(2) NON-DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS
When writing about the concentration camps of Nazi-era Germany, many authors use definitions not in English dictionaries. These definitions include: camps officially entitled a "Konzentrationslager" (which literally means "concentration camp" in German), camps administered by the part of the SS which operated concentration camps, camps a purpose of which was to kill most of their prisoners (promptly after arrival, gradually by working the prisoners to death, or in any other way), camps which were cruel to their prisoners, and camps a majority of the prisoners of which were Jews. POW (prisoner of war) camps were not concentration camps.
If Auschwitz had had a sign "music conservatory" outiside it, that would not have meant that Auschwitz had been a music conservatory. Because a German camp had a sign outside with German words which literally translate into English as "concentration camp", does not mean that the camp was a concentration camp as that term is defined in English dictionaries. Auschwitz was a place to kill people, not to detain or keep them.
This page concerns a few camps in northwest Germany, all of which are in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) state. Engerhafe, Neugraben, and Neuengamme worked Jewish prisoners to death. The function of Esterwegen camp changed from time to time.
During the Nazi period, Germany operated thousands of concentration camps (perhaps over ten thousand). This page has information about a few, former camps in northwest Germany (for example, detailed instructions on how to get there). Engerhafe, Neugraben, and Neuengamme were always run by the SS.
Engerhafe was a satellite camp of Neuengamme camp. The satellite camp was on (and on both sides of) what is now Dodentwenter street, between the church and Achterumsweg street, in Engerhafe village, Aurich county, Niedersachsen state, Germany. Part of the camp was directly across a street from the village's church. Most of the grounds of the former camp are now occupied by a field, one-family houses and other buildings, at least one street (Dodentwenter), and at least one, narrow lane. Except for the bottoms of a few brick walls (in a toilet area of the former camp), almost nothing remains of the former camp. (I guess that the bricks were made in the Neuengamme concentration camp's brick factory.) A memorial for Engerhafe camp's victims is in the Evangelical Lutheran church cemetery, a short walk from the site of the former camp. Jewish men, brought into Germany from many countries, lived in the camp and did construction work (for example, military construction work) outside the camp.
There is a 7.8 megabyte, color, Quicktime movie showing some of the site on Saturday, 1 September 2001.
Esterwegen was one of the fifteen Emsland camps and prisons. All were near the Ems River, in rural areas of the Emsland and Grafschaft Bentheim counties of northwest Niedersachsen state. Most Emsland prisoners were Christians who were prisoners of war (especially Soviet POWs), political opponents of Nazism (especially government officials, politicians, union leaders, and intellectuals), anti-German resistance fighters (Belgian partisans, for example), German military prisoners who had seriously misbehaved in a German military prison (and had therfore been transferred to a military punishment prison in the Emsland), homosexuals (all gay, I guess), and criminals. Emsland prisoners' work included building roads, digging ditches, farming (potatos, for example), and removing peat from the ground. As far as i know, POWs did not work (for example, did not harvest crops). Not all Emsland prisoners were white. Some French POWs were black. I think that some Soviet POWs were Oriental. Approximate latitudes and longitudes (in degrees and minutes) of some camps and camp cemeteries are in their descriptions below. Many camps and cemeteries were on or near Nord-Süd-Straße street.
ESTERWEGEN camp (Emsland camp number 7)
Esterwegen (which was Germany's biggest prison when it opened) was a concentration camp long before it became a satellite of Neuengamme camp. There was a court inside Esterwegen camp. Esterwegen's site is now occupied by a German army depot. Outside the depot's main entrance (on Hinterm Busch street, about half a block from Hinterm Berg rechts street, south of Bundestraße 401 street, north of Esterwegen town, in northeast Emsland county), signs tell about Esterwegen concentration camp. Nothing of the former Esterwegen concentration camp is at that site. Tourists are not allowed in the depot. There is a 7.8 megabyte, color, Quicktime movie showing some of the outside of the site of the former camp (not the cemetery) on Friday, 21 September 2001.
