Great Throughts Treasury

"Since the fourth century after Christ, there have been three anti-Jewish policies: conversion, expulsion, and annihilation. The second appeared as an alternative to the first, and the third emerged as an alternative to the second."

"A basic drive had appeared among Western nations, set free by their machines. From this moment onwards, the underlying preconditions of our civilization and culture no longer reigned supreme, because although the events themselves have past, the phenomenon as such remains."

"Before the advent of the 20th century and its technology, minds bent on destruction could not have come up with the Nazi agenda, even in their wildest dreams. Past administrators simply didn't have the means. They lacked today's communication network, and had no access to automatic weapons or highly toxic poisonous gases. Tomorrow's bureaucrat would not have this problem; he is better equipped than the German Nazis. Killing is no longer as difficult as it once was."

"The 20th century merits the name "The Century of Murder." 1915 Turks slaughtered 2 million Armenians. 1933 to 1954 the Soviet government encompassed the death of 20 to 65 million citizens. 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany murdered more than 25 million people. 1948 Hindus and Muslims engaged in racial and religious strife that claimed more lives than could be reported. 1970 3 million Bangladesh were killed. 1971 Uganda managed the death of 300,000 people. 1975 Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and murdered up to 3 million people. In recent times more than half a million of Rwanda's 6 million people have been murdered. At present times genocidal strife is underway in Bosnia, Somalia, Burundi and elsewhere. The people of the world have demonstrated themselves to be so capable of forgetting the murderous frenzies in which their fellows have participated that it is essential that one, at least, be remembered and the world be regularly reminded of it. "

"To me, the later developments in Holocaust denial were just a very slow spread, not even a growth, but a spread from France/Germany to the United States to Canada and ultimately picked up by the Arab world. The Arab world is very disoriented when it comes to Europe anyway. They are as confused about the West as we are about them. Even so, the conference in Iran did not even succeed in Iran – it was needless difficulty and trouble. There were Iranians who publicly denounced this conference. So, I am not terribly worried about it even though at the time that that conference took place last December I was asked by the German government to take part in a counter-conference as the keynote speaker that was held the same day in Berlin. I ordinarily do not engage in debates with Holocaust revisionists. I did not do so at the Berlin conference either, but the essence of my talk was that, yes, there was a Holocaust, which is, by the way, more easily said than demonstrated. I demonstrated this and people did come to it. Nevertheless, the German papers did not publicize the counter-conference in Berlin because they could not resist publishing the faces of the Rabbis who had gone to Iran. I have come to the conclusion, not once but several times, that, as far as I am concerned, I do not agree with legislation that makes it illegal to utter pronouncements claiming that there was no Holocaust. I do not want to muzzle any of this because it is a sign of weakness not of strength when you try to shut somebody up. Yes, there is always a risk. Nothing in life is without risk, but you have to make rational decisions about everything."

"The Nazis did not discard the past, they built on it. They did not begin a development. They completed it"

"According to Hilberg, 2.67 million out of the total 5.1 million Jewish victims were murdered in six camps which the orthodox historians call "extermination camps", a term found in no German wartime document. This means that 2.43 million Holocaust victims must have met their fate outside these "extermination centers"."

"According to General Jodl, who wrote the document I quote, the terms were the following : Hitler said he wanted the Jewish Bolshevik commissars to be liquidated. This is the first point...Such was the content of the order described by General Jodl."

"During the German march across Europe, some territories were occupied and others were allotted to Axis allies. Two areas were in a special category. Germany did not wish to incorporate them, but they were not to be absorbed by her partners. Hence these regions became COUNTRIES themselves. The new entities - states by default and satellites par excellence - were Croatia and Slovakia."

