Alan Dershowitz Letter 12 22-Aug-2001 A Jewish wedding

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Alan Dershowitz Letter 12 22-Aug-2001 A Jewish wedding

Alan Dershowitz

"What followed was described as quite extraordinary owing to the gluttonous consumption of food and alcoholic drinks." � Georg Konrad Morgen

The above image was received by email on 03-Feb-2004. It appears to be a marriage announcement at K.L (Konzentrations Lager) Auschwitz, and translates approximately as, "The inmates of the Concentration Camp Auschwitz extend to the wedding couple wishes for a joyous future, 18-Mar-1944" and "Wedding announcement from the KZ inmates, the married couple Friemel (1944)." The source is identified as follows: The Book "Die Hochzeit von Auschwitz" von Erich Hackl. Diogenes Verlag Zurich 16, 90.- Euro.

Although unmistakably a document that needs to be examined in any discussion of weddings at Nazi camps, its authenticity and interpretation remain to be determined, and may not conform to first impression. The existence of cropping never inspires confidence, and the trailing comma is suggestive of cropping in mid-sentence. The vertical line visible to the left of the photo is unobjectionable � it appears to be part of a box enclosing the calligraphic matter on the left; however, that box of calligraphic matter is on a tinted background, whereas the line of print at the bottom appears to be on an untinted background, which could mean that it was spliced in. Furthermore, the photograph appears to be cropped along the bottom (in line with the cropping of tinted matter on the left), the reason for which might be the chain or cord that the woman has around her neck � had the photograph allowed us to see a little lower, then it is possible that it might have revealed something interesting at the end of that chain, as for example a cross, and which might have invited an interpretation different from the one that first jumped to mind. That "wünschen den Hochzeitspaar" is in error, and should read "wünschen dem Hochzeitspaar" provides a clue that the creators of the card were not skilled in German. In discussions of the best translation of the German, ambiguities were detected as to who was sending the card to whom, and to whom the surname Friemel belonged.

The chief question raised by this image is what an uncropped and higher-resolution version would look like; secondarily one would like to know its chain of custody; in third place come questions concerning the degree of access at Auschwitz to jewellery such as earrings and neck pendants, civilian clothing, florists, photographers, printers, and calligraphers.

22 August 2001

Alan M. Dershowitz
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law
520 Hauser Hall
Harvard Law School
1575 Massachusetts Avenue
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA

Alan Dershowitz:

Judge Georg Konrad Morgen, who testified at the first Nuremberg trial, was a man of high accomplishment:

Q. What training did you have?

A. I studied law at the Universities of Frankfurt on the Main, Rome, Berlin; at the "Academie de Droit International" at the Hague and the "Institute for World Economy and Ocean Traffic" in Kiel. I passed the first, the senior law examination. Before the war I was a judge at the Landgericht in Stettin.

Direct examination of Georg Konrad Morgen by Dr. Pelckmann in The trial of German major war criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg Germany, His Majesty's Stationery Office, Part 20, 07-Aug-1946, p. 380.

Despite Morgen's leanings towards pacifism, he was drafted compulsorily into the SS:

Q. What example can you give that you did not believe you were joining a conspiracy when you joined the SS. Very briefly please.

A. In 1936 I published a book on War Propaganda and the Prevention of War. This book, at a time when war was threatening, showed ways and means to prevent war and the incitement of nation against nation. The book was examined by the Party and published. Therefore, I could not suppose that the SS and the policy of the Reich Government were directed towards war.

The trial of German major war criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg Germany, His Majesty's Stationery Office, Part 20, 07-Aug-1946, p. 380.

Morgen came to specialize in investigating criminal activity among the administrators of concentration camps. He evidenced no predisposition to whitewash:

Q. Now, how extensive did these investigations become? [...]

A. I investigated Weimar-Buchenwald, Lublin, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, Herzogenbosch, Cracow, Plaschow, Warsaw, and the concentration camp at Dachau. And others were investigated after my time.

Q. How many cases did you investigate: How many sentences were passed? How many death sentences?

A. I investigated about 800 cases, or rather, about 800 documents, and one document would affect several cases. About 200 were tried during my activity. Five concentration camp commandants were arrested by me personally. Two were shot after being tried.

