Fake Holocaust Survivors: Halina Strnad
Our next ‘Holocaust survivor’ whose supposed story has been published without any critical thought is one Halina Strnad (nee Wagowska) who was honoured by the ‘Times of Israel’ with a special article by so-called ‘Nazi hunter’ Efraim Zuroff dedicated to her ‘Holocaust’ experiences in 2020.
As always it is interesting to dissect these kinds of stories to see how much they make sense and what we can learn from them.
We read how:
‘Halina was originally incarcerated together with her family in the Lodz ghetto for 3.5 years. She and her parents were among the last Jews deported to Auschwitz. For reasons she did not explain, probably because of overcrowding at the death camp, she and her mother were sent by cattle car to Stutthof, arriving there in September 1944.’ (1)
Now this is superficially accurate in that jews were deported from the Lodz ghetto in September 1944 to Auschwitz – they were being deported to the partially demolished Chelmno to be gassed which was allegedly a pure extermination camp till mid-July 1944 – but her claim that there was ‘overcrowding’ at Auschwitz so they sent to Stutthof instead which – since Auschwitz and Stutthof are at opposite sides of Poland with Stutthof in the far north and Auschwitz in the far south – seems rather odd if Auschwitz was gassing the inhabitants of the Lodz ghetto in Chelmno’s stead as orthodox ‘Holocaust’ history claims, because given the alleged increasing gassing and cremation capacity of Auschwitz at this time it is hard to imagine Auschwitz being so overcrowded that it was over its alleged capacity.
Yet it would make perfect sense if both Auschwitz and Stutthof were just large work camps – they after all were uncontestably this as both were key to the Third Reich’s war effort by 1944 but ‘Holocaust’ historians just add ‘gas chambers’ to both – and Halina’s train was diverted to Stutthof because the latter – which had just acquired a new Focke-Wulf factory – either needed the extra labour or because Auschwitz’s ability to maintain sanitary conditions (the real reason for the famous ‘selections’ on the ramp at the camp) had been exceeded/compromised.
All that said I can find no reference to transports from the Lodz ghetto being transferred to Stutthof instead of Auschwitz. (2) Yet while Strnad’s testimony makes little sense in the orthodox ‘Holocaust’ narrative; it – as I’ve already explained – makes absolutely perfect sense in the revisionist version of the ‘Holocaust’ with large work camps struggling with sanitation and highly contagious diseases in the latter stages of war as well as in desperate need of more jewish workers to help produce sufficient material to support the Third Reich’s war effort at a critical juncture.
Next, we read how:
‘Halina described her life in Stutthof in graphic detail. The conditions in the camp were terrible. There were no bunks in the barracks, only some straw to lie on. The female guards harshly mistreated the inmates, beating them indiscriminately, spitting at them, and calling them “pigs” and Untermenschen (sub-humans), and Strnad’s skull was fractured during one of those beatings. To make matters worse, there were virtually no hygienic facilities and no showers. A latrine outside the barracks, which was merely a pit, was dangerously slippery.
In the midst of all this suffering, a woman who had recently arrived in the camp gave birth to a dead fetus. The inmates had to break a window to get a piece of glass to cut the umbilical cord, and Halina had to drown the baby’s body in the latrine. A few days later, she saw the fetus floating on the water, and had nightmares about the incident for many years later.’ (3)
This is pretty standard in terms of so-called ‘Holocaust survivor’ testimony in it has the German guards – in this case female ones as was allegedly more common in the concentration camps in the west such as Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald – being pointlessly sadistic overlords over the jewish prisoners and beating them horrifically.
Yet in Strnad’s testimony she claims that the female guards actually fractured her skull in a particularly bad beating which is odd because if this were true then Strnad should have had significant symptoms of a fractured skull such as confusion, dizziness and fainting all of which would have – according to Strnad – resulted in an additional beating from said ‘sadistic female German guards’ that would have likely killed her.
Indeed, skull fractures are known to significantly impact work performance for this reason and require significant rest to recover from. So Strnad’s testimony really doesn’t make any sense because had she had a fractured skull then she should have been beaten to death by the ‘sadistic female German guards’ or her work would have become sub-par, and she would have been identified as ‘unfit to work’ and gassed.
