Whats behind the curtain - Oskar Groening.

[polardude]

I have become quite interested in the story of Oskar Groening and the processes behind the curtain that leads a completely unknown to suddenly "break his silence" on a BBC commemorative documentary. I mean did they advertise in the newspaper "Wanted - SS men who saw the gas chamber and are willing to talk to a global audience about their participation - renumeration, nothing"

There may be a perfect reasonable explanation - for example any German who worked at Auschwitz is a perfect position to be blackmailed by the Federal Police. Basically gives us a good performance and we guarantee you won't go on trial - otherwise..... And lets face it, they have put plenty of older men on trial for these things.

But I wonder if that is necessarily it.

Is Oskar Groening even his real name, it isn't listed in the telephone book.

According to Lawrence Rees

After the war, Oskar Groening took up a hobby. He worked as a manager in a glass factory near Hamburg, but in his own time he became a keen stamp collector. It was at a meeting of his local philately club, in the late 1980s, that Groenig found himself chatting to a man about politics.

"Isn't it terrible," said the man, "that the government says it's illegal to
say anything against the killing of millions of Jews in Auschwitz?" He went
on to explain to Groening how it was "inconceivable" for so many bodies to have been burned.

Groening said nothing to contradict these statements. But the attempt to deny the reality of Auschwitz, the site of the largest mass murder in history, upset him and made him angry. He obtained one of the Holocaust deniers' pamphlets that his fellow stamp collector had recommended, wrote an ironic commentary on it, and posted it to the man from the philately club.

Suddenly, he started to get phone calls from strangers who disputed his
view. It turned out that his denunciation of the Holocaust deniers' case had been printed in a neo-Nazi magazine. The calls and letters he received "were all from people who tried to prove that Auschwitz was a huge mistake, a big hallucination, because it hadn't happened".

So he was maybe drawing attention to himself in the 80s - or maybe this is simply Rees' fiction. I did ask a couple of friends who work in the Federal Police on these matters if they knew about the neo nazi magazine it appeared in, and if there was a copy still around and they got quite snakey. So maybe this is just a myth propagated to explain how the BBC got hold of him.

It shouldn't be that hard to get hold of his true identity, he was a judge in an employment court and that should be available thru archives.

Some more information is here
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,338491,00.html
Here, Groening is quite explicit about seeing gas chambers (assuming that the interview transcript has not been tampered with - but frankly Mr Groening seems most cooperative that it is unlikely to have been necessary).

However the most revealing quote is:

The interview, said Groening is the "first time in 60 years that I am publicly talking about my time in Auschwitz." Groening was found innocent by a war crimes court in 1948 and testified against numerous other officers in post-war trials. In the interview, he says he has not been back to Auschwitz since the war because he is "ashamed" of what he did there.

Far from being someone seeking to forget his wartime past, he appears to have been a professional witness - that presumably only recently as decided to embellish his account with stories of Auschwitz.

It would be very interesting to know Mr Groening's true identity and what exactly were the war crimes trials he testified at and what he said.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

I think you're right. If you dug you'd find a fraud. There's another thread here on the forum about Groenig, because I've read that account here before.

Keep in mind that it's a formulaic story. We see a version of that formula with Professor Alan Brown, which I posted a year and a half ago: Compare:
http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?t=1546

excerpt:

"For 50 years as a Holocaust survivor I did not speak out," Dr. Alan Brown told his North Shore Community College audience. But one month before his retirement as professor of Economics at the University of Windsor, Canada, he received a telephone message that changed his life.

A former pupil asked him to write a recommendation stating that the student hadn't disturbed his class. What a strange request! Professor Brown (no relation to this reporter) learned that the pupil's other teachers refused him because he did disturb their classes by making speeches and distributing pamphlets denying the Holocaust.

That phone conversation was Brown's wake-up call. He decided to participate in the speakers' bureau of the local Holocaust Memorial Center in West Bloomfield, Michigan, to share his story so that others would learn from it.

[Hannover]

There have been many cases of 'Nazis' re-arrested after being freed. Groening may have anticipated his re-arrest or was informed of the possibility. This certainly could spur him on to take out a little insurance policy on the matter.

