Holocaust revisionism? Denier? or what?
A couple of weeks ago I sent an email/letter to the ET&T magazine (the journal of the Institute of Engineering and Technology previously the IEE) in response to an article published: -
OPERATION PAPERCLIP
The article ‘Working with the Allies’ (January 2017) looks at what happened to Werner von Braun and other Axis scientists after the Second World War.
My father Rudy Kennedy (born Karmeinsky — I changed my name back to his original after he died in 2008) was a Holocaust survivor and Fellow of the IET.
He was sent to Auschwitz at the age of 15 in 1943 and, having survived selection by saying he was 18, was sent to work on building roads where life expectancy was six weeks. His father, who had been interned with him (both his sister and mother were immediately sent to the gas chambers), managed to get him a job as an electrician ‘working’ for Siemens at the IG Farben plant.
When Auschwitz was evacuated due to the advancing Red Army, he was sent on a death-march to the town of Gliwice 55km away and only survived by sleeping under already dead bodies that provided some warmth. He was then sent to Mittelwerk and the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp where he ‘worked’ on testing V2 rocket engines.
At the time he was there, Werner von Braun supervised many aspects of the construction and was fully aware of the situation. He was an active part of the management of the facility He was a paid-up Nazi party member, not just someone who joined because they ‘had to’.
After he was evacuated from Dora he was Sent to Bergen- Belsen. He survived by eating grass and was only spotted as being alive when the camp was relieved because a British soldier kicked him and he moved.
After the war he managed to come to the UK as he had two remaining family members who had moved to England before the war. After rapidly educating himself (he had been kicked out of school at 13) he went to work with Ferranti then English Electric building guidance systems for early missile systems. He often had to be ‘excused’ from meetings as US rocket scientists were visiting and the British didn’t want to embarrass visitors who might have recognised him from Dora.
After being silent for 50 years, in 1995 he took me and my sister to Auschwitz for the 50th anniversary, where we randomly bumped into an ITN film crew who noticed he was speaking English and interviewed him for television news.
That opened the floodgates and on returning to the UK he set up, with other survivors, the Association for Slave Labour Compensation, which eventually led to the reparation process by the German government.
I feel it is important that it is recognised that Werner von Braun and many of the scientists covered by Operation Paperclip were complicit in the Nazi efforts and not just innocent participants.
Steve Karmeinsky MIET.
By email
I scanned and posted the article to my Facebook feed.
The article got some likes and generally positive comments, then things went a bit nuts after a couple of ‘negative’ comments. One was a troll so I’ll completely ignore that side though I must say I got a bit emotional and heated and used language I wouldn’t normally post on a public forum (I apologised for the language in a later post — sort of).
However the 2nd comment (from a well respected senior person in the telecommunications industry) was: -
load of nonsense in my view.
Things then went more nuts. Admittedly being emotional and posting is probably not a good idea and looking back I shouldn’t have commented and tried to justify the letter and had a good sleep and come back with reasoned arguments, though actually I don’t believe it would have made a difference to the views of this person. He has a BIG problem that Werner von Braun could be anything but an angel and virtually worships the ground he walked on. The German rocket scientists played a big part in the development of the Saturn V rocket system and the Apollo Moon projects (as well as many missile systems) [though there is a differing in opinion that the US would have got there anyway without his help].
For a bit of history Operation Paperclip was a secretive United States Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) program in which around 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians (many of whom were formerly registered members of the Nazi party, including some who had senior/leadership roles) were recruited for their skills and taken to the US to work there. It was known as Paperclip as the JIOA constructed histories for them which were attached to their dossiers and the US Immigration Service were not allowed to read under the paperclip’ed documents. The JIOA specifically went against’s President Truman’s orders that anyone who had been an active part of the Nazi regime should not be allowed entry into the US.
To this day US Immigration forms have “Have you ever been a member of the Nazi party?” on them. Lying on your immigration form means refusal of entry — or if you’re in the country and are found out, you’re liable to deportation.
His comment then sparked a flood of comments, including me asking if he thought my father was a liar? No was the answer, but he wanted corroboration (which basically meant yes).
After a night’s sleep and being less emotional I posted references to other witness testimonies and other publicly available information that clearly shows von Braun knew what was going on (slave labour was also used at Peenemünde which is where von Braun initially tested V2 rockets in Northern Germany) where he selected inmates from Buchenwald concentration camp to use there.
Documents found after the war also reveal he was directly involved with the workings at Mittlebau-Dora concentration camp (his signature was found on many camp documents). As to his being a member of the Nazi party, von Braun wrote a letter to a retired US General in 1967 with a p.s. saying something like there are some rumours going around about me having being a member of the Nazi party, yes I was a member of the Nazi Party Elite, please don’t pass this information to anyone as it might damage my reputation at NASA.
The documentary also shows that had von Braun not died of cancer in 1977, the US Justice Department Office of Special Investigations would have investigated him for being a war criminal. A member of von Braun’s team Artur Rudolph who was the Project Leader for Saturn V was interviewed by the OSI for his Nazi history and was he agreed to give up his citizenship and leave the US so he wouldn’t be prosecuted).
As soon as evidence was presented, this is the comment
“Why was WvB arrested by the SS then? I think you need to spend time balancing your view. (And checking out of this conversation).”
Also a previous comment
“Why? Because as I said in my research and meeting with people who he worked with at NASA it’s hard to imagine it’s the same person made out here or that he was a criminal. WvB impact on today’s society is massive (with technical innovation and acceleration of core technologies around mobile, computing and other technologies; and without him Apollo would never have happened.”
Unfortunately I think his views are set and no logic or “evidence” will make any difference, this actually saddens me. I don’t know what to call type of person “a non-believer of truth”. They aren’t a Holocaust denier, just denying aspects of the Holocaust and the history of some of the players.
For some background
USC Shoah Foundation have put the full 4 hours of my fathers testimony on Youtube.
Slave labour was used both at Peenemünde and Dora. Werner von Braun ordered and selected Slave labourers, evidence from the UAH archive.
Documentary with witness testimony and US Justice Department views etc.
Also Slave Labourer Testimony (down the page)
