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From: mvanalst@rbi.com (Mark Van Alstine)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Does Ceacaa understand the fundamentals?
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 10:15:31 -0700
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In article ,
jamie@voyager.net (Jamie McCarthy) wrote:

> ceacaa@aol.com ("Ceacaa") wrote:

[snip]

> > The Auschwitz complex cost over 20,000,000 marks.  

And Mr. Allen's source for this amount is? 

In reading Dwork's and van Pelt's _Auschwitz: 1270 to the present_, a
figure of RM 20.6 million for the _first proposed_ construction budget for
Auschwitz I is mentioned. It was turned down. Bischoff then proposed two
seperate subsequent budgets. The first of these, called the "Provisional
Expansion of the Concetration Camp Auschwitz O/S" was for RM. 2.02
million. The second, called "Building Project Auschwitz," was for RM 20.06
million. The agricultural estate was bugdeted seperately at RM 3.5
million. Auschwitz III (Monowitz) was evidently consrtucted under the
aegis of I.G. Farben who, according to the authors, "would secure the
building materials for the camp." Additionally, for the several thousand
prisoners used to construct the Buna plant (and Monowitz) I.G. Farben
evidently paid the SS RM 3 per day for unskilled workers and RM 4 per day
for skilled workers. Furthermore, the total cost for the construction of
Birkenau was RM 7.7 million. (cf. van Pelt, _Auschwitz_,
pp.207,214-215,265.) 

Therefore, given that it appears that only the expansion of Auschwitz I
was undertaken; that I.G. Farben basically footed the bill for the
construction of Monowitz; and that Birkenau was constructed it should mean
that the construction of the three main Auschwitz camps would have come to
RM 9.72 million.

> > The unneeded trains rides cost more as well as being additional security 
> > problems and the use of desperately need rail resouces.The creation of 
> > Auschwitz does not make sense in the context of a program of mass 
> > extermination.

This is quite specious of Mr. Allen. The cost of deporting the Jews to
Auschwitz (or elsewhere) was not picked up by the Nazis. The Nazis charged
the victims for the train fair to take them to their deaths. Furthermore
the security issues were quite manageable as the victims were typically
locked into freight cars without food or water until they arrived at their
destination. (cf. Lanzmann, _Shoah_, pp.117,129-134,142.)  

As to Mr. Allen's misleading assertion that Auschwitz did not "make sense
in the context of a program of mass extermination" I would say just the
opposite. Auschwitz made horrifying sense. Auschwitz, having both labour
camps and an extermination camps fullfilled the duel rolls of suppling,
for example, I.G. Farben, DEST, and DAW with a constant source of cheap
and expendable slave labor while on the other in fullfuilling the
ideological goal of National Socialism of annihilating the Jews. And the
SS did this for an immense profit to boot. The value of assets, monies,
and labor extracted from the prisoners and victims at Auschwitz-
eveidently several hundred million RM -exceeded that of _all_ the
Operation Reinhard death camps combined. (cf. Arad, Belzec, Sobibor,
Treblinka_, p.161; Gutman, _Anatomy_, p.258.)

[snip]

> This is really basic Holocaust history.  You obviously do not even
> understand the hideous fundamentals of why Auschwitz was built.
> 
> Or you _do_ understand it, and, like most "revisionists," your aim is
> to confuse as many people as possible.  I'm not sure which.

I'm sure which. 

For those interested in Mr. Allen's prolific Holocaust denial and crackpot
"theories," please peruse DejaNews and visit the Nizkor Project at:

http://www.dejanews.com/
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi?people/a/allen.andrew

Mark

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"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes 
not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties--but
right through every human heart--and all human hearts." 

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"
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