What Is Being Disrespected by Holocaust Denial

When people deny that there was a Holocaust, it is extraordinarily disrespectful. That’s because the evidence is absolutely irrefutable and when people say it didn’t happen, they are cruelly denying those that were murdered the simple dignity of having their true story told.

What you are about to read is from the sworn affidavit of “Hermann Graebe, the manager and engineer of a branch office in the Ukraine of a German construction firm.” It was read in a Nuremberg courtroom and it’s about events that occurred on October 5, 1942, at the hands of the Germans (From The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, pp. 961-962)

…My foreman and I were directly to the pits. I heard rifle shots in quick succession from behind one of the earth mounds. The people who had got off the trucks — men, women, and children of all ages — had to undress upon the order of an S.S. man, who carried a riding or dog whip. They had to put down their clothes in fixed places, sorted according to shoes, top clothing, and under clothing. I saw a heap of shoes of about 800 to 1,000 pairs, great piles of under-linen and clothing.

Without screaming or weeping these people undressed, stood around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells and waited for a sign from another S.S. man, who stood near the pit, also with a whip in his hand. During the fifteen minutes that I stood near the pit I heard no complaint or plea for mercy…

An old woman with snow-white hair was holding a one-year-old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The parents were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a boy about 10 years old and speaking to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to the sky, stroked his head and seemed to explain something to him.

At that moment the S.S. man at the pit shouted something to his comrade. The latter counted off about twenty persons and instructed them to go behind the earth mound…I well remember a girl, slim and with black hair, who, as she passed close to me, pointed to herself and said: “twenty-three years old.”

I walked around the mound and found myself confronted by a tremendous grave. People were closely wedged together and lying on top of each other so that only their heads were visible. Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some of the people were still moving. Some were lifting their arms and turning their heads to show that they were still alive. The pit was already two-thirds full. I estimated that it contained about a thousand people. I looked for the man who did the shooting. He was an S.S. man, who sat at the edge of the narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling into the pit. He had a tommy gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette.

The people, completely naked, went down some steps and clambered over the heads of the people lying there to the place to which the S.S. man directed them. They laid down in front of the dead and wounded people; some caressed those who were still alive and spoke to them in a low voice. Then I head a series of shots. I looked into the pit and saw that the bodies were twitching or their heads lying already motionless on top of the bodies that lay beneath them. Blood was running from their necks.

The next batch was approaching already. They went down into the pit. lined themselves up against the previous victims and were shot.

When people say “never again,” this is the kind of mass murder and inhumanity they are talking about.

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