Auschwitz concentration camp

Recently the Polish media and the foreign ministry of Poland have voiced objections to the use of the expression "Polish death camp" in relation to Auschwitz, as they feel that phrase might misleadingly suggest that Poles (rather than Germans) perpetrated the Holocaust. ([48]) Furthermore, the grammatical conjunction 'but' implies a contradiction which would only be grammatically correct if the phrase 'fixed around' was the American definition. In short, all of the denier's blustering about the 'Four Million Variant' is a specious attempt to envelope the reader into their web of deceit, and it can be discarded after the most rudimentary examination of published histories."[2]. Others have dismissed this criticism, saying the British usage of the term is the same as in the U.S., and that the meaning of "fixed around" in the memo is clear from context. If they can't keep their numbers straight, their reasoning goes, how can we say that their evidence for the Holocaust is credible? One must wonder which historians they speak of, as most have been remarkably consistent in their estimates of a million or so dead. This view was seconded by the writer Christopher Hitchens. They hope to discredit historians by making them seem inconsistent. " 'Fixed around' in British English means 'bolted on' rather than altered to fit the policy," he says.

Holocaust deniers have attempted to use this change as propaganda, in the words of Nizkor: "Deniers often use the 'Four Million Variant' as a stepping stone to leap from an apparent contradiction to the idea that the Holocaust was a hoax, again perpetrated by a conspiracy. Robin Niblett, a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, says it would be easy for Americans to misunderstand the reference to intelligence being "fixed around" Iraq policy. After the collapse of the Communist government, the plaque was removed and the official death toll given as 1.1 million. [47]. This number was never taken seriously by Western historians, and was never used in any of the calculations of the death toll at Auschwitz (which have generally remained consistently around 1-1.5 million for the last sixty years) or for the total deaths in the Holocaust as a whole. It's an entirely different document that describes legal authorization for the invasion of Iraq under standing UN resolutions. For many years, a memorial plaque placed at the camp by the Soviet authorities and the Polish communist government stated that 4 million people had been murdered at Auschwitz. (At this link, view this PDF: 07.03.03: Attorney general's full advice on Iraq war (pdf)) This PDF detailed Lord Goldsmith’s confidential advice on the legality of the Iraq war and does not match the text of any of the alleged Downing Street Memos.

"27 January 2005, the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Nazi Germany's death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where a combined total of up to 1.5 million Jews, Roma, Poles, Russians and prisoners of various other nationalities, and homosexuals, were murdered, is not only a major occasion for European citizens to remember and condemn the enormous horror and tragedy of the Holocaust, but also for addressing the disturbing rise in anti-semitism, and especially anti‑semitic incidents, in Europe, and for learning anew the wider lessons about the dangers of victimising people on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, social classification, politics or sexual orientation.". It turned out to actually be a picture of a document found in an 28 April 2005 Guardian Unlimited story. The European Parliament marked the anniversary of the camp's liberation in 2005 with a minute of silence and the passage of this resolution:. [46]. In 1996, Germany made 27 January, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, the official day for the commemoration of the victims of 'National Socialism'. On Thursday, 16 June 2005 Reuters mislabelled a photograph of what it claimed was "a copy of the Downing Street Memo". See Auschwitz cross for more details. [45].

Following an agreement between the Polish Catholic Church and the Polish government, the smaller crosses were removed in 1999 but the large papal one remains. That article is called "Failure is not an option, but it doesn't mean they will avoid it". In 1998, after further calls to remove the cross, some 300 smaller crosses were erected by local activists near the large one, leading to further protests and heated exchanges. The 18 September 2004 Daily Telegraph article contains the only known reproductions of the original memos (scanned from a photocopy). The Catholic Church told the Carmelites to move by 1989, but they stayed on until 1993, leaving the large cross behind. [44]. Some Catholics have pointed out that the people killed in Auschwitz I were mainly Polish Catholics. PDF format.

This led to protests by Jewish groups, who said that mostly Jews were killed at Auschwitz and demanded that religious symbols be kept away from the site. [43]. One year later the Carmelites erected the 8 metre (26 ft) tall cross from the 1979 mass near their site, just outside block 11 and barely visible from within the camp. This document originated in the Hutton Inquiry and can be viewed here. After some Jewish groups called for the removal of the convent, representatives of the Catholic Church agreed in 1987. Another document was the Rycroft email, showing the author of the Downing Street Memo actually believed that Saddam should be removed because of a threat by Iraq getting WMDs into the hands of terrorists. Carmelite nuns opened a convent near Auschwitz I in 1984. A further document, a July 21, 2002, cabinet office paper titled "Conditions for Military Action", which is a briefing paper for the meeting of which the Downing Street Memo is the minutes, was published (with the last page missing) by The Sunday Times on June 12, 2005.[42].

