Monday, May 8, 2023
Simi Valley's Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum was our go to spot today for a bone chilling exhibit.
Half of the nearby museum's floor space is houses a permanent tribute to the United States' 40th President and his administration's accomplishments. The indoor housing of the President's Air Force 1 jet plane is a remarkable exhibit in and of itself.
We have been to the Reagan Library on several occasions, usually with a focus on one of the many special exhibitions that the other half of the museum has exhibited over the years.
Today we joined our friends Koreen and Brian FitzGerald at the Reagan Library to view a special exhibit dealing with the Holocaust in general and Poland's Auschwitz Concentration Camp specifically.
A part of the Nazi's infamous
"Final Solution"
As I suspected, this exhibit made all of us both think and question.
Even though Laurie and I, over our many years living abroad, had visited the Dachau Concentration Camp outside of Munich, Germany and the the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp complex near Kraków, Poland, today's exhibit still moved us.
Usually the Nazi's packed about
150 people into one of these
railroad box cars for their trip
to a Concentration Camp
The only things placed in these box cars for the 150 sardine packed prisoners were two buckets to be shared by all.
One had drinking water while the other was for the prisoner's use as a community toilet.
An Auschwitz prisoners shoe
Did the owner survive or did she perish in the camp?
We'll never know.
Once the prisoners were unloaded from their box cars, they were quickly processed by the concentration camp's staff into groups based on sex, age and health status.
Those judged unfit to work were quickly stripped of their belongings and executed. These people were disposed of so quickly that they were never actually registered into the camp's list of prisoners. Thus, their deaths were not noted by the highly efficient Nazi killing machine's record keepers making the exact number of victims who died at Auschwitz impossible to tell.
Laurie at a section of the electrified,
barb wired fence that surrounded Auschwitz
Prisoners came to the camps
on railroad wheels like this one
A drawing of camp life despair
This was drawn by an Auschwitz survivor on the Camp Commandant's stationary as the camp was liberated by the Russians on January 27, 1945.
The exhibit shared much about the typical life of Jews living in Europe before the rise of Nazism.
Obviously, a visit to the
local Temple was important
Not sure what this says as
my knowledge of the Hebrew and
Yiddish languages is a bit rusty
My German is not so good either
but I'm guessing that this is NOT
good news for the Chosen People
A World War I German Iron Cross,
Second Class won by a Jewish
soldier in combat
One of the Nazis main claims on their path to gaining power was that Germany's Jewish population did nothing to help the Fatherland during WWI thus insuring the German defeat. This became known as the Jews' "Stab in the Back Theory" as the Nazis sold it to their Aryan people.
In fact, over 100,000 Jews served in the German military during WWI with about 12,000 of them actually giving up their lives for the Fatherland. A total of 18,000 Jews were awarded the Iron Cross during The Great War.
Of note, Adolf Hitler was awarded an Iron Cross, Second Class just like the one our Jewish soldier was awarded seen above.
No better, no worse.
Hmmm . . .
Typical Concentration Camp uniform
If you were "lucky" enough not to be killed immediately upon arrival at the camp, the prisoners were robbed of their possessions and clothing, They were then given these uniforms to wear for the rest of their stay in the camp.
The uniform included a pair of foot killing wooden shoes that made working and walking both difficult and painful. If these wooden shoes caused a prisoner painful sores or serious blisters that limited their ability to work, the Nazis would make an effort to shorten the prisoner's life span.
Please note the red triangle on the left chest of the uniform seen above. Triangles like this one were sown onto the uniforms to designate what kind of prisoner the Nazis had in their web of evil.
Triangle Deciphering Chart
In general, here is what these identification triangles meant:
RED: A politcal prisoner
GREEN: A habitual prisoner
BLUE: An immigrant prisoner
PINK: A homosexual prisoner
PURPLE: A religious dissident prisoner
Brown: A Roma prisoner
BLACK: An asocial prisoner, this category included the mentally ill, alcoholics, intellectuals, aristocrats, beggars and draft resistors
Of course, most of the prisoners wore . . .
the sign of a Jewish prisoner
A 1933 group photo of the
Dachau Concentration Camp's SS Guards
An Auschwitz Crematorium scene
Rudolf Höss was the longest serving commandant at Auschwitz.
In interviews leading up to his post-WWII war crimes trial, Höss was thoroughly interrogated about what happened under his watch at the camp.
When queried about how many people were executed on a daily basis he responded that it was it was possible to kill 2,000 people in half an hour it they wanted to do so. The problem, he said, was not the speed and volume of the executions but the long time it took to dispose of the bodies in the camps crematoriums.
For his part in the Holocaust, Rudolf Höss was found guilty of murdering 3,000,000 prisoners at Auschwitz. Of that total 2,500,000 died either in the gas chambers or by firing squad. Another 500,000 prisoners met their demise at Auschwitz due to starvation or disease.
The 3,000,000 deaths accounted for somewhere between 70%-80% of all the prisoners that were shipped to Auschwitz.
The Polish government executed Höss by hanging him in the courtyard next to the Auschwitz Camp's former Gestapo Headquarters.
This is a drawing of the courtyard
where Höss wound be hung
From 1943 onward, Poles that were rounded up by the Nazis for whatever reason were sent to the Gestapo Headquarters in Block 11 at Auschwitz. After a Gestapo trial, good luck with that, the now condemned Poles were summarily executed by firing squad in this courtyard.
None of these executed prisoners were ever registered in the Nazis log books thus adding to the difficulty of correctly saying how many people were killed at Auschwitz.
Post-WWII Jewish art of the
horrors of concentration camp life
Some of the items that the Nazis
accumulated from their prisoners
What did the prisoner who owned
these spectacles see?
A prisoners coffee pot
Laurie once decorated a coffee mug
with tole painting similar to this one
looted by the Nazis
Profound words to consider daily
This interesting, thought provoking exhibit will remain open at the Reagan Library until August 14, 2023.
Laurie and I highly recommend that you attend if you are anywhere near Simi Valley.
