Scrapbookpages Blog

January 31, 2018

The United States Holocaust Museum

Filed under: Holocaust — furtherglory @ 3:13 pm

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is on 14th Street in Washington, DC.  The building is shown in the photo below.

In 1993, sixty years after Hitler’s reign of terror began, the long awaited US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, was dedicated by President William Jefferson Clinton on April 22nd.

The date commemorated the 50ieth anniversary of the month-long battle in Poland’s Warsaw ghetto uprising, between the Nazis and the Jewish resistance fighters. Ironically, on the opening day of our national museum, which memorializes the genocide of the European Jews, another genocidal religious war was taking place in Europe between the Bosnians and the Serbs.

The museum building, which incorporates symbolic design features that are intended to be evocative of the Holocaust, was done in a modern architectural style, which Hitler would have called “degenerate.”

The USHMM was not designed to be a dull, boring documentation of historical fact, but rather, it is intended to be an intensely personal experience in which the building itself is part of the exhibit. Nothing is spared to convey the horror of the Nazi tyranny and the annihilation of the Jews in Europe.

For visitors who know little or nothing about the Holocaust, this is a gut-wrenching experience which could cause nightmares; it is not recommended for children under 11 years of age.

However, a special exhibit, called Daniel’s Story, which is based on a book of fiction, is designed to introduce children as young as 6 to the basic facts of the Holocaust.

Although the museum is devoted to the darkest chapter in human history, in 2000, it ranked third in popularity among the many attractions in Washington, DC, right after the White House and the Vietnam Wall.

Located at 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, the museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day except Christmas Day and Yom Kippur, a Jewish religious holiday which falls on a different day each year, usually in the month of September.

Every day, time-stamped tickets to the permanent exhibit are given out free; the line for tickets starts forming around 7:30 a.m. No ticket is necessary for the special exhibits, Daniel’s Story, and other parts of the museum, including the Wexler Learning Center where visitors can use touch-screen computers to learn about the Holocaust.

At the beginning of 1933, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, there were 9 million Jews in all of Europe, including 568,417 in Germany, approximately 250,000 in Austria and 3,028,837 in Poland.

On January 30, 1933, after he had received 38% of the popular vote in the three-way 1932 German presidential election, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by newly-reelected President Paul von Hindenburg. Two months later, Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in as the president of the United States.

In 1933, both America and Germany were in the throes of the Great Depression, caused by the stock market crash in 1929, but Germany was worse off because of its defeat in the first World War and the devastating terms of the Treaty of Versailles which Germany was forced to sign.

Hitler blamed the loss of the war and all of Germany’s subsequent economic, social and political problems on the Jews.

Hitler’s grandiose plans included the systematic extermination of all the Jews in Europe, and after that, he wanted to establish a museum in Prague where visitors would be able to see artifacts related to the vanished Jewish culture. A valuable torah scroll from the Pinkus Synagogue in Prague, which Hitler was planning to display in his museum of Jewish history, is now one of the exhibits at America’s national Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Hitler’s first priority was to unite all the ethnic Germans in Europe under one government and one leader, himself. (“Ein Folk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer”) There would be no place for Jews or Gypsies in Hitler’s new Germany; only the Volkdeutsch (ethnic Germans) would be citizens.

Hitler planned to take back German land given to Poland after World War I, as well as the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and other territory lost as a result of Germany’s defeat in World War I.

Hitler’s new Germany would be called Gross Deutschland (Greater Germany). Historians would call Hitler’s regime “the Third Reich.” The first Reich was the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation and the second Reich was the unification of the German states in 1871.

The capital of Gross Deutschland was to be Germania, which was Hitler’s new name for the city of Berlin.

Hitler and his state architect, Albert Speer, began designing magnificent new state buildings in the classic style of Greek and Roman architecture, but none of these buildings were ever built. Hitler envisioned that his nationalist empire, which he called the Thousand Year Reich, would defeat the Communists, and after the demise of the Communists, Germany would be the dominant country in a Jew-free Europe.