ESTERWEGEN cemetery (Gedenkenstaette Esterwegen)
Esterwegen's dead inmates (and some of the dead of other Emsland camps, too, I think) were buried here. The cemetery, which is always open, is on the south side of Bundestraße 401 street, west of Bockhorster Straße street, northwest of Esterwegen town, in the north part of Emsland county. Each gravestone has two notches. There is a 5.7 megabyte, color, Quicktime movie showing some of the Esterwegen cemetery on Friday, 21 September 2001.
Neuengamme concentration camp originallly was a satellite of Sachsenhausen camp but later reported directly to Berlin. The former camp is at Jean-Dolidier-Weg street 39, on the east side of Jean-Dolidier-Weg street, south of Klinkerweg street, in Neuengamme neighborhood, 21039 Hamburg. Telephone +49 4042 89603, fax +49 4042 896525. There is a local bus stop at the site of the former camp. Agricultural fields are across a street (Jean-Dolidier-Weg street) from the site. The site has some original buildings (such as a brick factory inmates worked in), some reconstructions (such as a clay pit), and some additional works (such as a memorial column and a museum). The camp's prisoners, almost all Jews, came from many countries. Neuengamme camp had several dozen satellite camps (also called subordinate camps, extension camps, external cammandos, and Außenlagern), one of which was on Alderney, an island in the English Channel.
There is an 11.2 megabyte, color, Quicktime movie showing some of the Neuengamme site on Wednesday, 14 February 2001.
Neugraben was a satellite camp of Neuengamme camp. Today, the former camp's site is a public park which is always open. There is a nearby bus stop: the Neugrabener Heideweg stop of the number 240 bus line. I suggest entering the park on the east side of Falkenbergsweg street, several steps north of Gödecke-Michels-Weg street, in Neugraben neighborhood, 21149 Hamburg, Germany. If you enter the park where I suggest, you will soon see a a hill. Some camp buildings were in a field on the hilltop. When one walks through the park, one sees nothing of the former camp except parts of foundations of some buildings. A memorial monument is near the front entrance of the police station in Neugrabener Markt, about half a mile from the park. (The memorial is next to the police station to protect the memorial from persistent desecration suffered by a memorial boulder in the park.) Jewish women (mostly from Czechoslovakia) were brought into Germany to that camp. They worked outside the camp. The former camp site is across a street (Falkenbergsweg street) from one-family houses.
There is a 9.6 megabyte, color, Quicktime movie showing the site on Saturday, 10 March 2001.
URBAN CAMPS
Many of the former camp sites of Nazi Germany were in the midst of cities (for example, Dessauer Uffer camp in Hamburg city), not in rural areas. For visitors to Germany who are curious about such things, the urban camp sites may be easier to visit.
CHRISTIAN PRISONERS
Many camps (for example, Esterwegen) had mostly Christian prisoners.
LABOR SHORTAGE
Many of the Jews in German concentration camps were brought into Germany (for example, to Engerhafe and Neugraben camps) to work. This importation of Jews to Germany to work (which was somewhat incompatible with Nazi ideology about Jews) is evidence of the severe labor shortage which contributed to Nazi Germany's military defeat.
FORMER CAMP BUILDINGS
In America, some private homes are made out of old barns. The architecture of those homes is sometimes discussed in magazines. Some concentration camp buildings have been incorporated into private houses in Germany. Those private houses are one-family houses (for example, at the sites of the former
Alexisdorf and Bathorn camps in the Emsland, two-story brick towers have been incorporated into one-family houses) and at least one nunnery (the Carmelite nunnery at Dachau). In some cases, the resulting architecture is interesting. By the way, the brick building which contained the Deßauer Ufer camp is now used as a warehouse.
MOVIES
Going to the camp sites is the best way to see what they look like now. Looking at the amateur, color, Quicktime movies mentionned above on this page are the second best way. For details, send email clearly identifyng yourself.
This is a preliminary discussion, written in the summer of 2006, of the Holocaust, especially how many Jews died in the Holcaust. There may be many mistakes in this preliminary discussion.
We will count someone as a Jew if he was killed because he was thought to be a Jew by the killer.
As far as we know, all of the killings were in Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Jews in French Africa were killed in the Holocaust. Many of them died during brutal, forced, railroad labor under the Vichy regime. Jews in Libya were killed when the German army was there.