Aside from the utter scientific impossibility of the gas chambers as they are alleged, Groening is not the slightest bit credible

Here's the relevant quotes from:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/interna ... 91,00.html

BILD: What did you see in Auschwitz?

Groening: The most gruesome nightmare, that still haunts me today. The gas chambers, the burning of bodies, mountains of corpses.

BILD: Were you there when the Jews were "selected" and sent to their deaths?

Groening Yes. At least after 1943. I had to watch out that the guards and the other SS-Officers didn't steal any of the valuables when the Jews arrived with their suitcases. Money. Gold. Diamonds. Furs. Everything was supposed to be collected and "without greed" and sent to the economics department and main administrative offices of the SS in Berlin. There were millions there.

BILD And the proper owners were sent to their deaths!

Groening Yes. That was absolutely clear. Even many of the Jews knew it. Others really believed they would only get "showered" and "deloused." The "selection" occurred incredibly peacefully. The prisoners stood in five lines, men separated from women. The children stayed with their mothers. Then five people came forward. Doctors picked out all the sick and those unable to work and put them on a truck, ostensibly so that they could be taken care of. We knew, however, that they would go to the gas chambers.

BILD How could you live with this horror?

Groening Through repression. In such a situation, a person turns off all the horror around in order to survive it. It's a protective reaction. Otherwise I would have gone crazy. For half a year I was sick with typhus. Otherwise, I did my job. After work I lived my daily life, sometimes by getting drunk. But there was also theater and movies in the camp.

Groening goes on to describe the first time he saw the gas chamber and how the screams of those inside still echo in his memory. He also describes the burning of bodies and how he watched a fellow SS-Officer quiet a crying Jewish infant by crushing it against a truck. The interview, said Groening is the "first time in 60 years that I am publicly talking about my time in Auschwitz." Groening was found innocent by a war crimes court in 1948 and testified against numerous other officers in post-war trials. In the interview, he says he has not been back to Auschwitz since the war because he is "ashamed" of what he did there.

- Curious, the many and very clear wartime aerial photos of Auschwitz show no such "mountains of corpses" or the claimed huge pits. Laughable.

- He claims to have witnessed 'selections' (which did indeed occur for choosing able bodied for work) and says he consequently knew they were gassed. He claims the sick and those unable to work were sent to the alleged 'gas chamber'. How does he explain all the young, old, & sick that were allowed to remain in Auschwitz when the Germans retreated? How does he explain the lack of human remains?

- He claims some Jews knew they were going to be gassed, but then says "The "selection" occurred incredibly peacefully". Right.

- He claims to have heard screaming of alleged gassees, but how does one hear screaming in alleged gas chambers that were essentially underground morgues? Aren't the Jews said to have been waiting outside as each batch is supposedly gassed. What, Jews don't have ears?

- He says a baby was crushed against a truck to silence it. I'm sure the Jews present would continue to think that everything was fine after that little fictitious event.

- All this and he was found innocent in 1948.

plus:
- He worked in the Auschwitz cashiers office, but claims to have detailed knowledge of alleged gassings.

- He claims to have been in a POW camp in England, how did that happen?

More on the Groening farce here:
'Nazi's testimony / Oskar Groening;
http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?t=1624

This dog don't hunt.

Hannover

[Reinhard]

From David Irving's website:

"A S Marques of Portugal has spotted, Saturday, April 16, 2005, how BBC producer Laurence Rees faked what a German "eye-witness of gas chambers" actually said

What Gröning actually said

I HAVE just read the article "The fight against Holocaust denial" by Raffi Berg, quoted by your site from BBC News. In that article, we read the following:

"The fear that deniers could gain the upper hand led an SS camp guard, Oskar Gröning, to break a lifetime of silence earlier this year in a BBC documentary, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution. 'I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I was on the ramp when the selections [for the gas chambers] took place,' said Mr Gröning, now in his 80s. 'I would like you to believe these atrocities happened -- because I was there.' "
Mr. Berg's quote is intriguing. I happen to have not only watched, but also tape-recorded, the BBC documentary he mentions, when it was broadcast last March 8 [2005] on the Portuguese channel RTP-2, in its original English version subtitled in Portuguese, and I was struck by the contradiction between the subtitles and the actual words one can hear in the film.