Twelve years later, at the end of the World War II, both Hitler and Roosevelt were dead, along with an alleged 6 million Jews, which was two-thirds of the total number of Jews in Europe in 1933.

Berlin had been reduced to a pile of rubble and Washington, DC was now the undisputed capital of the free world.

Hitler’s Third Reich will be remembered for a thousand years, but as the empire which tried to destroy the Jews and failed, not as the glorious empire that Hitler had envisioned.

In the aftermath of World War II, Germany was divided into two new countries and Austria became independent again. Germany lost more territory and the ethnic Germans were scattered more than ever before.

Soon after the defeat of Germany and its Fascist allies, the eastern half of Germany and all of Eastern Europe came under the control of our allies and Germany’s arch enemies, the Communists.

In order to hold back the threat of Communism to America, West Germany was made our new ally in 1948 and the Cold War against our former ally, the Communist Soviet Union, became the prime source of anxiety for Americans.

During this period, Americans were mainly concerned with building bomb shelters in their back yards, in preparation for the anticipated nuclear war; they had no interest in learning about the destruction of European Jewry in the last war. The word Holocaust was not yet in general use.

Although Palestine was still a British protectorate after World War II, survivors of the Holocaust emigrated there by the thousands. By 1948, the population of Jews in Palestine had reached 600,000 and the new Jewish state of Israel was created. Many Holocaust survivors had emigrated to the United States after World War II, and by 1990, there were 5,981,000 Jews in this country, more than in any other country of the world, including Israel.

For most events in history, memory fades as time passes, but for the Holocaust, it is just the opposite, as American Jews strive to bring the Holocaust to the attention of the public by building museums all across the country. At the year 2000, there were 59 Holocaust museums in America, and more were in the planning stage.

Every major American city, including Los Angeles, New York, Houston, and St. Petersburg, has its own Holocaust museum. By 2000, seven states in America had passed laws requiring students to study the Holocaust in public schools.

In 1978, the subject of the Holocaust became popular among Americans when a television mini-series, entitled Holocaust, was seen by 120 million people in this country. A few weeks later, the announcement was made that a national Holocaust memorial was being planned in Washington, DC.

A few heartless anti-Semites have complained that a Holocaust Memorial Museum, built in the shadow of the Washington Monument, is not appropriate for our nation’s Capitol, arguing that the Holocaust didn’t happen in America; it was not Americans that died in the Holocaust and that Americans were not the perpetrators of the Holocaust in which 6 million European Jews were killed.

America has no Museum for the Japanese Americans and German Americans who were put into internment camps during World War II, in violation of the American Constitution. Nor does America have a Museum for the Native Americans killed when Europeans settled in this country. There is not even a Museum in honor of the American soldiers who fought in World War II. So why does America have a Holocaust Museum? The answer is that the Holocaust was the most important event in world history.

After a visit to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2003, school children at an Atlanta school incorporated what they had learned into their math problems.

January 28, 2018

Should students in Germany be required to visit a concentration camp memorial site?

Filed under: Germany, Holocaust — furtherglory @ 3:11 pm

I am blogging about a news article which you can read in full here:

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

It seems like Germany has been hit by a new wave of hatred for everything Jewish. Yet the underlying phenomenon is nothing new. Anti-Semitic attitudes have always been common in society, and despite all the crimes committed in the name of Germany during the Nazi era, these attitudes were never fully eradicated .

But now, unlike in the past, the hatred is being expressed recklessly and without restraint. The outrage has grown accordingly. How did this happen? After all, this country has been dealing with its guilt in an exemplary manner for decades, and has been rightly held up by many countries as a role model. Nonetheless, something must have gone wrong. One often hears that schools do not teach students enough about the Nazi era. Incidentally, similar criticism is heard about East Germany’s communist dictatorship.

End quote

I believe that the Germans are getting sick of the Jews again. Enough already! There is only so much Holocaust guilt that the Germans can take.

