I posted previously:
Lamprecht wrote:OP: tell me when you have read the links provided, and then come back with the questions you don't feel are answered about. If this topic is truly important to you, I expect you do the actual research. It's really not very much at all.
No response from OP yet, but I have a bit of free time today so I will address some other points he made in the OP:
stinkytoes wrote:The revisionists say that Hitler intended to deport them (to lands formerly held by the USSR I guess). That is why the camps were mostly in Poland -- he was pushing them East.
The "Final Solution" was a policy that was intended to remove the Jews from Europe. Deporting them to lands formerly held by the USSR was seen only as temporary measures. The "Final Solution" was officially postponed until after that war, so it never came to fruition. I'll get to that more later (and have discussed it in many threads that have been linked)
However, is there any evidence that such deportations were ever carried out?
Various documents saying exactly this, as well as personal diary entries.
See my links on the "Final Solution" and Aktion Reinhardt that I posted in this reply:
viewtopic.php?p=96272#p96272From the Goebbels diary:
18 December 1941:
"I speak with the Führer regarding the Jewish Question. He is determined to take consistent action and not be deterred by bourgeois sentimentality. Above all, the Jews must leave the Reich (aus…heraus)... The Jews should all be pushed off (abgeschoben) to the East. We are not very interested in what becomes of them after that."7 March 1942 (probably referencing the 20 January 1942 Wannsee conference/protocols):
"I read a detailed report from the SD and police regarding a final solution of the Jewish Question. Any final solution involves a tremendous number of new viewpoints. The Jewish Question must be solved within a pan-European frame. There are 11 million Jews still in Europe. They will have to be concentrated later, to begin with, in the East; possibly an island, such as Madagascar, can be assigned to them after the war. In any case there can be no peace in Europe until the last Jews are shut off from (ausgeschaltet) the continent."27 April 1942:
"I talked to the Führer once more in detail about the Jewish Question. His attitude is unrelenting. He wants, under all circumstances, to push the Jews out (herausdrängen) of Europe. That is right. The Jews have brought so much misery to our continent that the severest punishment meted out to them is still too mild. Himmler is presently implementing a large resettlement (Umseidlung) of Jews from German cities to the eastern ghettos."30 May 1942:
"Therefore the Führer does not at all wish that the Jews should be evacuated (evakuiert) to Siberia. There, under the harshest living conditions, they would undoubtedly develop again a strong life-element. He would much prefer to resettle (aussiedeln) them in central Africa. There they would live in a climate that would certainly not make them strong and resistant. In any case, it is the Führer's goal to make Western Europe completely Jew-free. Here they may no longer have their homeland."21 August 1942:
"The Jews are now in large part evacuated (evakuiert) and established in the East. This is quite generous to them. Here the Jewish Question is tackled in the right place, without sentimentality and without much consideration. Only in this way can the Jewish problem be solved."1 October 1942:
"I drive back to the Chancellery with the Führer. Once again we talk through the Jewish Question. Here the Führer takes the same radical standpoint I do. He is also of the opinion that we must completely deport the Jews out of the Reich (restlos herausschaffen), and above all from Berlin."3 January 1943 (on the
Führer Reichstag prophecy):
"It's amazing how shortsightedly the Jews all over the world operate. They seem to have learned nothing from the example in Germany. Apparently the hemorrhaging of them by us yielded very little fruit. They should expect this frivolous playing with fire to continue until they are completely wiped out (gänzlich vernichtet). This also corresponds to the Führer's prophecy, when he explained at the beginning of the war that it would not end with the destruction (Vernichtung) of the Aryan race, but with the expulsion (Austreibung) of Jewry from Europe."23 January 1943:
"The Führer is of the opinion that the Jewish Question in Berlin must be solved as soon as possible. As long as one still finds Jews in Berlin, we cannot speak of internal security. Also the Jews must be removed from Vienna (aus…heraus) as fast as possible."2 March 1943:
