HOLOCAUST, AS TOLD BY EXECUTIONERS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 16, 1992                   TAG: 9202160246
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: E-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by ROBERT ALOTTA
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
HOLOCAUST, AS TOLD BY EXECUTIONERS
"THE GOOD OLD DAYS": THE HOLOCAUST AS SEEN BY ITS PERPETRATORS AND BYSTANDERS. Edited by Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen and Volker Riess. The Free Press. $22.95.
Reading this book can make one physically ill.
"The Good Old Days" is a collection of diaries, letters and confidential reports written by the executioners and sympathetic supporters of the Holocaust. Adding to the repulsion is a collection of frightening photographs that these people took to remember their work.
The title, "The Good Old Days," ("Schone Zeiten") was taken from a photo album kept by Kurt Franz, the commandant of the concentration camp at Treblinka. But that material is only the tip of the iceberg. We find the executioners and their helpers talking mater-of-factly about the day's happenings and the violent deaths of Jewish men and women:

Dr. Johannes Paul Kremer, in his diary, Oct. 15, 1942: "Tonight the first hoar-frost has appeared outside. In the afternoon it was sunny and warm again. Extracted fresh live liver, spleen and pancreas material from an ictus (jaundice) case."

Kurt Mobius: "Although I am aware that it is the duty of the police to protect the innocent I was however at that time convinced that the Jewish people were not innocent but guilty. . . . The thought that one should oppose or evade the order to take part in the extermination of the Jews never entered my mind either. I followed these orders because they came from the highest leader of the state and not because I was in any way afraid."

SS-Oberstrumfuhrer Kar Kretschmer, in a letter to his wife and children from Kursh, Oct. 15, 1942: "People soon get used to the sight of blood, but Blutwurst (blood sausage) is not very popular here."

Alfred Metzner, driver for Gebietskommissar Gerhard Erren said: "I was holding a whip or a pistol. I was loading or unloading. The men, children and mothers were pushed into the pits. Children were first beaten to death and thrown feet first into the pits. . . . There were a number of filthy sadists in the extermination Kommando. For example, pregnant women were shot in the belly for fun and then thrown into the pits. . . . Before the execution the Jews had to undergo a body search, during which. . . . anuses and sex organs were searched for valuables and jewels."
The accounts are vivid and frightening, and their effect grows with each section until one's head throbs with migraine intensity. The consequence of the black-and-white photographs, though descriptive, is lessened because they are so small and grainy. One cannot see the fear in frozen on the Jewish faces. Once cannot see the purple and red of bruised, bloody bodies piled in disarray in a common grave. But the executioners could.
Some performed their tasks and thought nothing of it; others were troubled by the frightening scenes and suffered nervous breakdowns. One, if not more, committed suicide to salve the conscience.
The accounts of the deaths these men witnessed and about which they wrote are secondary to concerns about meals, leaves and other inconveniences. One reason for this, perhaps, is that the Third Reich did not want officers or men to chronicle what was going on with Jewish exterminations.
Some men were disciplined for taking photographic records, such as SS Untersturmfuhrer Max Taubner. Taubner was not to be reprimanded for killing Jews - "the Jews have to be exterminated, and none that were killed is any great loss." Nevertheless, his action in taking "tasteless and shameless photographs" and showing them to family and friends "was a serious offense. Those photographs, in the wrong hands, the SS Court judged, could present "the gravest risks to the security of the Reich."
This book is so frightening it can bring nightmares . . . and questions. How can revisionist historians deny the existence of the Holocaust? How can they write that the Holocaust is the creation of an over-active Jewish imagination? And how can we, as members of the human race, not feel shame as human beings for the deaths of so many innocent people?
"The Good Old Days" is a devastating book that must be read.

Robert Alotta teaches at James Madison University.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB