# A letter from Auschwitz **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 9, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221 "2015-02-09T14:52:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/21 "2015-02-10T18:03:53Z")
I do want to point out that “politicals” did have some privileges. Mostly they were put in Dachau. Many members of Royal families, etc were there. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/22 "2015-02-10T18:25:47Z")
Holocaust deniers are mentally ill or anti-Semitic or both. Don’t waste your time. But if you must feed the troll, there is ample evidence that it occurred. The concentration camps that were liberated by heroic American generals that these twats usually worship (including Patton) give eyewitness accounts, as do the victims. There are films of these liberations on youtube that support the victim and eyewitness accounts. You might want to counter with: “What sort of bigotry or mental illness do you have that you would, from your fucking rocking chair, refute the eyewitness and victim accounts backed by films that are literally mountainous when stacked up? What right do you have, from your fucking rocking chair, without any personal investigation or interviews or report compiling, have to dismiss the worst crimes in human history? Tell me that, you mentally-ill nazi.” Genocide deniers are the lowest form of life next to genocide committers. Bubonic plague is a less disgusting life form. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/23 "2015-02-10T19:02:16Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > Found a passage in Martin Gilbert’s _The Holocaust_ which mentions letter writing; p.657-658. > _"At Birkenau, one group of deportees had not only been kept alive, but whole familes had been kept together in a special family camp. These were some 3,860 Czech Jews, survivors of the 5,000 Jews who had been brought to Birkenau from Theresienstadt six months earlier. At the beginning of March they were visited by a German Red Cross delegation which was not allowed to see the rest of Birkenau. Then, on March 3, the inmates of the family camp were told to write postcards to their relatives who were still in Czechoslovakia, saying that they were alive, well, and working. They were also made to date the postcards March 25, 26, or 27, and to ask their relatives to send them food parcels._" > > They were gassed four days later. This is one of the best answers, I have looked around and it is mostly the modern day Nazis and Neofascists the ones that play that overused card of “The believers can not explain this” When in reality historians and researchers have explained it many times before, the Holocaust deniers only demonstrate that they are getting their information from very unsavory sites of the internet. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/24 "2015-02-18T12:41:55Z")
> [@Malden\_Capell](#): > > Hey everyone, > > So I got entangled with a Holocaust denier. Yeah, I know…bad idea. > > Anyway, I’m trying to refute his points about the camps having amenities like swimming pools and money and the like, but he’s claimed one thing that I can’t find any direct refutation or explanation of. > > [This letter](http://servv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com/~gbpprorg/judicial-inc/a_letter_from_auschwitz_1943.htm), apparently, is of an Auschwitz inmate to a friend outside, claiming they are in good health and doing well. > > **So why would the Nazis permit a letter like this to go out?** > > I can recognise all sorts of reasons (such as a special privilege to a favoured inmate, or the letter being heavily doctored, or even a forgery, or taken out of context), but it’s one that I can’t definitively dismiss. > > Has anyone got any helpful directions or explanations as to why the Nazis would permit this, and was it a normal thing for inmates? (My bolding) Why wouldn’t they? It makes it seem OK to get on the trains taking them to hell. There’s nothing saying that this was actually written by an inmate. If it was, it could just be him trying to reassure people, but TBH the level of detail makes me think it was more likely written by someone else. Swimming pools, etc, have never been found within Jewish sections of any concentration camp. Google Earth could find them, or the remains of them, if they had ever existed. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/25 "2015-02-19T03:41:27Z")
Letters were permitted, [here](http://gdc.gale.com/archivesunbound/archives-unbound-correspondence-from-german-concentration-camps-and-prisons-1936-1944/) is a library that has over 4,000 pages of them. Others can be seen online in various places and they’re often not unlike the letter in the OP. I’m really unsure what the question is. Is it “why is the prisoner’s letter sort of cheerful if the Holocaust was really happening around him?” The reason is simple, _they were censored by the SS._ You wouldn’t send a postcard talking shit about your mailman, especially if the mailman is an SS officer. So you end up with a lot of simple “I’m alright, write soon, love ya lots” letters. And of course it could have been forced as mentioned above or even faked or whatever, but letters were permitted so it’s possible that it’s part of a normal correspondence. > [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I don’t know anything about this person who wrote the letter, but the fact that he could write German, and so, apparently, could his family… Nothing against your theories, but all letters were actually required to be written in German. If a prisoner couldn’t write German, they’d have to try to get help from another prisoner and I guess it was up to the family to also get help reading it. > [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Hmmm. > > Can you ask him how he reconciles this? [This page](http://auschwitz.org/en/history/life-in-the-camp/nutrition/) from the Auschwitz museum says “Prisoner nutrition improved to a certain degree in the second half of 1942, when the camp authorities permitted the receipt of food parcels. Jews and Soviet POWs, however, did not share this privilege.” I don’t know, but the Kapos that RivkahChaya mentioned might still have been allowed parcels. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/26 "2015-02-19T18:04:19Z")
> [@Fubaya](#): > > [This page](http://auschwitz.org/en/history/life-in-the-camp/nutrition/) from the Auschwitz museum says “Prisoner nutrition improved to a certain degree in the second half of 1942, when the camp authorities permitted the receipt of food parcels. Jews and Soviet POWs, however, did not share this privilege.” I don’t know, but the Kapos that RivkahChaya mentioned might still have been allowed parcels. Yes the “Politicals” could get food parcels. ---
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/27 "2015-02-19T18:46:57Z")
As I’m sure you know, it really doesn’t matter what answer you give him. He’ll just move the goal posts, or come out with yet another, different reason to spew his nonsense. As with this other conspiracy theories, (for me this includes 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination) I’ve defaulted to “If you really are this far out in left field, there’s nothing that I can say to help you.” Won’t change his or her mind, but it’s clear to them how screwed up I think they are and ends my frustration from a continued conversation. ---
**Author:** ![Octarine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/22d042/32.png) [@Octarine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octarine)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/28 "2015-02-19T19:10:23Z")
A while back I read the book [Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/auschwitz-miklos-nyiszli-dr/1100230630?ean=9781611450118). In it, the Nazi’s practice of sending letters to generate good publicity and quell outside fears was described in detail. A guard would instruct the prisoners to write letters home, and to make the camp sound like a happy place on threat of death; all letters would be read before being sent, and any which were not positive enough were destroyed and replaced with forgeries. The letters from the relatives responding to the inmates would be burned en masse. The prisoners themselves never wondered why they were never written back, however, as they were typically killed soon after writing their letter. It’s useless to argue with these people. Their position is based on their own antisemitism; no amount of logic or reasoning will change that. They’re one of the hardest conspiracy groups to debate, because rather than their ideas coming from the usual fear of the government, it comes from deep-seated bigotry. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/29 "2015-02-20T22:13:35Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > It’s pretty well known that many new arrivals as Auschwitz were forced to write letters home saying nice things before being killed. By the time their relatives got these letters the writers were long dead. But the letters served to make the population which was yet to be deported more compliant and more sanguine about the prospect. I have numerous books on the Holocaust and this is absolutely true. Prisoners were forced to write letters to loved ones saying how wonderful things were. Many Jewish prisoners were able to slip hidden messages in their letters alerting relatives of the horrors. One example is a woman who said (paraphrasing since the book isn’t handy) ‘Things are wonderful here. Uncle [insert yiddish word for murder] is here too’. Another used invisible ink. I will try to find a cite to link to…. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/30 "2015-02-20T22:19:44Z")
[Here’s a link](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/holocaust-how-a-love-letter-told-story-of-the-murder-of-a-nation-1292372.html) to the invisible ink one. [quote=] Visible message reads: “My darling, I remember you with love. Lola. 20 August 1943. Krakow.” The message written in invisible ink: "DEATH CAMP, THE REST DECEIT. FROM THE NIGHT OF THE WITCH-HUNT: HUNGER, STARVATION, DOG FOOD OAT PORRIDGE, A DOG’S LIFE, AN EPIDEMIC, TORTURE TORTURE CHAMBER, DEGRADATION, DISRESPECT VIOLENCE, INCITEMENT, TERROR, FRIGHT KILLING BY GAS, UPPER COURT (or) GALLOWS, MURDER, INCINERATOR, AGONISING HELL. CHILDREN OF FOUR AND UNDER. A BAND OF THIEVES COLD A DECLARATION CRYING TO THE HEAVENS THE NEWSPAPER ARRIVED I HEARD IT FROM HIM THE HEAT AFFECTED HIM A LOT THE WOUND HAS HEALED. I WAS VERY AFRAID OF HIS ILLNESS. K IS FULFILLING HIS MISSION WE WILL DO WHAT WE HAVE TO. URGENT: SIGNAL PISTOLS, CAMERA, INVISIBLE INK. URGENT: AIRBASE, CONTINUOUS LISTENING, THE TIME HAS COME THE KETTLE HAS BOILED OTTO [/quote] ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/31 "2015-02-20T23:43:10Z")