"We are now definitely pushing the Jews out (aus…hinaus) of Berlin. They were suddenly rounded up last Saturday, and are to be carted off (abgeschoben) to the East as quickly as possible."15 March 1943:
"You just can’t trust the Jews across the street. I therefore told the Führer emphatically once more that I deemed it essential to force the Jews out (herauszubringen) of the entire Reich as fast as possible. He approved, and ordered me not to cease or pause until no Jew is left anywhere in Germany."18 April 1943:
"I believe I shall have completed one of the greatest political achievements of my career once Berlin is free of Jews. When I consider how Berlin looked in 1926 when I came here, and how it looks now in 1943 when the Jews are being evacuated (evakuiert) completely, I get a feeling of what has been achieved in this sector."8 May 1943:
"The East will forever regard Europe as an attractive jewel. The East will again and again try to break into this continent in order to dominate it. Our constant, untiring effort must therefore center upon taking the necessary measures for our security. If it be true today that the Bolshevism of the East is mainly under Jewish leadership and that the Jews are also the dominant influence in the Western plutocracies, then our anti-Semitic propaganda must begin at this point. The Jews must therefore be thrown out (aus…heraus) of Europe."Is there someone -- a survivor -- who said something like "I was at Treblinka for two months and then I was shipped out to Russia."
Treblinka 1 was a work camp and Treblinka 2 was either a "pure extermination camp" or transit camp, depending on if revisionists or exterminationists are correct. During the Demjanjuk trial, a number of Jews admitted to being transited from Treblinka. Examples here:
http://vho.org/GB/Books/t/10.html#ftnref872So nobody would have been at Treblinka II (the alleged extermination camp) for 2 months based on either side's claims. Except maybe the workers there.
Why were some survivors at Auschwitz for years if the whole point was to deport them?
There were 3 main Auschwitz camps, and many inmates were used for labor. Some death row inmates were sent to Auschwitz to be subjected for months of forced labor, and then publicly executed. It was a prison camp during a war. The Auschwitz death records show:
viewtopic.php?p=94680#p94680Total number of inmates executed: 1616
Total Poles executed: 1465
Total Jews executed: 114
The goal of the "Final Solution" was to remove all Jews from Europe. Again, since this "Final Solution" policy was officially postponed until after the war, any actions taken were temporary measures.
By February 1943, a turning point with the loss of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Germans were expelled from the Caucasus and everything gained in the 1942 Summer Campaign was slowly being lost. As the Soviets were regaining these territories, evacuations "to the East" become completely infeasible. Using Jews for labor was now considered more practical than dumping them into ghettos, so the focus was shifted to Auschwitz (which had a synthetic-rubber and petroleum plant since May 1942) rather than Operation Reinhardt, which ended later that year.
Is there evidence from reconnaisance photos showing trains filled with people traveling from the camps in an Eastward direction?
I am not sure how that would even exist, but there are no reconnaissance photos showing hundreds of thousands of Jews being burned in open air pyres at Treblinka 2, Sobibor, or Belzec when that was supposedly happening.
If not, what was the point of the camps and what was the point of putting most of them in Poland?
Poland was conquered territory and the Germans were moving Eastward, expecting to win the war. The "pure extermination camps" were put in strategic areas in regards to railways.
I explained the purpose of the camps in my previous post, especially when I linked to:
5 January 1944 Globocnik Report to Himmler (4024-PS) on Operation Reinhard(t)viewtopic.php?t=12359Were they simply labor camps?
There were labor, internment, and transit camps. Some were mixtures of two or three.
And what happened to all the concentration camp prisoners if they were neither deported nor deliberately murdered? If millions went into the camps and a much smaller number than that were liberated in spring 1945, where did they all go?
How do we know they were not deported? Which prisoners? Some obviously died (disease, starvation, allied bombing, etc) as revisionists have always claimed. Some may have even been executed, but not in any "extermination of Jews" policy.
What numbers are you speaking of? Please provide these numbers and the sources of them.