Q. You caused them to be shot?

A. Yes. Apart from the commandants, there were numerous other death sentences against Führers and Unterführers.

The trial of German major war criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg Germany, His Majesty's Stationery Office, Part 20, 07-Aug-1946, p. 381.

Despite his actions not always being appreciated by his superiors, Morgen acted decisively against corruption and the unlawful killing of prisoners:

Obergruppenführer Pohl, however, took another attitude. Previously, or about the same time, I had had the commandant of the Concentration Camp Herzogenbusch arrested; he had caused the death of ten women through punishment he meted out. When I reported this to Pohl, he said this was a "bagatelle." He said, "What do the lives of ten women matter in view of the thousands of German women dying every night in the air raids?"

Georg Konrad Morgen in The trial of German major war criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg Germany, His Majesty's Stationery Office, Part 20, 07-Aug-1946, p. 395.

An incident that particularly aroused Morgen's curiosity was a sumptuous Jewish wedding:

A. One day I received a report from the Commandant of the Security Police in Lublin. He reported that in a Jewish labour camp in his district a Jewish wedding had taken place. There had been 1,100 invited guests at this wedding.

As I said, 1,100 guests participated in this Jewish wedding. What followed was described as quite extraordinary owing to the gluttonous consumption of food and alcoholic drinks. With these Jews were members of the camp guard, that is to say some SS men or other, who took part in this function. This report only came into my hands in a roundabout way, some months later, as the Commandant of the Security Police suspected that the circumstances indicated that some criminal acts had occurred. This was my impression as well, and I thought that this report would give me an indication of another big case of criminal corruption. With this intention, I went to Lublin and I went to the Security Police there, but all they would tell me was that the events were supposed to have happened at a camp of the "Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke." But nothing was known there. I was told it might possibly be a rather peculiar and "opaque" (this was the actual term used) camp in the vicinity of Lublin. I found out the camp and the commandant, who was Kriminalkommissar Wirth.

I asked Wirth whether this report was true and what it meant. To my great astonishment, Wirth admitted it. I asked him why he permitted members of his command to do such things and Wirth then revealed to me that on the Führer's order he had to carry out the extermination of Jews.

Q. Please go on, witness, with what you did.

A. I asked Wirth what this had to do with the Jewish wedding. Then, Wirth described the method by which he carried out the extermination of Jews and he said something like this: "One has to fight the Jews with their own weapons, and one has to cheat them."

Wirth built up an enormous deceptive manoeuvre. He first selected Jews who would, he thought, serve as column leaders, then these Jews brought along other Jews, who worked under them. With those smaller or medium-sized detachments of Jews, he began to build up the extermination camps. He extended this staff, and with them, Wirth himself carried out the extermination.

Wirth said that he had four extermination camps, and that about 5,000 Jews were working at the extermination of Jews and the seizure of Jewish property. In order to win Jews for this business of extermination and plundering of their brethren of race and creed, Wirth gave them every freedom and, so to speak, gave them a financial interest in the spoliation of the dead victims. As a result of this attitude, this extraordinary Jewish wedding had come about.

Then I asked Wirth how he killed Jews with these Jewish agents of his.

The trial of German major war criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg Germany, His Majesty's Stationery Office, Part 20, 07-Aug-1946, pp. 383-384.

Although Morgen is describing the extermination camp Monowitz below, his remarks are also intended as general to all extermination camps � that it was Jews who greeted new arrivals at the camp, and Jews who maintained internal security and ran the camp, whereas non-German-non-Jews provided external security only, and thus would have had limited, or no, contact with the prisoners. A former high-ranking officer in the SS, and of course a German, Morgen would have shifted some of the blame for egregious crimes from German shoulders to Ukrainian if the facts had permitted it; as he didn't shift blame to Ukrainians, we might infer that the facts did not permit it:

The prisoners arrived on a side track in closed transport cars and were unloaded there by Jewish prisoners. [...] These crematoria were surrounded by a barbed wire fence and were guarded from the inside by the Jewish labour details which I have already mentioned. [...] The camp itself was guarded on the outside by special troops of men from the Baltic, Esthonians, Lithuanians, Latvians and also Ukrainians. The entire technical arrangement was almost exclusively in the hands of the [Jewish] prisoners who were assigned for this, and they were only supervised by an [German] Unterführer from time to time. The actual killing was done by another [German] Unterführer who let the gas into this room.

