Thursday, March 20, 2014

HaRav Shmuel Yitzhak Churgin; Teacher Of Teachers, Lover of Zion

HaRav Shmuel Yitzhak Churgin, son of HaRav Eliahu Ben Haim Churgin, was born in 1865 in Karlin near Pinsk, Belarus, in the Polesia region of Russia. He was from a family of rabbis, biblical schloars- Torah and lovers of Zion. He was educated in the Cheder (alternatively, Cheider, in Hebrew חדר, meaning "room") which is a traditional elementary school teaching the basics of religious Judaism and the Hebrew language Shumel excelled in his studies. He had a love for the Torah and the Halachic rulings, Halakha (Hebrew: הֲלָכָה) also transliterated Halocho (Ashkenazic), the collective body of Jewish religious laws, based on the Written and Oral Torah, including the 613 mitzvot and later Talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions compiled today in the Shulchan Aruch, "the Code of Jewish Law." It was this great love for the Torah - the Bible, that he later taught to thousands of students at " Gates of Torah" and Mikveh Israel (Hebrew: מִקְוֵה יִשְׂרָאֵל; "Hope of Israel") the first Jewish agricultural school in Israel

At the age of twenty, in 1885. he married Chasiyah Eisenberg (Daughter of Aaron Eisenberg). A few years after his marriage in 1889, he was offered the opportunity to immigrate to America to study at a university there. HaRav Churgin and many young Jews had been affected by the wave of pogroms of 1881–1884 and anti-Semitic May Laws of 1882 introduced by Tsar Alexander III of Russia. These incidents of ant-Semitic hatred prompted mass emigration of Jews from the Russian Empire. HaRav Churgin decided to join with many other inspired young Jews to heed the call of the Lover's of Zion and to make Aliyah to Eretz Yisrael and to assist the rebuilding of the Jewish Homeland in the backward desolate portion of the dying Turkish Empire. So he became a Pioneer or Bilu (Hebrew: ביל"ו which is an acronym based on a verse from the Book of Isaiah (2:5) "בית יעקב לכו ונלכה" Beit Ya'akov Lekhu Venelkha ("House of Jacob, let us go [up]")) The Bilu'im were part of a movement whose goal was the agricultural resettlement of Eretz Yisrael - the Land of Israel.
Jewish settlers ("Biluim") in Palestine, 1880's

In 1889 he made Aliyah - immigrated to Israel. He went through some very exasperating experiences upon his arrival. as did many new comers in the early days of the First Aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. At that time the area was a sleepy backwater of the dying Ottoman Turkish Empire. Sparsely populated and filled with marauding bands of Arab Bedouin thieves. The land was treeless and barren. It was filled with rocky spaces and mosquito filled swamps with deadly malaria.
"Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective--distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.
Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the full flush of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by contrast with the far-reaching desolation that surrounds them on every side. I would like much to see the fringes of the Jordan in spring-time, and Shechem, Esdraelon, Ajalon and the borders of Galilee--but even then these spots would seem mere toy gardens set at wide intervals in the waste of a limitless desolation.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead-- about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. .... The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes."
 A section from Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad On the land of Palestine
The Jewish community in the ancient seaside port city of Jaffa was very small. It was located within the Arab Old City. From here every day at the crack of dawn he would walk the 25 kilometers to the new Jewish town of Rehovot. It was here in this newly founded colony/settlement he would work alongside other new immigrants. As the evening drew near he would walk back to Yaffo and with the dawn he would return once again to go to work. The work was physical, hard and long but he and the other young Zionists enjoyed the work. They knew that they were rebuilding the Jewish Homeland.
Rechovot 1912
After a few short years he was able to bring Chassiyah and their three children to be with him in Eretz Yisrael. They lived in Jaffa, since the new Jewish City of Tel Aviv had not yet been founded. There were no living quaters available so they rented in the old city of Jaff/Yaffo. Because of this the Jewish women were forced to go out veiled dressed in burqas (an enveloping outer garment worn by Moslem women to cover their bodies) whenever they ventured into the streets out of fear of attack from their Arab neighbors.

HaRav Churgin who had once dreamed of becoming a farmer settling in one of the agricultural settlements, was forced to abandon his dream due to financial considerations and the severity of life in the Yishuv. To feed his family he returned with fervor to his first love as a teacher in the Talmud Torah -"Sharei Torah" or "Gates of Torah". "Sharei Torah" had just been founded and it was the only institution of it's kind for Jewish children in Jaffa. He remained a teacher there for decades eventually moving with them to it's new quarters in Neve Shalom. Thousands of students learned from him his passion for the Halachic rulings and  especially the Torah / Bible. He was able to also inspire in them his love and passion for Torah as well as for the Land of Israel.

In my research I found that it was a high probability that when HaRav Kook moved to Ottoman Palestine in 1904 to assume the rabbinical post in Jaffa, which also included responsibility for the new mostly secular Zionist agricultural settlements nearby. He may have been in contact with HaRav Churgin since they both shared a love for Halacha and the rebirth of Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael. As a respected teacher he may have influenced HaRav Kook as he engaged in kiruv ("Jewish outreach"), creating a greater role for Torah and Halakha in the life of the city and the nearby settlements.
Talmud Torah Sharei Torah 1912 -1938
What is notable of HaRav Churgin is that he had been educated in the writing style of the ancient Hebrew writers. So in his leisure time he began writing poems in the long forgotten oratorical style of the ancient Jewish writers. He soon became recognized throughout the reborn Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael as a famous scholar in the rebirth of the Hebrew language and grammar. Dozens of private students from the best houses in the new Jewish city of Tel Aviv flocked to take lessons from him in the reborn language of modern Hebrew. These students -as well as his son Yakov later formed the original core group of new Hebrew speakers and writers.

Despite all the hardships of eking out a living and having a large family. HaRav Churgin was able to participate in public affairs in the Yishuv. As the years moved on and his health began to fail him only than did he stop his love of writing and teaching but not before leaving his contribution to the re-establishment of the Jewish home land in Eretz Yisrael and his love for Torah and Zionism was passed on.



I include below a picture of the daughter of HaRav Shmuel Yitzhak Churgin and Chasiyah Eisenberg (Daughter of Aaron Eisenberg) Rachel Churgin the wife of David Blick and their daughter Esther Blick -wife of Chaim Brownstein grandmother of my wife Rena.











Monday, March 17, 2014

Roosevelt’s Solution For Palestine

With the rise of Nazi Germany  during the years 1933 -1938 the Nazi regime free immigration of the Jews of Europe was of the utmost issue for Jewish circles. The critical period of 1938-1941 was the period of the beginnings of war in Europe. It was also the period of British appeasement to the Arabs of the severe restrictions of Jewish immigration in the White Paper of 1939.

President Roosevelt's interest in transferring Arabs from Palestine began in ‎‎October 1938 after a meeting with Justice Louis Brandeis‎‎Brandeis reported on this meeting to Felix Frankfurter who in turn passed on the report to ‎‎Stephen Wise and to presidential adviser and script-writer Ben Cohen. Brandeis pointed out in his report of this meeting how Roosevelt appreciated the significance of Palestine‎‎“the need of keeping it whole and of making it Jewish". He was tremendously interested - and wholly surprised - on learning of the great increase in Arab population since the First World War; and on learning of the plenitude of land for Arabs in Arab countries, about which he made specific inquiries.”

The Historian Zaha Bustami commented that it was, “…difficult to tell who brought up ‎‎this subject during the meeting, but the information on Arab demography was provided ‎‎by Frankfurter.” Who had met with FDR a few days earlier a meeting to discuss the ‎‎Palestine situation; however there are no records of what Roosevelt said at this meeting. 

On 25th of October 1938, Roosevelt had a meeting with the British Ambassador to the ‎‎U.S. Sir Ronald Lindsay. Lindsay wrote that the President was “impressed by the fact ‎‎that the Arab population had increased by 400,000 since the establishment of the [League ‎‎Of Nations] Mandate.” 

FDR also contemplated the creation of a program of well-digging across the JordanRoosevelt firmly believed that, “we ought to be able to find that money for the purpose”. FDR believed that once a large quantity of water would be made available for irrigation and the cultivable land thus created in Trans-Jordanian territory it;
‎‎“should be set apart for Arabs from Palestine. They should be offered land free, and that ought to be enough to attract them; and failing the attraction, they should be compelled to emigrate to it. Palestine could thus be relieved of 200,000 Arabs”.
FDR also added that it would “be necessary to prescribe that no Arab should be allowed to immigrate into Palestine, and no Jew into the Arab lands.” ‎‎

The Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle, later recalled that,” The President was full ‎‎of Palestine” and that FDR called on Ronald Lindsay to call a conference of Arab ‎‎princes. FDR was adamant in having them lay down; “say ‎‎$200,000,000 buying a farm for every Arab who wishes to leave Palestine, the money chiefly to be used in digging wells, which is perfectly possible in the Hedjaz.” Here, it is quite clear that Roosevelt intended the Arabs to "foot the bill" for the transfer of the Arabs of Palestine.
British Ambassador Lindsay therefore asked Lancelot Oliphant of the British Foreign ‎‎Office to have someone prepare a “short answer to this scheme” to have in readiness, ‎‎although he stressed that he would not take the initiative in sending a reply to the ‎‎President. Lindsay’s request was first dealt with by Lacy Baggalay of the Foreign Office. He first quoted experts, who held that the possibilities of finding water in quantity by boring in Transjordan were, “quite restricted”. He then continued, “But even assuming that water could be found in large quantities, it is now out of the question that any Arabs should be ‎‎'compelled' to emigrate to the lands thus brought into cultivation.

"Whatever else may remain uncertain about the problem of Palestine, the impossibility of compulsion on this scale is now beyond dispute."

There are those who blame the genesis of Roosevelt's idea of a forcible or voluntary eviction of Palestinian Arabs to Trans-Jordan or other neighboring lands on Roosevelt’s contacts with Zionist circles in the summer of 1938 perhaps in discussions with Brandeis and Frankfurter.

So "Who" actually had given Roosevelt the idea that irrigation of the Transjordan desert would create a ‎‎suitable location for the Arab transferees? The indications are that it came from the State ‎‎Department where at that period Edward Norman was in contact with government ‎‎officials to advance his own transfer plans. Although Norman was at the time in contact ‎‎with the State Department, his plans were in fact to irrigate Iraq by means of the dams it ‎‎had recently constructed.‎‎ ‎

Roosevelt summoned Lindsay for a further meeting, presumably during the first half of ‎‎November. At this meeting, the President said that he thought that “the British should call ‎‎in some of the Arab leaders from Palestine and some of the leaders from the adjoining ‎‎Arab countries.”

"The British should explain to them that they, the Arabs, had within their ‎‎control large territories ample to sustain their people.” He also pointed out that Jewish ‎‎immigration to Palestine and Transjordan would not harm the Arabs since there was ‎‎plenty of room for everyone. Roosevelt then went on to propose transfer of Arabs, “Some ‎‎of the Arabs on poor land in Palestine could be given much better land in adjoining Arab ‎‎countries."

British Ambassador ‎‎Lindsay answered Roosevelt by saying that there was opposition in both the Arab and ‎‎Moslem world but the President “belittled this opposition and thought it due largely to British indecision and conflicting policy.”

Roosevelt had also thought of ideas of how to finance this transfer. He thought that “if a plan was devised for a settlement of 100,000 families costing $3,000 a family or ‎‎$300 million the funds might be raised” by the American Government, the British and French Governments, and private subscriptions - largely Jewish; each of these bodies would contribute $100 million.‎‎

Towards the end of December the British Charge d'Affaires in Washington met with ‎‎Sumner Welles and handed him a memorandum on transfer received from the British ‎‎Government, adding that Roosevelt would probably be interested in it.‎‎ ‎After pointing out that the latest available evidence did not bear out the belief that any ‎‎considerable quantity of water could be obtained in Transjordan at shallow levels by ‎‎boring wells, the memorandum continued,
“Suggestions have also been made that if the free offer of cultivable land in Transjordan did not suffice to attract the Arabs from Palestine; they might be compelled to emigrate from it, with the object of vacating land in Palestine for settlement by Jews.”