To cooperate with Germany, Japan imprisoned Jews (for example, Jews who had fled to China to escape being killed in Europe). Japan kept them. Japan did not give them to Germany. Did any Jews die because of the imprisonment? For example, did a Jew die trying to escape or avoid capture by Japan? Did a Jewish prisoner die because he needed medical care that was unavilable in prison but was available outside prison? We don't know.
Most killings were in Europe.
There are at least two, different approaches to calculating the number of Jewish Holocaust deaths: addition and subtraction.
In addition, one starts from zero deaths, then counts up. The Yad Vashem method, mentioned below, is an example of addition.
In subtraction, one finds the Jewish population of a place before and after the Holocaust, then subtracts the after number from the before number. One tries to explain the difference (for example, "Why are there one hundred thousand Jews fewer living in this country after the Holocaust?"). To the extent one can answer that question, one does (e.g., "Five thousand moved to America and other countries. What happened to the other 95,000?").
If both approaches (addition and subtraaction) are used on the same place but yield different totals, it can be productive to ask why the totals differ.
This distinction (addition and subtraction) is important.
If someone knows, as the result of his own research (as distingusihed from guessing or having heard from someone else), how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust, he should know how many deaths he discovered using subtraction and how many he discovered using addition.
Consider a researcher who claims to know how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust based on his own research. He tells you that there is one total based on addition and a different total based on subtraction. He should tell you the two totals.
People often say that six million (or some number close to six million) Jews died in the Holocaust. As far as we know, no one defines six million or any other number. Six million does not seem to mean precisely six million (as distingusihed from, for example, 6,000,001).
Does six million mean six million give or take a million (in other words, a number between five million and seven million)? Does it mean give ot take two million (in othere words, four to eight million)?
Does six million mean six million rounded off to the nearest million (in other words: 5,500,00 to 6,499,000)?
In many fields of research, even when there is a consensus on an issue, the consensus occasionally changes as the result of continuing research. It is suspicious that six million continues to be the publicly announced number despite decades of experts' research.
In many fields, responsible experts publicly disagree with each other on various issues. For example, one expert might contend, based on his own research, that a certain country has a certain number of foreign-born people in it. A different expert, based on his own research, might contend that the country has twice as many as the first expert contends. To us, it seems suspicious how little, public disagreement there is among responsible experts about the total number of Jews killed in the Holocuast.
Consider someone who owns an extermination business. He kills cockroaches, termites, rats, and other vermin. He has employees. You ask him how many cockroaches he killed in 2005. He tells you that he doesn't know but it was a lot. He answers your questions. He shows you his business records. You see how many customers and employees he had, how much poison and equipment he bought and owned in 2005, how many sites he worked at, what his profit and taxes were. You can only guess how many cockroaches he killed in 2005. If entomologists tried to help you, some of them might guess. If they were ethical, the guessers would make it clear to you tha they did not know and that their gueeses might be highly inaccurate.
Now let's make it more realistic. The exterminator might have had some customers who paid him in cash and got no receipt. There is nothing in writing to show the work he did for those customers. He might have bought poison or equipment for cash with no receipt. He may have one employee he pays in cash with no receipt. You may never know the full scale of his extermination business. No one will ever know how many cockroaches he killed in 2005, and any guess will be based on his intentionally incomplete records (records which don't show all customers, for example). The law does not require, after he works at an address, that he estimate how many cockroaches he killed. The customer does not care how many cockroaches are killed. The customer hopes that, after the exterminaotr finishes working on a building, much time will pass until a cockroach is seen at that address.
There were records of the Holocaust. Many records, which would be useful if they had existed, never existed. We'll use an Auschwitz example. When Auschwitz began, every incoming passenger was registered. The vast majority were killed immediately afterwards. Much time was wasted registering incoming passengers who were killed immediately after registration. Auschwitz management changed its passenger-reception system. Under the new system, management decided, immediately after a passenger entered Auschwitz, whether to immediately kill him. For most incoming passengers, the decision was to immediately kill. If so, he was immediately killed without registration. Those passengers would never be registered as Auschwitz inmates. They would not be assigned identification numbers. The IBM staff in Auschwitz would never have Hollerith punch cards for those passengers. This policy (no registration for incoming passengers designated for killing immediately afer arrival) is just one example of a lack of records that prevents knowing how many Jews died in Auschwitz.