"At the end of October, Minister Benzler, Staatsrat Turner, and Standartenfuhrer Fuchs, joined by Foreign's Office's expert, Rademacher, were considering various methods of quietly removing the women and children. The bureaucrats planned a ghetto in the city of Belgrade, but Staatsrat Turner, who did not like ghettos, urged a quick removal of the Jews to a transit camp on a Danubian island at Mitrovica, not far from the Serbian capital. When the proposed Danubian island turned out to be under water, the choice fell upon Semlin (Zemun), a town (oposite Belgrade) originally under the jurisdiction of the Befhelshaber [occupying force] in Serbia but now transferred to Croatia. The Croatian government graciously gave its permission for the construction of a camp in Semlin. On November 3, 1941, Turner instructed the Feld- and Kreiskommandanturen to start counting the Jewish women and children in all Serbian towns. Preparations were completed in December. Troop units began to move the families of the dead hostages to Semlin... As the Jews arrived, they were accommodated in the camp. From time to time a batch of women and children were loaded on a special vehicle that drove off into the woods. The vehicle was a gas van. Slowly but methodically the gas van did its work. In March 1942 the Jewish population of the Semlin camp fluctuated between 5,000 and 6,000, in April the number dropped to 2,974, and in June Dr. Shafer reported that apart from Jews in mixed marriages there was no longer any Jewish problem in Serbia."

"The German-Italian negotiations continued for several months... The Italians first offered to take the Jews to Italy. Next the negotiators considered the possible removal of the victims to the island of Lopud, off the Dalmatian coast. Finally the Italian government promised to concentrate the Jews on the spot. However, it declined to permit Croatian confiscations of Jewish property and, more important, refused a German request of Jewish "labor battalions."... Several thousand Jews had been concentrated on the Italian-occupied island of Rab, from which they escaped to partisan-held areas in September 1943."

"By the summer of 1942 the depleted community was ripe for deportation... Thousands of Jews had already been trekking to the Italian-occupied zone of Croatia and to Hungarian annexed Yugoslav Backa to find refuge."

"On October 2, 1941, things were already happening in Serbia. At town in Topola a truck convoy of Company 2, 521st Signal Batallion, was ambushed by partisans. Twenty-one men were killed immediately; another died later. Two days later General Bohme instructed the 342d Division and the 449th Signal Batallion to shoot 2,100 inmates of the Sabac and Belgrade camps. The ice was broken. On October 10 Bohme decided to go all the way. He ordered the "sudden" (schlagartige") arrest of all Communists and suspected Communists, "all Jews", and a "certain number" of "nationally and democratically inclined inhabitants." The arrested victims were to be shot according to the following key: for every dead German soldier or ethnic German, a hundred hostages; for every wounded German soldier or ethnic German, fifty hostages. (This was the key Bohme had applied to the Topola ambush.) Limiting the role of the SS in the killing, Bohme specified that the shootings were to be carried out by the troops and that if possible, the executions were to be performed by the units that suffered the losses. Straight revenge."

"The camps, which were controlled by the Directorate for Public Security [run by Croat Eugen Kvaternik, son of Marshall Slavko Kvaternik] and garrisoned by the Ustasha, held Serbs, Gypsies, and Croatian political prisoners, as well as Jews. Numerically, the Serbs were in first place as inmates and casualties, but for Jews and Gypsies, death was all but certain."

"On April 30, 1941, the three-week-old Croatian state issued its first anti-Jewish law, a definition of the term "Jew." ... The Croatian authorities ...improved upon, the original Losener definition. We need only recall the problems to which the original German definition gave rise to realize that the Croatian definition, with all its improvements, was drafted by expert hands... In a very short time the Croatian government also proceeded to enact all those measures which German bureaucrats had toiled over for eight years: - the prohibition of intermarriage - of employing Aryan servants under forty-five, - of raising the Croatian flag - the revocation of name changes adopted since December 1, 1918 - the marking of Jewish stores and persons... By the end of August 1941, after only four months of Croatian government, most Jewish enterprises worth less than 200,000 kuna (RM 10,000, or $2,500) had been "Aryanized." The decrees had hardly been issued when the Jewish population was drawn out of the cities and towns for deportation to internment camps. In the principal three cities (Zagreb, Sarajevo and Osijek) roundups were the following."

"More than half of Croatian Jewry had been delivered to these camps. Shunted from one to the other, the Jews were marked for attrition and annihilation. Most of the Jewish inmates died in this process of starvation, shootings, torture, drowninigs, knifings, and blows with hammers to the head. An indication of what was happening was given to to Italian Foreign Minister Ciano on December 16, 1941, in the course of the visit by high-ranking Croatian delegation to Venice. On that Occasion Pavelic mentioned that the Jewish population of Croatia had already declined to little more than a third of its former size..."

