ZGram - 1/1/2002 - "Happy New Year!"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

January 1, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Ernst and I wish our readers and supporters world-wide a very happy,
productive, socially responsible New Year.  Very big challenges await us,
but we are up to it.  Things everywhere are coming into focus.

The article below, written for the Kansas City Star by John Dvorak, sets
just the right tone for how I would like the New Year to shape up for us -
for people to understand that World War II has "...been a launch pad for
all kinds of things..."  and that what we are seeing today is still a
consequence of World War II.

The biggest consequence, no doubt, was an enormous reservoir of sympathy
because of the Jewish experience, known falsely as the "Holocaust", in
German concentration camps where Jews are believed to have been "gassed".

We would not have an Israel today, were it not for that cleverly concocted
and massively exploited story.  America and Germany would not have propped
up that terrorist haven called Israel with such financial largesse
stretching more than 50 years.

Today, we would not have the US military guarding our airports, were it not
for the never-ending acts of terror-spawning reprisals - and ever new
terror growing out of that brutal conflict with the Israelis' invasion of
that region.  That we can't board an American plane without having
ourselves frisked and even having to take off our shoes like some criminal
suspects is thanks to our "friendship" with our "democratic allies" in the
Middle East.  And the indignities and restrictions on our freedoms are
barely just beginning.

=====

Time-Life Books in the 1980s ran a series of articles informing its readers
that there were in America a total of 666 Prisoner-of-War camps.  Not 665.
Not 667.  Exactly 666 - the "Number of the Beast", as Biblical sources tell
us.

Not very many people today even know that such camps in America existed -
much less in such great numbers.  The Soviets had 150 Gulag camps, the
Germans only 90.  98.8% of American prisoners made it out of Germany prison
camps alive at the end of the war.

My father, who in his entire life never once saw a German soldier in the
Hitler uniform, served as a modern slave in one of Stalin's Gulag camps
from 1941 to 1948.  Born in Russia but of German background, he was not
moved there in a cattle train.  He should have been so lucky.  He walked on
foot, often chained to other prisoners, through the ice and snow of a
Siberian winter, more than 1000 kilometers to his slave camp in Stalin's
northern Gulag.  He was 31 years old, a high school principal.

I don't know how many POW camps England or France had - but that all
countries at war kept such camps is basic knowledge, you would think. As a
hungry, freezing third-grader in postwar Germany, I wrote to one such
German POW imprisoned in atrocious conditions in Britain.  I don't remember
who organized that letter campaign - I believe, it was done through my
school.  At Christmas, I sent him five cookies.

I still remember the touchingly grateful letter I received in reply.  He
must have been an artistic fellow, for he drew me a picture of how he
opened my parcel and my five cookies tumbled out.  I read his reply in
class, and my teacher was in tears while my classmates sat silent, big eyes
and all ears.  I remember the episode well.  Other third graders had
written, too, but none of them received a drawing.  That day made me a
star.

=====

Saturday Night Magazine, September Issue 1989, called its main feature
"Eisenhower's Death Camps:  The last dirty secret of World War Two."  "Call
it callousness, call it reprisal, call it a policy of hostile neglect:  A
million Germans taken prisoner by Eisenhower's Armies died in captivity
*after* the surrender" a bolded subtext reads.  This after all the guns
fell silent!  Imagine:  More than one million German soldiers, who were
housed in open fields behind barbed wire, died of exposure, disease and
starvation.  The Canadian writer, James Bacque, has documented some of
those atrocities.

Ernst's father, who served as a paramedic on the German side in World War
II, was held in one of these camps for more than a year and came back to
his young family a sick and broken man.  He seldom spoke of it.

When Ernst and I moved to Tennessee, we passed one such Allied camp in
Arkansas where an agricultural museum had documented some of American POW
conditions.  German prisoners were paid 35 cents a week for their labor in
the cotton fields.  15,000 German POW's worked in those fields in the
South, along with poor blacks.  The museum curator told us that the Germans
were friendly, cheerful prisoners who used their skill to repair
agricultural machinery.  He said there was no tension between the Germans
and Americans, and escape attempts were rare.

When we take visitors and supporters of our work to the airport, we pass an
old, deserted, broken-down row of buildings right in our area where tobacco
was harvested and lumbering was done.  It looks like a horse barn to me.
Compared to that building, the Auschwitz compound must have looked like a
palace.  I don't know how German prisoners were treated in Tennessee.  The
locals have no memory of that.  One of Ernst's supporters wrote him that
people here were terribly poor and that the German POWs would throw wooden
toys and sandwiches to the local laborers as they were driven through the
towns, cheered by local women.

