Memory of the Liberation of the Camp.

international | sci-tech | event notice Thursday January 06, 2005 13:53 by -

Auschwitz in Poland was the camp where millions of European citizens were sent by Adolf Eichmann's office to be exterminated under the orders of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.

It was liberated at 3pm on the 27th of January 1945 by one officer of the Soviet army on horseback accompanied by one platoon of infantry scouts.

It was the location of Josef Mengele's experimentation.

there were many other badges.

Thanks to the survivors of the camp we know a little of what occured there.

The survivors of the camps (for there were many in an arc through Europe from Dachau to the Ukraine) included the former director of the NSO of Ireland Dr. Janos Furst.

The books were many they include most notably those of the italian chemist Primo Levi.

On the 27th of January 2005, the BBC will broadcast a short memorial act in which the violinist Maxim Vengerov will play the Chaconne from the Bach D minor partita.

The music of the camps was scant, we are left the French organist and composer Olivier Messiaen's "quartet for the end of time" which he wrote whilst in another type of camp, one for "prisoners of war".

Auschwitz, Dachau, and others were death camps.

And before death they were camps of experimentation. We may never know the full extent of Josef Mengele's crimes against humanity and creation, which were located in block 10 of the camp. We do know he was called the "angel of death". We do know that all twins who entered the camp were killed by him as he sought the secret of giving the world Hitler's master race. We know he worked closely with geneticist Professor Otmar Freiherr von Verscheur, who joined his staff in 1937.
We do know Freiherr von Verscheur shipped out two truckloads of documents from his research institute in Berlin, taking care to destroy all of his correspondence with Mengele.

We do know that the Angel of Death escaped the Soviet army in Poland in early january 1945 leaving the camp on the 17th of January and transferring his test results to Gross Rosen, in Silesia, where bacteriological-warfare experiments on Soviet prisoners had been conducted since the beginning of 1942.

We do know that his name was added to the list of the most serious war criminals and criminals against humanity in April 1945 and it was distributed to all Allied units.

We do know the Angel of Death had not received the blood tattoo which was worn by all officers of the SS, and lacking that identification could easily pass a member of the Wehrmacht. We know he arrived in a Wehrmacht field hospital on May 2nd 1945 the day Hitler's death was reported at the Berlin chancellory. We know Mengele refused to believe that Hitler had died from the testimony of his geneticist friend.

On the 8th of May 1945 Keitel signed the unconditional surrender of Germany to the Allies and Mengele's unit crossed the frontier from Czechoslovakia into Saxony, in what is now Eastern Germany.

We do know Mengele and his unit had moved into the narrow strip in central Europe that the Americans and Russians both informally agreed not to enter. Less than 25 miles separated the two Allied powers. In between the Russian and American pincer, some 15,000 German soldiers had become trapped.

On June 15th 1945 American forces entered the area and took some 10,000 German prisoners. Mengele was not among 12 of them; together with his unit, he had made a run for freedom entering Bavaria.

Thereafter he was held by the US army for a short time in 1945 but was released by them in August 1945 after Trumann had dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan.
The americans explained this oversight was due to non-identification, (the lack of the tatoo) and the chaos of operation the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects [CROWCASS] compiled by the Allied High Command in Paris for circulation to detention camps throughout Europe.

Though he had given them his real name after a fellow officer accused him of dishonour in using an allias. He remained a further three years on a farm in American occupied Germany till the new German constitution when he continued his escape by moving to Argentina.

He lived there under these names - Fritz Ulmann, Fritz Hollmann, Helmut Gregor, G. Helmuth, Jose Mengele, Ludwig Gregor, Wolfgang Gerhard.
He brought his files and the results of his experimentation to South America where he lived in Argentina from 1949 afterr sailing there on the North Star to Beunos Aires he lived there operating an agricultural equipment company till 1959.

During which time his father visited him in 1954,.

During a trip to Paraguay in 1954 Mengele met another key contact, Alejandro von Eckstein. He was then a captain in the Paraguayan army, and he cosponsored Mengele's bid for Paraguayan citizenship in 1959.

Alfredo Stroessner had just taken over Paraguay, ruling with the absolute power derived from the 1940 constitution, which allowed him to declare a state of emergency and suspend habeas corpus.

In 1956 he reverted to his real name and thus lived openly as Josef Mengele, in 1958 he married the widow of his brother Martina Mengele. During which time the Mengele family operated the dominant share in a pharmaceutical company registered in the USA and developed genetic theories and artifical insemination techniques though ostensibly his money was derived from the agricultural equipment business his father had started.

he moved finally to the dictatorship of Stroessner's Paraguay in 1959.

In 1964 the universities of Munich and Frankfurt finally withdrew his academic degrees.

He is believed to have died from drowning in a river in Brazil in 1979.

in 1985 his body was exhumed for forensic examination which confirmed the DNA was that of Mengele.

in 1985 he was tried "in absentia" by the Yad Velem court of Israel.

and found guilty.

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We may never know the full extent of the organisation that spanned Germany, and the Southern American dictatorships that allowed the Angel of Death to find solace and prosperity there amongst many others, which facilitated his regular visits to Europe, which infected the diplomatic missions of Switzerland the post war Germany and allowed him to elude Simon Weisenthal.

We may never know the full extent of his experimentation either at Auschwiz Birkenau or the other deaqth and experimentation camps, in which Jews, Slavs, Soviets, Gypsies, dissidents, homosexuals, twins, masons, catholics, lutherans, and even SS and wehrmacht officers themselves were stripped of their citizenship, rights, property and divine given rights.

But we may never stop trying to know.
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Kaddish

Yithgadal vyithkadash shmeh raba b'alma di-vra chir'utheh
vyamlich malchutheh bkhayechon uvyomechon uvkhaye
dchol-beyt yisra'el, ba'agala uvizman kariv, v'imru: amen.

Yheh shmeh raba mvarach l'alam ul'almeh almaya.

Yithbarach vyishthabach vyithpa'ar vyithromam vyithnaseh
vyithhadar vyith'aleh vyithhalal shmeh dkudsha, brich hu.
L'eyla (ul'eyla) min-kol-birchatha vshiratha tushbkhatha
vnekhematha da'amiran b'alma, v'imru: amen.

Yheh shlama raba min-shmaya vkhayim aleynu v'al kol-
yisra'el, v'imru: amen.

Oseh shalom bim-romav, hu ya'aseh shalom aleynu v'al
kol-yisra'el, v'imru: amen

=
Kaddish

Glorified and sanctified be God's great name throughout the world which He has created according to His will.
May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days, and within the life of the entire House of
Israel, speedily and soon; and say, Amen.

May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.

Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy
One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the
world; and say, Amen.

May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

He who creates peace in His celestial heights, may He create peace for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen !