Citat:
Ursprungligen postat av CoI
Ibland påstås det att det var en allmän uppfattning under VK2 att Tredje Riket utrotade många av de misshagliga grupper man internerat.
Såväl tyskar som omvärld visst om det. Var det verkligen så?
Vilka är de första tidningsartiklar eller uttalanden som hävdar att tyskarna bedrev utrotningspolitik?
Samuel Crowell i
The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes (revisionist) ger en bra sammanfattning på de första ryktena om utrotning och gaskammare:
The first claim of mass gassing pertaining to Jewish people that received wide circulation was contained in the so-called Bund Report that was smuggled to the Polish Government in exile, located in London, in the third week of May, 1942.16 The report contained two gassing rumors: first that a special automobile (a gas chamber) was being used to gas 90 persons at one time.17 Since the victims were supposed to have dug their graves before being gassed, it follows that this was more a gas chamber that could be moved from place to place than a gas van (normally conceived as a vehicle that would drive victims to a grave while they died from gas inhalation on the way).18 The second rumor pertains to actions in Warsaw: it is said that Jews were being experimented upon with poison gases.19
The Bund Report, in turn, appears to be a composite of at least two documents that had come from Warsaw during the spring of 1942. The first of these was an underground communication from the Jewish Labor Bund, in Warsaw, dated March 16, 1942, which described German activities in Western Poland as follows:
"In a number of villages the Jews were put to death by gas poisoning. They were herded in a horrible way into hermetically sealed trucks transformed into gas chambers, in groups of fifty, entire families, completely nude ...."20
and further alleged that "gas poisoning" was being carried out in Lodz.21 The second document that contributed to the Bund Report was a lead article in Der Veker, April 30, 1942, at a time of internecine struggle between Jewish resisters and collaborators in the Warsaw ghetto.22 That article is the source of most of the numerical totals in the Bund Report, but it is interesting that neither of these documents indicate 700,000 total dead.23 The April 30, 1942 Der Veker article also specifies Chelmno as the site of poison gassings, without giving details, but it is worth noting that from the March 16 communication there is an implied connection of bathing (the enforced nudity) and gassing, although, as we shall see, it will be some months before either element become dominant in the recitation of atrocities.
Two of the members of the Polish National Council in exile were Jewish: Zygielbojm and Szwarcbart, and they could be expected to be particularly interested in what was being alleged about their co-religionists several hundred miles away under German military occupation, and, in spreading these allegations as a means of getting support for their people.24 The Bund Report was thus extensively publicized in the media.
Already on June 24, 1942, the Bund Report was summarized on the BBC.25 The following day, the Daily Telegraph ran a major story on the Report, with two headlines of note: "Germans murder 700,000 in Poland," and "Traveling Gas Chambers".26 The following day, Zygielbojm delivered a broadcast over the BBC, summarizing the Bund Report, in Yiddish, and hence obviously directed to the Jewish population in Poland.27 Within a week, the BBC had made an arrangement with the Polish National Council giving the BBC priority in the reporting of all future atrocity stories.28
On July 1, 1942, the Polish Fortnightly Review published a report, based on the allegations made in the Bund Report, and now also mentioning specific camps: Sobibor, and Majdanek, near Lublin.29 It also made a reference to atrocities at Auschwitz, described as a labor camp, where about a thousand Soviet and Polish POW's were supposed to have been gassed the previous September, as well as to another camp nearby, called 'Paradisal' -- the name, so the report alleged, because "from it there is only one road, leading to Paradise."30 It further alleges that the crematoria in the Paradisal camp were five times larger than at Auschwitz, and that experiments with poison gas were conducted there.31 It should be emphasized that the remarks in the Polish Fortnightly Review concerning Auschwitz were not in the Bund Report; they appear to have come from earlier reports that were sent to London.32
http://web.archive.org/web/200212151...23.html#shrlk2
Man får säga att syftningen på Birkenau ("Paradisal") i det sista stycket är särskilt intressant. Birkenau fick sina krematorier nämligen långt senare, det första var färdigt i februari 1943.
Under sommaren 1942 planerades dock att bygga krematorier i Birkenau, men det var inte fråga om några gaskammare, utan normala krematorier för de många fångar som strök med i lägerkomplexet (sådana krematorier fanns i så gott som samtliga koncentrationsläger). Hela förklaringen nuförtiden bygger på att dessa installationer kom att göras om i några få detaljer med början hösten 1942, för att kunna användas som provisoriska kombinerade gaskammare och krematorier längre fram. Det är nämligen uppenbart från byggnadsplanerna att krematorierna inte från början hade kunnat avse att rymma gaskammare.
Så den intressanta frågan uppkommer, hur kunde
The Polish Fortnightly Review i juli 1942 veta att gaskammarexperiment förekom i Birkenaus krematorier när krematorierna inte ens existerade ännu, samt att deras kommande användning som gaskammare inte ens var känd för tyskarna själva?
Kan du svara på den har du utfört vad historiker kallar för källkritik med avseende på tidsaspekten.
