Will We Learn From The Past?

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!
Mark Matheny


While being stationed in Germany, I had the opportunity to visit the German Concentration Camp Dachau. This was in 1989, and I was only 20 yrs old at the time. Our Unit had a field trip that day to visit the site, and as we walked into the camp, I began to try and imagine the pain and suffering that took place behind the barb wired fences, and within the gas chambers that were built there.

Dachau was the first Nazi Concentration Camp opened in Germany, and the year was 1933. Heinrich Himmler, Chief of Police of Munich, officially described the camp as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners".[1] Of course, at the time of my visit I was young and not very knowledgeable as to the horrific events that took place, not only in this camp, but in others as well.

We were initially greeted as we entered the camp with the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" written upon the gate where thousands before entered. "Work Brings Freedom" was the deceptive promise of the gate, and I wondered how many of its occupants believed what it offered. It must have been horrifying to walk into this camp, not knowing what it truly was offering. Many would find out as time went on.

As we toured through the camp, we came upon a grave site area upon which a plaque was inscribed with the words "Tomb of the many  thousands unknown " or something close to those words. It slowly began to sink in to my heart, all the misery and pain, that was inflicted - from human to human - pain and terror that most of us in these times have probably never imagined, let alone seen.

History may never know how many people were interned there or died there, due to periods of disruption. One source gives a general estimate of over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries for the Third Reich's years, of whom two-thirds were political prisoners and nearly one-third were Jews. 25,613 prisoners are believed to have died in the camp and almost another 10,000 in its subcamps,[6] primarily from disease, malnutrition and suicide. In early 1945, there was a typhus epidemic in the camp due to influx from other camps causing overcrowding, followed by an evacuation, in which large numbers of the weaker prisoners died. Toward the end of the war death marches to and from the camp caused the expiration of large but unknown numbers of prisoners. Even after liberation, prisoners weakened beyond recovery continued to expire. [2]

All of the housing units had been torn down due to the disease and unsanitary conditions within the buildings. There was only one still remaining, and that particular one was a rebuilt replica. I walked through that dingy place and could almost hear the crying and dispair that dwelt there more than 40 yrs before. It was  hard to hold back tears, and by the end of the tour I don't think there was a dry eye in the group. It didn't matter whether we were Jewish or not. It was the thought of the brutality that could be inflicted upon one group of people by another that really disturbed me.

Over its twelve years as a concentration camp, the Dachau administration recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners and 31,951 deaths. Crematoria were constructed to dispose of the deceased. These numbers do not tell the entire story, however. Although there is no evidence of mass murder within the camp itself by other methods than poor sanitation, deprivation of medical care, withholding of nutrients, medical experiments, and beatings and shootings for infractions of the rules or at random, beginning in 1942 more than 3166 prisoners in weakened condition were transported to Hartheim Castle near Linz and there were executed by poison gas for reason of their unfitness. In 1941 and 1942 an unknown number of prisoners of war from the Soviet Union were executed by shooting at the camp's surrounding firing ranges, some for target practice and for sport. [3]

When I walked away from that place, I walked away with the feeling that the world is not the world I'd imagined before coming there. Before this experience, I always felt that people were basically good, and that governments and nations were humanitarian. But after learning of the length of time that these camps existed, and how many of the Allied countries, including the great United States, knew of their existance as the war progressed, the more I began to see that there certainly was evil in the world, and that governments were in most cases responsible for most of it.

This program paved the way for the Holocaust in several important ways. First, it had the effect of legitimizing government-sponsored killing. In keeping with the Nazi emphasis on racial purity, eugenics and national health, euthanasia was presented as a necessary program for eliminating those who carried defective genetic materials which might endanger the quality of the "Aryan" stock.



Second, it was the beginning stage in the corruption of the German medical profession. Robert J. Lifton [Nazi Doctors] asks the question: How did a profession committed to healing, the protection of human life and the relief of human suffering become part of the Nazi killing machine? The apparent answer to this question is that it was a gradual process, a "slippery slope" which began with the Euthanasia Programme of "mercy killing" and resulted in the full scale involvement of some members of the medical profession in the mass extermination of Jews and others in the Nazi death camps.


Third, the T-4 program was crucial in developing the technology which would later be applied to mass murder. [4]

With the turmoil developing in all countries around the globe, I wonder how long it will take for the conditions to be ripe once again for these atrocities to be resurrected? Here in the U.S. we seem to be on the road to a possible form of National Socialism that Hitler dreamed of as he went forth conquering. Our president has promised to turn us from the devastating effects of a Republican induced economic crisis, (these were his words in a recent speech) and to bring national healthcare to all in the U.S., whether a citizen or not. This healthcare bill however, seems to me, to be the launching pad for another "T-4" type of program that ultimately caused the death of thousands of innocents in Nazi Germany.

The T4 Euthanasia Program was a Nazi German effort --framed as a euthanasia program-- to kill incurably ill, physically or mentally disabled, emotionally distraught, and elderly people. Adolf Hitler initiated this program in 1939, and, while it was officially discontinued in 1941, killings continued covertly until the military defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.


In October 1939, Adolf Hitler empowered his personal physician and the chief of the Chancellery of the Führer to kill people considered unsuited to live. He backdated his order to September 1, 1939, the day World War II began, to give it the appearance of a wartime measure. In this directive, Dr. Karl Brandt and Chancellery chief Philipp Bouhler were "charged with responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians…so that patients considered incurable, according to the best available human judgment of their state of health, can be granted a mercy killing."

Within a few months, the T4 Program --named for the Chancellery offices that directed it from the Berlin address Tiergartenstrasse 4-- involved virtually the entire German psychiatric community. A new bureaucracy, headed by physicians, was established with a mandate to kill anyone deemed to have a "life unworthy of living." Some physicians active in the study of eugenics, who saw Nazism as "applied biology," enthusiastically endorsed this program. However, the criteria for inclusion in this program were not exclusively genetic, nor were they necessarily based on infirmity. An important criterion was economic. Nazi officials assigned people to this program largely based on their economic productivity. The Nazis referred to the program's victims as "burdensome lives" and "useless eaters." [5]

I know that the comparison might seem a bit outlandish, but I'm sure those living in Nazi Germany also initially felt as if there was nothing wrong with the reforms Adolf Hitler was instituting in the Fatherland in order to bring about a New World Order[6] for the Aryan people. Could our physicians be turned into the monsters that commited such atrocities in Nazi Germany?

The transformation of physicians into killers took time and required the appearance of scientific justification. Soon after the Nazis came to power, the Bavarian minister of health proposed that psychopaths, the mentally retarded, and other "inferior" people be isolated and killed. "This policy has already been initiated at our concentration camps," he noted. A year later, authorities instructed mental institutions throughout the Reich to "neglect" their patients by withholding food and medical treatment.



Pseudoscientific rationalizations for the killing of the "unworthy" were bolstered by economic considerations. According to bureaucratic calculations, the state could put funds that went to the care of criminals and the insane to better use&emdash;for example, in loans to newly married couples. Proponents for the program saw incurably sick children as a burden on the healthy body of the Volk, the German people. "Wartime is the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill," Hitler said. [7]

Our unemployment rate is slowly increasing, as well as the fact that more and more Americans are becoming economically dependant upon the government to sustain them. We have currently 40.2 million Americans on Food stamps. There is talk of war starting in Iraq and ultimately spreading globally sometime possibly before 2012, according to Lindsey Williams, and global economic collapse according to Trends Forcaster Gerald Celente, Bob Chapman, Peter shiff, Ron Paul, and other economists who are not bought and paid for through the CFR.

And of course, let's not forget that currently accross America, Internment Camps are being built. Will these be for political prisoners when the final stages are implemented in bringing about the long awaited dream of a New World Order?

The bible says " There is nothing new under the sun". I only hope in this case we who understand the coming events will stand up without fear to warn others of this very real possibility. Winston Churchhill once said “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” We have the history behind us, and we see the trends that are developing toward a similar scenario if we fail to learn and avert it.

Sources: 1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp
3.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp
4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp
5. http://isurvived.org/t4-program.html
6. http://www.amerikanexpose.com/quotes1.html"National Socialism will use its own revolution for establishing of a new world order."

Adolf Hitler during World War II
7. http://isurvived.org/t4-program.html
 
Mark Matheny is Administrator and editor of SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!. He is a Veteran and has worked as an Operation Manager in Private security covering both private and government contracts. He is proficient in several forms of martial arts, including Aikido, Karate and Kungfu. He currently works in management for a major super retail company. He is married with 6 children and 1 nephew, and enjoys reading the Bible and studying biblical prophecy.