Holocaust Exceptional Gassing Only of Jews a Myth Friedlander

Origins of Nazi Genocide, by Henry Friedlander. 1997

Ambivalence on Holocaust Supremacism. Nazi Gas Chambers Were Originally For the Handicapped, and Only Later For Jews. Holocaust Was As “Rational” As All Other Genocides

This book has much to say about the Third Reich’s targeting of the handicapped, Jews, and Gypsies. In contrast, it is almost completely sanitized of any mention of the Nazi genocide of Poles (the Polokaust).

I focus on a number of issues of lasting significance.

VICTIMHOOD COMPETITION: DIMINISHING THE GENOCIDE OF THE POLES

The author promotes the standard Holocaust supremacist meme that insists that the Jews’ Holocaust was exceptional. The reader hears that Poles had to “do something” before the Nazis would kill them while Jews only had to be born Jewish in order to be killed. (p. xii).

To top it all off, he actually makes this amazing statement, “In their drive against the Jews, they [the Germans] even killed infants and the very old, a policy they did not follow in their treatment of such enemies, for example, as Communists, Poles, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.” (p. xii).

I can’t believe what I am reading! For Friedlander’s basic information, the Nazis most certainly included Polish infants and the Polish elderly as among their victims.

AUTHOR FRIEDLANDER FINALLY ADMITS THE REALITY OF THE POLOKAUST

Henry Friedlander then does a bit of an about-face, admitting that Poles were targeted, alongside the Jews, not for what they did but for who they WERE. In other words, the stamping out of Polish statehood, culture, and potential resistance was not enough: Poles were admittedly targeted as BIOLOGICAL entities. He writes, “During the war, the number of people considered unworthy of procreation—Jews, Gypsies, Slavs—increased enormously. The traditional method of sterilization was too expensive and too time-consuming to use against large populations. Reich Leader SS Himmler, therefore, commissioned research projects designed to perfect a method by which large numbers of persons could be sterilized rapidly and if possible without their knowledge. Professor Carl Clauberg…Viktor Brack…” (pp. 132-133).

NAZI GERMAN MASS GASSING: PRE-JEWISH USAGE

As part of the mystification of the Holocaust, we are told that Jews were sent to the gas chambers, and Poles were not, as if it made the slightest difference. This technicality confuses the MANNER of mass murder with the SIGNIFICANCE of mass murder, which both Poles and Jews faced. A Pole who died from a German bullet was just as dead as a Jew who died from German carbon monoxide or German hydrogen cyanide.

As it turns out, Nazi gas chambers were not built originally for Jews. In fact, such usage goes back to the time that the Nazis came to power (1933), and for usage against other Germans. At Brandenburg, a short train ride from Berlin, the Nazis constructed a gas chamber in order to destroy the handicapped. It utilized the very same disguise (a showering facility) for which the later Jew-killing gas chambers became notorious. (p. 87).

No sooner had the Germans conquered Poland in 1939 than they started the systematic gassing of Polish handicapped. The Lange Commando used mobile van gas chambers for this purpose throughout 1939-1941, and later put its skill to use in the construction of the gas chambers of the first death camp—Chelmno (Kulmhof) in late 1941. (pp. 138-139).

HITLER NEVER HALTED THE KILLING OF THE HANDICAPPED: IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAY’S “RIGHT TO DIE” LAWS

Hitler’s August 1941 order to stop the destruction of those “unworthy of life”, contrary to postwar myth, did not end the process. It only stopped the mass gassings of handicapped. The murders of the handicapped continued, albeit by other means, such as through the use of tablets, injections, and starvation. (p. 151). [Considering today’s Nazi-like culture of death as per the “assisted suicide” policies in western Europe, this is a frightening portent.]

THE GERMAN PEOPLE MADE NO MORAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN KILLING THE HANDICAPPED AND KILLING JEWS

It has been suggested that the opposition, by the German public, to Nazi policies killing the handicapped, stemmed from the fact that the German people had regard for the lives of the handicapped, if not for Jews. Turns out that nothing so noble was at work: The German people were unconcerned about the morality of killing either the handicapped or Jews. Friedlander (pp. 188-189) shows that the only time that Germans opposed the deaths of either the Jews or the handicapped was when their immediate relatives were the intended victims.

THE HOLOCAUST WAS AS “RATIONAL” AS ANY OTHER GENOCIDE, INSOFAR AS IT MATERIALLY BENEFITTED THE PERPETRATORS

Friedlander comments, “Globocnik’s massive killing operation yielded unbelievable wealth. His final accounting gives some indication of the money and jewelry collected from the victims, even without counting the gold from the teeth of those murdered.” (p. 299).