Furthermore, many Holocaust records were destroyed. Some records were destroyed accidentally or by causes beyond Germany's control (recall, for example, that there was a war going on during much of the Holocaust) and some records were destroyed intentionally by German personnel (for example, to prevent punishment of people who did the Holocaust).
There is a difference between (1) knowledge and (2) a guess made after learning what one can about a subject. Sometimes, despite much study, sought knowledge remains unknown. Sometimes one can only guess.
Let us say, perhaps wrongly, that, on average, at least 1000 Jews died during the Holocaust per camp (although not necessarily on the pemises of that camp). We have reasons (which we may present in an expanded version of this essay) for our premise of 1000.
We think we read on a webpage, that there were 10,006 concentration camps (primary and secondary). We guess that the true number is not lower.
If the two numbers (1000 and 10,006) are right, at least 10,006,000 (ten million, six thousand) Jews died in the Holocaust. This guess (10,006,000) is much higher than most guesses.
Yad Vashem is an Israeli entity which has a Web site which lists Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It provides specific information for each Jew it lists as killed in the Holocaust (for example, his name). Many killed Jews were never reported to YV. YV has, according to its Web site on 1 June 2006, "... names and biographical details of half of the six million [in other words, three million] Jews murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices."
We checked some Holocaust-era Jewish names to see how YV Web site handled them. A few Holocaust Jewish deaths were correctly reported by YV. A few Holocaust Jewish survivors were incorrectly reported by YV as Holocaust deaths. Several Holocaust Jewish deaths were not reported by YV. In general, the number of Holocaust Jewish deaths reported by YV is about one third of what we know, according to the tiny, unscientific, spot check we did.
We don't know if anyone outside YV except us has attempted to evaluate the quality of YV's work. We did a tiny, unscientific spot check which does not necessarily prove anything.
According to news reports on about 19 September 2006, YV's website, based on wrong information supplied by Hilda Shlick's brother Karol that Hilda had died in the Holocaust, wrongly reported her as dead. On 19 September 2006, the YV Web site still writes, "Hilda perished in the Shoah. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 01/02/1999 by her brother." As nearly as we can tell, Karol's report seems to have been based solely on his plausible guess.
We informed YV of one Holocaust survivor its Web site incorrectly reports as having been killed. According to the YV website, the supposed killing was reported to YV by a group ("reporters") from the same town as the survivor. The Web site does not say the reporters' source of information (for example: they saw a killing, they saw a corpse, they attended a funeral, they read a death certificate, they heard gossip, they lost touch with the person during the Holocaust and later guessed that the person died as part of the Holocaust). The YV Web site does not say what evidence the reporters provided to YV (for example: one of the reporters said that he had seen the survivor's corpse). YV responded by email to our notice to it. VY wrote:
"Only after receiving this material can we note that the record is about a survivor."
We came to two conclusions about YV:
We'll use Poland to illustrate gross and net. The gross number of Polish Jews is the number of Polish Jews who died during the Holocaust regardless of cause of death.
Some Polish Jews died for reasons other than seeming Jewish to the killer (for example, some died because they were living in a cambat zone). The net number of Polish Jews' deaths is the number of Poles who were killed by Germany and its collaborators because those killed people were believed to be Jews by the killers. One can estimate the Polish net number if one knows the percent of Polish gentiles (non-Jews) who died during the Holocaust.
If someone claims that his research established how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust, ask him how he calculated gross and net. If he did the research himself, he knows. He may not know how gross and net were calculated if he merely guessed (or repeated a conclusion someone else told him).
Consider a Polish Jew who goes to Belgium. In Belgium, he is captured by the German invader, then sent to a Czech camp where he is killed. If someone claims to know, based on his own research, how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust, ask how his calculations handled the kind of death described just above. Did the researcher treat that kind of death as Polish, Belgian, Czech, or some combination of the three? The researcher may not have had a policy on that kind of killing. He may capriciously have handled that kind of death differently for different deaths. If he is just guessing (or repeating or adding conclusions others made), he may not know how multiple-nationality deaths were handled.
To know (not guess) how many Holocaust Jewish deaths there were, a researcher must know much about the demography of the deaths. For example, it seems unlikely that someone knows how many Holocaust Polish Jews' deaths there were without knowing how many of them were young (for example, not yet sixteen years old).
