Cities Burned, from the Ashes Return (Poland-Germany and WWII)

Part 1: Cities Burn… The Holocaust from Warszawa, PL to Berlin, GE
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“Where they burn books, they also burn people.”
-Heinrich Heine 

Warszawa, Poland has been nearly completely rebuild after its systematic destruction by the Nazis during World War II.

​I have decided to include an entry in the blog that talks explicitly about the holocaust because it is important that we remember the atrocities that occurred in Europe during World War II so that, hopefully, we can learn from the mistakes of the past and not repeat them in the future. In a blog about science, it is particularly important to address the issues of Eugenics, phrenology, and social Darwinism as all of these ‘fields’ of study are cases of frivolous ‘science’ that was backed and supported by some of the most intelligent men and women in science and some of the most powerful politicians at the time. It is a stark reminder that neither science nor religion offer any guarantee of morally just outcomes and that we, as a society, must always be sure to check every premise, every concept that we encounter or learn in school.

Bebleplatz- over 20,000 books were burned in this location by the Nazi party

Book burning memorial in Berlin, Germany reads- “Where they burn books, they also burn people.” -Heinrich Heine

​Hitler was a fascist dictator that rose to power in Germany during a period of political and social unrest. At the end of World War I, Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles without having any say into the contents of the treaty. This treaty essentially blamed Germany for the entirety of WWI and made it mandatory for Germany to pay reparations and forfeit assets to the allied powers. After a change in leadership, Germany begrudgingly signed the treaty for the sole reason that they knew they could not defend themselves against an allied offensive. The Great Depression also made living in Germany after WWI difficult. Accusations after the war claimed that, during WWI, many Jewish citizens, communists, business owners, and other conscientious objectors refused to support the war effort. For this, Jews and communists were deemed traitors and antisemitism and anti-communism began to rise in the wake of the German defeat. As Hitler, known for his great oratory skills, began to become more popular, he joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (what is now referred to as the Nazi party). Using the political and social conflicts of the time- Hitler pledged to unite Germany by destroying democracy and the republic- a popular idea in Germany at the time. After the citizens of Germany voted to eradicate democracy, Hitler rose to power by forming alliances and assassinating opponents of his political ideology. He made the Nazi party the only legal party in Germany.

Himmler's former SS building in Berlin now houses the German tax office.

​Hitler’s regime promised to unite Germany and return the nation to prosperity. With the creation of the Third Reich, Hitler literally meant that Nazi Germany was to be the third empire of Germany- (the first being the Holy Roman Empire and the second being the German Empire which existed prior to the Weimar Republic) a return to the greatness that Germany once was. This mission would be accomplished by enacting social programs that would provide food and supplies to ‘pure’ Germans. His party built a state of the art road/ highway system (the autobahn). History shows that Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies were not his most popular among the citizens of Germany; however, his anti-Semitism was perceived as a minor offense to much of the public since his other policies were so well received. To provide benefits for ‘pure’ Germans- criteria were established to determine who was ‘fit’ and who was not. 

Nazi propaganda bust of 'typical Jew'

Typical calipers used by phrenologists.

Cast of 'Neger' bust developed by Nazi phrenologists.

​The policy of Eugenics was used by the Nazi party to determine which individuals were true Germans worthy of existence within Nazi controlled Germany. For this ‘science’, Nazi anthropologists, including Bernhard Struck, measured physical attributes, customs, cultures, and traditions of people from all over the world. People were placed into categories of purity based on skin color, eye color, linguistic skills, etc… This was exacerbated by corroborating findings with a related field, phrenology, which sought to measure intelligence and attitude by measuring the geometry of the skull. Masquerading as science, these fields were used to collect volumes of data- all based on the misconception that Germanic traits were inherently superior to others. Of course, these ‘fields’ were inherently flawed from the outset- as German anthropologist Michael Hesch pointed out in 1937, claiming Germanic traits are superior without any data or evidence to support this claim is clearly unscientific. The next time someone tells you that you need proper controls- I want you to remember this as an excellent example of why proper controls are necessary. We also know now, in hindsight, that of course everything we once ‘knew’ from the field of phrenology is completely false.

Busts produced of various African peoples by Nazi phrenologists. Pictures from "Surveying the Non-Human: On the Aesthetics of Racism" exhibit in Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.