A short while later, a Star of David appeared at the site, leading to a proliferation of religious symbols there; eventually they were removed. The six documents are available in PDF form from the Think Progress web site.[41]. After the pope had announced that Edith Stein would be beatified, some Catholics erected a cross near bunker 2 of Auschwitz II where she had been gassed. The Los Angeles Times published an article on June 15, 2005, describing several of the "new" documents; the article says that "Michael Smith, the defense writer for The Times of London who revealed the Downing Street minutes in a story 1 May, provided a full text of the six new documents to the Los Angeles Times."[40]. In 1979, the newly elected Polish Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass on the grounds of Auschwitz II to some 500,000 people. Interest in these documents was revived around 8 June 2005, following their appearance in a discussion thread at Democratic Underground[39] and subsequently they began to be quoted in US media, after Rawstory and NBC verified their authenticity with Smith and British government sources. The Auschwitz concentration camp is part of the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. The file derives ultimately from the typed transcript of the documents made by Smith and the Telegraph.

Auschwitz II and the remains of the gas chambers there are also open to the public. On October 5th, 2004, a zipped file (leaks-brief.zip), containing facsimiles of these documents in PDF form, appeared on Cryptome[37], provided by Professor Michael Lewis of Cambridge University, who had also housed the file at Iraq expert Glen Rangwala's Middle East Reference website[38]. However, in most cases the departure from the historical truth is minor, and is clearly labelled. The documents were widely quoted in the British press immediately following the Telegraph's story, for example in The Guardian[35] and The Sunday Herald[36]. Today, the Auschwitz I museum site combines elements from several periods into a single complex: for example the gas chamber at Auschwitz I (which did not exist by the war's end) was restored and the fence was moved (because of building being done after the war but before the establishment of the museum). (As reported in Rawstory[34].). The Polish government then decided to restore Auschwitz I and turn it into a museum honouring the victims of nazism; Auschwitz II, where buildings were prone to decay, was preserved but not restored. On receipt of the documents, in September 2004, acting on the advice of lawyers, Smith says he photocopied them and returned the originals to his source, then, after the Telegraph's legal desk secretary typed transcripts on an "old fashioned typewriter", the Telegraph destroyed their copies of the originals, in order to frustrate any future police investigation of the leaks.

The Buna Werke were taken over by the Polish government and became the foundation for the chemical industry of the region. (6) a memo from Jack Straw to Tony Blair, 25 March 2002 containing advice ahead of Blair's meeting with George Bush in April. After the war, the camp served as a prison of the NKVD through most of 1945 and then remained in a state of disrepair for several years. (5) a memo from Peter Ricketts, Political Director, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, to the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, dated 22 March 2002, with background and opinion for Straw's advice to Tony Blair ahead of his meeting with George Bush in April. This number has met with "significant, though not complete" agreement among scholars.^ . (4) a report from Christopher Meyer to David Manning on his meeting with Paul Wolfowitz, dated 18 March 2002. A larger study started around the same time by Franciszek Piper used time tables of train arrivals combined with deportation records to calculate 1.1 million Jewish deaths and 140,000-150,000 Polish victims, along with 23,000 Roma. (3) a report from David Manning to Tony Blair on his meeting with Condoleezza Rice, dated 14 March 2002.

In 1983, French scholar George Wellers was one of the first to use Nazi data on deportations to estimate the number killed at Auschwitz, arriving at 1.613 million dead, including 1.44 million Jews and 146,000 Poles. (2) Iraq: Legal Background, prepared by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Legal Department, dated 8 March 2002. Though this number, and a higher total of 4 million, was used by Soviet and Polish authorities, it was never taken seriously by Western scholars, who generally supported numbers of around 1-2 million. (1) Iraq: Options Paper, prepared by the Overseas & Defence Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, dated 8 March 2002, describing options available for pursuing regime change in Iraq. Early efforts to count the number of dead relied on the testimony of witnesses, especially Nazi Rudolf Hoess, who gave the number of dead at 2.5-3 million. They are:. Since the Nazis attempted to destroy the evidence of the mass murder at Auschwitz, the exact number of victims is impossible to fix with certainty. The documents describe issues relating to the meetings held between Bush and Blair at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch in April 2002.

Soviet POWs were accused of collaborating with the Germans and were either executed or sent to gulags in the Soviet Union. Previous to the appearance of the Downing Street Memo, six other British (Blair) Cabinet papers originating around March 2002 were obtained by Michael Smith and used in two Daily Telegraph stories[32] [33] published on 18 September 2004. 'Liberation' was not necessarily the end of the ordeal for many prisoners. The full transcript is available here. Those too weak or sick to walk were left behind; about 7,500 prisoners were liberated by the 322nd Infantry unit of the Red Army on January 27, 1945. Straw stated that he had not expected the question to come up. On January 17, 1945 Nazi personnel started to evacuate the facility; most of the prisoners were marched West. On May 18th, 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw were questioned on the memo, although neither was able to give a detailed answer.

The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the Germans in November 1944 in an attempt to hide their crimes from the advancing Soviet troops. On 23 May, when BTC News reporter Eric Brewer asked him about his May 16th statement, McClellan said:. The debate over what could have been done, or what should have been attempted even if success was unlikely, has continued heatedly ever since. [30]. One bomb accidentally fell into the camp and killed some prisoners. On 17 May, McClellan told reporters that the White House saw "no need" to respond to the letter from Congress. Later several nearby military targets were bombed. [29].

At one point Winston Churchill ordered that such a plan be prepared, but he was told that bombing the camp would most likely kill prisoners without disrupting the killing operation, and that bombing the railway lines was not technically feasible. However, McClellan admitted that he has not read the memo, but has only received reports of what it contains. Starting with a plea from the Slovakian rabbi Weissmandl in May 1944, there was a growing campaign to convince the Allies to bomb Auschwitz or the railway lines leading to it. On 16 May, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said that the memo's statement that intelligence was "being fixed" to support a decision to invade Iraq was "flat out wrong". (In fact, it was not until the 1970s that these photographs of Auschwitz were looked at carefully.). [28]. Detailed air reconnaissance photographs of the camp were taken accidentally during 1944 by aircraft seeking to photograph nearby military-industrial targets, but no effort was made to analyse them. He said the same thing in a June 7, 2005 interview with Gwen Ifill on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

This changed with receipt of the very detailed report of two escaped prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, which finally convinced most Allied leaders of the truth about Auschwitz in the middle of 1944. He also reiterated that he and Bush had continued to try to find a way to avert war, "As it happened, we weren't able to do that because -- as I think was very clear -- there was no way that Saddam Hussein was ever going to change the way that he worked, or the way that he acted," again without explaining the apparent contradiction with the contents of the memo. Some information regarding Auschwitz reached the Allies during 1941-1944, such as the reports of Witold Pilecki and Jerzy Tabeau, but the claims of mass killings were generally dismissed as exaggerated. Blair's response to Steve Holland at the joint news conference with Bush was "No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all". Female subcamps were constructed at Budy , Plawy, Zabrze, Gleiwitz I, II, III, Rajsko and at Lichtenwerden. When the document was published, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair denied that anything in the memo demonstrated misconduct and said that it added little to what was already known about how British policy on Iraq developed. The largest subcamps were built at Trzebinia, Bleechammer and Althammer. … I'm not sure who 'they dropped it out' is, but—I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there.".

In regular intervals, doctors from Auschwitz II would visit the work camps and select the weak and sick for the gas chambers of Birkenau. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? Could both of you respond?" President Bush did not address the issue of the intelligence and facts being "fixed" around a decision to go to war, but he did deny that he had, at the time of the memo, already decided to use military force against Saddam Hussein, saying "There's nothing farther from the truth." Bush also questioned the motives of whoever leaked the memo during the British election, saying "Well, I—you know, I read kind of the characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out in the middle of his race. It was associated with the synthetic rubber and liquid fuel plant Buna-Werke owned by IG Farben. Bush-Tony Blair press briefing in the White House, Reuters correspondent Steve Holland asked, "On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. The largest work camp was Auschwitz III Monowitz, starting operations in May 1942. On 7 June 2005, at a joint George W. The surrounding satellite work camps were closely connected to German industry and were associated with arms factories, foundries and mines. [24] UK Prime Minister Tony Blair denied that anything in the memo demonstrated misconduct and said that it added little to what was already known about how British policy on Iraq developed.