Until the Wannssee conference of January 1942 there was still hope in Jewish / Zionistic circles that the Nazis would allow mass Jewish immigration. With the inevitable invasion of Poland by the Nazis in September 1939 the doors of Europe began to close and the fate of European Jewry was sealed.

The British Government “Complicity” can be found in Whitehall’s fear of the repercussions in BritainIndia and the Moslem world if they should back Roosevelt's plan of Arab "resettlement". They saw the threat to the sources of raw materials and oil for the Empire in agreeing to Roosevelt’s proposals. Their Empire would be in jeopardy due to their promises made to the Jews. 

Lancelot Oliphant of the British Foreign ‎‎Office brought, in his words, the “fallacy” which Roosevelt was using to try and solve the Palestine problem in a reply sent to Lindsay saying that the British government would not even contemplate such an idea. That  His Majesty's Government would be accused of such a thing. That it would be “thoroughly unjust” to compel the "long-established community" the Arabs to transfer from Palestine “to make room for immigrants ‎‎[Jews] of a totally different race who have had no connection with [Palestine] for at least 2,000 years.”

The British Government also felt that the problem of ‎‎“redistribution of the Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine and across the Jordan”, was not one of finance but rather of politics.On two occasions, Roosevelt raised his plan with British representatives but he was ‎‎‎“firmly told that no amount of financial inducement would move the Palestinian Arabs.” Roosevelt however, was unconvinced by this British reply.
Chaim Weizmann had his first meeting with Roosevelt in February 1940. At this meeting, Roosevelt put forward the idea of bribing the Arabs, asking Weizmann “What about the Arabs? Can't that be settled with a little baksheesh?” Weizmann replied that “it wasn't as simple as all that. Of course the Jewish people would compensate the Arabs in a reasonable way for anything they got, but there were other factors appertaining to a settlement.”

In December 1942 two and a half years later, Roosevelt told Treasury Secretary, 
Henry ‎‎Morgenthau, “I actually would put a barbed wire around Palestine, and I would begin to ‎‎move the Arabs out of Palestine.... I would provide land for the Arabs in some other part ‎‎of the Middle East.... Each time we move out an Arab we would bring in another Jewish ‎‎family.... But I don't want to bring in more than they can economically support.... It ‎‎would be an independent nation just like any other nation.... Naturally, if there are 90 per ‎‎cent Jews, the Jews would dominate the government.... There are lots of places to which ‎‎you could move the Arabs. All you have to do is drill a well because there is a large ‎‎underground water supply, and we can move the Arabs to places where they can really ‎‎live.” 
In October 1943, the question of “barbed-wire” around Palestine came up again in a ‎‎conversation between Roosevelt and Judge Samuel Rosenman, Justice of the New York ‎‎Supreme Court and speechwriter and counselor to RooseveltRoosevelt had spoken of ‎‎the “possibility of settling the Palestine question by letting the Jews in to the limit that the ‎‎country will support them - "with a barbed-wire fence around the Holy Land.” Rosenman ‎‎thought that this would work but only “if the fence was a two-way one to keep the Jews in and the ‎‎Arabs out.”

What should be mentioned here is that Roosevelt already knew full well of the extent Nazi program of mass genocide. He had been informed by Churchill in the Casablanca Conference January 14 to 24, 1943, of the entire text of the Protocols of the Wannssee conference gleaned from the transmission of the file through the Abwehr G312 “Enigma” program at Bletchley ParkRoosevelt had also read the Polish Foreign Minister Count Edward Raczynski's note which had been addressed to the Governments of the United Nations on 10 December 1942 entitled, "The mass extermination of Jews in German occupied Poland", which provided the Allies with the earliest and most accurate accounts of the Holocaust.

In addition to being informed by documents and Intelligence reports during the course of 1943 an officer in the Związek Walki Zbrojnej (abbreviation: ZWZ or Union of Armed Struggle) of the Polish underground, Jan Karski, traveled to Washington as an emissary of the Polish Resistance to meet with President Franklin Roosevelt and report directly to the President on the European conflict and specifically conditions in his own country, Poland.

In 1942 Karski was selected by Cyryl Ratajski, the Polish Government's Delegate at Home, to perform a secret mission to gather information about Nazi atrocities in occupied Poland. In order to gather evidence, Karski met Bund activist Leon Feiner and was twice smuggled by Jewish underground leaders into the Warsaw Ghetto for the purpose of showing him first hand what was happening to the Polish Jews. Karski had visited Bełżec death camp disguised as a Ukrainian camp guard and had gained first hand eyewitness to the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Karski reported to the Polish, British and U.S. governments in 1942 on the situation in Poland and especially on the the extermination of the Jews. He had done so by smuggling out a microfilm with further textual information in German as proof from the Underground Movement on the extermination of European Jews in occupied Poland.

Karski met with Polish politicians in exile including the Polish Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski , as well as members of political parties such as the PPS, SN, SP, SL, Jewish Bund and Poalei Zion. He also spoke to Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary who reported the meeting directly to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in a detailed statement on what Karski had seen in Warsaw and Bełżec. Karski then traveled to the United States to report to President Franklin D.Roosevelt. Roosevelt requested that Karski meet with Justice Frankfurter and Rabbi Stephen Wise, as it would be of vital concern for them to be apprised of the horrors befalling their fellow Jews in Poland. Frankfurter and Wise listened to Karski’s detailed eyewitness accounts from Belzec concentration camp of the program of extermination of the Jewish people carried out by the Nazis.