Here’s [another link](http://warwitness.e2bn.org/resource_39.html). [quote=] One of the truly ‘black’ propaganda operations of World War Two was the sending of postcards from concentration and extermination camps. People being held captive in these camps were forced to send cards home to friends and relatives telling them that all was well. This deception served two important purposes for the Nazi regime. Firstly, it reassured those who received the postcards that, following their forced deportation and transportation, the sender was alive and well. But the second, and rather more devious purpose, was that it made the job of rounding up and deporting the next group of people much easier. After all they had heard from those who went before them and all seemed to be fine so there was nothing to worry about. One famous example of this deception is the ‘Waldsee’ postcard. In summer 1944 people who had recently been deported were instructed to write postcards home to their relatives and friends. The postcards appeared to come from a place called Waldsee and were sent to the Jewish council in Budapest so that they could distribute them to the correct people. The cards contained phrases such as “I am doing fine,” “I am working,” or “I have arrived safely. I have got work” and most chillingly of all, “Follow us here!” [/quote] ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/32 "2015-02-23T05:30:27Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > Largely because they lied about it from beginning to end and getting others to lie on their behalf about the nature of the camps was in their interests. The reason is obvious; victims are more easily rounded up and subsequently murdered if they don’t know that certain death awaits them. In the Aktion T4 program, murdering the disabled, relatives were told that they had died of infectious disease. In the Final Solution euphemisms abound at even the highest levels; Jews weren’t exterminated, they were ‘evacuated’. They weren’t being murdered en masse, they were ‘resettled in the east’. > > They maintained the lies right to the end, Jews weren’t being herded into gas chambers but taking a shower. One of the [commandants](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irmfried_Eberl#Treblinka_death_camp) of Treblinka was fired because he did such a poor job of concealing the camp’s true purpose, camps were supposed to look like just a temporary transit station on the rail journey, [the aforementioned Treblinka](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treblinka_extermination_camp#Killing_process) having fake timetables and ticket stands. > > So lies, upon lies, upon lies, all designed to make the process of extermination easier, so that the victims and those who would sympathise with the victims would not resist to the last. > [Himmler on the “Evacuation of the Jews”](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/himevac.html) Although you then get people who went to Auschwitz like Maria van Herwaaden who had heard those stories about gassing but then found they actually just had a shower? The thing with the testimony is that at Nuremberg it was claimed that people were exterminated in gas chambers in German based camps such as Buchenwald & Dachau. Then Paul Rassinier subsequently pointed out that wasn’t correct. Also, the US pathologist Larson didn’t find any cases of poisoning. So it seems around 1960 the claims regarding German based camps, based on eyewitness testimony, were dropped. The British Intelligence service had been decoding German communications from 1942 and picked up references regarding deaths at Auschwitz due to shootings, hangings & disease (eg. typhus outbreaks - which delousing was meant to prevent/reduce). They considered the stories of gas to be similar to propaganda used in WWI. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/33 "2015-02-23T12:21:56Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Although you then get people who went to Auschwitz like Maria van Herwaaden who had heard those stories about gassing but then found they actually just had a shower? > > The thing with the testimony is that at Nuremberg it was claimed that people were exterminated in gas chambers in German based camps such as Buchenwald & Dachau. Then Paul Rassinier subsequently pointed out that wasn’t correct. > > Also, the US pathologist Larson didn’t find any cases of poisoning. So it seems around 1960 the claims regarding German based camps, based on eyewitness testimony, were dropped. > > The British Intelligence service had been decoding German communications from 1942 and picked up references regarding deaths at Auschwitz due to shootings, hangings & disease (eg. typhus outbreaks - which delousing was meant to prevent/reduce). They considered the stories of gas to be similar to propaganda used in WWI. Not surprised in the least that you’re a Holocaust denier. I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on this – we could start another thread, if you like. Not that it hasn’t been done [before](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=702634), of course. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/34 "2015-02-23T16:17:41Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Not surprised in the least that you’re a Holocaust denier. I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on this – we could start another thread, if you like. Not that it hasn’t been done [before](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=702634), of course. Color me unsurprised that **Chen019** is a Holocaust denier as well. Love the immediate reference to “typhus outbreaks”, that doesn’t have Holocaust denier written all over it.:rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/35 "2015-02-23T17:24:40Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Not surprised in the least that you’re a Holocaust denier. I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on this – we could start another thread, if you like. Not that it hasn’t been done [before](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=702634), of course. He’s correct on several points. “Nuremberg it was claimed that people were exterminated in gas chambers in German based camps such as Buchenwald & Dachau.” Those two camps weren’t death camps with gas chambers. Auschwitz, Bełżec , Chełmno, Treblinka, etc were the Extermination Camps or Death Camps. None were in Germany proper. Pointing out that German based camps such as Buchenwald & Dachau did not use gassing does not make one a “Holocaust denier”, it’s a simple fact. Now if you wont admit to the gassing in the death camps you are a denier. > **[Extermination camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp)** > > Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (German: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (Todeslager), or killing centers (Tötungszentren), in Central Europe, primarily Occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million people – mostly Jews – in the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were The ide... "\*The Nazi perpetrators distinguished between extermination camps and concentration camps, although the terms extermination camp (Vernichtungslager) and death camp (Todeslager) are interchangeable, each referring to camps whose primary function was genocide. They weren’t used for punishing crime or containing political prisoners, but for the systematic killing of the prisoners delivered there en masse by the Holocaust trains. The executioners did not expect the majority of prisoners taken to the Belzec, Sobibór or Treblinka extermination camps to survive more than a few hours beyond arrival.[6] As early as September 1942, Dr. Johann Paul Kremer, M.D., an SS physician, witnessed a gassing of prisoners, and in his diary wrote: “They don’t call Auschwitz the camp of annihilation [das Lager der Vernichtung] for nothing!”[7] … These differed from concentration camps, such as Dachau and Belsen, which were initially prison camps for people defined as socially or politically undesirable in Nazi society. … The distinction was evident during the Nuremberg trials, when Dieter Wisliceny (a deputy to Adolf Eichmann) was asked to name the extermination camps, and he identified Auschwitz and Majdanek as such. Then, when asked “How do you classify the camps Mauthausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald?” he replied, “They were normal concentration camps, from the point of view of the department of Eichmann.”[\*8]" Since Maria van Herwaaden was a Political, not a Jew, she wouldnt have been gassed, and it’s quite possible she would not know directly of the gassing. My relatives were sent to the camps as “Politicals” . You had a decent chance of surviving as a political- about 70-80% made it out\*. The chance of surviving a death camp was minimal. Pointing out that Death Holocaust denier - The irony here was many of the politicals were swept into Soviet camps. None of my relatives survived both. The Soviets killed more than the Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/36 "2015-02-23T17:27:53Z")
I think I’m going to declare the term ‘holocaust denier’ off limits. While it may be true or not - I have no opinion - until Chen labels himself that way I’d prefer that posters avoid terms with such high emotional freighting as such get too close to insult and have the potential to derail discussion and debate. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/37 "2015-02-23T18:53:40Z")
People who arrived at Auschwitz were divided into two groups, those who would be used for labor, and those who would be exterminated immediately. My aunt’s father arrived at Auschwitz with his two older sons, who were 14 and 12, toward the end of the war. The boys were killed immediately, because they were considered too young for labor. My aunt’s father was there for about 10 months, and then the camp was liberated. If he’d been there longer, he might have starved, died of exhaustion, or died of typhus, which were ways that many people actually did die at Auschwitz-- Anne Frank died of typhus. My aunt’s father just got lucky in that he was there for a short enough time to still be alive at the end, and never got typhus. The best insider’s look into what went on in the camp’s is probably Art Speigelman’s _Maus_. His father survived Auschwitz, and _Maus_ is his father’s story, so while it’s just one person’s story, you learn about many different things that happened. There were many, many ways to die in a concentration camp. Being gassed was just one, and pointing that out, as was said earlier, does not make a person a particular type of conspiracy monger; however, if someone is to suggest that the mere fact that deaths occurred other than in gas chambers somehow argues against the existence of a “Final Solution,” that person is wrong. I have never seen that argument on these boards, but I have seen it elsewhere, FWIW. ---
**Author:** ![Valteron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f17d59/32.png) [@Valteron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valteron)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/38 "2015-02-23T19:28:56Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > (I’m not sure what the term “car order” means in context, and I also don’t speak much German so can’t verify what the document contains, but you get the picture.) My German is far from perfect but maybe I can explain “car order”. Interestingly, it is yet **another** piece of proof that the Nazis were behind this letter-writing scam. If you look at the picture of this document at [http://auschwitz.org/en/gallery/historical-pictures-and-documents/archive-documents,2.html](http://auschwitz.org/en/gallery/historical-pictures-and-documents/archive-documents,2.html) you will note: It is a request (Anforderung) to supply a car (Kraftfahrzeug) to an SS officer, Untersturmführer Hartenberger from RSHA. This was almost certainly _ **Richard** _ Hartenberger, and his rank in the SS is more or less equivalent to a lieutenant. RSHA was the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, meaning Reich Security Office of the SS. It was the bloodthirsty terror arm of the SS that murdered people throughout Europe. Hartenberger was involved in mass deportations of Jews to Auschwitz, and was a member of the Eichman unit of the RSHA. He was jailed after WWII for war crimes and died in 1974. You have to understand that, especially in early 1944 when this request was made, gasoline was in short supply, and the use of cars was tightly controlled. While generals and other important figures had their own staff cars, minor officers like Hartenberger had to ask for a car on an “as needed” basis and to give a reason. So what was Hartenberger’s reason? Look at the line Zweck (Begründung) (Purpose (Reason)): It clearly says he was going to visit sub-camps of Auschwitz regarding the “Briefaktion des RSHA (Juden)”. Look at that closely. “des RSHA” is a genitive case. It means that the letter campaign is “of” the SS/RSHA, that it belongs to them. Then the word (Juden) comes after in brackets. In other words, it is not a Jewish letter campaign. It is the Letter Campaign of the RSHA (involving Jews). So what are we to believe? That Untersturmführer Hartenberger decided one day to see how his beloved Jewish friends he had sent to Auschwitz were doing, and what kind of letters they were writing as they lay around the swimming pool? Not bloody likely. This application proves that the letter campaign, as clearly admitted by an SS officer, was an organized scam. The obvious purpose was to fool people on the outside so they would be easier to take away when their turn came. ---
**Author:** ![Valteron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f17d59/32.png) [@Valteron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valteron)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/39 "2015-02-23T20:02:57Z")
The SS-run scam in which they got Jewish prisoners to write home to say they were fine may have been based on several motives. The most likely reason, already noted in this thread, was to keep future victims from fleeing in terror or fighting to the death when their turn came to be rounded up. But believe it or not, there is another reason based on the fact that the Nazi regime was not totally indifferent to what people thought of them. To some extent, this is because even the most repressive tyrant cannot make a go of it if his people are massively against him. For example, one of the things that made the Nazis stop killing mental patients was the building chorus of opposition from relatives and friends of these victims. Poor old crazy Aunt Helga may have had 20 relatives and friends who suddenly realized that the government had murdered her. Multiply the dead mental patients by a factor of 20 and you get the idea. After the concentration camps were opened in the 1930s (not to be confused with death camps) the Nazis did not conceal their existence but rather started the myth that these were re-education camps that turned filthy bohemian socialist and communist freaks back into good, clean Germans again.There is a humorous poster in one of my books about the 3rd Reich that I have not been able to find on-line (if you can find it and post it, it would be appreciated) that shows just such a clean-up, with idiot leftists looking at their cleaned-up friend and saying “How he must have suffered.” German friends who remember WWII remember that the existence of camps in the east was not denied, but they were told that the people sent there were parasite Jewish exploiters who were now learning to be productive citizens. Even Himmler admitted that the exterminations were something they could not really talk about to the public. Ironic footnote: A French, Jewish leftist who had been sent to Auschwitz and escaped back to Vichy France tried to tell people about the horrors he had seen. He was silenced by fellow Jews who told him to stop making trouble with his “exaggerated horror stories.” ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2015, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/40 "2015-02-24T03:55:29Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > The British Intelligence service had been decoding German communications from 1942 and picked up references regarding deaths at Auschwitz due to shootings, hangings & disease (eg. typhus outbreaks - which delousing was meant to prevent/reduce). They considered the stories of gas to be similar to propaganda used in WWI. It’s hardly worth responding to you, but since you quoted me the skepticism on horror stories out of Germany was remarked upon at the time. _“‘Atrocities’ had come to be looked on as synonymous with ‘lies’. But the stories about the German concentration camps were atrocity stories: therefore they were lies—so reasoned the average man.”_ - George Orwell, 1944. Then the 11th Armoured found Belsen. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221.md?page=3)