60 years on and still counting . . .
Historians still struggle to put names to numbers from German concentration camps . . . which begs the question - where did they get '6 million' from?
BUCHENWALD, Germany — The hunt begins with a number.Harry Stein sits nose-to-screen, squinting at the fuzzy digits in column after column on faded microfilm, searching for clues to a mystery: Who was Auschwitz inmate 185403?
The number was tattooed on the left forearm of one of the thousands who were processed through Auschwitz, shipped off to Buchenwald concentration camp, and never seen again.
Male? Female? Old? Young? Jewish? Christian? Reason for arrest? The list Stein is scrutinizing says nothing. There's only that number.
What? Nazis didn't discriminate between Jews and Christians?
That's odd. Surely, it would have made their 'work' easier.
More than six decades after the Nazi Holocaust ended, historians such as Stein are still struggling with a gargantuan task — to make a semblance of order among hundreds of thousands of dead by finding, at least, their names.
There is no central catalog — just miles and miles of files, scattered across Europe, the United States, Israel and elsewhere. Of 56,000 people who perished behind the barbed wire at Buchenwald alone, or on the way there, 23,000 on the camp's records remain unidentified.
The object of Stein's attention on a late autumn day is prisoner 185403. In the end, after four weeks of poring over lists, each dozens of pages long and collected from different archives, Stein will have found the name. "We have pulled out one more person," he will say. "Back from the forgotten."
But it will turn out that 185403 was not forgotten after all.
Staring at a terminal in a stark research room at Buchenwald, overlooking the rooftops of former Nazi barracks and the long sloping road leading to the camp where SS guards taunted and harassed them on their way to its gates, Stein is looking at a log of deaths dated Feb. 18, 1945 — seven weeks before the liberation.
The file was acquired by Buchenwald from the German state of Thuringia's archive, one of many East German repositories of Nazi-era documents that were opened to the public after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The log lists only numbers — row after row of six-digit identity tags tattooed on the arms of prisoners who were unloaded at Buchenwald after the journey from Auschwitz and other camps in German-occupied Poland in the bitter winter of 1945.
Each number must be checked against copies of copies of the master transport lists — acquired from the archives at Auschwitz and Yad Vashem by the administrators of Buchenwald, which has been preserved as a museum and place of pilgrimage.
"And then ... we go from the top to the bottom, over 40 to 50 pages, we go down the list," trying to match a number with a name, Stein explained. "For this, it is important that the list is clearly legible, which is sometimes very difficult."
The process usually takes about one day per individual. But 185403 is taking weeks.
How ironic - that he should spend weeks putting one name to one death - that is 60 years old, while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, slaughtered in the last three years alone, remain nameless to the world at large.
Only two hours drive away, in the German spa town of Bad Arolsen, the International Tracing Service, or ITS, holds some 1.5 million original Nazi documents from Buchenwald. If Stein and his team of six researchers could plumb this collection, the job would be much easier.
But this largest archive of original Nazi records in existence is off-limits to historians. Administered by the International Committee of the Red Cross and governed by an international panel, the ITS' sole mandate for six decades has been to trace the fate of victims or reunite families torn apart by World War II.
"They have these documents that could clarify the fate of so many people, and they are just sitting on them," said Sabine Stein, Buchenwald's chief archivist, who is married to Harry.
Now, if reuniting families was truly their 'sole mandate' wouldn't they want as many researchers and historians as possible to help?
Clearly, an ulterior motive lurks behind the secrecy.
Paul Shapiro, a senior official of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., says the ITS records represent "a significant effort to identify names with numbers for most of the camps that they have records ... The fact that those materials have not been accessible has created great problems for researchers and perhaps resulted in significant duplication of effort."
Jean-Luc Blondel, an assistant to the president of the ICRC who served as interim director at the ITS, says he is aware of historians' frustrations, but insists the primary task of the archive is to reunite families.
"Our priority is to catch up with the humanitarian personal requests, and it takes up a lot of our energies," said Blondel.
Last May, the 11-nation commission overseeing the ITS agreed to open the files to researchers. But ratification by the individual countries is required before that can happen. Some have promised to speed the process, but it could be years before all 11 are on board.
Or, for some countries - never.
Meanwhile, the Steins have learned to follow a circuitous paper trail from archives held at Auschwitz to others maintained by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem gathering copies of recopies, mostly of the original lists held by the ITS.
The goal is to come up with a memorial book listing — as completely as possible because the Holocaust generation is dwindling — all those who died at Buchenwald. The Steins hope they will be able to identify at least another 1,000 victims. For the others, mostly inmates who perished in death marches or Soviet prisoners of war executed in a mass killing, no documentation survives.
They're doing all this to identify just 1000 victims?
Is that 1000 out of 6 million? or in addition to 6 million?
And if no documentation survives for the rest of them, then how do we know they died? Or, how they died, or when they died?
If so much remains unknown, then where did the '6 million' figure come from?
Is it just a guess? And if it is just a guess, then why is there so much indignation when people question its accuracy?
These are all questions that deserve answers. But, first someone must ask.
This is exactly the same questions WE have been asking!
Strange how they CONTROL ALL ACCESS TO "original" documents, huh?!!!!!!!!!
They can EASILY FORGE ANY DOCUMENTS to say whatever they want. Heck it can be 60 Million, or 6 GaJillion for all they care!
Norman Finkelstein on his web site (and in his books) has a great deal to say about the holocast reparations racket. Most of the money extorted from European countries goes into the pockets of lawyers and Zionist "foundations." Very little of it goes to actual survivors of the detention camps.
A person is only a "survivor" if a Zionist lawyer or "foundation" grants the label. Jews have only themselves to blame for this, since they will not allow anyone to seriously examine the holocaust.
We should not be surprised if some of these survivors (who got stiffed) start calling for outsiders to be allowed to help in holocaust research. Zionists will scream, but authentic survivors have nothing to fear. They might even get some of that money that's supposed to go to them.
Now the U.S black population, enslaved or not, should know just where all THEIR reparations went.
That the moon shot went down without using US government documentations or sources and you WILL FAIL.
I tried that. Just like i tried to find more than 600,000 or so holocaust deaths. Unless i Sex up the data 600k is all i can realistically chock up on that list without MORE proof.
As to the moon shot,If you buy THAT story you should try the search for proof of the moon landing Without using US or NASA infos on the subject for your own self.
First you take D.C. Then you take New York.