If a researcher used the subtraction approach, he may not have a breakdown by year (for example, he may not know how many Jews were killed in 1943). If a researcher used the addition approach, he should have (based on the evidence he encountered in his research) some kind of approximate breakdown by year.
Most Holocaust Jewish deaths were between September 1939 (German invasion of Poland) and May 1945 (German defeat). The Wannsee conference, at which implementation of the final solution was planned in a general way, was held on 20 January 1942. Much of the Holocaust was done after the Wannsee conference.
What if someone died in January 1948 (or will die in January 2008) because of medical problems caused by his having been a camp inmate during the Holocaust? Let us assume that this person would have lived longer but for the Holocaust. The custom is not to count him as a Holocaust death. To be counted as a Holocaust death, he must have died during (or very soon after), not just because of, the Holocaust.
When a smoker dies, it may be impossible to know if that smoker would have lived longer but for his smoking. However, it can be shown that, for smokers generally, they die younger than they would but for their smoking. There are properly done studies measuring, for people in general, the life-shortening effects of smoking. Consider a specific, Holocaust survivor who died in 1950. It may be impossible to know if he would have lived past 1950 (dying in 1973, for example) but for the Holocaust. However, maybe there are studies of the life-shortening effect of the Holocaust on its survivors in general, so that one can know about how many Holocaust survivors who died in, for example, 1950, died earlier than they would have but for the Holocaust. We do not know if such studies have been done.
Above we state and briefly explain our two guesses of total, Jewish Holocaust deaths: 9,000,000 (based on a spot check of Yad Vashem incompleteness) and 10,006,000 (based on the number of concentration camps). These are much higher than others' guesses.
Today, computers are inidspensable to the functioning of many governmetn agencies. Before there were computers, there were Hollerith machines. According to information once at URL news.com.com/Probing+IBM's+Nazi+connection/2009-1082_3-269157.html, IBM built Hollerith machines, provided the SS with those machines, programmed those machines for the SS and other Third Reich clients, custom-printed the Hollerith punch-cards, and provided those cards. IBM was indispensable to the SS's dataprocessing, which was indispensable to the SS's efficiency.
IBM must be contrasted with other vendors to the SS. For example, Hugo Boss designed the SS's uniforms. If Hugo Boss had not designed uniforms, another vendor would have designed uniformas which would have served just as well. I.G. Farben (more particularly, its Degesch affiliate) provided Zyklon B, the gas used in concentration camp gas chambers, to the SS. If I.G. Farben had not provided Zyklon B to the SS, another company would have provided some other poison that would have worked as well or better. IBM provided dataprocessing hardware (machines and cards) and software (programming) to the SS. The machines included card-punchers and card-sorters. If IBM had refused to provide dataprocessing hardware and software to the SS, no other company would have provided comparable hardware and software. Unlike Hugo Boss's uniform design and I.G. Farben's Zyklon B, IBM was indispensable to the Holocaust's efficiency (and thereofre to the Holocaust's size). Without IBM dataprocessing, Jews would have been killed but in much smaller numbers.
Accomplishing the Holocaust was an immense, dataprocessing challenge. Millions of Jews spread over many countries had to be killed. There were thousands of concentration camps. The railroad transporation alone was difficult to plan and coordinate. The Holocaust was a logistical problem which required much dataprocessing to solve. IBM provided that dataprocessing. For example, Dachau had dozens of IBM's Hollerith machines. IBM personnel worked in concentrtion camps. The original Auschwitz tattoo was an IBM number. The Holocaust could not have been done so quickly to such huge numbers of victims without IBM's help. IBM was not simply a vendor to the Third Reich (like Hugo Boss), IBM was an indispensable vendor. The Third Reich could not have bought the dataprocessing provided by IBM from another source.
The SS operated the concentration camps. If the SS had not done so, some other Nazi party or German government organization would have. IBM, unlike the SS, was necessary to the Holocaust's efficiency.