​Unfortunately, data from these fields was effectively used as means to spread propaganda about the ‘scientific validity’ of the Nazi ideology. The question begging of the Nazi party gradually and effectively swayed the public to believe in their own superiority- the Nazi party using ‘science’ to reinforce the political ideologies for which they already held self-evident. As a result, forced social Darwinism was enacted and those deemed unfit were no longer welcome in German society. Tobuild a race of genetically superior individuals and to build his great society, ‘inferiors’ were to be excluded from the gene pool. For this, Hitler was going to need radical political change and plenty of space for his superior race to flourish in newly occupied land. To establish the dominance of Nazi ideology and the inferiority of competing beliefs, universities associated with Berlin held book burnings in which all material deemed Jewish or communist propaganda- all books that did not ‘fit’ with the Nazi ideology- were burned.

Measurements painstakingly recorded from thousands of observations.

Tables of pictures from villages all over the world used to correlate intelligence with customs, physical attributes, etc...

Color chart used for quantification of eye and hair color.

Pictures of human skulls used to characterize the dead.

Attempting to find correlation and patterns in the data.

Large inventories of data, photos, and recordings were documented and stored for years.

Excerpt from Architecture of Doom.

​The old town of Warszawa, Poland is perhaps one of the youngest cities to be entered into the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites. This is because most everything seen in the Old Town of Warsaw was completely reconstructed in the second half of the 20th century. When Warsaw, Poland was occupied by the Nazis, its citizens were forced to inherit a new form of life. Jews and those deemed ‘unfit’ for work or society were packed into ghettos and forced to live away from the rest of society. The Polish people were a major target of the Nazi regime. Although Jews were the least respected of all people under Hitler’s rule, the Polish were viewed as a nuisance and often arrested at random in what was called a Lapanka. Hitler’s plan was to build a socially and biologically engineered perfect society consisting almost entirely of the Arian race. The land in Warszawa, Poland was set to be the location where his expanding population of Arians could migrate to and live- what was called the Pabst Plan. He had no room for the Polish occupants to ‘get in the way’ and saw the East as the new land for his perfect race (Lebensraum). 

Remnants of a ghetto in Krakow, Poland.

What I think are remnants of a ghetto in Krakow, Poland.

​As a result, the city became segregated and social unrest grew. As time passed, the ghettos occupied by the Jews proved to be an inefficient means for removing them from society. Although the living conditions in the ghettos were atrocious and many died in them, the frequency of death was not high enough to suit the needs of the Third Reich. Concentrations camps were established to ship ‘invalids’ from the ghettos to the outskirts of the city. When the Nazis entered the ghettos to inform the inhabitants that they would be leaving, they told a little story that went something like this:

​“We [the Nazis] understand that your living conditions in the ghettos have been rough. For this reason, we have made a new city for you all to live in. Rather than living here in squalor, you will be able to prosper in a new town; everyone even gets their own plot of land- think of it as a new beginning. You may gather all of your valuables and personal belongings, whatever will fit in a single piece of luggage, and we will put you on a train to the new city free of charge.”

"Death" train lines to Birkenau

Train station for Birkenau

​This is how the Nazi prisoners were convinced that getting on the trains was a good idea. Of course, history tells us this is all nonsense. In reality, when people arrived at the train station their luggage was confiscated to put into a ‘storage carriage’ on the train. People were then forced into train cars with no access to water, food, heating, cooling, plumbing, etc… The conditions of the trains were often so harsh that people would die on the trip to the concentration camp. The elderly and children were the most susceptible to death since they were the most vulnerable. 

Barbed wires lines Auschwitz

Block in Auschwitz

​The ‘new city’ turned out to be a concentration camp (KZ Warschau) about 40 kilometers outside of town. The prisoners were told it was ‘pit-stop’ for processing papers, legal documents, etc…  The reality was that the prisoners had departed at a concentration camp. Here, their heads were shaved (if not already done prior to departure) and they were separated into two categories: those deemed valid for forced labor in the camp and those deemed ‘unfit’ for labor- 80-90% of all prisoners were deemed ‘unfit’ for labor. Most of them were women, children, and the elderly since these groups were considered physically weaker. They were not told why they had been separated. At KZ Warschau a majority were taken away and shot, in other camps, likeDachau/ Auschwitz II outside of Krakow, another fate was more common. They were told that they were being sent to take showers since the conditions of the train were so harsh. This way, they could clean up a bit before their final voyage. 

Guard tower at Birkenau. Towers were needed to watch its 150,000 prisoners.

Birkenau was so large that a wastewater treatment plant was installed to treat water onsight.