When Roosevelt, Frankfurter and Wise were told by Karski’s of the,“the unprecedented' extent of the genocide”, Felix Frankfurter stated that he was unable to "conceive the unconceivable" of the full extent of the methodical extermination of the Jewish people.

In April 1944 two prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, managed to escape from Auschwitz and the Polish Underground once more provided information that they gave to the Allies – together with intelligence gained from two other prisoners who escaped shortly afterwards. This information formed the basis on the workings of Auschwitz that became known as the “Auschwitz Protocols”. This was the first absolute and conclusive proof the Allies received that mass murder was taking place at Auschwitz.

Limited information about the camp had reached the West before this date, but the Auschwitz Protocols removed any reasonable doubt about the scale and nature of the crime, and the Western media were quick to report the news. On 18 June the BBC broadcast a radio story about Auschwitz, and on 20 June the New York Times carried a report which explicitly mentioned the ‘gas chambers’ at Auschwitz/Birkenau.

At the beginning of November 1944, Roosevelt was elected President for an ‎‎unprecedented fourth term. A few days later, Roosevelt discussed the Palestine situation ‎‎with the Under-Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius. Roosevelt had developed his ideas for the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine as time progressed as he heard from State Department officials and Military Intelligence reports of the events happening in Eastern Europe against the Jews. Some believe that Roosevelt's views had become more extreme in his criticism of British policy in Palestine, which was ruled by Whitehall’s  pro-Arab Middle Eastern stance as Arab "complicity" with the Nazi regime became more apparent.

After telling Roosevelt of their ‎‎difficulties regarding Palestine, Under-Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius wrote in his diary, “He thinks Palestine ‎‎should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it”. Roosevelt felt confident ‎‎that he would be able to “iron out” the whole Arab-Jewish issue. Originally recommending the transfer of two hundred thousand Arabs, Roosevelt eventually ‎‎stated unequivocally that “Palestine should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it.” and that as stated in the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate that, "The Mandated area of Palestine should be exclusive Jewish territory.”‎‎ ‎

Almost all the statements that are quoted on this subject were not written by Roosevelt himself, but by the various people he worked and met with. There are no recordings nor written notes either. This however, is characteristic of Franklin D. Roosevelt since he was a man who always had one eye cocked on historians who would someday assess his role in history. He tried to cover his historical tracks, using unrecorded telephone conversations and unrecorded private interviews but we do have the recorded comments from those present with Roosevelt and their diary entries.  

Franklin D. Roosevelt died on the afternoon of April 12 at the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia and with his death so did his Plan for a Jewish Palestine with out the Arab "Problem". Once again the infamous historic statement “What If” resounds through history…

Friday, February 28, 2014

Apartheid in Israel

There have been many furious anti-Israel claims by many of the HOIZS- Hater Of Israel and Zionism - all those pseudo intelligentsia who jump up and down, scream, rant and rave and froth at the month against Israel. Who say Israel and in particular Jewish Israelis are practicing Apartheid. What is overlooked in all these accusations of "Apartheid" is the right of the Jewish people to a land that historically was ours from 3800 years ago. That our Jewish ancestors were forced to flee this land that was once ours. Many Jews tried to stay but they were either massacred or forcibly converted. Despite the various hardships many Jews did come back over the years and resettled our homeland. In many cases the history of the Jewish people and the legality of our existence here has been questioned, erased or negated by those who wish to ignore historical fact. The map of Akko below from the Franciscan Brothers Order website does not even acknowledge the existence of a Jewish Quarter or the existence of the RaMCHaL's synagogue.
Here is a recent case of this Arab practice of Apartheid and erasing of the Jewish presence in our land. This news item is from today's -February 27th, 2014, article in the Ynet "Yediot HaZafon" entitled Arabs in Acre are opening an opposition against the Judaization of the Old City.
According to an article in today's paper by the staff reporter Yaffa Baranes, the Arabs in Akko (Acre) are demonstrating and organizing against what they call the "Judaization" of the Old City. Meetings have been recently held by public officials from Arab factions who have decided to support the fight against the sale of properties to parties intending to "Judaize" the Old City. The Rabbi for the district and the City of Akko Rabbi Yashir stated: "There is no reason why anyone should want to refuse a Jew who wants to buy an apartment"
Representatives of the Arab public" decided to hang signs on the properties and houses in the old town which state in three languages ​​- Arabic, Hebrew and English - "(This) home is not for sale." This step is a continuation of the protest against the plans of certain residents to sell assets to Jewish religious associations in the ancient -once all Jewish Harat al-Yahud, the Jewish quarter adjacent to the synagogue of the RaMCHaL הרמח"ל  before it was razed by the city's Bedouin ruler Daher el-Omar in 1758, who built a mosque on top of it. In its place, the Jews of Akko received a small building north of the mosque which still functions as a synagogue and bears the name of the Ramchal"

The chairperson for "Hadash" -the Israeli Arab Communist Party, Ahmad Odeh, said at the recently held meeting with public representatives from the Arab factions against the posting of a tender to sale the " Khan al Umdan"-)The Khan al-Umdan (Arabic: خان العمدان‎: "Caravanserai of the Pillars" or "Inn of the Columns", also known as Khán-i-'Avámid) is the largest and best preserved khan in Israel. Located in the Old City of Acre, it is one of the prominent projects constructed during the rule of Ahmed Jezzar Pasha in the Ottoman era.)

The Arab factions lead by Ahmad Odeh of the Israeli Arab Communist Party, decided to support the fight against the sale of assets as defined radical elements who intend to Judaize the Old City . Still mean Jewish organizations who get apartments in the old town.

Representatives gather every two weeks , including council members, heads of the Waqf and sheikhs to discuss matters relating to the Arabs of the city. The meetings are not political , and purpose - to handle and solve problems of Arab residents . The meetings are usually held at the community center or the central mosque , al-Jazzar . " Over ten years ago I argued that there is a trend to Judaize the Old City ," said Odeh .