"The destruction process descended upon the Jews of Serbia with immediate force. On May 30, 1941, the [German] military administration issued a definition of Jews (Losener principle), ordered the removal of Jews from public service and the professions, provided for registration of Jewish property, introduced forced labor, forbade the Serbian population to hide Jews (Beherbergungsverbot), and ordered Jewish population to wear a star. In other words, the first three steps of the destruction process had been introduced in a single day...Serbs who had any kind of Jewish property in their possession were ordered to register such assets..."

"The Croatian government availed itself of these departures to publish its own version of the 11th Ordinance to the Reich Citizens law. All Jews leaving the country were to loose their Croatian nationality, in order that they might also lose their property. Again there was an improvement over the original German decree: any dependents left behind by the deported persons were also to lose their nationality. On October 9, 1942, Finance Minister [Croat] Kosak agreed to pay to the German government 30 reichsmark for each deported Jew - payment by the Croatian people to the German people for the German contribution to the "final solution of the Jewish problem" in Croatia... In March 1943 the representative of the Reichbahn in Zagreb agreed to furnish cars, to be hooked to regularly scheduled trains, for the deportation of about 2,000 Jews via Austria to Auschwitz. On occasion of these deportations, another vain attempt was made to induce the Italians to cooperate in their zone... In September the Italian zone disappeared,... In April 1944 Kasche and the police attache, Helm, send their final report to Berlin. The Jewish question in Croatia, said Kasche, had been solved... Neither Kasche nor Helm mentioned that many Jwes had found refuge among Marshal Tito's partisans, who at that time had liberated a considerable portion of Yugoslav territory. When the war was over, about twenty per cent of Croatia's Jews were still alive."

"The Serbs dislike foreign domination in practically any form, and German-occupied Serbia was consequently the scene of continuous partisan warfare. ...in Serbia, German army reacted to the rebellious outbreaks by shooting hostages, especially Jewish hostages... During the late summer of 1941,... two camps were set up, one in Belgrade, the other in Sabac. At the same time, systematic roundups of Jewish men were set in motion in the entire Serbian territory. Aparently the [German] military was already beginning to think in terms of large-scale shootings of Jews... At the beginning of September a traveling envoy from Berlin joined Foreign Office Plenipotentiary Benzler in Belgrade. The traveler was Edmund Veesenmayer, a party member, businessman, and Foreign Office troubleshooter. On September 8, 1941, Veesenmayer and Benzer ...proposed that 8,000 Jewish men be removed from Serbia, perhaps in barges moving downstream on the Danube to the delta of the river in Romania..."

"The Italian commander in Mostar... had promised equal treatment to all inhabitants, and he had even refused to evict Jewish tenants to make room for German Organisation Todt. When asked for an explanation, he declared that anti-Jewish measures were "incompatible with the honor of the Italian army.""

"While the German army was completing the shooting of 4,000 to 5,000 men, there remained a problem of killing about 15,000 women and children; for "it was contrary to the viewpoint [Auffassung] of the German soldier and civil servant to take women as hostages," ... The Jewish women and children consequently had to be "evacuated.""

"The underlying philosophy of the state was Fascist-Catholic. Its movement, the Ustasha, was an organization that in the Interior Ministry [led by Croat Dr. Artukovic who later found his refuge in the United States of America] developed a uniformed force, somewhat analogous to the SS, which was performing police functions and running concentration camps. At the time of its creation the new Croatian state had very uncertain boundaries. To the north the Germans annexed a good chunk of Slovenia, stopping only a few miles from Zagreb. To the west the Italians annexed Ljubljana, most of the Dalmatian coast, and a few Adriatic islands. To the east the German [1] commander in Serbia held the town of Semlin (Zemun), while in the northeast the Hungarians annexed the basin between the Danube and the Tisza."

"When Generaloberst Lohr took over as Oberbefehlshaber Sudost in August 1942, Staatsrat Turner jotted down a few notes for a personal report to his new chief. In this report Turner itemized all the achievements of the previous administration. With a considerate satisfaction he wrote down a unique accomplishment: "Serbia only country in which Jewish question and Gypsy question solved.""