Before we get into the numbers, I’d like to share some images of the Theresienstadt ghetto that I came across while in the midst of my research. They were found on a blog of someone that had taken a tour of the area. Here are the photos with the captions included:
These pictures might be surprising to a person with the modern idea of a ghetto. If you think that the area was only made nice after the Nazis were defeated, I suggest you look at this 1941–45 map of the place and read the list of amenities that were available to the Jewish people living there.
As you may recall from part one, the Wikipedia entry for Gidon Lev made an uncited claim that “Of the 9,000 children imprisoned in or transported through Theresienstadt concentration camp, he is one of the more than 2000 children estimated to have survived.“
However, this is a case of stories not being straight as according to the information that my robot assistant, Sarah (Bing AI), dug up only 200 children survived. As you can see from the conversation below, the figure of only 200 children surviving is widely accepted by historians and scholars.
The references Sarah used for the claim of 200 children surviving were newspaper articles. The reference Wikipedia uses for the number of people that allegedly died in the camp is from a book that is written in German. This makes it difficult for the average person to verify these claims. After more prodding and poking, I discovered that deaths were recorded in the Tagesbefehl, or order of the day. This page describes a single Tagesbefehl in which one birth was recorded, but there were 47 deaths. This is most likely cherry picked to paint Theresienstadt in the worst light possible. Unfortunately, I was unable to find access to more of the Tagesbefehl.
In the entry for the Theresienstadt ghetto, Wikipedia states, “About 33,000 people died at Theresienstadt, mostly from malnutrition and disease.” There is no citation given; however, it is possible that the records reflect this. On the other hand, as regular readers know, there is no reason to take anything said about the Holocaust at face value.
Alexander McClelland, who I mentioned in part one, had obtained records of Theresienstadt and shared them in his interview with Ernst Zundel. It seems as these records have been lost to time as I am unable to find them online. During the interview, McClelland mentioned that in Theresienstadt over 50% of the people were over the age of 66. He goes on to say that about 43,000 residents in the ghetto were over the age of 61. This most certainly was a contributing factor to the deaths in the camp as the elderly are going to be more vulnerable to the harsh conditions caused by wartime.
Back to the matter of the children. The following information shown below is from the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum (USHMM) website. It is possible that the number of fewer than 200 children surviving comes from the fact that 120 children were found at the children’s home shortly before the camp was liberated. This would mean that it is assumed that anyone not found at the camp had died, which would be an unscientific assumption.
First, unlike what Holocaust fabulists would have you believe, no one that was transported from the ghetto to Auschwitz/Birkenau gassed, this is because homicidal gas chambers did not exist. However, I have further information about this particular group of people in my Theresienstadt Family Camp article. Secondly, according to McClelland’s research there were 1,600 children in the camp when the Red Cross took it over in May of 1945. He also found that children from Theresienstadt were put in foster homes. Finally, I would like to quote one of Sarah’s answers:
It’s important to note that while these records are extensive, they may not account for every single individual due to the chaotic and devastating circumstances of the Holocaust.
Because of the chaos and disruption the war caused, you cannot just assume that because someone is not where you expected them to be means they were murdered.
Because of all these factors, I cannot accept the claim that out of 15,000 children less than 200 survived without actual evidence.
Holocaust fabulists paint the Theresienstadt ghetto as a terrible place of misery and suffering that was above and beyond what the general population was facing, but the evidence simply does not support this picture.
>Holocaust fabulists …
It’s my impression that less attention is paid to Theresienstadt because generally it does not fit the ‘Holocaust’ narrative, certainly not the ‘death camp’ narrative, and one could ask: if the Nazis were so deadset on killing Jews, why send them to a comparatively survivable place like Theresienstadt? — as I recall, one of the usual explanations is that these were a better class of Jews.
Nonetheless, the Wikipedia page on Theresienstadt (link) includes some really outlandish text: Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination camps. Its conditions were deliberately engineered to hasten the death of its prisoners, and the ghetto also served a propaganda role.
