Hitler’s Death Camps in Occupied Poland – Disturbing

Ian Baxter has compiled a book of rare photographs from Occupied Poland which features the Nazi German Death Camps. Eighty years on, the concept and scale of the German genocide programme remains a stain on humanity. This book graphically demonstrates the depths and the reality of the Holocaust, the proof exists, whatever the deniers try and tell you.

There are pictures of a police deportation unit in the Łódź ghetto about to deport the Jews to the extermination camp at Chełmno. Which is followed by a picture of Jewish workers about to sort through the clothing confiscated from those being deported. There is a picture of two SS Concentration camp guards at Chełmno enjoying their comradeship. It must be remembered that all those who worked at the camps did so for the prestige of the SS uniform, the elitism as well as the toughness and comradeship which outweighed any moral scruples.

When the Germans invaded Poland on 1st September 1939, the fate of the Jews and the Poles had already been set. Hitler had decided that Poland would be cleared of Poles and Jews alike. What followed was unrestrained terror in Poland. The Nazis had long propagated the belief that the Eastern Jew of Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic States were carriers of disease and required isolation.

As Jews and Slavs were regarded as subhuman, the Jews were first put in ghettos, while they decided what they should do with them. When the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, their “Jewish Problem” grew, and they began shooting Jews and dumping their bodies in pits. These killings were often witnessed by “unauthorised” people, who often complained about the brutality. Also, the German officers noted to Himmler that it was “distressing” for the killers.

Himmler made it clear he required a more effective method of killing, which was either by gas or explosives. Camps were built with gas chambers for extermination of Jews. As the camps began to open the murder of Jews stepped up.

This book captures the Jews on their way to the camps, in the camps and being dehumanised. Their only crime was to be Jewish in a German Occupied Country. The pictures of Treblinka are always hard, as this is a camp the Germans managed to destroy. Anyone who has been there today are well aware evil took place there, as there is a green space in the forest, but the sound of bird song is strangely absent. The pictures in this book shows you why. Where unnatural events took place, and people were being killed in a race war.

The images in this book are deeply disturbing, and they are meant to be. The Holocaust was and remains a terrible stain on the Human race. We have a duty not to forget the evil we can do to each other and this book is the evidence of what we can do.