=====

Just this morning I read a letter from one of my Revisionist friends that
one of the Los Angeles Jewish papers is peddling yet another "human soap
story" dreamed up by yet another yammering yarmulke, even though the story
of the human soap is bunk, as we have known for more than 50 years, and as
even the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel has reluctantly admitted in the last
15 years.

=====

The title of the article below reads "Group seeks to preserve camp that
housed German POWs in World War II".  A people without history are people
without roots - and as this article implies, timidly and gingerly Americans
are reaching for their roots.

The vilification of Germans must stop.  America will not heal itself until
it understands the panorama and the true dimensions of that war of
1939-1945 - a war we are still fighting.

Below is one such beginning - a reach for understanding:

[START]

CONCORDIA, Kan. -- His nondescript old storage building sits out in the
country, with farm fields and a few houses nearby, looking like anything
but a historical attraction.

     "Ten years ago nobody wanted tours," owner Don Kerr said.

     Today it's not unusual for Kerr to hear that someone would like to
visit, perhaps schoolchildren who will listen with fascination as he
describes what used to go on around his property.

     This was Camp Concordia, a place where America sent German POWs
captured in Africa during World War II. Once 4,000 prisoners lived here in
a complex of 300 buildings, guarded by 800 U.S. soldiers.

    Several structures remain, including a prison warehouse -- the building
Kerr uses for storage -- an officers club and a restored guard tower. Only
the guard tower is easily accessible to the public.

     Now a Concordia area group wants to preserve part of the camp because
of the place it occupies in Kansas history. During World War II, the nation
set up dozens of POW camps, but they've slipped into oblivion.

    For years, nobody cared much about Camp Concordia either, said Kerr,
one of the workers who helped build it and later helped tear it down.

    In the 1990s, as the 50th anniversary of the camp approached, people
started caring.

    "It's too bad we didn't get into it sooner," Kerr said.

     Historian Pat O'Brien, who has studied the POW camp, sees merit in
making Camp Concordia into a public attraction.

     "I think in terms of timing, it's propitious," said O'Brien, a retired
Emporia State University professor. "The whole World War II phenomenon,
that's been a launch pad for all kinds of things."

    State government provided a $2,000 grant to help the POW Camp Concordia
Preservation Society purchase a small parcel of land. The state might
provide additional grants.

    Tourists and history buffs would benefit from the attraction, said Jeff
Mercer, the state's travel and tourism director.

     "This is a piece of history we don't often focus on," he said. "It's a
part of our past we tend to forget about."

    Much of the project, however, would require private money, and the
society doesn't have much available, said Lowell May, an area resident and
the society president.

    "It's slow going," May said, "but it's going."

    May, author of the book "Camp Concordia -- German POWs in the Midwest",
wrote that he was surprised to learn how many people didn't realize enemy
POWs were held in the United States.

     Camp Concordia existed for two years, from 1943 to 1945.

     Prisoners arrived by train. Placing them in the Midwest, authorities
thought, could provide useful labor for agriculture. Almost immediately,
the Germans started working with local farmers.

     Difficulties between POWs and local residents were few, and in fact
friendships formed, May wrote. Only a handful of escape attempts occurred,
none successful, he wrote.

     Life at the camp, the book said, was easy compared with the war in
Europe. Prisoners played outdoor sports, listened to band performances and
took courses offered by the University of Kansas.

     The POWs headed back to Germany in the autumn of 1945, some of them
harboring pleasant memories of Kansas.

     As quoted in the book, Franz Kramer of Gundelfingen, Germany, said:
"There was no reason to criticize American authorities. The prisoners felt
that they were well treated. We learned a little of the American way of
life and saw part of the vast country."

     About a dozen former POWs came to Concordia for a reunion in 1995.

    Today, correspondence continues between former POWs, their relatives
and Concordia residents.

     However, May said, his organization doesn't yet have an overall plan
for acquiring land and restoring the original buildings. Most of the
property remains in private hands.

    Concordia residents support the idea of making the camp into an
attraction, he said. But donations haven't exactly flooded in, he said.

     Paul Rimovsky, vice president of the preservation society, said he
didn't know of active opposition. He would like to see more active support.


    "The old people think it's OK," he said. "But the young ones, they
don't know about World War II."

   To reach John A. Dvorak, Kansas reporter, call (816) 234-7743 or send
e-mail to jdvorak@kctar.com.

   For information

 You can write to the POW Camp Concordia Preservation Society at Box 341,
Concordia, KS 66901, or phone (785) 527-5576.

[END]

=====

Thought for the Day:

"Eisenhower himself signed the request to create a prisoner category not
covered by the Geneva Convention."

(Saturday Night, Issue September 1989, page 34)