Many of the inmates enslaved here survived less than a year due to their harsh with duck head living conditions. One of the first articles on the memo to appear in the US media quoted "a former senior US official", who, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the memo's account "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington. The prisoners then attempted a mass escape, but nearly all of the 250 were killed soon after. Several other documents obtained by Smith, and treated similarly (see below), were confirmed as genuine by the UK Foreign Office.[23]. Female prisoners had smuggled in explosives from a weapons factory, and crematorium IV was partly destroyed by an explosion. This has led some to question the document's authenticity, but no official source has questioned it, and it has been unofficially confirmed to various news organizations, including the Washington Post, NBC, The Sunday Times and the LA Times. On October 7, 1944, the Jewish Sonderkommandos (those prisoners kept separate from the main camp and involved in the operation of the gas chambers and crematoria) staged an uprising. The document was retyped from the photocopy, and the photocopy destroyed.

On 10 October, eight hundred Roma children were systematically killed at Birkenau. Michael Smith, the journalist who first reported on the Downing Street Memo, has said that he protected the identity of his source by photocopying the original and returning the original document to the source. They were gassed in July 1944. [22]. Many Roma had been imprisoned in a special section of the camp, mostly in family units. MSNBC has an article and a video clip from NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. ^[1]. Network news coverage by NBC on 14 June.

When the crematoria could not keep up, bodies were burned in open pits. The Associated Press first issued a story about the memos on 7 June. Between May and July 1944, about 438,000 Jews from Hungary were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the most were killed there. It stated explicitly,. The largest group of Jews deported to Auschwitz came from Hungary after Germany took control of its former ally in March 1944. The Star Tribune revisited the Downing Street Minutes as part of the evidence in a Memorial Day editorial (30 May, 2005). Jews from many countries were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau to be killed: 300,000 from Poland, 69,000 from France, 60,000 from the Netherlands, 55,000 from Greece, 46,000 from Moravia, 25,000 from Belgium, as well as tens of thousands of Jews from other countries. And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing.".

An oven room, where selected camp prisoners called Sonderkommandos took out the dead bodies and burned them, was part of the same building. Also on 8 June, USA Today printed an article by their senior assignment editor for foreign news, Jim Cox, saying with respect to the memo, "We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source… There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). Gas chambers in crematoria IV and V were above ground and Zyklon B was poured through the special windows in the walls. NewsHour transcript, audio and video. Once the victims were sealed shut in the chamber, the toxic agent Zyklon B was discharged from openings in the ceiling. He said it may have been assigned to 'foreign news' correspondents and wasn't seen as a Bush story, or it may be the US media is still working on researching it (although he then admitted he had no reason to believe that). The victims were ordered to strip naked and leave their belongings in the undressing room in a location that they could subsequently remember, before being led to the adjacent gas chamber. [21] Although Okrent stepped down at the end of May (the routine end of his term), on NewsHour on 8 June he suggested some possible explanations for why the US media had been so slow to cover what he considered a very important story.

To avoid mass panic, the victims were told that they were going there for showering; to reinforce this impression, shower heads were fitted in the gas chamber, though never connected to a water supply. He also stated that, due to continuing reader interest, the paper intends to give fuller coverage to the memo. Two of the crematoria (Krema II and Krema III) each had an underground undressing room and the underground gas chamber, capable of holding thousands of people. On May 20th, 2005, Daniel Okrent, the Public Editor at the time for The New York Times, publicly assessed the coverage of the minutes in the paper in a forum on the NYT's website. Those selected for extermination were sent to any of four massive gas chamber/crematorium complexes, all at the edge of the camp. [20]. Items such as banknotes, coins, jewellery, precious metals and diamonds were removed from "Canada" and shipped off to the Reichsbank. The report was one of the most extensive for a nationwide publication up until that time.

In another section known as "Canada" (so named because Germans believed that Canada was a land of vast riches), the belongings of the arriving victims were sorted and stored, to be transferred to the German government. One of the first reports include that topic was a May 17 article in the Christian Science Monitor. One section of the camp was reserved for female prisoners. Since that time, much of the coverage about the memo has discussed the lack of coverage. Those arriving prisoners who survived the initial selection would go on to spend some time in quarantine quarters and eventually work on the camp's maintenance or expansion or be sent to one of the surrounding satellite work camps. [19]. Young children were taken from their mothers and placed with older women to be gassed, along with the sick, weak and old. The article was initially scheduled to run on May 11, but was pushed back so that it could have greater prominence on a slower news day later in the week.

At other times, the Nazis would perform "selections", often administered by Josef Mengele, to the end of choosing whom to kill right away and whom to imprison as labour force or use for medical experiments. After a few days of no news, however, a local reporter was assigned. At times, the whole transport would be sent to its death immediately. Undoubtedly, many other newspapers across the country reacted similarly. From 1944 railway tracks extended into the camp itself; before that, arriving prisoners were marched from the Auschwitz railway station to the camp. Being quite a distance from London, editors first waited for articles to come across on wire services. Most people arrived at the camp by rail, often after horrifying trips in cattle cars lasting several days. At the Star Tribune, initial interest had been piqued after a reader e-mailed information he had seen on the Internet to the paper's ombudsman, who forwarded it to others in the news department.

Large-scale extermination started in Spring 1942. The Los Angeles Times and Star Tribune put local reporters on the story, and produced early articles on May 12 and May 13, respectively. For this purpose, the camp was equipped with four crematoria with gas chambers; each gas chamber was designed to hold up to 2,500 people at one time. The Knight-Ridder news service produced some reportage at the time, but independent articles were limited. The camp's main purpose, however, was not internment with forced labour (as Auschwitz I & III) but rather extermination. According to Media Matters [18], there were some early mentions in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Sun, and the Washington Post, though coverage was slight (the Post's first article appeared in the "Style" section) and primarily aimed at the impact it would have on the British elections, rather than how it affected the Bush administration. The camp held up to 100,000 prisoners at one time. .continue to downplay [the] story." [17].

Fields as well as the camp itself were surrounded with barbed, electrified wire (which was used by some of the inmates to commit suicide). print media, saying they ". The camp was about 2.5 kilometres by 2 kilometres (1½ mi by 1¼ mi) large and was divided into several sections, each of which was separated into fields. The organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has been among those that have criticized the U.S. The camp was designed, according to the Bauhaus concept of functionalism and construction started in 1941, as part of the Final Solution (Endlösung). The story had limited coverage in the USA but has recently received greater attention in the American press. The camp is located in Brzezinka (Birkenau), about 3 kilometres (1.8 mi) from Auschwitz I. The Downing Street Minutes was a major story in the British press during the last few days of the 2005 general election campaign and was also covered in other countries.

It was the site of the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, and the killings of over one million people, mainly Jews. A strong majority of Democrats, and around 25% of Republicans, agreed with the sentiment. Auschwitz II (Birkenau) is the camp that many people know simply as "Auschwitz". voters believe that Congress should impeach President Bush if it is found that Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq. It was staffed by women specifically selected for the purpose, and by some volunteers from the female prisoners most of whom were raped by the Nazis. A June 2005 Zogby poll shows that 42% of U.S. The camp brothel, established in the summer of 1943 on Himmler's order, was located in block 24 and was used to reward privileged prisoners. In addition to the grand prize for eliciting a clear "Yes" or "No" answer, a number of lesser prizes are offered for lesser responses, down to $100 reward for video evidence of having posed the question clearly to President Bush within his hearing but getting no answer.[16].

Prisoners in the camp hospital who were not quick to recover were regularly killed by a lethal injection of phenol. Democrats.com has raised one thousand dollars, offered as a reward to anyone who can get George Bush to answer the following question:. Josef Mengele experimented on twins in the same complex. A website, afterdowningstreet.org, has been established for the newly emerging citizens' coalition. Dr. Among the citizen groups are:. Carl Clauberg conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish women in block 10 of Auschwitz I, with the aim of developing a simple injection method to be used on the Slavic people. The request states the constitutional grounds for impeachment:.

Dr. Bonifaz and is available here. From April 1943 to May 1944, the gynecologist Prof. The formal Resolution of Inquiry request was written by Boston constitutional attorney John C. The first women arrived in the camp on March 26, 1942. Article written by Larisa Alexandrovna, pushing the topic to the MSM. This gas chamber operated from 1941 to 1942 and was then converted into an air-raid shelter. [12].

The tests deemed successful, a gas chamber and crematorium were constructed by converting a bunker. A coalition of citizen groups will ask Congress to file a Resolution of Inquiry, the first necessary legal step to determine whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses. The substance producing the highly-lethal cyanide gas was sold under the trade name Zyklon B, originally for use as a pesticide used to kill lice. [11]. The first experiment was on 3 September, 1941, and it killed 600 Soviet POWs. On 26 June, drug war critic Donald Way wrote commentary on holocaustnow citing the relevance of those portions of the memos detailing how the air war began in 2002 for the purpose of provoking Saddam Hussein into reacting in such a way that could be used to justify the military invasion. In September 1941, the SS conducted poison gas tests in block 11, killing 850 Poles and Russians using cyanide. [10].

Others were executed by shooting, hanging or starving. Also on that day, he and Kevin Zeese authored an op-ed for the Boston Globe to support the call for impeachment against Bush, citing the memo as part of the evidence that the possibility of deliberate deception by the administration should be investigated. Some prisoners had to spend several days in tiny cells too small to sit down. On 31 May, consumer advocate and former Presidential hopeful Ralph Nader wrote an article on ZNet calling for Bush and Cheney’s impeachment under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution [9]. Block 11 of Auschwitz I was the "prison within the prison", where violations of the numerous rules were punished. [8]. The harsh work requirements, combined with poor nutrition and hygiene, led to high death rates among the prisoners. On 18 May, conservative pundit and former Reagan Administration advisor Paul Craig Roberts wrote an article calling for Bush's impeachment for lying to Congress about the case for war.

All inmates had to work; except in the associated arms factories, Sundays were reserved for cleaning and showering and there were no work assignments. Conyers' blog is keeping tabs on the number of signatures on a petition for the campaign to re-open hearings (see petition links below). The various classes of prisoners were distinguishable by special marks on their clothes; Jews were generally treated the worst. US Congressman John Conyers has also set up a blog to raise support for re-opening the Congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks, ConyersBlog.us. The SS selected some prisoners, often German criminals, as specially privileged supervisors of the other inmates (so-called: kapo). These lists are also linked to by a network of blogs. Contrary to what is depicted in several films, the majority of the Jews were imprisoned in the Auschwitz II camp, and did not pass under this sign. Every day it lists new contact information for three news outlets, to urge them to provide better coverage of the issues.

The camp's prisoners who left the camp during the day for construction or farm labour were made to march through the gate at the sounds of an orchestra. On 1 June 2005 a targeted media campaign called 'Awaken the Mainstream Media' began jointly at Daily Kos and downingstreetmemo.com. The entrance to Auschwitz I was (and still is) marked with the cynical sign "Arbeit macht frei", "Work (shall) make (you) free" (or "work liberates"). On 30 May 2005, in a "blogswarm" fueled by the memo, hundreds of blogs joined together to form the Big Brass Alliance in support of After Downing Street. At any time, the camp held between 13,000 and 16,000 inmates; in 1942 the number reached 20,000. Created in late May, AfterDowningStreet.org is a coalition of organizations that support an official inquiry into the DSM, pre-war intelligence, and the planning and execution of the Iraq war. Jews were sent to the camp as well, beginning with the very first shipment (from Tarnów). The website also has a blog dedicated to discussing issues surrounding the memo, called downingstreetmemo.blogspot.com.

Common German criminals, "anti-social elements" and 48 German homosexuals were also imprisoned there. A website, www.downingstreetmemo.com, was created on May 13 to inform the public about the memo and provide context. The camp was initially used for interning Polish intellectuals and resistance movement members, then also for Soviet Prisoners of War. By the next morning the document had become a major story at Daily Kos, where Congressman Conyers learned of it. A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów became the first residents of Auschwitz on June 14th that year. James Wolcott may have been the first blogger in the US to take note of the Sunday Times publication, on 30 April 2005. It was founded on May 20, 1940, on the basis of an old Polish brick army barracks. Wilson and Cindy Sheehan among others testify.[5][6][7].

