers.

The excavations in Poland have been going on since 2007, and thousands of inmates’ personal items have been found at the site. They include rings, pendants, earrings, jewelry, perfume bottles, medicine cases and food utensils, Yad Vashem said Wednesday.

The water well used at Sobibor’s Camp 1, in which an uprising by inmates took place, also was discovered. The well also contained the personal items of Jewish inmates.

David Silberklang, senior historian at the International Institute for Holocaust Research and editor in chief of Yad Vashem Studies, called the discovery of the gas chambers “a very important finding in Holocaust research.”

“There were no survivors from among the Jews who worked in the area of the gas chambers. Therefore, these findings are all that is left of those murdered there, and they open a window onto the day-to-day suffering of these people,” he said in a statement.

“We will now be able to know more precisely what the process of murder was in the camp, and what the Jews went through until they were murdered. Additionally, finding the gas chambers and their capacity will enable us to estimate more precisely the number of people murdered in Sobibor.”

Archaeologist Yoram Haimi said the staff was “amazed at the size of the building and the well-preserved condition of the chamber walls.”

The Sobibor camp operated between April 1942 and October 1943, during which time some 250,000 Jews were murdered there. In the wake of the camp uprising on Oct. 14, 1943, the Germans decided to dismantle the camp, bulldozing it and leaving no signs that it was a former death camp.
Until now, researchers used survivor testimony for details about the camp.

Forgotten faces and smiles facing the Holocaust in Kutno Ghetto Poland 1939-40.

Forgotten faces and smiles facing the Holocaust in Kutno Ghetto Poland 1939-40.(DM).

How Hitler's PERSONAL photographer captured for history the plight of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland Hugo Jaeger's photographs normally celebrate the glory and triumphalism of the Third Reich 

But in this set he depicts the tragic circumstances of Jews while allowing them to retain their humanity and dignity Taken in the Polish town of Kutno in 1939 and 1940 they have been released to mark the official establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto.
But soon after this photograph was taken, they would face almost certain death. 
This haunting image is one of a series depicting Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland before they were rounded up to be sent to the gas chambers......."NEVER FORGET, NEVER AGAIN"

Hmmmm..........Esteemed Rabbi Writes to the 613 "Rabbis for Obama"......Warns : "Er Kommt." Read and see the full story here.