"Fortunately, in recent weeks have understood representatives of the Arab population trend is growing stronger , and so it was decided to unite in order to defeat it. Decided to take steps overt and covert , the fame can ruin them. We have no intention to upset anyone. We only want to hold on to homes and our assets . Were born and grew up in the city. We All in all for ourselves. interests factors that may harm the delicate coexistence in the city, and it is not possible to us."

The Rabbi for the district and the City of Akko Rabbi Joseph Yashar, recently criticized Odeh stressing that Oded is openly inciting against Jews who want to live there .

Rabbi Yashar, "Just as the Arabs are allowed to buy homes anywhere, they wish and no one refuses them. Than justifiably there is no reason to refuse Jews who wants to buy an apartment anywhere in the city. I do not understand what the problem is . If we had come and "God forbid" incite against Arabs and did not allow them to buy homes, there would be a literal war here. We wish to live here in coexistence. Just as the Arabs are allowed to freely buy apartments, than why should Jews not be allowed to buy?"

HaRaMCHaL הרמח"ל

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, also known by the Hebrew acronym RaMCHaL הרמח"ל,   Padua, Italy 1707 – 16 May 1746, Acre (26 Iyar 5506)), was a prominent Italian Jewish rabbi, kabbalist, and philosopher. His magnum opus was the Mesillat Yesharim "Path of the Righteous" (1740), perhaps the most important Jewish ethical text of the post-Middle Ages period. It is essentially an ethical treatise but with certain mystical underpinnings. Rabbi Luzzato wrote Mesillat Yesharim as a dialogue between a hakham (wise man) and a hasid (pious person).  The book is a work on a "Beraita" or "Beraisa", a tradition in the Jewish oral law not incorporated in the Mishnah, associated with the sage Pinchas ben-Yair, whose list goes in order of accomplishment: "Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair said: Torah leads to watchfulness; Watchfulness leads to alacrity; Alacrity leads to cleanliness; Cleanliness leads to abstention; Abstention leads to purity; Purity leads to piety; Piety leads to humility; Humility leads to fear of sin; Fear of sin leads to holiness; Holiness leads to prophecy; Prophecy leads to the resurrection of the dead". The book presents a step-by-step process by which every person can overcome the inclination to sin and might eventually experience a divine inspiration similar to prophecy. Another prominent work, Derekh Hashem (The Way of God) is a philosophical text about God's purpose in Creation, justice, and ethics. The same concepts are discussed in a shorter book called Maamar HaIkarim (the English translation of this book is now available on the Web). Da'at Tevunot also found its existence in the Dutch city as the missing link between rationality and Kabbalah, a dialogue between the intellect and the soul. On the other hand, Derech Tevunoth introduces the logic which structures Talmudic debates as a means to understanding the world around us. Rabbi Luzzatto left Amsterdam for the Holy Land in 1743, settling in Acre. Three years later, he and his family died in a plague.

One major rabbinic contemporary who praised Luzzatto's writing was Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna, the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797), who was considered to be the most authoritative Torah sage of the modern era as well as a great kabbalist himself. He was reputed to have said after reading the Mesillat Yesharim, that were Luzzatto still alive, that he would have walked from Vilna to learn at Luzzatto's feet; He stated that having read the work, the first eight chapters contained not a superfluous word. This is considered to be one of the highest praises that one sage can grant another.


Monday, February 24, 2014

Hatred and Palestinian Children


“A culture of hate has wormed its way into the very fiber of Palestinian society… No ‎peace agreement will be able to guarantee peace… if a generation of Palestinians is ‎growing up indoctrinated to hate Israel, Jews and the West.” MP British Parliament: ‎Henderson

I am really feed up and tired of the insistent approach  to focus almost exclusively on the Israeli settlement enterprise, while doing next-to-nothing to tackle the pervasive negation of Israel’s legitimacy among Arabs of the Mandated Areas (Palestinians), is a guaranteed  approach that will cause peace efforts to never succeed.
By continuously telling the Israeli people that you regard settlements (all of Israel is settlements) as illegitimate and the "Human Rights" lackeys ask for a Boycott of our goods and institutions this will never bring peace.

The main enemy of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation is the hatred for Israel that is being nurtured daily in the hearts of so many in the West Bank and Gaza — the constant narrative that says Israel has no right to exist, and that its people are rapacious invaders who must be struck down. This heartless, soulless poisoning of the young Arabs of the Mandated Areas (and I may add those whom I refer to as HOIZs-Haters Of Israel and Zionism) with anti-Israel incitement is the core problem. They are blinded and so consumed with abject rabid, utter hatred that they have blinders on and cannot see any truth. Young Arabs of the Mandated Areas aka "Falestinians" and their "Human Rights" lackeys are taught nothing but hate of the Jews as "Occupiers" and "usurpers" of the dream of Palestine" on a day by day basis.

Just check ANY text book issued by the Hamas or the PA. Day after day — in Gaza and in the West Bank, and in countries all across the region — in schools and in youthful get-togethers and in newspapers and on television and on Facebook pages and in the speeches delivered by political leaders — millions of young minds  are being gradually poisoned. Children are being persuaded by those they trust that Israel is the embodiment of iniquity, and that all Israelis must be slaughtered. This is widely reflected in the Nazi style high anti-Semitic political cartoons used to defame Israel and Jews alike.


The term “Incitement” is used on a daily basis by the "Falestinian's" and their "HOIZ" lackys as the source of many of the ills afflicting the dismal relationship between our two peoples. The term is vague and means little until you start watching, say, Hamas’s children’s TV programs, in which sweet young kids, on studio sets full of colorful backdrops and cuddly toys, unthinkingly parrot the vicious curses against Israel that their cynical elders have fed them, and vow with the earnest innocence of their manipulated young psyches that they are willing to martyr themselves — to kill and be killed — for the noble, divine cause of harming the terrible Jews.