In an attempt to hide their war crimes, Nazis burned down much of Birkenau. Each brick post represents the chimney of a burnt dormitory.

​With shaved heads, they were sent into bunkers that contained a series of rooms. In the first room, they were told to enter and remove their clothes. Their clothes were collected by the Nazi soldiers. They continued into a room that had small ducts in the ceiling. The Nazis then placed Zyklon B gas capsules in these ducts. The prisoners were then sealed in the room until they suffered an agonizing and slow death. In the next room, were smelters, for smelting all gold teeth that were removed from the prisoners’ skulls. In the last room, an incinerator, for converting the bodies to ashes which were often dispersed into fields or ditches directly adjacent to the gas chambers. Between removing their clothes and being spread as ashes on a field, the prisoners traversed approximately fifty feet. So that the prisoners did not realize what was happening, the time between departing the train and being shot in a ditch or becoming a pile of ashes could be as short as 10 minutes; however, if prisoners were gassed, death could take several hours. 

The rubble of a gas chamber in Birkenau. Shown is the complete path from entrance (left) to incineration (right). Ashes were placed on the field behind.

​After incineration, the remaining valuables of the prisoners were gathered up and sent back on the same train in which they rode. They were told that they were allowed to bring a piece of luggage with them because the Nazis knew that, with limited space, they would likely pack their most valuable things. This made finding and appropriating all of their valuables as cheap and efficient as possible. The hair taken from the heads of the prisoners was saved and kept in sacks- later to be used to make socks and other materials to support the war effort. Clothes were sent either to factories for recycling as cloth, or washed and sold directly.

Exceptions were made for certain people deemed invalid- not all of them were immediately sentenced to death. Twins were seldom sent for incineration or to the firing squad because they were valuable to the Third Reich. Twins were often the specimen used for Nazi medical testing; for example, twins were used to determine if injecting dye into eyes could permanently change eye color, others were sewn together in an attempt to create conjoined twins. Twins and others had sections of their bones, muscles, and nerves surgically removed without anesthesia so that the Nazis could gain insight into treating battle wounds. Some prisoners were castrated; women were injected with hormones for sterilization. People were intentionally infected with malaria, typhus, and leprosy so that the Nazis could test experimental drugs and medications that had been provided to them by drug companies, including Bayer, within Nazi Germany.

Photographs of twins used for scientific study.

​Those who were deemed fit for labor were still deemed inferior (Untermenschen) and sent into forced labor. They often ended up in concentrations camps, essentially as a means to assassinate victims through exhaustion. However, many victims were sent to work in large corporations including a few you may recognize: Thyssen, Krupp, IG Farben, Bosch, Mercedes, Daimler-Benz, BMW, Demag, Henschel, Junkers, Messerschmitt, Siemens, Volkswagen, Fordwerke (a subsidiary of Ford Motor company), and Adam Opel AG (a subsidiary of General Motors). Schindler’s Factory (A well-known factory since the production of Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List) is the location where Oskar Schindler saved thousands of Jewish lives by employing them at his metal kitchenware production factory (Philips did this as well). In this case, Oskar recognized the plight of the Polish Jews under Nazi rule and established the production of ammunition shells in his factory in order to preserve it- claiming it was a necessary part of the war effort. By providing work and decent living conditions for the Jewish people that were sent there, he provided them haven from the concentration camps.

Schindler’s Factory Museum in Krakow, Poland

The Old City of Warsaw

Old City of Warsaw 1944

​Of course, not all of the Polish victims were fortunate enough to end up in a place like Schindler’s Factory- relocation to ghettos or concentration camps was the fate of most. The Polish population eventually understood the consequences of the Nazi occupation- no longer trusting that trains were going to take them to new homes. Mentioning Auschwitz became a means to insight fear in the Jewish population. After suffering heavy losses from sickness in ghettos or death sentences in concentration camps, the citizens of Warszawa rebelled. First, in 1943 during the Warsaw ghetto uprising: when occupants of the ghetto refused to leave for transport to Treblinka- a concentration camp. As a result, a battle erupted. To retaliate, the Nazis ordered the complete destruction of the ghetto and burnt each building to the ground- 13,000 victims perished and 20% of the city was destroyed.