Furthermore, most Jews killed in the Holocaust were not German. Most of the Jews who were killed were obtained in countries invaded by Germany. Dataprocessing was indispensable to Germany's military prowess then as it is now. Rapid conquest of much territory in modern war requires dataprocessing. Then, IBM provided Germany's military with dataprocessing hardware and software. Germany could not have conquered so much of Europe so quickly without IBM's dataprocessing products and services. If IBM had stopped doing business with the Third Reich when Watson returned his award to Hitler, the Allies would have defeated Germany sooner. Germany would have conquered less territory and thus had fewer Jews to kill, had IBM refused to do business with the Third Reich.
In summary, IBM's assistance to the Third Reich caused far more Jewish deaths than otherwise would have occurred, for at least two reasons. First, IBM dataprocessing was used to gather, transport, and kill Jews (for example, IBM dataprocessing equipment was used by the camp system and by railroads which brought Jews to the camps). Second, IBM dataprocessing was used by Germany's military to conquer territory which Jews inhabited, resulting in far more Jews being subject to the Holocaust. IBM helped the Third Reich in other ways, too, but this discussion is limited to the Holocaust.
Consider a large organization today (maybe an airline, medical center, or phone company) that would decide to stop operating without computers or even Hollerith machines. To operate without computers or Hollerith machines, the scope of the organization's operations would have to be drastically reduced. The SS's system of concentration camps (and closely related organzations such as railroads) could not have processed so many Jews so quickly without IBM's dataprocessing.
The brief Wannsee conference, at which implementation of the final solution was planned in a general way, was held on 20 January 1942. Much of the Holocaust was done after that conference. The Holocaust, especially in its last few years, required immense, dataprocessing. But for IBM, most of the Holocaust's killed victims would have survived.
During and after World War I, people sometimes sincerely described it as the "war to end all wars". Similary, people who discuss the Holocaust sometimes say, "Never again.".
It's common to ask why: why Nazism (including the Holocaust) happened, why in Germany, and so forth. We learn by doing research involving many cases, then statistically analyzing our observations. One must have many cases to get a low probability value. However, what makes the Holocaust (and much of the rest of Nazism) interesting is that much of it is unique or at least rare. Furthermore, if one decides to study features which are common (for example: religious intolerance, military agression, glorification of brutality, dictatorship, widespread use of forced labor and slave labor, eagerness to do what the government and other authorities want), one must omit outliers as part of proper research procedure. The Holocaust was an outlier in many kinds of research, making it difficult to study.
We guess that part of the explanation is that the percentage of the German population which is vicious is much higher than the corresponding percentage of other countries' populations. We don't know how to find out whether this guess is right. We do not express an opinion as to whether the average (mean, median, or modal) German is more vicious than the averge person of other countries. It is conceivable that, with respect to the trait of viciousness, the German population has a higher standard deviation from the mean than do the populations of other countries. We guess that the viciousness of Nazism appealed to many Germans. Americans sometimes think that it is a mistake to outlaw Nazism in Germany. Sound analysis of politics and economics should keep Nazism weak, etc. In light of the viciousness of many German people, it is sensible to outlaw Nazism in Germany.
According to our understanding of German law, it is illegal to publicly mock or scorn the dead. For example, if someone in Germany, while chatting with neighbors, ridicules a dead person they knew, the speaker violates German law. This kind of law is necessary in Germany. This law may have almost no effect on ordinary, social conversation. Nevertheless, we favpr this law because, what can be done to try to civilize the exceptionally high percentage of the German populace which is vicious, should be done. Every miniscule bit helps.
This we guess.
This paragraph is only slightly relevant to this page but I don't want to create a special page for the subjet of this paragraph, nor do I want to create a miscellany page.
Primary camps such as Auschwitz were run from Berlin. Secondary camps (sometimes called satellite camps) such as Engerhafe were run from primary camps. In general, secondary camps were not as bad to their inmates as primary camps were.
According to someone who survived Bergen Belsen and Auschwitz, both of which were primary camps, Bergen Belsen was much worse than Auschwitz. For example, we were told that Bergen Belsen and Auschwitz were night and day. We've never read comparisons of the relative hellishness of the primary camps; in other words, a rank-ordering of primary camps in how horrible they were. For example, among people who survived both Bergen Belksen and Auschwitz, is there a concensus that Bergen Belsen was much worse? It would be interesting to read a survivors' rank-ordering of the primary camps' hellishness.
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