So first before I make my big post, I want to talk about my pre-existing biases. I never looked in depth at the holocaust in the eastern front before, because I have only ever heard the gas chambers discussed. I had been convinced that the gas chambers are a hoax by credible evidence, and so I never felt the need to look into the east, because, I dismissed it, reasoning that if the gas chambers were fake, then the rest of the holocaust was probably fake too.
I spent the past few hours reading the holocaust encyclopedia and other sources, and one thing I will agree with Chugger on, is that the holocaust is very well documented; however, there is a caveat, taking a glance at the citations, I happened see a name I recognized.... Ilya Ehrenburg. You may remember him as the author of this piece of insanity:
“The Germans are not human beings. From now on, the word ‘German’ is the most horrible curse. From now on, the word ‘German’ strikes us to the quick. We have nothing to discuss. We will not get excited. We will kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day … If you cannot kill a German with a bullet, then kill him with your bayonet. If your part of the front is quiet and there is no fighting, then kill a German in the meantime … If you have already killed a German, then kill another one – there is nothing more amusing to us than a heap of German corpses. Don’t count the days, don’t count the kilometers. Count only one thing: the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the Germans! … – Kill the Germans! Kill!”
Looking into things further, this one man is cited quite literally dozens of times, he is one of the most important sources for the entire narrative. I fully expect that a professional soviet propagandists would try to amplify German war crimes as much as possible, so I don't trust everything I read here, and expect a good amount of spin-doctoring, but I think it's still good enough to get a general picture of things.
First of all, the jews were, without a shadow of a doubt, engaging in a mass uprising against the Germans. Now you can make a chicken and egg argument, were they rebelling because the Germans were killing them, or were the Germans killing them because they were rebelling. Probably there was a feedback loop of both, which resulted in an escalation from both sides. Generally what I found is that early on in the war only suspected communists were killed, as a rule of thumb. As time went on, the Germans began rounding up more and more suspects and the jews began organizing rebellions, and upon hearing news of significant partisan activity, the Germans would engage in reprisals, which would devastate the remaining population of a ghetto.
Almost every major camp and ghetto had a large jewish uprising, I can easily find evidence of literally hundreds of such uprisings in mainstream literature, without particularly straining myself... often entire ghettoes fled to join the partisans in the forests. Child partisans and women partisans were common.
Often, the German massacres were a self-fulfilling prophesy. Many times, a ghetto would hear rumors it was about to be exterminated, then rise up, and Germans would come and kill a good number of them in retaliation. After the German reprisals, the surviving population of many ghettoes were often very small, and it was common for the ghetto to be dissolved completely and its remaining people moved to another ghetto.
To give an example of how big these rebellions could be, the latest soviet census of Minsk before WW2, had the jewish population at 54,000. Some sources estimate that the Minsk Ghetto had a population of over 100,000 at its peak (due to German resettlement policies), until 30,000 jews fled the ghetto to join as partisans.
Here is a quote from the Nuremberg trials from Hans Lammers, where he claims that Himmler admitted to this and justified his actions:
Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945 - 1 October 1946 in 42 volumes
archive.org
Hans Lammers (Chief of the Reich Chancellery): "Finally, however, in 1943, rumors cropped up that Jews were being killed. I had no jurisdiction in this field; it was merely that I occasionally received complaints and on the basis of these complaints I investigated the rumors. But, as far as I could tell, at any rate, these rumors always proved to be only rumors. Every one said he had heard it from somebody else and nobody wanted to make a definite statement. I am, in fact, of the opinion that these rumors were based mostly on foreign broadcasts and that the people just did not want to say from where they had the information. That caused me once more to undertake an investigation of this matter. First of all, since I, for my part, could not initiate investigations of matters under Himmler’s jurisdiction, I addressed myself to Himmler once again. Himmler denied any legal killings and told me, with reference to the order from the Führer, that it was his duty to evacuate the Jews and that during such evacuations, which also involved old and sick people, of course there were cases of death, there were accidents, there were attacks by enemy aircraft.
He added too, that there were revolts, which of course he had to suppress severely and with bloodshed, as a warning. For the rest, he said that these people were being accommodated in camps in the East. He brought out a lot of pictures and albums and showed me the work that was being done in these camps by the Jews and how they worked for the war needs, the shoemakers shops, tailors shops, and so forth."
"Nevertheless, I once again reported this matter to the Führer, and on this occasion he gave me exactly the same reply which I had been given by Himmler. He said, “I shall later on decide where these Jews will be taken and in the meantime they are being housed there."
If the deaths of jews in Romania are a lesson about the failure of socialist economic policies; the mass uprisings in Germany are a lesson about the failure of using intimidation as your sole means of diplomacy.