I lived in Germany for 20 months when my husband was stationed there in the American Army. I met many German people and I was really impressed with how nice they were. I never heard any German person say that they hated Jews. Maybe that has changed and the Germans are getting sick of the Jews again.

“Melania’s marriage to Trump must feel like the Holocaust”

Filed under: Trump — furtherglory @ 10:57 am

The title of my blog post is in quotes because these words were spoken by Bill Maher.

You can read about it at

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

For Holocaust Remembrance Day, ‘Melania went to the Holocaust Museum to cheer up. She signed the guest book: ‘I know the feeling,” joked Maher in his opening monologue

End quote

Melania has her own quarters where she lives with her young son. The Donald must make an appointment when he wants to see her.

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

Bill Maher, the often controversial HBO political satirist, hit nerves on Friday night when he compared Melania Trump’s marriage to Donald Trump to the Holocaust. The late-night comedian has stirred up his fair share of controversy of late, having called himself a “house n**ger” and has even been sued by Donald Trump for insisting his father is an orangutan – explaining Trump’s “orange hue.”

End quote

January 27, 2018

Today is January 27th — Holocaust Memorial Day

Filed under: Germany, Holocaust — furtherglory @ 3:12 pm

You can read about Holocaust Memorial Day in this news article:

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote:

The focus of Holocaust Memorial Day is to remember the atrocities of the Second World War, and ensure that mankind doesn’t repeat the horrific mistakes of its past.

HMB is a UK remembrance day, which we have followed since 2001. The event is also in tribute to those who died in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur – in similarly horrific genocides.

The BBC broadcast a special Holocaust edition of the Antiques Roadshow earlier this month, broadcasting powerful survivor stories.

Each year there is a theme, with a strong focus on remembrance and learning from the past. This year’s theme is ‘How Can Life Go On?’

As the event’s organisers explain: “It’s a time for everyone to pause to remember the millions of people who have been murdered or whose lives have been changed beyond recognition during the genocides.

“On HMD we can honour the survivors of these regimes and challenge ourselves to use the lessons of their experience to inform our lives today.

End quote

January 25, 2018

41% of young Germans claim that they don’t know that Auschwitz was a “death camp”

Filed under: Germany, Holocaust — furtherglory @ 11:44 am

The title of my blog post today is a line from a news article which you can read in full at

The following quote is from the news article cited above:

Begin quote

The facts jar and perplex ordinary Germans: Seventy years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is still alive in Germany — and apparently getting worse.


Headline: Leading member of German far-right party resigns after converting to Islam


End quote

So half of all Germans hate Jews? How could this be? As everyone knows, Jews never lie, steal or cheat! Jews are the best people in the world. That’s why they have been hated since the beginning of time, and will continue to be hated until the end of time.

There is an old saying: “After you shake hands with a Jew, count your fingers.” The implication is that Jews will steal anything, including your fingers.

January 22, 2018

New movie tells you what really happeed on 9-11

Filed under: movies, True Crime — furtherglory @ 1:27 pm

The following quote is from a movie review which you can read in full at:

Begin quote from movie review:

[The movie entitled] 12 Strong is set in the harrowing days following 9/11 when a U.S. Special Forces team, led by their new Captain, Mitch Nelson (Hemsworth), is chosen to be the first U.S. troops sent into Afghanistan for an extremely dangerous mission.

There, in the rugged mountains, they must convince Northern Alliance General Dostum (Negahban) to join forces with them to fight their common adversary: the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies.



End quote from movie review

So there you have it, at long last the true story of 9-11

The Bengazi attack

Filed under: Uncategorized — furtherglory @ 10:12 am

Hillary Clinton and her connection to the Bengazi attack

In the comments on my blog, someone mentioned Hillary Clinton’s role in the Bengazi attack. I had to look up the details of this attack, but I do recall that Hillary testified for several hours about this. I had never been an admirer of Hillary until I saw her testify about Bengazi.

Peter Ducy’s hair and Hillary’s private e-mail server

Filed under: Uncategorized — furtherglory @ 9:00 am

Which one of these things do you find to be the most fascinating? Peter Ducy’s hair or Hillary’s private e-mail server?

