Taking a little break from the overwhelming weirdness of the ‘Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense’ claimed about Buchenwald Concentration Camp; we instead pivot over from one of the best known of the German camps to one of the least known. Namely that of Ebensee.
Ebensee was established on 18th November 1943 just east of the city of Salzburg in Austria as a sub-camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp with its purpose being to excavate tunnel shafts into the nearby mountains in order to turn them into impregnable arms factories for the Third Reich’s war effort. (1)
The camp was notorious for being a place of hard labour and attrition among the prisoners was predictably high with food being increasing in short supply; although the Germans did try to compensate using ersatz coffee giving the inmates half a litre of the stuff every morning in order to wake them up and get them ready for the day of hard labour ahead. (2)
Predictably we hear all the usual crazy stories of deranged SS men and women staffing Ebensee with yet another rampaging SS dog – you’ll remember such SS dogs were apparently common since Klaus Barbie allegedly had one that specialised in raping jewesses (3) while a similar such dog named Barry that liked biting jews in the crotch was allegedly owned by the deputy commandant (and later commandant) of Treblinka Kurt Franz – (4) and drunken mass shootings as well as assorted plunder and rapine. (5)
However, the story that is the focus of this article is one that occurs on 4th May 1945 when Otto Riemer – the camp commandant of Ebensee – allegedly did the following:
‘On 4 May, the camp commandant reportedly told the prisoners that they had been sold to the Americans and that they should wait for them in the tunnels. The prisoners refused to obey the command and remained in their barracks. Hours later, some of the tunnels were destroyed by mines, which may have been intended to kill the prisoners.’ (6)
Yad Vashem also repeats this story in its ‘educational summary’ of the Ebensee camp with a notable modification:
‘On April 30 the Nazis released most of the German prisoners and halted all forced labor. On May 5 the camp commandant tried to get the remaining prisoners to enter one of the mountain tunnels; they refused, and the camp staff left. On May 6 American troops liberated Ebensee, and found that same tunnel full of explosives. By refusing to enter the tunnel, the prisoners had saved themselves from being blown up by the Germans.’ (7)
Put another way: we are expected to believe – apparently based purely on ‘eyewitness testimony’ and nothing else – that Riemer had told the prisoners that ‘they had been sold to the Americans’ – who were to occupy Ebensee two days later on 6th May 1945 – and they should go into the tunnels for protection, but then later – according to one version – some of the tunnels ‘blew up’ which the ‘survivors’ interpreted as an attempt to ‘murder them all’, while another version – given by Yad Vashem – is that the tunnels didn’t blow up at all but instead the America forces (3rd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron) discovered the ‘tunnel where they were to go was full of explosives’ which was again interpreted – rather maliciously mind you – by the ‘survivors’ and the American soldiers as a ‘failed attempt to murder the remaining prisoners’.
The likely truth of the matter is relatively simple if you think about it.
On 4th May 1945 Riemer addressed the prisoners at Ebensee informing them that the Americans would arrive soon and – as he would have been well aware of the ‘war crimes’ atrocity propaganda being pushed by the Western Allies against the SS and the SS’ ‘Deaths Head’ units (of which he headed one) – he tried to get the prisoners on side by being kind and looking out of their welfare – more than normal anyway and to be honest the SS did work the inmates hard but they also looked out for their health and well-being as best they could with the resources available to them – which he did by telling them that they should go into the tunnels/a tunnel they had been digging in order to protect them from Allied air raids – these commonly hit concentration camps as perceived industrial centres this late in the war – which was a likely scenario given that American forces were only a day or two away; so American fighter-bombers would likely be flying near (and over) the camp soon. Hence the increased likelihood of an air raid that would likely cause heavy casualties among the inmates crowded in the camp’s wooden accommodation blocks.
Then the inmates refuse to go into the tunnels thinking them either a trap or because they thought the SS wanted them to work; the SS then abandoned Ebensee on 5th May 1945 (8) and the inmates promptly celebrated by murdering 52 fellow prisoners who were seen as ‘collaborators’ with the German camp authorities. (9) Then they stole rifles from Ebensee’s armoury and began hunting Germans in the nearby woods murdering at least one who they claimed was a former SS guard. (10)
Then when the 3rd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron checked the tunnels; they found that the SS had stored their explosives for blasting tunnels – a normal use of explosives and not indicative that the Germans planned to ‘blow up the tunnels’ – in one of them both in order to contain any accidental blasts to a single tunnel but also to protect the explosives from being destroyed in any air raid.
The Americans and the jews then put two and two together and got well… five and not four and so began the myth that the SS camp guards under Riemer at Ebensee were trying to ‘blow up the jews in the tunnels’ that they had been digging in early May 1945.
References
(1) https://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/camps/EbenseeEng.html
(2) Idem.
(3) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/remarkable-holocaust-nonsense-47
(4) https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/treblinkadeathcamp/barrykurtfranzsdog.html
(5) https://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/camps/EbenseeEng.html
(6) https://editions.fortunoff.library.yale.edu/essay/hvt-2348
(7) https://wwv.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206227.pdf
(8) https://editions.fortunoff.library.yale.edu/essay/hvt-2348
(9) Ibid.
(10) Ibid.
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