Unravelling Truths and Untruths

This morning Weds 14th December around 6.25 I heard Steve Allen on LBC state that Anne Frank had been sent to Belsen concentration camp where she was murdered. I had only just turned on the radio and stepped into the hallway so did not hear the full details except that he repeated the same statement again at 06.37 in relation to a brand of frankfurter or something, still no wiser because the bulk of content must have been said before turning the radio on.

It is a fact that what Steve Allen said is not true because Anne Frank died from typhus not long after being interned in Belson Concentration camp, the result of having her hiding place revealed to the Nazi’s by a neighbour. Another thing that comes to mind is that at the site of this concentration camp there is a head stone, and I am not sure if it is a commemoration head stone or whether it is claimed that it is the grave of Anne Frank. If it is the latter then once again it is a case of convenient misrepresentation because Anne frank was at that time unknown, and as an inmate, died along with the many other victims who likewise perished and were buried in mass graves, unidentified. It was only after the war that the diary was made public and subsequently published.

Belsen, it has been claimed, served as a transit camp for Jews who were wealthy enough to engage in the scheme, set up between Hitler and the Zionist movement, to pay for unhindered passage to Palestine.

Hitler thought that the arrangement was a good one because not only did it earn Germany income but it removed Jews from Europe into the bargain. It is likely that the thinking of the Zionists was that wealthy Jews were the best of the best which would be a good asset towards populating their new homeland in Palestine, something that had been taking place even before 1948 (since 1881), before the defeat of this totalitarian regime. As for the rest who continued to languish as slaves in concentration camps, there are written inferences that the Zionists had no care at all, except that their persecution would further the advance of their cause towards establishing an official homeland, something that Britain facilitated but had no right to give away another Country really.

Also this popular misrepresentation prompted me to now share the details of a conversation with Major Henry F Reeves that had taken place one Thursday 17th March 2016. I had known him for quite a number of years through his attendance, along with his wife, to a fine arts class. Each year he would ask me where I planned to go for holidays and always I would tell him Hannover to which he would reply ‘’Don’t forget to visit Celle, it’s a very beautiful place’’.

From these casual conversations over the years I had gained an insight into Henry’s military background and the reason he was so fond of Celle. Henry was around 94 years old by this time, and now and again he would miss a class or two because of his frailty or illness.

I had struck up the conversation immediately before the class had settled because I was curious to know if Henry had met Major Leonard Bernice who had recently died and as a result the news was full of the claim that he was first into Belsen. Henry had told me several years before that he was on point duty and was surprised to discover Belsen because it wasn’t on the map but you could smell it before getting there. At that time he mentioned that the smell was so bad that he could not sleep for weeks.

Question to Major Henry F Reeves:

RH Did you ever know Major Leonard Bernice at Bergen Belsen? He died last Wednesday week and I was expecting to see you on the Thursday but the hall was double booked.

HFR No I did not know him, he came after me.

RH You were there for two weeks weren’t you, documenting the event?.

HFR I was there for three weeks and I never saw so many Sergeants in one place – Medical Corps.

RH You were first in!

HFR Yes. I was on point duty and you could smell the place before we got there. I had to stop people going in because of the disease. People were dying all the time.

RH I know that you mentioned before that all of the guards had scarpered but Leonard Bernice said that the Commandant had remained behind to prevent prisoners from escaping and spreading typhus into the general population.

HFR That is not true, everybody had left. There are so many reports that are not true and it makes me so angry – Even during the recent visit of the Queen.

There are so many things that they don’t want you to know about, especially the BBC reports.

We had to burn the place down and used flame throwers to do it. They were all lined up and a Jewish soldier knocked the flame thrower that it hit a group of Jewish women that were lined up.

RH Was that accidental or deliberate?

HFR It was deliberate.

HFR We made the population dig up the graves. The smell was so bad that I could not sleep for two weeks. ]Unquote.

Henry had spent time in Celle doing administration work in relation to Belsen. On a previous occasion I asked him how many Jews were at the camp to which he replied: ‘’There were more others than Jews.’’

The archive footage of Belsen shows the torching of the wooden huts, but also noticeable is the varied condition of the inmates, from the taught skin frames of the dead, to those in an intermediate stage of deterioration to others who are contrasted by their appearance of being fully fleshed and well to such an extent that if they were separated out you might never know that they had ever been at the camp. Perhaps historic records and posing correct questions may explain this situation, though it is possible to make a guess based on the prevailing conditions brought about by the failing infrastructure of defeated tyranny.

Thursday 15th December 2022:

Further more, on the question of Anne Frank’s memorial stone, more information needed to be gained related to my previous statement. Obviously there needs to be tests made to verify the following claim, especially the comparison of DNA with a living relative.

From the Metro:

Anne Frank’s grave may have finally been found

Monday 13 Apr 2015 2:52 pm

The final resting place of Anne Frank may have been uncovered.

The body of the iconic teenager, who died in a concentration camp in 1945, was thought to have been thrown in an unmarked mass grave.

 thoughtBut now the grandson of a person she may have been buried with claims to have found her in Bergen-Belsen, Germany, which was home to one of the dreaded camps.

‘One of them gave me a map on which he marked where my grandfather was buried,’ said Paul Verschure, whose grandfather was Dutch resistance fighter Jan Verschure.

He’d met with several Holocaust survivors who gave him the alleged burial spot of the 15-year-old diarist, who became famous after writing a journal about her time hiding from Nazis.

Mr Verschure was able to find the location (now a field), with the help of Dutch researchers.

There’s no way of verifying the claim though as Jewish law doesn’t allow graves to be dug up.

From a Polish article :

POLISH/JEWISH RELATIONS

Exhumation in Judaism: Theory and Practice

…..in the August 10, 1946, protocol addressing the exhumation of Jewish corpses from the village of Rzezawa (county of Bochnia), we read: “the total of 15 bodies was exhumed, including 7 women, four men and 4 children.” They had been murdered in September 1942. Some were identified by witnesses. Three members of the County Jewish Committee in Brzesk participated in the process. They initiated the exhumation and prompted the writing of the protocol. “The bodies were buried at the Jewish cemetery in Brzesko.” The victims, thus, were not only exhumed but also moved from the mass grave in Rzezawa to proper burial grounds in Brzesko.

Similarly, on August 18, 1949, in Łomazy, representatives of the Jewish community from Wrocław undertook an exhumation and removal of about 1,800 of Jewish victims shot by the Germans in a mass execution. Historian Gabriel Finder provides more examples of similar exhumations.

Very interesting perhaps this is all  we need to know. Notice the month of the death of Anne Frank’s last living relative  and that of the article claiming to have found her actual grave.

Anne Frank’s Last Living Relative Dies at 89

BY

STEPHANIE BUTNICK
MARCH 23, 2015
Here is another article with a slightly different perspective: