Now when I was doing the researching for my article explaining the origins of the famous swimming pool of Auschwitz, why it was created and also explaining why we know that it was primarily used by inmates not the guards of Auschwitz; (1) I realised that it might be worthwhile writing several articles clarifying key features concerning the geography of Auschwitz.
The most iconic image of Auschwitz is the railway entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau (aka Auschwitz II) which was only begun in 1943 and only went into operation in May 1944 and ceased operations sometime in September/October 1944:
This in itself will itself be quite surprising to many who are told – or rather it is heavily implied – that most of Auschwitz’s prisoners went through this gate when in truth this simply isn’t true.
In fact, that the majority of Auschwitz’s prisoners were not off-loaded from trains here at all but rather on the ‘Alte Judenrampe’ – in reality the second of the third ‘Judenrampes’ in Auschwitz’s history – which operated as the main transport hub for prisoners, goods and produce – yes Auschwitz produced a arriving and departing the camp from 1942 to May 1944.
To put this in its situational context let’s look at where this ‘Alte Judenrampe’ was relative to the famous so-called ‘Gates of Death’ above:
The so-called ‘Gates of Death’ are on the left, while the large circle on the right is the ‘Alte Judenrampe’ which is roughly 500-600 metres outside of Auschwitz-Birkenau, while – if we highlight Auschwitz I (aka the ‘Stammlager’) – we can see that it is roughly double the distance from the ‘Alte Judenrampe’:
This is interesting precisely because it tells us how the famous selection – which remember occurred at the ‘Alte Judenrampe’ from 1942 to May 1944 (the bulk of the alleged ‘Holocaust’ at Auschwitz) – (2) not at the new ‘Judenrampe’ inside the ‘Gates of Death’ that people invariably imagine was the case.
The point I am making here is that with the primary camp hospital being in Auschwitz I; it did have subsidiary facilities in Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II) as well as Auschwitz Monowitz (Auschwitz III) that we know of (3) and all had their own medical staff (both inmate doctors and SS doctors). (4)
So, when the selections were being made at the ‘Alte Judenrampe’ from 1942 to May 1944; the geographic positioning of the ‘Alte Judenrampe’ is interesting because it is between both Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau. This then allowed the German camp authorities to easily engage in what we’d call triaging – a standard medical practice then as now – moving the sick or hurt patients direct to Auschwitz I from the ‘Alte Judenrampe’ to Auschwitz I’s camp hospital blocks for further evaluation and triaging before they were filtered into different hospital blocks or on to Auschwitz-Birkenau or Auschwitz Monowitz if the initial evaluation at the ‘Alte Judenrampe’ turned out to be incorrect or too pessimistic/overly cautious.
When we think about this logically we can quickly see how many of the claims of ‘disappeared’ friends and family members came about – in the same way we can see how people came to believe that friends and family members ‘disappeared’ when transiting through Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka – because families were both split up within the work camps themselves – for example men and women were in different barracks in Auschwitz-Birkenau – and also during the selection procedures with say the women and any older children in one family being moved to Auschwitz-Birkenau’s family block, the men and older male children being moved to Auschwitz Monowitz and the grandparents moved to Auschwitz I’s camp hospital due to their infirmity.
This then means this one family would be in three different camps and that in the chaos of the later war years; the grandparents could have died quite naturally from infirmity in Auschwitz I’s camp hospital (not because the German’s killed them), the women and children could have died from typhus in Auschwitz-Birkenau – which we know hit the women’s and family blocks particularly hard – and then the men and older male children say survived the war after being split up and were moved to Buchenwald and Dachau later in the war by the Germans then being ‘liberated’ by the Western Allies.
So then the surviving men and older male children believe the claims about ‘mass murder’ being widely disseminated in the newspapers and gossip of the day; then assume that the grandparents, the women and children were all ‘gassed’ or otherwise ‘murdered’ by the Germans in Auschwitz, which then in turn becomes their ‘Holocaust Survivor’ testimony that they peddle to children in schools across the United States.
This is the power of actually understanding the geography of Auschwitz as well as the German concentration camp system in general, because it helps you see how the ‘Holocaust’ as a claim came to be ‘validated’ but also why so many ‘Holocaust Survivors’ believe what they claim.
They didn’t ‘see things’ but rather people they knew ‘disappeared’ and rather than asking the obvious and logical questions; their experience melded with the narrative being widely propounded by the newspapers and gossip of the day to create what we now call the ‘Holocaust’.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/understanding-the-swimming-pool-of
(2) https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/auschwitz-and-shoah/the-unloading-ramps-and-selections
(3) Carlo Mattogno, 2016, ‘Healthcare in Auschwitz: Medical Care and Special Treatment of Registered Inmates’, 1st Edition, Castle Hill: Uckfield, pp. 54; 57
(4) https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/camp-hospitals/the-opening-and-growth-of-the-hospitals/