The Symbiotic Travelers Ch 08

The symbiotic Travelers

The Final Solution

BADSAM

It is nearing 6:00 PM, June 23, 1945, James is still working for the Chicago Tribune. He has just finished talking to his syngeneic partner, Yaphet on the phone, to inform her that he would be home a little later than normal. He is putting the finishing touches on an article for tomorrow morning's edition about a few little known facts of the Nazi Régime and the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.

It's a human interest story he has been working on for a couple of months. He told his extraterrestrial lover that he had to do some research into the Tribune's archives and some other newspapers and make some phone calls in order to make sure he gets factual information. It is a story that he finds hard to believe.

When he first heard about the Holocaust in the Spring of 1942, he ignored it. He didn't believe that anyone could be so evil and filled with hate as to want to kill off entire ethnicities of human beings. He thought the enslavement and genocide of the Jews, Romani (Gypsies), Poles, homosexuals, communists, political dissidents, the elderly and handicapped individuals was just negative propaganda to stir up hatred for the Axis Powers.

However, when the horrors of the attempt to exterminate these people came to full light after the end of the Second World War, everyone was horrorstruck by the revelations of concentration camps, forced labor and the mass murder of those whom Hitler branded as undesirable.

The Führer's decision to rid Europe of everyone of Jewish descent came on December 12, 1941. This was at a secret meeting with numerous German officials attending, including Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Hitler's broader policy later included Gypsies and Poles, communists, political opponents and other "objectionable people" for extermination. The December 12th resolution made it obvious that the principle of systematic murder of Jews in the occupied territories was to be extended to all unacceptable individuals in Germany and Western Europe.

It began as sporadic and brutal discrimination. Different ethnicities were forced to wear different colored badges. For example, anyone of Jewish descent had to wear a yellow star of David sewed onto the outside of their shirt or jacket. Poles had to wear a purple P on a yellow background, Gypsies a brown triangle, homosexual men a pink triangle, political prisoners a red triangle and Jehovah's Witnesses a purple triangle. Other "undesirables" had to wear different types of badges as a form of intolerance and discernment.

The broad system of dehumanization and control soon became wholesale genocide, with the slaughter of men, women and children, even babies in labor encampments and concentration camps, complete with gas chambers and firing squads with mass burials and incinerators.

On January 20, 1942, several leading Nazi officials took part in the Wannsee Conference and provided a "rubber stamp" of Hitler's proposals, plans that were already in place to institute the "Final Solution."

The Final Solution was the official Third Reich code name for what the Führer and other top ranking Nazi officers considered to be the Jewish problem. However, the systematic murder of all Jews was not restricted to just within the German borders. This policy of deliberate and methodical genocide starting across German occupied territories was formulated at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin by Nazi leadership in January 1942. It saw the indiscriminate massacre of ninety percent of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the European Jewish population.

On January 25, 1942, the SS chief Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi official responsible for the implementation of the Final Solution, ordered the first Jews of Europe to Auschwitz. One hundred thousand Jewish men and fifty thousand Jewish women and children were deported from Germany to Auschwitz as forced laborers. Three weeks later, on February 15th, Schutzstaffel authorities, i.e., the SS, began killing in cyanide gas chambers many of those who arrived on the transports immediately upon their entry to the complex.

The SS were Schutzstaffel police, German for "Protective Echelon or Protection Squadron." They initially served as Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguards but eventually became one of the most powerful and feared organizations under Heinrich Himmler in all of Nazi Germany.

To solve what the Nazi Régime called the Jewish problem, immediately after the Wannsee Conference, Adolf Eichmann supervised large scale deportations to extermination encampments. He organized the identification, the gathering together, and the transportation of Jews from all over occupied Europe to their final destinations in internment camps throughout Germany and occupied Poland. All Jews were forced to sew a yellow star onto their clothing or the word Jude, the German word for Jew, signifying that they were Jewish.

Those who were sent to concentration camps soon included anyone who Hitler considered inferior. The victims were shipped on "death trains" to centralized extermination zones that were built specifically for their execution. Once there, they were stripped of all their possessions, marched naked into "shower rooms" and gassed with cyanide. Their bodies were then thrown into crematoriums that were intentionally built to hold several corpses.

A practice was established at Auschwitz and Birkenau to tattoo the prisoners with identification numbers on their left forearm. However, those who were sent straight to gas chambers didn't receive any type of tattoo or distinguishing mark. Men, women and children, whole families, were stripped of everything and then ushered naked together into large gas chambers and murdered. In order to prevent resistance and panic, victims were told they were going to take a shower for disinfection.

Throughout much of occupied Europe, military brothels were established in the concentration camps. They were surrounded by barbed wire fencing for the use by the Wehrmacht and the SS. The brothels were built as barracks, with small individual rooms. Tens of thousands of female prisoners were forced to serve as sex slaves during the occupation of their countries. In Eastern Europe, teenage girls and young women were kidnapped for use by the Wehrmacht for their sexual gratification.

Many of them endured forced hysterectomies, tubal ligation and removal of their ovaries as well as forced abortions, often resulting in their death. The sterilizations were often performed without anesthesia.

If a woman gave birth while in an internment camp, sometimes the baby was declared to be stillborn and then thrown into a bucket of water, drowning them, frequently in front of the mother who had just delivered the infant. Camp SS authorities did not allow mothers to breast feed their babies or even distribute milk or appropriate foods for infants, thus sentencing them to starve to death. Many children were used as test subjects, "guinea pigs" in criminal experiments by Doctor Josef Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death," who was known for his brutal experiments on twins, babies and other inmates.

The Nazis constructed numerous prison camps, each with satellite facilities. In places such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Birkenau, Buchenwald, Dachau and Warsaw, to name some of the more brutal encampments, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children perished. More than 1.1 million people were murdered in Auschwitz alone.

Evidence regarding the mass killing of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, communists, political dissidents, the elderly and handicapped individuals began to reach the Allies soon after these atrocities began. After British intelligence agents broke the Enigma code, the Allies were able to listen in on classified German radio transmissions that described systematic mass murders in Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Ukraine and other places. These descriptions included information on methods, numbers, and locations.

Confirmation of their existence and the atrocities they were committing came in spring 1942 after American journalists, who had been stranded in Germany when the U.S. entered the war, were exchanged for German nationals stranded in the United States.

News also trickled out of occupied Europe through normal government channels. After Poland's defeat by the Nazi Wehrmacht, Polish leaders created a temporary "government in exile" in Britain. In June 1942, they received a secret report from occupied Poland confirming that the Nazi Régime was murdering Jews and other undesirables throughout Western Europe. Many newspapers around the world printed the story.

On December 13, 1942, Edward R. Murrow of the CBS radio network bluntly stated, "What is happening is this. Millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency and murdered. The phrase 'concentration camps' is obsolete, as out of date as economic sanctions or non-recognition. It is now possible only to speak of extermination camps."

On June 10, 1944, four days after the Allies landed at Normandy, in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, the Nazi SS murdered everyone they found in the area, including non-combatant men, women, and children. They even seized people who were merely passing by the town at the time. The men were ushered into barns where they were shot by a firing squad. Then their bodies were doused with gasoline and set on fire. Innocent women and children, even infants were directed into a church. The doors were locked, and the building was then set on fire. Anyone who attempted to escape the flames through the windows was shot. In all, over 600 civilians were massacred by the Nazi.

An estimate of those murdered by the Third Reich included six million Jews, 500,000 Romani (Gypsies), two million Poles, over three million Soviet prisoners of war, 15,000 homosexuals, five thousand Jehovah's Witnesses. And countless numbers of political prisoners, communists, resistance fighters, clergy, handicapped, elderly and intellectuals were exterminated in the purges, Holocaust and concentration camps. In all, there were approximately 15 million "undesirables" killed by the Nazi Régime.

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But the atrocities of Hitler did not stop at just the murder of innocent people. Working under the Führer's orders, the Nazis orchestrated the systematic pillaging of art and cultural treasures all across occupied Europe. Many Nazi officers appropriated thousands of paintings, sculptures, books, cultural artifacts and jewelry from museums, churches, synagogues and civilians' private collections.

After the war, the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) program located many of these stolen items in castles, warehouses, salt mines and in the homes of Nazi officers where they had been hidden. Upon recovering these treasures, the "Monuments Men" documented and cataloged them, in an attempt to return them to their rightful owners, including museums, religious institutions, families and individuals. This process was painstaking and frequently complicated by the destruction of records and the displacement of people during the war.

Unfortunately, numerous pieces of art were lost during the Second World War, most notably Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man. A remarkable painting some believe to be a self-portrait by the artist himself. It was last seen in the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, Poland, before it was seized by the Nazis Régime in 1939. Many other works of art were deliberately destroyed by the Third Reich as the army retreated from the advancing Allies. Many pieces of diamond laden silver and gold jewelry stolen from Jews, Poles, Romani and others who were sent to the concentration camps have also never been recovered.

By late June 1944, when it became increasingly obvious that Germany was going to lose the war, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler ordered the prisons to be evacuated before the Allied soldiers discovered them. The detainees were then transferred to other internment facilities, further from the advancing Allied lines.

As the crimes of Adolf Hitler against humanity increased and the war turned against Germany, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg grew progressively disillusioned by Nazi atrocities. Believing that a devastating defeat would leave his beloved Germany destroyed and divided amongst the Allies, he decided to act. As early as 1942, he began quietly searching for other officers who shared his conviction that the Führer must be eliminated in order for Germany to survive.

On July 20, 1944, Colonel Stauffenberg, along with a group of disheartened Wehrmacht officers attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi Régime in a daring plot known as Operation Valkyrie. They had originally intended to include Himmler and Hermann W. Göring, Hitler's most loyal supporter and the second most powerful man in the Third Reich, in their assassination plot. But circumstances beyond their control prevented this.

Göring created the Office of the Secret State Police, also known as the Gestapo, which answered directly to him. It could arrest anyone it considered to be a threat to the Nazi Régime and place them in prison indefinitely, frequently in concentration camps. Anyone who even infringed upon Hitler's orders, placed their life at risk. And he also played a prominent role in establishing concentration camps for the "corrective treatment" of political opponents.

After Hitler's assassination, the conspirators hoped to seize control of the German government, make peace with the Allies and put an end to the destruction ravaging Europe.

The July 20th plot was the most meticulously planned assassination attempt against Hitler. The daring plan depended on Stauffenberg using his ability to get close enough to Hitler to kill him with a bomb he had hidden in a briefcase. On the appointed day, he arrived at Hitler's heavily guarded "Wolf's Lair" field headquarters to attend a military strategy meeting. Concealed in his attaché case were two blocks of plastic explosives.

At 12:37 PM, Colonel Stauffenberg entered the conference room carrying the piece of luggage. After making an excuse about receiving an urgent phone call, he hastily left the room at 12:44 PM. Two minutes later a deafening blast ripped through the meeting room.

Three key factors together prevented the Führer's death that day.

1. The briefcase was moved by Colonel Heinz Brandt. He accidentally nudged it, pushing it behind a thick, solid wooden table leg. The leg created a natural blast shield that absorbed much of the explosion.

2. The bomb was insufficiently armed. Colonel Stauffenberg had intended to arm his briefcase with two bombs to guarantee its lethality. However, because of an unanticipated time crunch before the meeting started, he was only able to arm one of the blocks of the explosives.

3. The meeting was relocated. The July 20th meeting was originally supposed to be in Hitler's reinforced concrete bunker. But at the last minute it was switched to a converted military billet with wooden walls and large windows. This allowed the blast pressure to rapidly dissipate rather than magnifying its force in an enclosed space.