They differ in one important detail from what one can distincly hear, both in the German words spoken by Gröning and their superposed English translation.

The Portuguese subtitles, like Mr. Berg's quote, follow what I gather to be the BBC-distributed text that one can find here (Gröning speaking): http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/about/transcripts_6.html

"I see it as my task, now at my age, to face up to these things that I experienced and to oppose the Holocaust deniers who claim that Auschwitz never happened. And that's why I am here today. Because I want to tell those deniers: I have seen the gas chambers, I have seen the crematoria, I have seen the burning pits - and I want you to believe me that these atrocities happened. I was there."
Now here are the actual words one gets in the English superposed commentary, which is a faithful translation of the German words one is also able to hear beneath the English:

"I see it as my task, now at my age, to face up to these things that I experienced and to oppose the Holocaust deniers who claim that Auschwitz never happened. And that's why I am here today. Because I want to tell those deniers: I have seen the crematoria, I have seen the burning pits - and I want you to believe me that these atrocities happened. I was there."
Spot the difference.

Tough luck. Back to Höss's "confessions" (never mind Richard Baer or Arthur Liebehenschel) and, of course, the Germans that also confessed to have seen the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth: Hans Stark (10 years for gassing Jews, under juvenile law due to his age, in the Frankfurt 1963-65 "Auschwitz Trial") and Pery Broad (5 years, same trial)...

A. S. Marques
Lisbon, Portugal"

Source: http://fpp.co.uk/Letters/Auschwitz/Marques_150405.html

[Radar]

Groening's story has no credibility until he is subject to cross examination. This is not likely of course. In the meantime we can only delve into his actual background and history. Just another "eye witness".

I am struck by his vast knowledge of everything going on from the "selections" to the actual gas chamber operations when he was apparently some kind of a pencil pusher. He sure got around. I'm only surprised that we don't hear that he was there quietly at the side of Dr. Mengle while he performed his experiments. He seems to have been everywhere else. His story smells very fishy and of course we know that there were no homicidal gas chambers based on the real evidence. So the remaining question is why did he tell these stories?

[Reinhard]

BILD: What did you see in Auschwitz?

It may be of some interest to the non-German readers in this forum, to what a newspaper Gröning gave this interview.

The yellow-press "sex and crime" - daily "Bild" (the German equivalent to the British "Sun") is owned by the publishing house "Springer", which, as any other German publishing house, has gained its licence after the German defeat 1945 from the allied occupation forces, in this case (Springer) from the British.
The Springer publishing house, which, among others, also owns the respected daily "Die Welt", has its so-called "Springer essentials", which are part of every employment contract:
"I don't know the exact words of the "Springer-essentials", but I hear that they are part of every employment contract. They oblige each member of the editorial staff to learn the lessons from the German past and therefore reject resolutely National Socialism and Communism and to always commemorate the obligation we owe the victims of the Jewish People and the state of Israel, in which the survivors of the Holocaust have found refuge."
["Den Wortlaut der "Springer-Essentials" kenne ich nicht, höre aber, daß sie Bestandteil jeden Arbeitsvertrages bei Springer sind. Sie verpflichten den Redakteur, die Lehren aus der deutschen Vergangenheit zu ziehen und also den Nationalsozialismus und den Kommunismus entschlossen abzulehnen und stets der Verpflichtung zu gedenken, die wir den Opfern des jüdischen Volkes schulden und dem Staat Israel, in dem die Überlebenden des Holocaust Zuflucht gefunden haben." [Klaus Reiner Röhl, "Deutsche Tabus. Ungefragte Antworten", München 2004, p.154]

In fulfilment of this obligation, Iranian President Ahmadinejad was called "the lunatic of Teheran" some days ago by this sex and crime smearpaper "Bild".