Auschwitz I served as the administrative center for the whole complex. presides over a hearing or forum on the Downing Street memo in a basement room in the Capitol where Joseph C. . Congressman John Conyers, Jr. A common punishment for escape attempts was death by starvation; the families of successful escapees were sometimes arrested and interned in Auschwitz and prominently displayed to deter others. On June 16, 2005: U.S. About 700 prisoners attempted to escape from the Auschwitz camps during the years of their operation, with about 300 attempts successful. [4] As of 16 June 2005, over 100 congressmen had signed the letter, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Chief of the women's field was handled by Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandel and last by Elisabeth Volkenrath. By 13 June 2005, the letter had received over 540,000 signatures from citizens, and more congressmen had signed on, bringing the total to 94. He was hanged in 1947 in front of the entrance to the crematorium of Auschwitz I. [3] The letter has been getting between 20,000 and 25,000 signatures a day, which was boosted by MoveOn.org joining the campaign on 9 June. Höß provided a detailed description of the camp's workings during his interrogations after the war and also in his autobiography. Conyers initially requested 100,000 signatures from citizens (a petition) to request that President Bush answer the questions in his letter. The commandants of the camp were the SS-Obersturmbannführers Rudolf Höß (sometimes transliterated in English as "Hoess") until Summer 1943, and later Arthur Liebehenschel and Richard Baer. [2].

Like all Nazi concentration camps, the Auschwitz camps were operated by Heinrich Himmler's SS. al have given serious consideration to sending a fact-finding mission to the UK. The exact number of people killed in the camps is not known, but most modern estimates are around 1.1-1.5 million. In response to the Bush Administration's refusal to answer the congressional delegation's questions, Conyers et. See List of subcamps of Auschwitz for others. No specific White House response to the letter has been made publicly. The three main camps were:. On 5 May, Congressman John Conyers sent a letter to President Bush signed by 89 of his colleagues demanding an explanation of the revelations in the memo.

The camps were a major element in the perpetration of the Holocaust, killing around 1.1-1.5 million people, of whom over 90% were Jews. However, the minutes explicitly state that the capability was less than that of Libya, Iran, and North Korea, and that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors. Beginning in 1940, Nazi Germany built several concentration camps and an extermination camp in the area, which at the time had been annexed by Nazi Germany. It has been said that some of those present at the meeting believed that Iraq might possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD) "capacity". The name is derived from the German name for the nearby Polish town of Oświęcim (pronounced [oʃˈventʃiːm]), situated about 60 kilometres (37 mi) southwest of Kraków. Another paragraph has been interpreted to show that Geoff Hoon believed timing of the war's start was intended to influence American elections:. Auschwitz is the name loosely used to identify the largest Nazi extermination camp along with two main German concentration camps and 45-50 sub-camps. They also say that the minutes are dated at a time when Bush stated that "we haven't made any decisions on Iraq, but all options are on the table.".

Indiana University Press, 1998, pp 60-70. Powell presented the administration's case to the United Nations Security Council, in a speech on February 5, 2003. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bush did not finally decide to carry out the invasion of March 2003 until after Secretary of State Colin L. ^ Yisrael Gutman, Michael Berenbaum, Raul Hilberg, Franciszek Piper, Yehuda Baur. Also, proponents say that the contents (such as "Military action was now seen as inevitable.") and the date of the memo, July 23, 2002, contradicts the official White House position that Mr. Auschwitz III (Monowitz), which served as a labor camp for the IG Farben company. In particular, they say that the minutes indicate that the Administration was determined to go to war with Iraq prior to considerations of legality, and with full knowledge that, at best, "the case was slim." And furthermore that they selected and exaggerated intelligence so as to confirm their policy and developed a plan to manipulate public opinion.

Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp and the site of the deaths of roughly 1.1 million Jews, 75,000 Poles, and some 19,000 Roma. In the United States, proponents of a formal congressional inquiry say that the minutes, along with testimonies from credible witnesses, shed sufficient doubt on the actions of the Bush Administration to warrant a formal inquiry. Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp which served as the administrative centre for the whole complex, and was the site of the deaths of roughly 70,000 people, mostly Poles and Soviet Prisoners of War. The main sections covering the ultimatum are:. The British analysis of US policy is also stated elsewhere in the minutes:. Others argue that "being fixed around" was used in the sense of selectively choosing or ignoring facts depending on whether they supported the already decided conclusion.

