While Mengele himself probably had nothing to do with it, I have it on pretty good authority* that when us Brits were facing our outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease about ten years ago, we were having serious issues with how to dispose of all the cow carcasses. Yes, we were cremating them, but it pretty much had to be done on the farm (the cost to transport while maintaining biosecurity would have been huge).
It wasn’t until somebody suggested we quietly ask the Germans that it all got sorted out, because, yes, someone had made records of the techniques they used during the holocaust.
*OK, I heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy. But the Royal Army Veterinary Corps was overseeing the project so it seems pretty feasible that the Brigadier-General in charge would be able to get in touch with the right people in Germany.
Er… first thing is, aren’t a lot of the architects of the Nazi WWII camp system dead by now? Which makes asking questions a bit difficult.
Second, the Nazis had the advantage of self-loading cargo. They did the transporting when their victims were still alive and able to ambulate. Only after they were transported to central hubs and killed in large batches did the cremation take place. So I don’t see how that would help with transporting piles of already dead livestock from scattered farms to a central cremation furnace.
Actually, it doesn’t seem feasible at all. Why would a British Brigadier-General in the Veterinary Corps have access to 70 year old records from Germany?
Besides the fact that this story is absurd on its face (Germans are the only ones who know the secrets of the Holocaust?), livestock culls are fairly common with contagious diseases and there would be a wealth of information and standard practices across cultures. I really don’t see any parallels between cremating large numbers of non-contagious humans concentrated in a single place and cremating large numbers of contagious animals scattered on hundreds of different farms.
SJL4041: Yep - it could be an nascent urban legend, and given I can’t even remember who mentioned it you’re welcome to continue taking it with a pinch of salt. All I will say is that the two degrees of removal I alluded to may be the only two degrees of removal - I was involved with the outbreak and, while I fortunately never diagnosed FMD and thus never went “dirty” (ie was on a FMD+ve farm) those of my colleagues which did were working directly with the RAVC.
Germans the only ones who know the secrets of the holocaust? Well no, but they are the only primary witnesses of the mass cremations as far as I know. For sure, livestock culls have occurred elsewhere, but I suspect they’re not actually all that commonplace, especially in such volume - a lot of countries will just cope with endemic FMD, for instance, and if the disease isn’t hugely contagious the animals can be transported. The impression I got was that the political implications of using information obtained during the holocaust was recognized - I would imagine that if the information had been accessible from another source it would have been used.
Telemark, Broomstick: What I was getting at is that a BG would have the clout to be taken seriously by the German guy on the end of the line rather than being presumed to be a crank caller. I guess a civil servant might have had similar success via different channels. At the time there would still most likely have been a few witnesses still alive, but if it is a problem that the Nazi had recognized then they’d presumably have left a paper record, as there was more than one concentration camp. Not all the cattle were transferred to a central furnace (I believe that policy changed during the outbreak (risk of transport vs risk of burning in the open) which suggests that in fact there was no standard practice) - many were burned in situ as the UK incinerator capacity was filled with carcasses of any cattle killed after thirty months (due to the ongoing BSE issue - this would include most dairy cattle)
In addition, there are health and veterinary organization with expertise and guidelines in safe disposal of infected animal carcasses. For example, this article cites the World Health Organization as an authority on disposal of animals killed by anthrax.
I find it hard to believe that “us Brits” dealing with a foot and mouth disease outbreak a decade ago, would’ve found it necessary to dig up old Holocaust “techniques”.
I opened a separate thread for another observation I had about this column, but I think I’ll post it here as well. In the column, Cecil says, “The Tuskegee syphilis experiment, where** rural **men with the disease were kept ignorant of their condition and prevented from getting treatment, is justly infamous…”
(emphasis mine)
Um…“rural?” Am I wrong in remembering that all of the test subjects in that experiment were African-American, and while they may have been rural as well, it’s for their ethnicity, not their place of residence, that the study is “justly infamous?”