Reading through some things revisionists say in response, what I find to be convincing is that the Germans originally intended to settle the Jews in Poland (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisko_Plan ) But eventually decided to settle the jews further east. We can see that, yes, there were transports to the occupied USSR territories carrying jews, settling them to ghettoes, and yes, we do see jews the Germans had handed off to the Romanians to settle in Transnistria. (I've posted these already). At least in the early stages, this appears to be a legitimate resettlement. The jews in German-occupied territory were put into ghettoes which were rather crappy, these ghettoes were requied to have a council, which would be responsible for meeting German demands (of industrial products, and manpower) and able-bodied men and women were frequently requested for forced labor. It doesn't appear like the Germans intended to create rural villages like the Romanians were doing, rather they preferred to keep them centralized.
At some point though, the resettlement effort seemed to slow down massively, In mainstream sources, I can't find very many population influxes to the east occurring in or after 1943. Probably due to the fact that the Germans didn't want to develop eastern regions after suffering so many military losses, which meant the soviets might capture the regions they intended to settle. So instead, the jews remained in Poland, in massive camps, where disease swept through, causing huge amounts of deaths. The camps were supposed to be a temporary solution, at least until the resettlement east could resume, but this never happened because the war only got worse for the Germans.
Nuremberg quote that corroborates this:
Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuernberg, October 1946-April 1949, Volume 13, p. 416 (
https://books.google.com/books?id=gcIcA ... &lpg=PA416):
Hans Lammers (Chief of the Reich Chancellery): [Hitler] said, pretty clearly, that he wished that an end might be put to all these Jewish affairs, once and for all. He added that after the war he would make a final decision as to where the Jews were to go. I remember he said that then there would be enough room in the East or in other places where the Jews could be taken."
Q. How did you interpret Hitler's remark that after the end of the war he would decide where the Jews were to go?
A. I thought it was a reference to the various projects concerning the setting up of a separate territory for the Jews, a sort of autonomous Jewish state, or reservation, or whatever you want to call it. There was a lot of talk about such projects at the time."
Another quote:
"The principle of the German Jewish policy after the seizure of power consisted in promoting with all means the Jewish emigration...
The present war gives Germany the opportunity and also the duty of solving the Jewish problem in Europe. In consideration of the favorable course of the war against France, D III proposed in July 1940 as a solution - the removal of all Jews from Europe and the demanding of the Island of Madagascar from France as a territory for the reception of the Jews... The Madagascar plan was enthusiastically accepted by the RSHA...
The Madagascar plan in fact had been outdated as the result of the political development.
The fact that the Führer intends to evacuate all Jews from Europe was communicated to me as early as August 1940 by Ambassador Abetz after an interview with the Führer (compare D III 229
.
Hence, the basic instruction of the Reich Foreign Minister, to promote the evacuation of the Jews in closest cooperation with the agencies of the Reichsführer-SS, is still in force and will therefore be observed by D III...
4. In his letter of June 24, 1940 - Pol XII 136 - SS Lieutenant General Heydrich informed the Reich Foreign Minister that the whole problem of the approximately three and a quarter million Jews in the areas under German control can no longer be solved by emigration - a territorial final solution would be necessary...
5. On the basis of the Führer's instruction mentioned under '4' (above), the evacuation of the Jews from Germany was begun...
The number of Jews deported in this way to the East did not suffice to cover the labor needs there. The RSHA therefore, acting on the instruction of the Reichsführer-SS, approached the Foreign Office to ask the Slovak Government to make 20,000 young, strong Slovak Jews from Slovakia available for deportation to the East...
The intended deportations are a further step forward on the way of the total solution and are in respect to other countries (Hungary) very important.
The deportation to the Government General is a temporary measure. The Jews will be moved on further to the occupied Eastern Territories as soon as the technical conditions for it are given."
- Translation of Document No. NG-2586 (J), "Memorandum, from Luther, Under Secretary of State, Berlin,
August 21, 1942"
www.trumanlibrary.gov
Well that is all a coverup, right? The Germans gassed non-workers at Auschwitz on arrival, right? Well... no... and I even have picture proof:
Children at Auschwitz were not gassed on arrival. In fact, many children are testified to have been born there, they even had dedicated midwives.
Joseph G Burg, Maria Abrams, Benedikt Kautsky are 3 jewish witnesses (Kautsky spent three years at Auschwitz and Joseph G Burg spoke to hundreds of people including crematory staff, and would later go on to become a prominent revisionist) who all testified in court that there were no gas chambers. I could go into this in more detail if necessary, but that's an entirely different rabbit hole.
So there you have it, the resettlement was carried out in the early phases of the war, then was put on hold and jews were amassed in Poland waiting for the opportunity for it to resume, which never arrived for the Germans. Meanwhile, in the east, the jews were engaging in mass uprisings and the Germans were putting them down with extreme brutality, which utterly devastated the populations of jews in the east.
jewua.org