​Again the Polish rebelled in 1944, in a battle that is referred to as the Warsaw Uprising. With the Soviet army approaching Warszawa, the Polish Resistance Home Army planned the largest major European uprising against the Nazis during World War II. The Polish forces, outgunned, starved, and exhausted was anticipating support from the red army once they arrived. For 63 days the Polish resistance fought the Nazis, and for 63 days the Soviet army, with an airbase only a five minute flight away, refused to advance. The result was 40,000 Polish casualties, 27,000 Nazi casualties, ~200,000 civilian casualties, and 700,000 civilians fled or were expelled from the city- 25% of the city was levelled to the ground. The Nazis were victorious and the resistance movement ultimately failed. 

Statue commemorates the Warsaw uprising.

For this effort, the order to completely destroy Warszawa, the capitol of Poland at the time, was issued by SS Chief Heinrich Himmler:
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“The city must completely disappear from the surface of the Earth…No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.”

The Barbican, relic of an old fortification around the city, has had extensive repairs. Repairs are clearly visible when looking closely at the bricks.

​With this order, began the deliberate and systematic destruction of an entire city. Nazi forces moved from street to street, building to building, and blew up or burnt down every one they could get their hand on. By the end of the Nazi rampage, 85% of the city, or over 10,000 buildings, were completely destroyed. Overall, ~60% of the population was killed; most of the rest were deported. After the Nazis had finished demolishing the city, the Soviets advanced to reclaim the city. Those that survived had lived through winter with little food, shelter, or clothes. The remaining population was so few and the survivors so isolated, that many believed they were the only ones left alive in the city. Those that survived in these conditions would come to be known as the Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw.

St. John's Cathedral- rebuilt by the Soviets, lacks traditional religious ideology.

What would be a statue of the Virgin Mary is instead a secular statue of a woman holding a basket of goods.

​For this reason, most of what is seen in modern day Warszawa is a city completely rebuilt by the Soviet Union between the 1950’s and 1980’s. This is why Warszawa, despite being an old city, is one of the youngest World Heritage sites (given this title in 1980). All of the buildings that are seen in old town are reconstructions based on old photographs, paintings, and personal accounts. Many of the buildings, upon being rebuilt, were modified to suit communist ideologies. Churches lack stained glass, statues of the Virgin Mary hold baskets instead of the baby Jesus, the ornate style of baroque found in most European cities is dumbed down or completely not present. 

The Royal Castle (shown with a rainbow!) was completed in 1984. After the Soviets refused to fund the reconstruction of the castle, the Polish asked for donations to fund the project- donations poured in from sources all over the world.

The Royal Castle in 1945

​By 1945, the Americans and British were working together with the Soviets to bring an end to the Nazi regime. As a result, a decree for all-out war was issued by the United States. Most resources and manufacturing were converted or used for the war effort as a necessary means to thwart the Germans. Dresden, the capitol of the German state of Saxony was targeted. Targeting Dresden is perhaps one of the most controversial attacks by the allies during World War II. While the Nazis claim that the city contained mostly civilian targets, the allies maintain that the city was an essential shipping port and manufacturing community for the Nazi war effort. In 1945, from February 13-15, four air raids from the allied forces were conducted on the city of Dresden. Over 1,200 aircraft dropped over 3,900 tons of explosives- in three days the firebombing of Dresden demolished 1,600 acres of the city. Nazis originally claimed a death toll of 200,000, but independent investigation suggests the death toll closer to 25,000 people. 

Old City Dresden

Dresden, Germany 1949

New bricks are easily distinguished from the old at Dresden Cathedral.

The flames, so hot, charred the brick over 60 years ago.

​The flames from the ensuing fire were so hot that many buildings not directly struck by bombs still collapsed into rubble. The heat from the flames caused the bricks in the buildings to expand and as the bricks cooled, they contracted and the buildings collapsed in on themselves. Bricks that fell from buildings were inventoried. Those that could be salvaged were kept and put in their original location during the rebuilding process. Those that could not be salvaged were replaced by new bricks. The end result is buildings that have a patchwork of bricks- the old bricks, still black and charred from the flame.

​Berlin was to house the capitol of the Nazi regime and contained the private bunker of Adolf Hitler and the main headquarters of the SS. During the war, Berlin was the target of over 360 bombing raids by the United States, the British, and the Soviets. As a result, the city’s population nearly halved over the course of World War II. Hitler, understanding that the Nazi war effort was all but defeated, became a recluse- confined to his bunker for much on 1945. In his final days, he 

Hitler's Bunker now lies beneath...

...an old slide and a sandbox...

became paralyzed by fear and paranoia and he lost part of his vision. Understanding that his capture would likely result in his body being desecrated and dragged through town, he killed himself via cyanide and a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head on April 30, 1945 and ordered his body to be incinerated.

