the Holocaust, quick question

[Dave Monroe]

Again, a concentration camp is a concentration camp, Nazi atrocities are Nazi
atrocities, but, from Michael Neufeld's "Introduction" to Yves Beon's Planet Dora: A
Memoir of the Holocaust and the Birth of the Space Age, on Dora, "The Third Phase:
November 1944 to April 1945," by November 1st, Dora having been separated from
Buchenwald to "become the center of Concentration Camp Mittelbau," of the total
Mittelbau population of 32,471 prisoners, 472 were specifically Jewish, and,
specifically, Hungarian Jews.  "The first Jews had come in May from the Nazis' mass
deportation program in Hungary.... In typical SS fashion, most Jews in Mittelbau
ended up with the absolute worst jobs, but some did labor in Mittelwerk production."
In December 1944, prisoners from Auschwitz and other camps were evacuated there as
well.  And more than just Jewish prisoners were mistreated, tortured, more than just
Jewish prisonsers died from mistreatment, torture, punitive execution.  1090 death
listed in Dora alone from Dec. 24th to March 23rd (if it;s figues anyone's demnding
here).  Neufeld provides all sorts of info here, doo consult.  Although I don't know
why it was necessarily significant that few to no Jews were initally held in the
camp.  Again, this all fell under the Nazis, under the Holocaust ...

Michel Ryckx wrote:

> There may have been jews after the Germans retreated  from Poland and the
> surviving jews, after horrible death marches, were put in every camp in Germany
> available.
>
> The population of Dora was selected because of their skills.  An arrested French
> engineer, active in the maquis, would have been sent easily to Dora.  There were
> German engineers (homosexuals) and so on.  The Kapo's were ordinary criminals.
>
> It was no extermination camp, which means its main goal was not to kill people
> immediately (like Auschwitz -though Auschwitz had very large sattelite camps like
> Treblinka or Birkenau where German factories had large plants -Primo Levi, as a
> chemist, survived Auschwitz mainly because he worked at Buna - Birkenau), but to
> produce something.  It was, I think, of the 'Nacht und Nebel'-type.
>
> Because they were so skilled, they were able to sabotage sometimes.
>
> There was a crematorium, meant to burn those who died during the night.  There
> were a couple of dysenteria epidemics, so death rate was quite high.
>
> Colour pictures, discovered in 1997 (?), are to be seen in New York next month,
> and in December in Munich.  I'll try to find out where and when.
>
> Kind regards,
> Michel.