Talk:Warsaw concentration camp

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!! Unfortunately, the entry on Konzentrazionslager Warschau is highly misleading. No evidence exists of neither the gas chamber in the West Warsaw tunnel, nor of the claimed huge number of victims (who the proponents of the KL Warschau campaign refer to as "Polish Christians," victims of a "Christian Holocaust"). The "historical evidence" produced in the book by Maria Trzcinska -the main document refered to by those who seek to establish the death camp as a historical fact- is flawed and biased (e.g. naive calculations of how many Poles were killed a day during the Nazi occupations of Warsaw). None of the many historians specializing in World War II or the mambers of the War-time Polish intelligence, nor, for that matter, any of the civilian survivors of the war in Warsaw, support her argument or even take it seriously. Had a major death camp eqipped with gas chambers and operating on the scale similar to Treblinka (200,000 victims in slightly more than a year) been located in the middle of Warsaw, it would have been widely known both during and after the Nazi occupation. And, frankly, some knowledge of it would have survived, both in archives and in popular memory. Such is the position on the issue by the Institute of National Rememberance (IPN). In short, what existed of the alleged "death camp KL Warschau" was the concentration camp set up in the area of the prison at Gesiowka. The great majority of the victims were not "Polish Christians," but non-Polish Jews (Greek, Belgian, French, etc.) brought to Warsaw in 1943 as labor force to dismantle the remainings of what used to be the Warsaw ghetto. The total number of victims of this KL Warschau could have amounted to a few tens of thousands at the most, and most of the deaths were linked to typhoid. In short: Did something called "Konzentrationslager Warschau" exist? Yes. Did it look anything like the monstrous network of five "lagers," a huge gas-chamber and krematoria desribed by Trzcinska and other supporters? No. The play with numbers is telling. Sure, Warsaw suffered great human losses during the war, but the victims of the 1943-44 German terror, the many round-ups and killings in the ruins of the ghetto, as well as the civilian casualties of the 1944 Warsaw rising, should not be included in the death toll of "KL Warschau" - unless what one really wants to do is to conjure up an imaginary -indeed, nightmarish- entity and market it as a "historical fact" for reasons of political expediency (e.g. in order to accuse the liberal political and intellectual elites of compliancy in silencing "the truth" in a conspiracy-theory manner). The currently on-going campaign that aims at winning official recognition of the alleged death camp is an unfortunate product of the nationalist imagination, conspiracy theory thinking, and a political undertaking of the nationalist catholic right. It seeks to create a counter-narrative to the history of the Holocaust and foreground what is perceived as the unrecognized suffering of the Catholic Poles. In fact, and fortunately, it is--as of yet--merely a marginal artifact of local exoticism, and should only be regarded as such. For more information, see the website of the Polish Institute of National Rememberence, a state body that coordinates historical and judiciary investigations on events of the Second World War and the Communist rule in Poland: http://www.ipn.gov.pl/sled_klw_090503.html http://www.ipn.gov.pl/aktual_2707_klw.html

Perhaps the page needs some explanation of the post-war controversies and the current IPN trial. Any volunteers? [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 02:06, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

I suppose, it should be mentioned, that the existence of gas chambers in KL Warschau is not proved.

And with no connection with above topic. Shall it be mentioned, that liberated during Warsaw Uprising part of KL Warschau was called "Gęsiówka". MWeinz

Well... it is mentioned, isn't it. [[User:Halibutt|]] 15:08, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Changed "Kozetrazionslager" to "Konzentrationslager" which is the correct spelling user:Barlotto

This kind of comments is usually entered into the "Edit summary" field. mikka (t) 19:18, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] One person saw KL Warschau operating and survived

Jan Moor-Jankowski a Polish born doctor ( about whom is a separate article in wikipedia ) during World War II while working for the polish resistance was ( by mistake ) arrested by the Germans and taken to KL Warschau . Since he was disguising himself as a member of the Todt organisation ( Nazi engineers organisation , i think ), he was released . He was the only witness of the camp operating . Also there are some evidence that after WWII communists used KL Warschau as a prison for those that opposed their reign ( while still emploing captive Germans there ). That's why the camps existence wasn't reaveled by the communists after the war .

[edit] Corrections

I made some corrections based on IPN information.

Some background information: IPN is professionally investigating Nazi and Soviet crimes in Poland and they are generally held in high regard by historians. In particular Nazi crimes from that time are usually reasonably well documented. Authors of many controversial books on WW2 crimes usually make very little (or none at all) actual research and simply reinterpret the existing data in a way that creates most controversy and sells most books, and usually they are not treated very seriously by mainstream historians. I'd say this is one of such cases.

One thing that still needs verification is Wilhelm Goecke which is claimed to be "the first commander of KL Warschau". Is it supposed to mean 1943 commander of the camp created in Ghetto ruins, or some sort of 1942 supervisor of extermination-related activities before the camp was officially created or what ? Taw 01:45, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Witnesses of the tunnel gas chamber

IPN claims there is only one eye-witness. From the IPN report [1]:

Co do istnienia komory gazowej w tunelu w ciągu ul. Bema w aktach sprawy znajduje się jedna tylko relacja naocznego świadka F. J., który został przesłuchany w dniu 4 kwietnia 1989 r. [...]

Translated:

As for the existance of gas chamber in tunnel at Bem Street, the evidence contain only a single relation of an eye-witness F.J., who have been interrogated on April 4, 1989 [...]

Taw 12:57, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

There are two new eye-witnesses found. [2] There are even the gassing facalities remaning, as well as an other witness for a huge amounts of (unknown) gas storaged (there are several "partial" witnesses). [3] Btw, this closing report was rejected by the state parliament, and the official investigation restarted. --HanzoHattori 13:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Now that's pretty interesting. So let's remove the part about there being only one witness, but I'd still rather keep IPN's estimates (probably number of victims being "tens of thousands", and the tunnel being possible but not certain) unless something moves on with the investigation. Taw 18:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)