The author of the memo, Matthew Rycroft, uses this term in an e-mail when talking about an appointment, This is now fixed for 0800 [1]. Supporters of President Bush argue that the usage of the phrase "were being fixed" in the 5th sentence is a colloquialism meaning "to agree upon". The most controversial paragraph is a report of a recent visit to Washington by head of the Secret Intelligence Service Sir Richard Dearlove (known in official terminology as 'C'):. Tony Blair is quoted as saying that the British public would support regime change in the right political context.

The resolution currently has 70 co-sponsors. A resolution of inquiry was filed by Representative Barbara Lee, which would request that the President and the State Department turn over all relevant information with regard to US policy towards Iraq. Bush to respond to the contents of the document. A group of 131 United States Congressmen, led by John Conyers, have repeatedly requested of US President George W.

Both UK and US officials have since either refused to affirm or deny its content, or else have tacitly validated its authenticity (as when Tony Blair replied to a press conference question by saying "That memo was written before we went to the UN."). No official sources have questioned its accuracy or disputed its authenticity, despite being questioned directly about it on numerous occasions. If it is not a forgery, another original copy may surface. Because of this, the retyped copy would not be admissible in any court.

Hence, it will be impossible to authenticate the contents of the copy by physical means. The retyping process certainly opens up the possibility of errors or mischief. To protect the source who provided him with the classified memorandum, the Sunday Times journalist who acquired it retyped its contents (using an old-fashioned typewriter rather than a computer) and returned his copy of the original to his source. A typed replica of the memo was printed in The Sunday Times on 1 May 2005.

The term "Downing street memo" is also used to generally describe a larger body of associated or related documents leaked to the public from November 2004 onwards, which date from March 2002 through July 2002—the DSM being the most important. As this issue began to be covered by American media, two other main allegations stemming from the memo arose: that the UN weapons inspection process was manipulated to provide a legal pretext for the war, and that pre-war air strikes were deliberately ramped up in order to soften Iraqi infrastructure in preparation for war, prior to the October congressional vote permitting the invasion. The Memo went largely unremarked in the US press at first but was heavily covered in progressive blogs such as those on Daily Kos, in particular because of a remark attributed to Richard Dearlove (then head of British foreign intelligence service MI6) that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein from power, which was taken to show that US intelligence on Iraq prior to the war was deliberately falsified, rather than simply mistaken. The memo was named by the Times after the official residence of the UK Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street in London ("Downing Street" is a metonym for the Prime Minister's office.).

The memo was first published in The Sunday Times on May 1 2005, during the last days of the UK's general election campaign. . The "Downing Street memo" (occasionally DSM), sometimes described by critics of the Iraq War as the "smoking gun memo", contains an overview of a secret 23 July 2002 meeting among United Kingdom Labour government, defence and intelligence figures, discussing the build-up to the war—including direct reference to classified United States policy of the time. According to CNN, currently classified documents which were dated at the same month as the Downing Street memo, March of 2002, were uncovered in Iraq, and contained evidence that Russian intelligence notified Iraq about the "determination of the United States and Britain to launch military action." [27].

In addition, that was before we went to the United Nations and secured the second resolution, 1441, which had unanimous support."[26]. When asked about the contents of the memo by Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price in the House of Commons on 29 June 2005, Blair again refrained from disputing the document's authenticity, saying only "[…]that memo and other documents of the time were covered by the Butler review. A White House official said the administration wouldn't comment on leaked British documents. The British Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Bush has not responded to questions from Congress regarding the memo's accuracy. George W. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, when questioned about the document's accuracy, did not confirm or deny its accuracy. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, when questioned about the document's accuracy, did not confirm or deny its accuracy.

Tony Blair, responding to a question on the document, said: "that memorandum was written before we went to the United Nations" [25]. Bush. [13] [14] [15] Several links supporting the impeachment of George W. Gold Star Families for Peace.

Velvet Revolution, and. Democratic Underground. Democrats.com. Global Exchange.

Code Pink. Democracy Rising. 911Citizens Watch. Progressive Democrats of America (PDA).

Veterans for Peace. Downing Street Director of Communications and Strategy Alastair Campbell. Downing Street Director of Government Relations Sally Morgan, and. Prime Minister's Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell,.

Head of the Secret Intelligence Service Richard Dearlove,. Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Michael Boyce,. Director of the Government Communications Headquarters Francis Richards,. Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee John Scarlett,.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Richard Wilson,. Attorney General of England and Wales Lord Goldsmith,. Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jack Straw,. Secretary of State for Defence Geoff Hoon,.