And in the more respected daily "Die Welt", Jewish publisher Lord Weidenfeld (who is quite often interviewed by both papers) on January 25th, 2006 was allowed to agitate immoderately in favour of attacking Iran:
"[...] The risk of a military intervention could indeed cause victims at a scale of WW I and WW II, but the triumph of islamistic terrorism would exceed in awefulness everything that world history has shown us."
["[...] Das Risiko einer militärischen Intervention könnte zwar Opfer in Größenordnungen des Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieges mit sich bringen, doch der Triumph des islamistischen Terrors würde an Gräßlichkeit alles überbieten, was uns die Weltgeschichte vermittelte."]
Source: http://www.gerhard-wisnewski.de/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=146

So it seems that, after revisionist scholars have quite successfully exposed many of the lies of the Holocaust-myth, a new eye-witness on the side of the "murderers" had to be dug out and presented to the public.

[Haldan]

I found this posted by ASMarques at a blog, discussing the same subject which we do here, in this thread.

Read on:

Don't you find it strange that Groening can be heard both before and
after the supposed words "I've seen the gas chambers"?

Why would they have edited out of the soundtrack precisely those words,
leaving the next words "I've seen the crematoria" and so on, with the
list of what he had seen except for the gas chambers?

And if the words are not there and were in fact subreptitiously added to
the transcript in order to be featured in the foreign dubbed versions,
how come Groening would have forgotten the main Auschwitz "attraction"
precisely when he was describing what he had personally seen with his
own eyes, i.e. the most outlandish unbelievable items of all?

The BBC producer Laurence Rees says Groening mentions "gas chambers"
elsewhere on his footage. Not true. Not once in the whole final product
of Rees's efforts. He can only be referring to unreleased footage, but
if so why would he have edited the relevant part out of his final
version, only to add the words later, in a different place where
Groening doesn't pronounce them at all and actually talks about
something else?!

Unbelievably idiotic negligence on Rees's part, or simply another lie,
underlining the lack of convincing explicit footage due no doubt to a
very understandable sense of shamed hesitation on Groening's part?

Very odd indeed. Here is my take on the subject:

The words were not there, in the original soundtrack, because
Groening is just another poor guy who was fetched and blackmailed into
activity against his best wishes, in order to "keep the memory alive".
He was half-heartedly doing what was expected of him, while nevertheless
managing to avoid going all the way and confirming the "gas chambers".

Do I have to remind you of Hoess's working-hands going into the same gas
chambers, "smoking cigarettes and eating sandwiches"?

Now, why would Hoess tell us such idiocies instead of simply "hey,
folks, I'm actually being forced to tell you a pack of lies"?...

I leave the answer to your imagination. Not much is required.

Back to the 21st century and the latest Jack-in-the-Holocaust-box, Oskar
Groening.

So they simply edited the words into poor Groening's mouth in the
official distributed text, as Rees now seems to be confessing in his
correspondence with your blog here:
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... right.html

That same text, of course, was the one used for the foreign dubbings,
and that's that. Anything goes in the happy-go-free world of serious
"Holocaust" publishing & broadcasting...

Unfortunately for Rees, in the original English version both the
superposed English comment and the German words that can be heard
beneath it (if you rewind and pay close attention) give the game away:
the "gas chambers" words are definitely not there.

Now, Rees didn't get away with it, and therefore, neither did Groening
for long. He probably is singing the right tune now and will do all that
is required of him, but the question remains: since both Groening's
voice and the superposed English comment agree in the soundtrack and
leave the gas chambers out, what do you call the transcript deemed to
have miraculously created those words backwards in time?...

Don't be afraid of the words: it's called a FALSIFICATION.

And here is the wondrous Holocaust world in a nutshell, friends:

David Irving, the historian; Germar Rudolf, the scientist; Ernst
Zündel, the pacifist: all under arrest.

Laurence Rees, the shoa-bizz falsifier: free as a bird and making lots
of money.

ASMarques

[polardude]

To me the most interesting questions are

1. How did the BBC get hold of him. What were the forces at work here?

2. Is his claim that he was acquitted in a war crimes trial in 1948 true and that he gave evidence against others who were accused true? Or is it simply invention. If so what were these trials he testified in and what was his name? Were these trials to do with Auschwitz or did he witness (supposedly) more atrocities elsewhere?

[Hektor]

I'd be interested in the exact video/audio material!