It’s well known that the Red Cross visited Theresienstadt.
>It’s well known that the Red Cross visited Theresienstadt.
There’s a Wikipedia page about that too (link), and it also includes a lot of very cynical text, i.e. conditions at Theresienstadt were comparatively good because the Germans wanted to fool the Red Cross: During World War II, the Theresienstadt concentration camp was used by the Nazi SS (German: Schutzstaffel) as a ‘model ghetto’ for fooling Red Cross representatives about the ongoing Holocaust and the Nazi plan to murder all Jews.
But does that really make sense? — per Wikipedia, the ICRC visit took place 23 June 1944 (after the Normandy invasion), when it must have been very clear that the Germans were going to lose the war (the Red Army arrived at Majdanek a month later, on 24 July) — so you are supposed to believe that while the Germans were busy killing hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz, on top of the millions they’d already killed there and in the other ‘death camps’, they decided to put on a show (‘beautification’) just for the benefit of the ICRC — at that point in time, what was to be gained?
Doesn’t it seem more likely the Germans allowed the ICRC to visit Theresienstadt because it really was a fairly decent place (comparatively), and no mass killing was going on elsewhere, so there was really nothing to hide?
Note Wikipedia very aggressively promotes the extermination ‘Holocaust’ story, so as a source for the conventional version of events it is as good as any other site or reference.
I know I’ve seen it claimed that at some point in 1944 Himmler ordered that all ‘Holocaust’ killings should stop, although no concrete evidence (or date) for this is ever put forth — I’ve seen this given as a reason why the Frank family, arrested in early August 1944, wasn’t killed in the gas chambers (Otto Frank survived, his wife supposedly died in the Auschwitz hospital, Anne and Margot were sent to Bergen-Belsen, and are assumed to have died of typhus there) — otherwise there is the very obvious question: why wasn’t the Frank family murdered?
Almost every ‘Holocaust’ timeline (e.g. this one) says Himmler ordered the demolition of the Auschwitz ‘gas chambers and crematoria’ (both plural) on 25 November 1944 (note no evidence or citation) — any order to stop the killing must have come latest at that time, but clearly that is way too late for such an order to have played any role in the fate of the Frank family.
>Himmler ordered the demolition of the Auschwitz ‘gas chambers and crematoria’
The website of the Auschwitz museum says they were demolished in January 1945 (link).
All of that seems rather imprecise, and you never see any citations — I’m surprised the various ‘Holocaust’ websites appear to make no effort to reconcile these claims and present a consistent story (even if there is no hard evidence, they could all still get the story straight).
The reason for the interest in the general 1944 timeline, e.g. when (and if) Himmler ordered the ‘Holocaust’ killings to stop, when the gas chambers and crematoria were destroyed, etc, especially at Auschwitz, is that it seems undisputed that Jews were sent from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz in late 1944, and you see claims (again without citation) that very few of them survived, implying they were put to death, or it is said directly that they were killed.
For example here: October 30 The last transport of Jews from the camp-ghetto Theresienstadt arrives at Auschwitz. During October, SS officials deport approximately 18,000 Jews from Theresienstadt to the Auschwitz camp complex, where camp officials murder most of them in the gas chambers at Birkenau.
So it says explicitly they were murdered in the gas chambers in October 1944 (maybe even November), which again reinforces what phenomenal luck the Frank family had.
(By the way, it is generally cold in November, so HCN would have evaporated much more slowly from the gypsum substrate used in Zyklon-B — was it really a practical killing mechanism during cold weather?)
Why were Jews sent to Auschwitz from Theresienstadt so late in 1944? — what was the reason? — the motivation? — I’ve always had questions about that — after all, it must have been clear to the Germans by then that Auschwitz would be overrun by the Red Army relatively soon, long before Theresienstadt.
Obviously believers in the conventional ‘Holocaust’ story will say the reason was to kill them.
>HCN would have evaporated much more slowly
For a chart of HCN evaporation vs time for various temperatures, see here.