Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense #95: Suffocating Jews with Snow at Gross-Rosen

Recently I was made aware of yet another piece of ‘Holocaust Nonsense’ in the form of the claims made by a jewish ‘Holocaust survivor’ named Isaak Egon Ochshorn in official documentation for the ‘World Jewish Congress’ that were used as evidence in the Nuremberg Trial as document PS-2429. (1)

In this document Ochshorn claims to have been an inmate of ‘seven death camps’ – specifically naming Buchenwald, Dachau, Gross-Rosen, Auschwitz (specifically Auschwitz-Birkenau), Warsaw (which was a sub-camp of Majdanek when Ochshorn was there) and then back to Dachau again (specially to two of its sub-camps Kaufering [Ochshorn misspells it ‘Daufering’] and Allach [actually Munich-Allach]). (2)

Given that Ochshorn provides both the dates he was in these camps and his prisoner numbers in each I think it is fair to credit Ochshorn as actually having been in said camps as he is very specific about his time in the German camp system.

However, Ochshorn’s credibility falls apart completely when we bother to read the absolute rubbish he claims occurred in said camps which I am addressing over the course of several articles. (3)

One of Ochshorn’s claims was reported at the time by ‘The Courier-Mail’ in Brisbane, Australia on 19^th October 1945 where we read how:

‘New York, Oct. 18 (Special) – Some Jews in Germany were thrown alive into grinding concrete mixers by the Nazis.

The resulting of the practice has been made available by the World Jewish Congress to the United States War Crimes Commission.

The Congress has taken the eyewitness testimony of a Jew, who, as an unwilling clerk, saw the officials of seven German death camps at work for nearly six years.

The clerk, Isaak Egon Echshorn, 44, of Vienna, testified that he witnessed the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

Many Methods

Methods of killing included beating, gassing, shooting, poisoning, torturing, suffocation, exposure, and deliberate starvation.

These are some of his experiences:

At Osweicim camp he saw six S.S. men seize 386 Jewish children by the hair and hold them up and shoot them.

At Gross-Rosen camp the commandant’s favourite winter sport was to have Jews thrown alive into a pit covered with snow until they suffocated.’ (4)

To preempt the usual claims of ‘prove it’ here is the article in its original context in the ‘The Courier-Mail’:

Thus, we can put the usual refrain of ‘oh that’s not a real claim’ to bed and focus on the fact that Ochshorn is claiming here the ‘commandant of Gross-Rosen’ – given that Ochshorn specifically claims that he was in Gross-Rosen between 16^th June 1941 to 15^th October 1942 (5) this would almost certainly be Arthur Roedl although Wilhelm Gideon took over from Roedl on 16^th September 1942 a month before Ochshorn was moved to Auschwitz-Birkenau from Gross-Rosen on 15^th/16^th October 1942 – had a ‘favourite winter sport’ where he lobbed jews into a pit alive and then covered it in snow to ‘suffocate them’.

Nor is ‘The Courier-Mail’ taking this out of context or misrepresenting this in any way since Ochshorn clearly states in his official testimony to the ‘World Jewish Congress’ – which remember was officially admitted as evidence at Nuremberg and judged to be ‘true’ by the court – that:

‘The sport of Camp Commandant Tomann, favoured in winter, was to have many Jews daily thrown alive into a pit and to have them covered with snow until they suffocated.’ (6)

We can already see from quoting Ochshorn’s original claim that ‘The Courier-Mail’ – probably just working off of a summary put out by the ‘World Jewish Congress’ – has slightly but significantly altered Ochshorn’s claim to be more plausible by removing the fact that Ochshorn claimed that this type of execution ‘happened daily’ and all year but was ‘only preferred/favoured in winter’ meaning that it still happened daily (or say weekly) in spring, summer and autumn.

The obvious reason for this is because readers might start asking awkward questions about where ‘Tomann’ – meaning one of the camp leaders (Gross-Rosen was composed of two separate installations) named Anton Thumann not the camp commandant Rodl – had managed to acquire snow in summer located as it was to the west of Warsaw not only say monthly but daily in order to ‘suffocate jews’ with it.

One also wonders how he stopped it melting before said jews could ‘suffocate’, but that’s just asking rational questions concerning stupid claims made by jews about what happened in German concentration camps during the war.

Further it is worth pointing out that when you are buried in snow; you don’t suffocate as the snow doesn’t – as Ochshorn seems to have believed – act like a sealed lid as it is porous (especially if it is melting), but rather it kills you by lowering your body temperature and inducing hypothermia (which is why winter sports that take place in the snow stress the importance of digging people out of the snow immediately).

Also it is worth noting that if this were real event then we’d have the punishment documentation for it since contrary to the ‘Schindler’s List’ image of the ‘Holocaust’; the Germans produced an awful lot of forms that had to be filled in and any executions (or any kind of physical consequences such as confinement to a prison cell, public lashes etc) had to be authorized in writing by the Central Concentration Camp Administration in Berlin upon submission by the camp commander of a punishment form. (7)

We have none of these forms for any such execution or punishment detail at Gross-Rosen that would have been required.

Thus, we can see that we have yet another piece of ‘Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense’!

H/T to @j1465067 on X/Twitter who helped me locate Ochshorn’s original testimony.

References

(1) https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/documents/603484

(2) Wiener Library, 1656/3/8/557, p. 1

(3) For the first two of these see my articles:

(4) The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Queensland), 19th October 1945, p. 1

(5) Wiener Library, 1656/3/8/557, p. 1

(6) Ibid., p. 3

(7) On this see Carlo Mattogno, 2016, ‘Healthcare in Auschwitz: Medical Care and Special Treatment of Registered Inmates’, 1^st Edition, Caste Hill: Uckfield, pp. 28-29