Jan. 4, 2009
Last week Poland's culture minister promised the equivalent of $137,000 for improving security at the site where more than one million people died during the Holocaust.
But Robert Jan Van Pelt, an architectural historian and a leading expert on Auschwitz, says it may be time to consider other strategies for the site, which is split into two camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau. They sprawl over nearly 500 acres.
Van Pelt, a professor at the University of Waterloo, suggests the museum consider sealing off the Birkenau death camp, where 95 per cent of the murders took place, and letting nature take over. We asked him to explain.
Why have you have posited that Birkenau should be closed up and reclaimed by nature?
There is a present problem of preservation in Auschwitz. The place that is actually well-preserved - that's where the museum is. But the site of Birkenau, a couple kilometres away, where the murders happened, is falling apart. That camp was very hastily constructed. The buildings were built to have a lifespan of two to three years. They were built from recycled bricks. When they ran out of recycled bricks, the SS bought from the German army prefab horse stables. In 1945, when the war came to an end, these horse stables were very valuable because they were kind of instant housing for someone who needed it. So people had the idea that the best thing that they could do was to pick up all of these horse stables - and there's like 500 of them - take them apart, put them on the train and send them to Warsaw. By 1948 all of the brick barracks in Birkenau were already falling apart. Each of the old horse stables had two stoves inside with two brick chimneys that were not taken to Warsaw.
So you had this very weird landscape - and you still have that - where you get these small, primitive brick chimneys rising three metres out of the ground. They don't have any other bracing and if you have a storm they blow over. But of course the chimneys themselves - altogether there are hundreds of them - create a very powerful symbolic landscape because we associate Birkenau with the chimneys of the crematoria.
By allowing nature to take over the site, do we run the risk of allowing humanity to forget what happened and set the stage for future questioning of the Holocaust?
Ninety-nine per cent of what we know we do not actually have the physical evidence to prove . . . it has become part of our inherited knowledge.
I don't think that the Holocaust is an exceptional case in that sense. We in the future - remembering the Holocaust - will operate in the same way that we remember most things from the past. We will know about it from literature and eyewitness testimony. . . . We are very successful in remembering the past in that manner. That's how we know that Cesar was killed on the Ides of March. To put the holocaust in some separate category and to demand that it be there - to demand that we have more material evidence - is actually us somehow giving in to the Holocaust deniers by providing some sort of special evidence.
Why has the site not been closed off already?
In 1959, a proposal was made to let nature take over the camp. The museum wanted to seal the gates and let everything fall into disrepair. The idea was that this spot represented a place where humanity failed in such a monumental way that we really have no business maintaining it.
At that time the survivors opposed that proposal. They said `You cannot lock us out of our own experience. We suffered here; we need to be able to return to the site where we suffered.'
Fifty years later, we are facing the end of the age of the survivors - the age of the witnesses - and I think when the last survivor of the Holocaust has died, when that almost silent passing happens, we as a civilization or as a species should mark this.
The chairman of the international Auschwitz council says the decision should be left to those who died at Auschwitz. Do we have any insight - recorded statements from victims before they died - on what they wanted to be done with the site?
No. So when you call on the victims to some way indicate what happened at the site we can only talk about the survivors. But can survivors really represent those who died? The survivors can do that to a degree, but once they are dead I don't think it's our place to interpret. This is a decision that we have to take as the living. The earth belongs to the living. It is the living that have to make the tough decisions.
--
NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE
Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton
In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."
On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.
The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.
This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.
The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.
This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
I guess a ''gaggle'' of lying Hebrews does not constitute physical evidence...
Van Pelt is an architect by training...a ''pseudo architect'' according to David Irving. Is this guy for real when he compares the murder of Caesar to the Holocaust? Caesar was a single individual whose assassination by a handful of conspirators at a single location lasted perhaps a few minutes and took place twenty centuries ago...of course the physical evidence is going to be limited.
The Holocaust was allegedly the murder of six million, across a continent, over a period of years that involved tens of thousands of ''willing executioners'' utilizing the physical and bureaucratic assets of a modern industrialized state. To paraphrase Arthur Butz the author of The Hoax of the Twentieth century, a crime of such magnitude would have left:
''a mountain of evidence''.
Where is that evidence???
--joe
ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
To all -
Imagine Van Pelt back-pedalling like that ...Still spouting some lies, but even so, this is a huge admission that the Holocaust Dogma is crumbling!
Another BIG revisionism victory!
Ingrid
=====
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/742965--a-case-for-letting-nature-take-back-auschwitz
A case for letting nature take back Auschwitz
This leading Holocaust scholar argues that there would be dignity in death camp's neglect
Brett Popplewell
Staff Reporter / Toronto Star
2009/12/27 04:30:00
The recent theft and retrieval of the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Sets You Free") sign that marks the gateway into Auschwitz has reignited debate over what should be done with the sombre monument to one of humanity's darkest hours.
A case for letting nature take back Auschwitz
This leading Holocaust scholar argues that there would be dignity in death camp's neglect
Brett Popplewell
Staff Reporter / Toronto Star
2009/12/27 04:30:00
The recent theft and retrieval of the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Sets You Free") sign that marks the gateway into Auschwitz has reignited debate over what should be done with the sombre monument to one of humanity's darkest hours.
Last week Poland's culture minister promised the equivalent of $137,000 for improving security at the site where more than one million people died during the Holocaust.
But Robert Jan Van Pelt, an architectural historian and a leading expert on Auschwitz, says it may be time to consider other strategies for the site, which is split into two camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau. They sprawl over nearly 500 acres.
Van Pelt, a professor at the University of Waterloo, suggests the museum consider sealing off the Birkenau death camp, where 95 per cent of the murders took place, and letting nature take over. We asked him to explain.
Why have you have posited that Birkenau should be closed up and reclaimed by nature?
There is a present problem of preservation in Auschwitz. The place that is actually well-preserved - that's where the museum is. But the site of Birkenau, a couple kilometres away, where the murders happened, is falling apart. That camp was very hastily constructed. The buildings were built to have a lifespan of two to three years. They were built from recycled bricks. When they ran out of recycled bricks, the SS bought from the German army prefab horse stables. In 1945, when the war came to an end, these horse stables were very valuable because they were kind of instant housing for someone who needed it. So people had the idea that the best thing that they could do was to pick up all of these horse stables - and there's like 500 of them - take them apart, put them on the train and send them to Warsaw. By 1948 all of the brick barracks in Birkenau were already falling apart. Each of the old horse stables had two stoves inside with two brick chimneys that were not taken to Warsaw.
So you had this very weird landscape - and you still have that - where you get these small, primitive brick chimneys rising three metres out of the ground. They don't have any other bracing and if you have a storm they blow over. But of course the chimneys themselves - altogether there are hundreds of them - create a very powerful symbolic landscape because we associate Birkenau with the chimneys of the crematoria.
Those crematoria aren't there anymore, they were blown up by the Germans and one of them was blown up by the prisoners in 1944. So because there are only these ruins of the crematoria and because people expect to see chimneys in some way, that field of small chimneys that are the leftovers of the barracks creates a kind of landscape that people in some way associate with the killing and the burning of the bodies of the victims.
By allowing nature to take over the site, do we run the risk of allowing humanity to forget what happened and set the stage for future questioning of the Holocaust?
Ninety-nine per cent of what we know we do not actually have the physical evidence to prove . . . it has become part of our inherited knowledge.
I don't think that the Holocaust is an exceptional case in that sense. We in the future - remembering the Holocaust - will operate in the same way that we remember most things from the past. We will know about it from literature and eyewitness testimony. . . . We are very successful in remembering the past in that manner. That's how we know that Cesar was killed on the Ides of March. To put the holocaust in some separate category and to demand that it be there - to demand that we have more material evidence - is actually us somehow giving in to the Holocaust deniers by providing some sort of special evidence.
Why has the site not been closed off already?
In 1959, a proposal was made to let nature take over the camp. The museum wanted to seal the gates and let everything fall into disrepair. The idea was that this spot represented a place where humanity failed in such a monumental way that we really have no business maintaining it.
At that time the survivors opposed that proposal. They said `You cannot lock us out of our own experience. We suffered here; we need to be able to return to the site where we suffered.'
Fifty years later, we are facing the end of the age of the survivors - the age of the witnesses - and I think when the last survivor of the Holocaust has died, when that almost silent passing happens, we as a civilization or as a species should mark this.
And (what) if no one was going to provide the funds to preserve this site? My response to that challenge is `So what? Maybe it's not so bad if this site is erased.' But if indeed there is a moment when we can surrender this site to nature, we cannot do that before the last survivor dies.
The chairman of the international Auschwitz council says the decision should be left to those who died at Auschwitz. Do we have any insight - recorded statements from victims before they died - on what they wanted to be done with the site?
No. So when you call on the victims to some way indicate what happened at the site we can only talk about the survivors. But can survivors really represent those who died? The survivors can do that to a degree, but once they are dead I don't think it's our place to interpret. This is a decision that we have to take as the living. The earth belongs to the living. It is the living that have to make the tough decisions.
It is fine with me if we the living decide that this site should be preserved and . . . we are willing to spend the money to maintain the site in a proper way . . . that somehow leaves the dignity of the place intact. I'm not going to quarrel with that. But that means we as a worldwide society are actually accepting responsibility for the site - and putting resources toward that.
--
NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE
Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton
In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."
On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.
The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.
This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.
The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.
This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.
http://www.amazon.
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@
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