Jedwabne and Gardelegen Barn Size Constraint No Last-Minute Nazi Killing of Only Jews Blatman

The Death Marches, by Daniel Blatman. 2011

The Gardelegen Massacre (German Barn-Burning of 1,016 Mostly Non-Jewish Captives) Shows a MAXIMUM Hundreds (Not 1,600 or 3,200) Jedwabne Victims

This work presents a wealth of information, and I focus on some particularly relevant items.

THE GARDELEGEN MASSACRE CONSTRAINS THE NUMBER OF JEDWABNE VICTIMS

The Germans murdered part of the inmate prisoner population of Mittelbau Dora and Hanover-Stocken camps at Gardelegen (some sources call it Gerdelegen) in April 1945, a day or so before the arrival of Allied troops. The victims were Russians, Poles, French, Hungarians, Dutch, Jews, etc. (p. 336). There are broader implications of this heinous crime that I now discuss.

Although author Daniel Blatman does not “connect the dots” that link Gardelegen to Jedwabne, I now do so. To begin with, the Gardelegen Massacre reinforces the fact that the mass burning of victims in a barn is a typically German technique of mass murder. It is not a feature of self-directed European pogroms!

Despite the fact that the investigative IPN Commission had long ago established that the probable number of Jedwabne victims was not more than a few hundred, post-Stalinist Jan T. Gross, and part of the media following him, still go around saying that “the number of Jews killed by Poles” is “as much as” 1,600 or even 3,200. Then again, if it makes for a better Jewish-victimization Polish-villainy sob story, why not?

Blatman specifies the Gardelegen barn, in which the Germans burned or shot 1,016 victims (p. 359), as 4 meters high, 25 meters long, and 8 meters wide. (p. 333). This means a 200 square meters floor area. For comparison, the Sleszynski barn, in which the Jews of Jedwabne were burned or shot, was 19 X 7.5 meters (142.5 square meters floor area), as noted by Chodakiewicz (THE MASSACRE IN JEDWABNE, p. 141).

So the Gardelegen barn had a considerably greater floor area than the Sleszynski barn in Jedwabne. Scaling the 1,016 Gardelegen barn victims to the much-smaller Sleszynski barn means a maximum of hundreds of Jedwabne victims. Now more than ever, it is time for the media to stop repeating the canard of 1,600 or 3,200 Jedwabne victims.

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THE STANDARD JUDEOCENTRIC NARRATIVE DESPITE A CONSIDERABLE FOCUS ON NON-JEWISH VICTIMS OF THE NAZIS

Author Blatman presents a vast body of data on the Nazi German murders of the mostly-infirm evacuees of concentration camps (p. 46) in the last few months of the European theater of WWII. Many if not most of the victims were non-Jews (p. 10), and were killed according to the whims of local commanders, and not because of any kind of higher-level Nazi order or any kind of overall plan. (p. 417).

However, in doing so, Blatman retains the standard Holocaust supremacist victimhood hierarchy. This is obvious from his statements, “It is true that the murderous ideology at the heart of the Nazi WELTANSCHAUUNG was anti-Semitism, but it was compounded by racial stances that shaped genocidal activity marked by other characteristics, sometimes similar to and sometimes different from the extermination of the Jews—targeted against Gypsies, Poles, Soviet POWs, and other victims.” (p. 417). In other words, despite Blatman’s media-professed “inclusive” approach in dealing with all the victims of the Nazis, the victimhood of the Jews remains central, and thus the significance of all the non-Jewish victims remains minimized.

On another subject, Blatman (p. 409) repeats the standard meme of Polish guilt for Jedwabne. He also unfailingly drags-in the teachings of the Church and (what else?) anti-Semitism into the mix of the canned accusations. Finally, Blatman completely sidesteps all the evidences for German responsibility for Jedwabne. He also ignores Jewish complicity in the Koniuchy massacre of Polish villagers.