In a recent speech from Qatar, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal urged Palestinian fathers in Gaza and around the world to instill a desire for death in their children from the youngest ages. “Jihad in the path of Allah is the pinnacle of our aspirations…it is our life,” said the Hamas leader during a ceremony honoring Palestinians killed while carrying out terrorist attacks against Israeli men, women and children. The highest honour for Palestinian children is to die in service as Martyrs for Allah to kill Israeli Jews and “liberate” the Holy Land from their presence. (The Hamas leadership had previously been headquartered in Damascus but escaped to Qatar due to the ongoing civil war in Syria).
Meshaal said that when a Palestinian joins a terror groups such as Hamas, “we are very happy”; when that same Palestinian carries out a terrorist attacks, “we are overjoyed”; and, when that Palestinian is killed in the process of murdering Israelis, “we praise Allah.”Meshaal went on to vow that a new wave of terrorist violence will soon overwhelm Israel, as such violence is the only viable way to achieve the Palestinians’ nationalistic goals.

Our Israeli children are taught that all murders are foul. All cold blooded murders indefensible. It sickening that an atmosphere and a mindset evidently prevalent, among  Arabs of the Mandated Areas in the West Bank and Gaza , that leaves no room for optimism in the short-term. And it underlines the nature of the task ahead if there is to be any substantive change for the better. Hatred must end - from both sides- but the Arabs have a long way to go.

Inconclusion:

I wish to use this excellent summary of a quote by Israel's "Yenta" Prime Minister Golda Meir
"I am also grateful that I live in a country whose people have learned how to go on living ‎in a sea of hatred without hating those who want to destroy them and without abandoning ‎their own vision of peace. To have learned this is a great art, the prescription for which is ‎not written down anywhere. It is part of our way of life in Israel.‎
When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our ‎sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons."



Saturday, January 25, 2014

The Nazi Motive for the Holocaust: Profiting from Murder

For all those Neo Nazi's, Iranians and Arabs who "gloat" and deny that such a thing as the Holohoax as they call the Holocaust - the meticulously Nazi planned extermination of all the Jews throughout the world - actually did occur.

There is one major detail few people are not aware of or are readily reminded of; that ‎The Wannsee Conference (German: Wannseekonferenz)  on 20 January 1942 was a ‎‎"business" meeting. This "Business Meeting" was arranged and carried out, in a very convivial atmosphere over good food and wine, to discuss every finite detail from the previous highly (unprofitable) experience of dealing with "The Jewish Question", to one of profit for the Nazi war machine in the (Die Endlösung der Judenfrage) or "Final Solution" (extermination) of the Jews.

At the Wannsee Conference in 1942 the director of the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office; RSHA) SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich voiced the disappointed of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime at the problems encountered concerning the "Jewish Question".
The main purpose of the Wannsee Conference, lead by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the now proposed (Die Endlösung der Judenfrage) or"Final Solution" of the "Jewish Question."
Conference attendees included representatives from several government ministries, including state secretaries from the Foreign Office, the justice, interior, and state ministries, and representatives from the Schutzstaffel (SS).

During the course of the conference, Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up from west to east and sent to extermination camps in the area of General Government (the occupied part of Poland), where they would be exterminated in his carefully calculated, organized arrangement.
In his comprehensive plan, most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be rounded up to be deported by thoroughly coordinated train transportation  to specially constructed death camps in Poland.

However the true story of just how the Nazi's were able to carry out their diabolical scheme is recounted here from "IBM and the Holocaust," by Edwin Black:
"IBM engineered a strategic business alliance and joint planning program with Nazi Germany from the very first moment in 1933 and extending right through the war that endowed the Hitler regime with the technology and the tools it needed to expedite and, in many ways, automate, all six phases of Hitler's war against the Jews. Those six phases are identification, expulsion, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation and ultimately even extermination.
When Hitler came to power, a central Nazi goal was to identify and destroy Germany's 600,000 Jews. To Nazis, Jews were not just those who practiced Judaism, but those of Jewish blood, regardless of their assimilation, intermarriage, religious activity, or even conversion to Christianity. Only after Jews were identified could they be targeted for asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and ultimately extermination. To search generations of communal, church, and governmental records all across Germany-and later throughout Europe-was a cross-indexing task so monumental, it called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed.
When the Reich needed to mount a systematic campaign of Jewish economic disenfranchisement and later began the massive movement of European Jews out of their homes and into ghettos, once again, the task was so prodigious it called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed.
When the Final Solution sought to efficiently transport Jews out of European ghettos along railroad lines and into death camps, with timing so precise the victims were able to walk right out of the boxcar and into a waiting gas chamber, the coordination was so complex a task, this too called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed.
However, another invention did exist: the IBM punch card and card sorting system-a precursor to the computer called a Hollerith, after Herman Hollerith, its inventor. 
IBM, primarily through Hollerith its German subsidiary, made Hitler's program of Jewish destruction a technologic mission the company pursued with chilling success. IBM Germany, using its own staff and equipment, designed, executed, and supplied the indispensable technologic assistance Hitler's Third Reich needed to accomplish what had never been done before-the automation of human destruction.
More than 2,000 such multi-machine sets were dispatched throughout Germany, and thousands more throughout German-dominated Europe. Card sorting operations were established in every major concentration camp where they  inventoried prisoners for death at Bergen-Belsen and other concentration camps. People were moved from place to place, systematically worked to death, and their remains cataloged with icy automation.
IBM Germany, known in those days as Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, or Dehomag, did not simply sell the Reich machines and then walk away. IBM's subsidiary, with the knowledge of its New York headquarters, enthusiastically custom-designed the complex devices and specialized applications as an official corporate undertaking. Dehomag's top management was comprised of openly rabid Nazis who were arrested after the war for their Party affiliation.
IBM NY always understood-from the outset in 1933-that it was courting and doing business with the upper echelon of the Nazi Party. The company leveraged its Nazi Party connections to continuously enhance its business relationship with Hitler's Reich, in Germany and throughout Nazi-dominated Europe.
Dehomag and other IBM subsidiaries custom-designed the applications. Its technicians sent mock-ups of punch cards back and forth to Reich offices until the data columns were acceptable, much as any software designer would today. Punch cards could only be designed, printed, and purchased from one source: IBM. The machines were not sold, they were leased, and regularly maintained and upgraded by only one source: IBM. IBM subsidiaries trained the Nazi officers and their surrogates throughout Europe, set up branch offices and local dealerships throughout Nazi Europe staffed by a revolving door of IBM employees, and scoured paper mills to produce as many as 1.5 billion punch cards a year in Germany alone. Moreover, the fragile machines were serviced on site about once per month, even when that site was in or near a concentration camp. IBM Germany's headquarters in Berlin maintained duplicates of many code books, much as any IBM service bureau today would maintain data backups for computers.
I was haunted by a question whose answer has long eluded historians. The Germans always had the lists of Jewish names. Suddenly, a squadron of grim-faced SS would burst into a city square and post a notice demanding those listed assemble the next day at the train station for deportation to the East. But how did the Nazis get the lists? For decades, no one has known. Few have asked.
The answer: IBM Germany's census operations and similar advanced people counting and registration technologies. IBM was founded in 1898 by German inventor Herman Hollerith as a census tabulating company. Census was its business. But when IBM Germany formed its philosophical and technologic alliance with Nazi Germany, census and registration took on a new mission. IBM Germany invented the racial census-listing not just religious affiliation, but bloodline going back generations. This was the Nazi data lust. Not just to count the Jews — but to identify them.
People and asset registration was only one of the many uses Nazi Germany found for high-speed data sorters. Food allocation was organized around databases, allowing Germany to starve the Jews. Slave labor was identified, tracked, and managed largely through punch cards. Punch cards even made the trains run on time and cataloged their human cargo. German Railway, the Reichsbahn, Dehomag's biggest customer, dealt directly with senior management in Berlin. Dehomag maintained punch card installations at train depots across Germany, and eventually across all Europe."

