To Cindy Chavez.
Jan Mokrzycki (xuegxaw@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK)
Sun, 12 May 1996 10:18:03 +0100
I assume by kindertransport you mean those transports
of children stolen from other countries and transported
to Germany.I can remember one such transport of Polish
children from the Lublin area which stopped in Warsaw
on the way to Germany it was in the winter of 1941 or
42. There were a lot of the children there, packed
tightly into railway cattle trucks with little food or
water. A lot of people risked their lives to provide
them with some of the essentials.That particular train
was at the Warsaw train terminal for about 24-36
hours.It appeared to have a very low transport
priority, in German eyes those children were an
expendable item, so I doubt that they had special
routes.
Some of the children who were old enough to remember
the past were reunited with their families after the
war, but that is en exception, rather than the rule.One
can only assume that the majority have adapted to their
new lives and remember nothing of their true families.
To Jamie Comer on Mengele.
My late Mother was a prisoner at Aushwitz who being a
doctor worked there in the prison hospitaland had
rather vivid memories of Mengele and his "work".It had
little to do with sience and a lot with sadism.
Some of the "experiments" were: use of x-rays on women
to produce inferility and then trying artificial
insemination on them, transplantation of leg muscles
from one place to another, again on women- some of
these ladies have survived this and though permanently
crippled I believe one or two are still alive.Perhaps
the most horrendous were the so called heredity
experiments carried out on identical twins, as an
example would both suffer pain and limp if only one had
a leg amputated.
Finally Jenny-
Do you perhaps mean Belsen? If so it certainly was an
extermination camp and your figures are probably
right.Like all such camps it was not exclusively
reserved for any one or two groups.Two other groups
which suffered extermination in almost all the camps
were Jehovas Witnesses(perhaps the most persecuted
group of all, though for some reason very little is
said about them) and Catholic priests.You could also
find Poles, Russians, some Belgians, French, Dutch and
Scandinavians in most of the camps not to mention the
odd English, Australian and Canadian.
Hope that's a little bit of help.
Jan Mokrzycki.