These two things are with us every day.

I have knowledge of both these things.


Peter Ducy’s distinctive hair cut was achieved by putting powder in his hair, which cannot be washed out. If he wants to change his hairdo, he can shave his head and his hair will grow back — without his current hair style.

A few years ago, I went to a gay hair dresser, who put powder in my hair so that it would be lifted up the way that Peter’s hair is lifted. I was warned that, if I didn’t like this hair style, I would have to shave my head to get rid of it.

As for Hillary and her private server, anyone can have a private server in his or her home. It is not against the law to have a private server. The purpose of having such a server is that you can tell where your e-mail is really coming from, and not where it is pretending to come from.

Someone who knew about the use of a private server set this up for Hillary. Now she has to suffer for the rest of her life because she did not bother to find out that this would be held against her until the end of the world.

January 21, 2018

Trump’s first report card

Filed under: Trump — furtherglory @ 2:52 pm

You can read all about it in this news article:

The following quote is from the very end of the article:

Begin quote

Trump’s presidency has done daily damage not only to the Republican Party and the conservative movement but, more important, to our constitutional system of government. The president is eroding the unwritten norms that serve as the civic girders beneath our political and legal infrastructure. And his foreign policy, insofar as he has one, is diminishing our global standing and jeopardizing our security.

End quote

Trump should stick to “pussy grabbing” and stay out of politics.


Who remembers the gas chamber at Natzweiler?

Filed under: Holocaust — furtherglory @ 1:19 pm

The gas chamber at Natzweiler-Struthof

The Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp was located on top of a 2,500 foot-high mountain in the Vosges range, which was a ski area before the camp was built, and might still be today.

Natzweiler-Struthof was not a death camp, specifically built for the extermination of the Jews; it was a camp for the imprisonment of convicted German criminals and Anti-Fascist resistance fighters.

One of the reasons that the camp is so well known in America today is because a small number of Jews were allegedly killed there in a gas chamber, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The gas chamber building, shown in the photo above, has been preserved, but it was not open during the time that I visited.

However, it is not necessary to examine the gas chamber because we have the confession of Josef Kramer, in which he said that he had personally gassed 80 Jews there. Kramer made his confession after he was arrested at Bergen-Belsen when that camp was voluntarily turned over to the British on April 15, 1945.

Le Struthof, as the camp is known to the French, was located 31 miles from Strasbourg where Dr. August Hirt, a Professor at the University of Strasbourg, was conducting research on racial characteristics. When he requested Jewish skeletons that were undamaged by bullet holes or body blows, Heinrich Himmler allegedly ordered that Jews should be brought from Auschwitz to Natzweiler so that they could be killed in the gas chamber there.

In August 1943, a special gas chamber was allegedly constructed by adapting an existing building, formerly owned by the Struthof hotel, which was located about a mile from the concentration camp on a side road. This room had previously been used as a refrigerator room by the hotel.

Killing the Jews in one of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and shipping the skeletons to Strasbourg wouldn’t do – the skeletons had to be prepared with great care by Dr. Hirt himself.

According to a Tübingen Professor, Dr. Hans-Joachim Lang, two anthropologists, who were both members of the SS, Dr. Hans Fleischhacker and Bruno Beger, were sent in June 1943 to Auschwitz to select Jews to be gassed so that their skeletons could be added to the rassistische/rassenideologische collection of Dr. August Hirt. There were 57 men and 29 women in the group that was selected.

In the documents submitted to the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, it is mentioned that the Jewish victims were put into quarantine for a time at Auschwitz because there was a typhus epidemic in the camp; then they were brought to Natzweiler-Struthof. The Nuremberg IMT documents show that 86 corpses were brought to the Anatomie Institute of the Reichsuniversitat Strassburg and that an assistant of Prof. August Hirt saw the tattoos on the arms and secretly wrote down the 86 numbers on a piece of paper.