Until the "Wannassee Conference" the "highly unprofitable" liquidation of the Jews had been carried out mainly in the Eastern areas of occupied Russian territory by "Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD" who were Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that carried out mass killings, primarily by shooting of Jews in the East.

From September 1939 in Poland to June of 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. The Einsatzgruppen worked hand-in-hand with the Orpo Police Battalions on the Eastern Front to carry out operations ranging from the murder of a few people to operations which lasted over two or more days, such as the massacre at Babi Yar with 33,771 Jews killed in two days, and the Rumbula massacre (with about 25,000 killed in two days of shooting).On December 15th, 1941 commenced one of the largest (Photos on left) mass executions of over 2,700 Jews as well as 23 Communists from the Latvian town of Liepaja (Libau, to the Germans) forced over the course of two-plus days to strip on the freezing Skede dunes overlooking the Baltic and there shot by German and Latvian teams into a vast pit. It’s one of the most recognizable Holocaust atrocities because it was extensively photographed. As one can see from the pictures, the victims here were mostly women.

These mass murders were ordered (indirectly) by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the Wehrmacht cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen and provided logistical support for their operations. SS documentation related to  the Einsatzgruppen and their related auxiliary troops reveled that they killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews between 1941 and 1945.

Until the reorganization of the Die Endlösung der Judenfrage or"Final Solution" at the Wannsee Conference, German Einsatzgruppen had operated in a manner which, to the SS High Command, was haphazard and highly unprofitable.
In most cases when Jewish "Shtetls"-or villages with Jewish inhabitants were encountered by German forces, Einsatzgruppen were called upon to deal with the "Jewish Question". In 8mm films made by Wehrmacht film crews who accompanied the Einsatzgruppen on their mission we have seen how the Jews were rounded up and made to dig ditches and then are made to run to them where members of the Einsatzgruppen would shoot the Jews.

At first the Jews were murdered in their clothing but as seen in later films Jews where forced to undress and their clothing taken.
It was only after a few months that upon reading the reports of "Aktions"- the murder of the  Jews, that the SS High Command realized their error in allowing the Russian neighbors from participating in the "Aktions", As seen in the films the non Jewish; Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian and Ukrainian neighbors, had in many cases "gleefully" helped to round up and liquidate their Jewish neighbors, from confiscating valuable  items from the Jews.
Due to the "loss of valuable items" an order was issued that when Jewish villages were encountered that members of the Ordnungspolizei would organize the rounding up the Jews the day before an "Aktion". The Jews were ordered to pack two suitcases per family and that at a table in the local Synagogue all Jews were required to bring their "valuables" -items of silver and gold for "registration and storage". Selected female members of the community, who were not immediately murdered were assigned to sort and package the clothing of those ordered to strip.
Upon further review the SS High Command found that this new procedure which did begin to improve profit, still had flaws. They found that the cost of the ammunition and alcoholic drinks provided to the members of the Einsatzgruppen who performed the murders still effected the overall profitability of the operation.

The next step of the (Die Endlösung der Judenfrage) or"Final Solution" of the "Jewish Question."was the introduction of "Gas Vans." Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler learned the psychological impact of shooting women and children on the Einsatzgruppen during trips to Russia in 1941 and he commissioned Arthur Nebe to explore ways of killing that were less stressful for the task forces. Nebe's experiments eventually led to the utilization of the "Gaswagen" or Gas van.

These vans manufactured by German Magirus-Deutz and Gaubschat Fahrzeugwerke GmbH were first tested on Soviet prisoners in Sachsenhause in 1940 and for the gassing of East Prussian and Pomeranian mental patients in Soldau, a camp located in the former Polish corridor.
It was a vehicle with an airtight compartment for victims, into which exhaust gas was piped in while the engine was running. As a result, the victims were gassed with carbon monoxide, resulting in death by the combined effects of carbon monoxide poisoning and suffocation. The suffocations usually occurred as the gas van was carrying the victims to a freshly dug pit or ravine for mass burial.
Gaubschat Fahrzeugwerke GmbH the main producer of gas van had delivered 20 gas vans in two models (for 30–50 and 70–100 individuals) to Einsatzgruppen units, out of 30 ordered by June of 1942.
The existence of gas vans first came to light in the trial of members of crimes against humanity of Nazi collaborators involved in the gassing of 6,700 civilians in the Krasnodar Territory of the USSR.