If they weren’t all black, I’d love to see a cite for that, and if they were all black, why not mention that? “Rural” seems oddly vague and disingenuous. I mean, I’ve now seen “urban” and “rural” both used as euphemisms for “black,” which is kind of a problem.
Yes, they were all rural, and yes, they were all African American.
What made the study infamous was neither their residence nor their ethnicity. It was because they were denied effective treatment after such became available (penicillin was not generally available until 1943; the study began publishing its results in 1934).
The study was unethical (to say the least) no matter what race the subjects were.
Before treatment was available, it was ethicially questionable but not horribly so. The researchers were doing an extended study of the course of an untreatable disease. Part of the research prior to 1943 was to test how well things like Salvorsen and mercury worked (they didn’t).
Ethnicity is certainly a factor of infamy in the Tuskegee experiment. Rural location not so much for the moral and ethical aspects but in the political realm they were told they were receiving free government healthcare.
The problem seems to be how to properly dispose of cow carcasses. AFAIK, Britons have been familiar with fire, and it’s uses, for a really long time. Baking, smelting, cremation, etc. No need to seek outside assistance.
*According to the National Funeral Directors Association which is the largest industry association (founded in 1882), “The optimum temperature range is 1400 degrees to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit for the cremation chamber.” aCremation’s Dallas cremation chambers (also called retorts) are typically kept at 1650 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature is constantly monitored by the crematory operator to ensure it is maintained between the required levels. *
If you feel it was worse to do this to blacks than to whites or Asians or Hispanics, we are going to have to agree to disagree. Promising free health care seems unethical whether rural or urban, so I don’t thinnk their location means it is no longer a moral or ethical consideration.
The “big deal” is that it wasn’t a coincidence that the victims were black – they were chosen because they were black (and had syphilis, obviously). It was just (sadly) another example of governmental and societal maltreatment of black Americans.
Salvorsen did work. It didn’t work as well as penicillin, especially when the disease is in the later stages, and had some nasty side effects, but it did often cure syphilis.
And yes, the fact that all of the participants were poor African Americans contributes to its notability. It represents a case of institutional discrimination: that the government is willing to conduct unethical experiments on black people but not white people is pretty troubling.
That link also cites controversy associated with disposal - following the WHO’s advice got the veterinarian involved fined big time. The UK government spent quite a bit of money after the epidemic trying to learn lessons for the future (an example I found a few days ago is here. )
To take anthrax as an example, as it was the one you cited - a quick google search suggests that anthrax outbreaks don’t normally affect a huge number of cattle - in which case the logistics of providing enough fuel are less of a nightmare, and choosing a less than optimum means of incineration might not be so much of an issue.
Cremation of a single cadaver is no problem. However look at the equipment that’s usually used for cremation of a single human being. Larger industrial systems certainly exist and the UK has some, but at the time all the facilities were taken up with the substantial culling being done on an ongoing basis due to the BSE concern (which meant that any cattle over 30 months old could not go into the food chain and needed to be incinerated - this would include all dairy cattle).
Consider also the amount of fuel that is normally used by societies that burn their dead on pyres - quite substantial for a human. Six million animals (mainly sheep, but also 0.7 million cattle ) were killed during the outbreak. That’s a lot of fuel you need.
It’s worse when you select from any group of people who are less valued by society and vulnerable to having their rights denied. Those in rural areas would have had less access to any kind of health care and may have seen this as their only opportunity for treatment, again it’s the reason for the selection, they weren’t randomly selecting groups without reason.
OK, I took on board the point about my dodgy citation and realized that I did have the email address of someone fairly high up in the RAVC (not the BG but not far off) who might be able to clear it up. He’s requested I don’t bring his name into it (as it’s not an official MOD response) but his general feeling is that the whole story is a load of bollocks.
His justification: he was involved at a high level in the planning and coordination of the whole thing and visited every major disposal site in the UK, then wrote a paper on the management of the whole thing; he’s never heard of the story.
He also pointed out that the burns were organized by contractors long before the military were deployed, and they seemed to know what they were doing.
My apologies for misleading anyone (although it sounds like most of you are suitably cynical anyway).