Hurrying the prisoners along to the gas chambers were not Ukrainians, as is incessantly repeated in today's show trials, but Jews:

After he [Kriminalkommissar Wirth] had found such calming words for his victims, they started on the road to death. Men and women were separated. At the first place, one had to give his hat; at the next one, his coat, collar, shirt, down to his shoes and socks. These places were set up like check-rooms, and the person was given a check at each one so that the people believed that they would get their things back. The other Jews had to receive the things and hurry up the new arrivals so that they would not have time to think. The whole thing was like an assembly line. At the last stop they reached the big room, and were told that this was the bath. When the last one was in, the doors were shut and the gas was let into the room.

And of course as has already been widely reported, as for example at the John Demjanjuk show trial in Jerusalem, it was Jewish workers who removed the bodies from gas chambers:

When the air could be breathed again, the doors were opened, and the Jewish workers removed the bodies.

The absence of solidarity among Jews against their oppressors is indicated by recaptured prisoners being killed by other prisoners:

To begin with, there were killings of one prisoner by another, for example, as an act of revenge. If a prisoner had broken out, then during the search, because one did not know where the prisoner was hiding � perhaps in the camp itself � the whole camp had to line up on the parade grounds. That often lasted for hours and sometimes a whole day. The prisoners were tired and hungry, and this long standing, sometimes in the cold or rain, excited them very much, so that when the prisoner was recaptured the other prisoners out of revenge, for his having brought this upon them, beat him to death when the opportunity presented itself.

What can be gleaned from the above testimony, then, is that the people who did the hands-on implementing of the Jewish holocaust were Jews, and that the sorts of crimes attributed in today's Jewish show trials to Ukrainians, if they took place at all, were more plausibly perpetrated by Jews, as I outlined in my letter to Canadian Justice Minister, Anne McLellan of 20-Feb-1998 on the subject of Jewish War Crimes. Ukrainians and other non-German-non-Jews provided external security; they were themselves little better than prisoners who had been assigned to serve as perimeter guards.

Furthermore, what the Jewish wedding with 1,100 guests indulging in its "gluttonous consumption of food and alcoholic drinks" suggests is that the collaborating Jews worked not out of fear, but out of avarice, as I outlined in my letter to Anne McLellan of 17-Apr-1998 on the subject of the Jewish Ghetto Police.

That Western society, then and now, is stratified according to something like a caste system with Jews toward the top and Ukrainians toward the bottom is suggested by two observations: (1) that not Morgen and not anybody has ever heard of a wedding of any Ukrainian WW II guard affluent enough to invite 1,100 guests, and who was able to finance a "gluttonous consumption of food and alcoholic drinks"; and (2) that contemporary Nazi-collaboration prosecutions are directed mainly at Ukrainian perimeter guards, and not at all on the feasting and drinking Jews who implemented the Jewish holocaust in exchange for a share in the wealth of their victims:

At first Wirth's description seemed completely fantastic to me, but in Lublin I saw one of his camps. It was a camp which collected the property or part of the property of his victims. From the quantity � there were an enormous number of watches piled up � I had to realize that something frightful was going on here. I was shown the valuables. I can say that I never saw so much money at one time, especially foreign money � all kinds of coins, from all over the world. In addition, there were a gold-smelting furnace and really prodigious bars of gold.

Although Jewish leaders have several motives for staging Jewish show trials of non-Jews today � as I outlined in my letter to you of 04-Jul-2001 on the subject of the John Demjanjuk Show Trial 2001 � the particular motive that the above Nuremberg testimony points to is the concealment of the WW II reality that in exchange for booty, Jewish leaders implemented the destruction of their own people.

Lubomyr Prytulak

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