SO DANIEL BLATMAN PROMOTES A “POLISH NARRATIVE”? NOT EXACTLY

Let us examine the implications of all this. Author Daniel Blatman has recently (late 2018) become the newly appointed chief historian of the ‘Warsaw Ghetto Museum’ in Poland. Ironic to his unambiguous endorsement of the standard Judeocentric narrative, as exhibited in this study, Blatman has been accused by some Jews of promoting the “Polish narrative”, and, worse yet, of now being a “willing tool” of the Polish government! Yeah, right.

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HOLOCAUST NOT EXCEPTIONAL: MURDERING JEWS WAS NOT CENTRAL TO EITHER NAZI GERMAN THINKING OR POLICIES

While supporting the standard Judeocentric narrative of the presumed special-ness of Jewish victimhood, Blatman ironically presents evidences that refute it. The remainder of my review examines some of them.

Despite rumors among Jews of the time, no Nazi plan existed for killing all the remaining Jews in the latter stages of the war. (p. 4). If anything, it was almost the opposite. Several months before the defeat of the Third Reich (p. 210), Heinrich Himmler gave a directive to spare the remaining Jews and gather them together with the “privileged” Jews at Theresienstadt in order to serve as a potential bargaining chips with the Allies for “German interests”. (p. 144: See also pp. 210-211, p. 239, pp. 411-412, p. 429).

Now, we are often told that the Nazis insisted on the death of ALL Jews, and that the Nazi obsession with the destruction of Jews, unlike that of other targeted groups, was absolute and unalterable, and moreover to be achieved regardless of the political, economic, or military costs. This is supposed to make the Holocaust exceptional. Such is clearly not the case. “German interests” could conceivably accept the sparing of Jews instead of the killing of Jews. And, to Himmler at least, saving his skin before the Allies was more important than killing Jews. Clearly, something other than killing Jews was MORE important.

HOLOCAUST NOT EXCEPTIONAL: SLAVS HAD NO MORE INHERENT LONG-TERM RIGHT TO LIVE THAN THE JEWS

Despite adhering to the standard Judeocentric narrative, Blatman tacitly acknowledges that the Nazis recognized neither the rights of non-Jews or Jews to long-term survival. He comments, “The SS’s unceasing efforts to transfer more and more prisoners to the concentration camps in order to proceed apace with building and industrialization brought into the camps vast numbers of prisoners WHO WERE PERCEIVED FROM THE OUTSET as UNDESERVING OF LONG-TERM SURVIVAL: Jews, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, French resistance fighters, and Yugoslav and Italian Communists. They made up the bulk of the prisoners who were incarcerated in concentration camps in the last 18 months of the war.” (p. 46; Emphasis added). Note also that, unlike the resistance fighters and Communists, the Slavs as well as Jews were imprisoned not for what they did but for who they WERE.

HOLOCAUST NOT EXCEPTIONAL: IT WAS JUST AS “RATIONAL” AS ALL THE OTHER GENOCIDES

On another subject, Blatman inadvertently dispenses with the old argument that the Holocaust was exceptional because it was uniquely irrational in that it brought no tangible benefit to the perpetrator. As is the case with other genocides, it most certainly did. Blatman writes, “As we know, there were extensive utilitarian aspects to Nazi genocide; one of these was economic. The seizing of the assets of the victims, in particular the murdered Jews, directly affected the standard of living of all Germans. Looting the treasures of the occupied countries was a routine procedure.” (p. 427).

HOLOCAUST NOT EXCEPTIONAL: MASS GASSING OF NON-JEWS AS WELL AS JEWS

The systematic gassings of victims conducted by the Nazis is usually associated, in the public mind, with the Jews sent to the death camps. However, the Germans also engaged in the mass gassing of “unproductive” inmates (non-Jews as well as Jews) in concentration camps. Thus, there were gas chambers in the concentration camps of Stutthof (p. 112), Ravensbruck (p. 128), Sachsenhausen and Dachau (p. 130), and Mauthausen (p. 131). This fact blurs the presumed distinction between “Jews only” extermination camps and the presumably-ordinary “Jews and non-Jews” concentration camps.