Stauffenberg and his conspirators staged their assassination attempt against Hitler, not to save themselves or salvage a lost war, but to reclaim Germany's honor and humanity in the face of unspeakable evil. To quote Colonel Stauffenberg's own poignant words before his execution: "Long live our sacred Germany!" He was executed by firing squad along with three other conspirators a few minutes after midnight on July 21, 1944.

His wife, Countess Nina von Stauffenberg was arrested by the Gestapo and her children were placed in an orphanage. She was sent to the Ravensbruck; a concentration camp exclusively for women and children located in northern Germany. Near the end of the war, she was held there as a hostage. Although her guards had orders to kill her, she was eventually liberated by Allied soldiers and later reunited with her children.

Immediately after the failed coup d'état, the Gestapo began arresting the leaders of the plot. More than 7,000 people were ultimately detained, of which more than 4,900 were executed. Acting on Hitler's orders, in order to prolong their death, some were strangled with piano wire. But not all of them were connected with the plot. The Gestapo, again acting on the Führer's orders, used the occasion to arrest and or kill many individuals they suspected of "sympathizing" with the enemies of the Third Reich.

Yaphet is horrified by what her symbiotic equivalent reveals to her about the atrocities committed by the Nazi Régime. She doesn't understand how someone could be that cruel, that heartless. She asks her consort, "Zlatex, how could a person do those kinds of things to their fellow human being? I know people have differences, different ideologies and beliefs, but to subject innocent women and children, babies even, to such cruelty, such barbarism is atrocious. It's sadistic." She begins to cry.

Zlatex wraps his arms around his syngeneic partner, comforting her. "I don't know, Yaphet. I don't understand it either. But hey! Every dark cloud has a silver lining."

"What do you mean," she asks, wiping the tears from her eyes.

"You remember reading about the Georg von Trapp leaving from Nazi Germany, don't you?"

"Yes, he was a captain in the Austrian Navy. When the Nazi occupied Austria, he was supposed to serve in the German Navy," Yaphet answers.

"While searching the Tribune's archives, I came across an article about him," Zlatex responds.

The story of the von Trapp Family Singers begins with Maria Augusta Kutschera, a young woman who was studying to become a nun. The convent sent her to be a tutor for Georg von Trapp's seven children; he was a widower. Eventually, they fell in love and got married and formed a singing group, performing throughout Europe. They were touring as musicians to make a living.

The whole family was anti-Nazi and wanted nothing to do with Hitler or his Nazi government. When Germany annexed Austria on March 12, 1938, they left under the pretense of going on a concert tour to avoid drawing suspicion. They didn't sneak out of the country. The following June, they took a train from Salzburg to Innsbruck, Austria in broad daylight. At first, they went to Merano, Italy, then London. But in 1939 they settled in Vermont and established the von Trapp Family Lodge.

Yaphet is delighted to hear that someone escaped Hitler's merciless grasp. But she wants her mate to continue.

"Zlatex, tell me about the Japanese too. I don't want to be misinformed. Did they commit any inhumane acts? I believe that it is important to know about what enemy combatants do to each other. It's the only way we can learn about the full brutality of war.

While the Third Reich was busy in Europe, the Japanese were in the Pacific committing atrocities themselves and establishing their own "Final Solution."

Special Imperial Japanese military units conducted experiments on Chinese civilians as well as British, American, and Australian prisoners of war. They were subjected to vivisection surgery, i.e., the cutting of or operation on a living person or animal, usually for physiological or pathological investigation. This included amputations without anesthesia; some were given animal blood transfusions. They were exposed to anthrax, cholera and typhus to determine the effects on human beings. Frostbite experiments were performed to study the effects of extreme cold on human flesh. They were introduced to various biological and chemical weapons, starvation and dehydration in order to study the limits of human endurance and the impact of diseases and injury.