...at a residential community

​In total, the Holocaust took the lives of 11 million people- 6 million of these people were Jews. The remaining victims included: Polish, homosexuals, mentally and physically handicapped, the elderly, Slavs, Soviets, communists, Romanis, Freemasons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now, a monument remains in the heart of Berlin, to remind people of the losses encountered during the Nazi reign of terror. Throughout the city, several monuments remain- reminding us all of this past and beseeching us to never let it happen again.

Holocaust Memorial for Murdered Jews in Berlin, Germany

Holocaust Memorial for Murdered Jews in Berlin, Germany

​The ultimate irony of the whole event is that very few Nazis, when you consider the number of those enrolled in the regime, were punished or received sentences for the roles they played in the holocaust. Every once in a while, we hear a news story about someelderly former Nazi being brought to trail and we all get to feel good and pretend that justice has been served. However, the allied powers were much more concerned with the spread of communism and the threat of the Soviets to really focus on punishment, trials, and ‘denazification’. 

Much of the Berlin Wall is now an art gallery

Cross section of the Berlin Wall

No sir, I don't like it.

Exposed rebar shows how the wall was reinforced to prevent people from trying to break through.

​After WWII, Germany was split into two countries, East Germany (German Democratic Republic) controlled by the Soviet Union and West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) controlled by France, UK, and USA. Tensions escalated and eventually on August 13, 1961, construction of the Berlin Wall began; splitting Berlin in two. The wall was used as propaganda on both sides- the West claiming it was a ‘wall of shame’ manufactured by the communists that was meant to tear the city apart, and the East claiming it was a protectant from the Nazis located in the West. The West of course, claimed that the Nazi influence had perished since the liberation from the West. The East claimed that all of the civilians on their side were communists and thus could not be fascist Nazis. Refusing to accept that either side contained Nazis and insisting that one side was guiltier than another became a propaganda tactic for claiming superiority during the cold war. In the meantime, to operate the cities, many of the people that served as judges, scientists, investigators, teachers, police offers, etc… for the Nazi regime kept on doing the same work after the war that they had done for the Nazi regime during the war. 

Nazi war poster wars citizens to keep their lights off at night to avoid bombs from allied planes.

​AlthoughGermany has paid over $61.8 billion in reparations, after the war they did not come to all who suffered. For example, victims were entitled to reparations only if they were victimized by the Nazi party for ‘political reasons.’ Jews could also receive reparations for their suffering. However, being targeted for homosexuality was not deemed worthy of reparations; homosexuality was not legal in either East or West Germany. For this reason, the actions of the Nazis against homosexuals were, in a sense, deemed justifiable, or at least not worthy of consideration for assistance to those which were mistreated or killed during the Nazi terror. One court even went as far as to rule that a man named Gunther Eggeling, attempting to claim reparations due to the Nazi’s treatment of him for homosexuality, was a “fake victim of Fascism” and as a result was sentenced to one year imprisonment for fraud as a deterrent for others trying to claim reparations for mistreatment due to their sexual orientation. 

​Perhaps the most troubling of all the issues discussed in this blog is the timeline in which all of this happened- people are alive that experienced these atrocities firsthand. These events occurred within a lifetime- the Belin Wall only came down (politically) in 1989. Although I’d like to leave us all with a nice little narrative saying that I think we’ve had the time to learn from our past and that something like this could never happen again- I’d prefer to leave us with a more cautious narrative than that. You see, some of our grandparents fought in the war, most of our parents lived through the cold war, and modern warfare only shows us that somewhere the lesson is getting lost. The War to End All Wars already had its over-the-top sequel and we’ve been producing low budget spin-offs ever since. Every day, it seems, the political rhetoric and fundamentalist undertones of the world grow more desperate and more extreme. To me, the greatest threat to humanity is not that we may destroy each other, it’s that we have so much knowledge at our disposal, so much knowledge that people alive today have already experienced firsthand, and yet we seem to be complacent leaving all of that on the table. It’s the idea that, not matter how much we analyze the data, we’ll never reach the right conclusions. That our fate is just that, fate, and that no amount of inquiry, logic, or observation can save us from it. 

​It’s not the threat that we extinguish ourselves, but rather the notion that we all know better and choose to extinguish ourselves anyway. And those responsible, like so many war criminals of the past, will never receive their day of reckoning.