Prior to the Wannsee Conference the Jews were sent primarily to forced labor camps, but from 1942 onward they were mostly deported to the extermination camps under the guise of "resettlement". For political and logistical reasons, the most infamous Nazi German killing factories were built in occupied Poland, where most of the intended victims lived; Poland had the greatest Jewish population in Nazi controlled Europe.
On top of that, the new death camps outside the prewar borders of the Third Reich proper could be kept secret from the German civil populace.

Under Operation Reinhard three top-secret camps (at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka) were built solely to efficiently kill thousands of people each day. These camps differed from the likes of Auschwitz and Majdanek, because the latter operated as forced-labour camps initially, before they became death camps fitted with crematoria.

The "Extermination camps" (Vernichtungslager) and "Death camps" (Todeslager) where designed specifically for the primary function of genocide by mass gassings of Jews. They were established in the months following the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 in which the principle was made clear that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated.

Up until then most of the Jews had already been confined to ghettos and interned in Nazi concentration camps. The Wannsee Conference had place the responsibility for the logistics of the program to Adolf Eichmann as the administrator.

Todeslagers were designed specifically for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains. The executioners did not expect the prisoners to survive more than a few days.
Death camps differed from concentration camps located in Germany proper, such as Bergen-Belsen, Oranienburg, Ravensbrück, and Sachsenhausen, which were prison camps set up prior to World War II for people defined as 'undesirable'.

From March 1936, all Nazi concentration camps were managed by the SS-Totenkopfverbände (the Skull Units, SS-TV), who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well.

An SS anatomist, Dr. Johann Kremer, after witnessing the gassing of victims at Birkenau, wrote in his diary on 2 September 1942:
"Dante's Inferno seems to me almost a comedy compared to this. They don't call Auschwitz the camp of annihilation for nothing!"
The distinction was evident during the Nuremberg trials, when Dieter Wisliceny (a deputy to Adolf Eichmann) was asked to name the extermination camps, and he identified Auschwitz and Majdanek as such. Then, when asked "How do you classify the camps Mauthausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald?" he replied, "They were normal concentration camps, from the point of view of the department of Eichmann."

The specially constructed Nazi "Death Camps" were for the systematic murder in an economically efficient manner of large numbers of Jews in gas chambers. Careful planning for the construction of crematoriums with large industrial size ovens with special elevators to bring the bodies up from the underground gas chambers were carefully made and implemented.Consideration for the re-use of  the belongings of the murdered Jews from their hair, clothing, shoes, bones and even ashes was made with German efficiency so as to make the extermination of the Jews profitable.

Under the direct leadership of Director of the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt ‎‎(Reich Main Security Office; RSHA) SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich together with his subordinate SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Adolf Eichmann outlined their detailed economically feasible "Final Solution" plan. 

The Jews would now be put to work and those who could not would be "liquidated" as soon as possible upon arrival at the "Death Camps" so as to not "waste" funds on -the Jewish children, the infirm, enfeeble and old age. 
That all possible profit be earned from those murdered- clothing, belongings, glasses, gold teeth, hair, bones ashes and even fat. Nothing was wasted and all this data was minutely recorded on cards of each victim. The SS with typical Germantic efficiency worked out the average profit to be expected down to to the residual yield from the gold in the teeth.



At liberation many of the camps, but most notably Buchenwald, warehouses were found with the sorted; bales of women’s hair, spectacles, dentures, silverware, clothing, shoes, artificial limbs and jewelry. The most poignant find was that of thousands of pairs of children’s shoes and bales and bales of baby clothes.


Those who were "Selected" were usually hired out as slave laborers in industrial facilities established nearby. At Auschwitz-Birkenau were more than 3 million were murdered, the large chemical trust I.G. Farben built just such a facility to take such advantage of the cheap slave labor. This payment came in the form of direct money paid to the SS, in light of the ‎‎"resettlement to work in the East" myth.


At the Wannssee Conference it was decided that the Jews would “not only” be confined by decree to the Ghettos, they would be charged for their accommodations!
And when they were called for “Deportation” for their “Resettlement-ie Death” the Jews were forced to pay for a full one-way ticket by the "cheapest fare" possible in order to "balance the budget" and to keep the "project" profitable. 
SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich deemed the Jews to not be humans and chose to use cattle cars where the price of transportation charge was much less,  was deemed "more economically practible".
SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann  replied that the price of transportation by cattle cars was deemed cheaper since there was no need to provide , heating, food ,water nor sanitation.‎

The SS also paid the German Transport Authority to pay the German Railways to transport Jews. The Reichsbahn was paid the equivalent of a third class railway ticket for every prisoner transported to the final destination: 0.5 Pfennig × 8,000,000 prisoners × ‎‎600 km (pro media of voyage length) = 240 million Reichsmark. 
Children under 10–12 years of age paid half price particularly where passenger carriages were used. Those who were running out of money in the ghetto were shipped to the East first, while those with some supplies of gold and cash were shipped last.

In total, over 1,600 trains were organized by the German Transport Ministry, and logged mainly by the Polish state railway company due to the majority of death camps being located in PolandBetween 1941 and December 1944, the official date of closing of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, the transport/arrival timetable was of 1.5 trains per day: 50 freight cars × 50 prisoners per freight car × 1.5 trains/day × 1,066 days = 4,000,000 prisoners. The Reichsbahn pocketed both this money and their share, after the SS fees, of the money paid by those transported.

The cost of transporation in the "total annihilation [Vernichtung] -the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"—the deportation and genocide of ALL Jews in German-occupied Europe  was to derived taken from funds seized from the properties, possessions and absconded financial accounts of the Jews.


In the photo to the left the arrows are pointing at Crematorium 1 on the left and Crematorium 2 on the right at Aushwitz.