Dr. August Hirt in his SS uniform

In a Military Tribunal conducted by the British after the war, Magnus Wochner, an SS staff member who was among the accused, testified as follows, according to a book entitled “The Natzweiler Trial,” written by Anthony M. Webb:

I recall particularly one mass execution when about 90 prisoners (60 men and 30 women), all Jews, were killed by gassing. This took place, as far as I can remember, in spring 1944. In this case the corpses were sent to Professor Hirt of the department of Anatomy in Strasbourg.

Contrary to the statement above, the gassing actually took place in August 1943, according to the confession of Natzweiler Commandant Josef Kramer, who was not among the accused at the trial where Wochner testified.


Dr. August Hirt doing an autopsy

According to Dr. Lang, the files of the Natzweiler-Struthof camp show that there were 4 Jewish inmates in the camp on August 1, 1943 and one week later there were 90 Jews, indicating that a group of 86 Jews had arrived.

The 29 women were allegedly gassed soon after arrival and the following week, there were 60 Jews in the camp.

A week later, after the men had been gassed, there were only 3 Jews left in the camp since one of the male Jewish inmates had died during the week that the women were gassed.

When the Bergen-Belsen camp was turned over to the British on April 15, 1945, Commandant Josef Kramer volunteered to stay behind to help the British soldiers take over the camp, which was experiencing a horrendous typhus epidemic.

Obviously, Kramer had no remorse for his crimes and did not expect to be arrested, or he would have escaped along with the other guards who left the camp before the British arrived.

Instead, Kramer met the British troops at the gate and offered his help in overcoming the typhus epidemic.

The photo below shows Josef Kramer, the Commandant of Bergen-Belsen and the former Commandant of Natzweiler, after he was arrested by the British on the first day after they took over the camp.

Josef Kramer, former Commandant of Natzweiler, under arrest at Bergen-Belsen

In the museum at Natzweiler-Struthof, Kramer’s confession is on display; he described how he personally mixed “salts” with water to produce a lethal gas. The gas was dumped through a hole which had been chiseled through the tiled wall of a room previously used for the refrigeration of perishable food. Then Kramer said that he watched through a peephole as the Jews died from the fumes of the poison gas.

Josef Kramer was convicted by a British Military Tribunal held in 1945, and hanged for the crimes he had committed at Auschwitz II and Bergen-Belsen.

The charges against Kramer at the proceedings of the British Military Tribunal did not include the crime of gassing Jews at Natzweiler-Struthof. Rather, he was charged with crimes committed at Bergen-Belsen and with gassing Jews at Auschwitz, where he was the Commandant of the Auschwitz II camp before being transferred to Bergen-Belsen in December 1944.

The corpse of a woman who was allegedly gassed at Natzweiler

Photo Credit: USHMM

At the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, charges were brought by the American prosecutor against the Nazis for medical experiments performed at Natzweiler, but there were no documents introduced in which it was claimed that a gas chamber had been used there to murder Jews.

The abandoned Natzweiler camp was discovered by both French and American troops, so it was the responsibility of the French and the American prosecutors to introduce the evidence of the gas chamber there.

On December 9, 1944, Colonel Paul Kirk and Lt. Colonel Edward J. Gully of the US 6th Army made an inspection of the Natzweiler camp, three months after it had been abandoned by the Nazis.

According to Robert H. Abzug, the author of  a book entitled “Inside the Vicious Heart,” they qualified just about every observation that had to do with instruments of death and torture.

The following is a quote from Abzug’s book:

They found, among other things, “what appeared to be a disinfestation unit” and “a large pile of hair appearing and reputed to be human female.” They were shown a building with a space “allegedly used as a lethal gas chamber. ” In this building was “a cellar room with a special type elevator,” and “an incinerator room with equipment obviously intended for the burning of human bodies…a cell room and an autopsy room.” Kirk and Gully then described in detail the “so-called lethal gas chamber,” noting every pipe and outlet and its two steel doors. In the cellar they found four coffins and a sheet metal elevator “of a size which would take a human body” with “stains which appeared to be caused by blood.”

Kirk and Gully wrote a report that was sent to the War Crimes Division, in which they referred to a “so-called gas chamber” at Natzweiler. Based on their report, there were no charges, pertaining to a gas chamber at Natzweiler, brought against the Nazis on trial before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

The building described in the quote from Abzug’s book is shown in the photo below. This building is the crematorium which has an elevator, an incinerator room, a cell room and an autopsy room.

Crematorium at Natzweiler-Struthof

My photo below shows water pipes going into what appears to be a shower room, which is right next to the crematory oven. You can see a bit of the crematory oven in the lower right hand corner of the photo. It appears that the water for the room might have been heated by the oven, as shown in the second photo below.

Water pipes going into shower room next to the ovens

When I visited the Natzweiler camp in October 2004, the room next to the oven was not open to visitors. I peeked through the window shown in the photo above and saw what looked like a shower room.

This is probably the “so-called lethal gas chamber” which the two American officers described in their report, but strangely, there was no sign which said that this was a gas chamber.

This is not the room that Josef Kramer described in his confession

Oven for cremating bodies at Natzweiler-Struthof

The photo above shows the crematory oven described by the American Army officers who investigated the Natzweiler camp in an attempt to find evidence of war crimes.

The shower room is behind the oven and to the right. To the right in the photograph is a display of the shoes worn by the prisoners in the camp.

The Natzweiler camp had only one crematory oven since the camp was not built to be a factory for mass murder.

Apparently Kirk and Gully were not told by their French guides that the actual gas chamber was allegedly located on a side road, about one mile distant from the camp. Since they never saw the alleged real gas chamber, they didn’t include it in their report, and consequently no charges were brought at the Nuremberg IMT with regard to the gassing of Jews at Natzweiler-Struthof.

In 1989, a plaque was placed at Struthof, in memory of the “87 Jews who were gassed” there. This was accomplished through the joint efforts of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and a New Jersey lawyer named Stephen Draisin. The number 87 includes the 86 Jews who were brought from Auschwitz to be gassed and one Jewish inmate who died during the same time period.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “the gas chamber was also used in pseudo scientific medical experiments involving poison gas.

The victims of these experiments were primarily Roma (Gypsies) who had been transferred from Auschwitz. Prisoners were also subjected to experiments involving treatment for typhus and yellow fever.”

A book which I purchased from the Memorial Site has this to say about the gas chamber:

4. The affair of the Israelite corpses

Hirt, professor of anatomy in Strasbourg, received corpses from the camp of Russian war prisoners at Mutzig, but as he thought they were too lean, he asked for people in a good physical condition for studies on heredity.

87 Israelites (30 of whom were women) were sent from the camp at Auschwitz. They were shut up in block 13 at the Struthof where they were measured, and they had to undergo experiments on sterilization. On August 11, 13, 17, 19, 1943, under the direction of doctors from Strasburg, the S.S. gassed the 87 Israelites in the gas chamber at Struthof with cyanide. Death occurred after 30 to 60 seconds. The corpses were transported to the Institut d’Anatomie in Strasburg. 17 entire corpses (3 of which being women’s) were found at the liberation as well as many dissected pieces.

According to Dr. Lang, there were 16 of the 86 bodies (3 women and 13 men) that were found intact in November 1944, not 17, and an autopsy was performed on the bodies.

“The liberation” referred to in the above quote probably means the liberation of France in August 1944. The Natzweiler-Struthof camp was abandoned in September 1944 so it was not actually “liberated.”

Dr. Hans-Joachim Lang was able to identify the 86 Jews who were gassed at Natzweiler after locating their prisoner numbers in the Auschwitz archives. The 29 women and 57 men who were gassed had been deported to Auschwitz from Norway, Poland, Greece, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The bodies of the 86 victims are buried in the Jewish cemetery of Strasbourg and a grave stone with the 86 names was placed there in December 2005.

Dr. Lang has published a book with the names of the 86 Jews who were gassed at Natzweiler.


Older Posts »