When you think about it for a moment rather than just simply accept it as read it doesn’t fit: does it?
However, what would make sense is if Strnad had been given a particular hard clip round the head by a female German guard for some reason – such as laziness, sloppiness and/or talking back to them – and this was subsequently interpreted/remembered by Strnad as a ‘fractured skull’.
Whatever is the case it is pretty certain that – if the rest of Strnad’s account be true – then it contradicts the idea that she had a fractured skull from a particularly sadistic beating from a female German guard.
Strnad next claims that there were ‘virtually no hygienic facilities and no showers’ at Stutthof, but this is untrue since Stutthof and its sub-camps had bath houses as well as latrines. (4) Indeed, we even have photos of the shower room in Stutthof ‘Old Camp’! (5)
I reproduce this below:
So Strnad’s claim that were ‘virtually no hygienic facilities and no showers’ is simply untrue and made up or – to be generous – misremembered.
Strnad also confirms this when she tells us they had a latrine outside the barracks – in other words they did have sanitation facilities – but claims that this was ‘merely a pit’ yet this would render it next to impossible for women to use it at all and men would only have been able to use to urinate.
So therefore, it must have had some kind of toilet structure above it, which makes sense of her next comment that it was ‘dangerously slippery’ as this wouldn’t really make sense without a toilet structure of some kind. Since the worst that would occur in Strnad’s ‘without a toilet’ scenario is that she’d have fallen into an earthen pit filled with urine and faeces and while unpleasant this is unlikely to be fatal.
Where-as if you have a wooden or concentrate toilet structure over said pit and you have a lot of rain (with the resultant mud as well) or snow and ice then slipping is both more likely and going to be more of a problem because when you fall your body and/or head will likely hit a hard surface or even an edge resulting in significant bruising, injury or even possibly death which makes sense of Strnad’s ‘dangerously slippery’ comment.
Next Strnad gives us a pretty farcical story about a woman who arrived at Stutthof and gave birth to a stillborn foetus where the inmates allegedly had to ‘smash a window’ to get a sharp edge to cut the umbilical cord and then they threw the stillborn foetus in the latrine pit.
The problem with this narrative is that it makes little sense since smashing a window would surely have been a punishable offence – after all the Third Reich was in the middle of the deadliest war the world has ever known – and the need for a sharp edge shouldn’t have been only been able to been cut by that method as it is reasonable to suppose they would have had an sharp edge somewhere – for example a razor blade for shaving since camp prisoners didn’t have beards so they must have been shaving somehow and that is only possible with a sharp blade – and it is distinctly odd that they would have thought to smash a window to get such an edge.
Further the necessary question arises about the means of disposal of the stillborn foetus itself which Strnad claims they dumped in the latrine pit. This is odd precisely because the camp authorities were well known to have mass cremation facilities at this point, and it would make far more sense for Strnad to alert the guards (and/or a local Kapo) who then could arrange for the stillborn foetus to be cremated not just dumped to rot in the latrine.
Strnad doesn’t state the logic behind their supposed disposal of the stillborn foetus, and this is probably because she can’t really offer one beyond emotive vagaries about ‘being afraid of the guards’ which while emotionally satisfying for many are not sufficient to explain why she did something to a historian.
Finally, Strnad narrates how:
‘Another traumatic incident was her mother’s death of typhus in the winter of 1944-45. Both she and her mother fell ill and were unconscious, but Halina somehow survived and did everything she could to save her mother. She begged her to hold on, but ultimately she died in Halina’s arms. (Only 20-25 inmates out of hundreds survived the epidemic.) Later she was taken on a death march, and ultimately survived when she fell behind and hid in an abandoned railroad shack, with two other female inmates of the camp. Found by a local German who hid them for several weeks, they managed to survive.’ (6)
This is more reasonable as Strnad’s testimony about a typhus epidemic in 1944 fits with the known events at the camp as well as her claim that ‘hundreds’ died and ‘only 20-25 inmates’ survived (likely meaning in her block or sub-camp) (7) which again fits with the narrative of revisionism, because the mass death at Stutthof according to Strnad wasn’t the camp authorities ‘gassing’ inmates (sick or otherwise), but rather the inmates simply dying of typhus in droves at a time when the German logistical and supply system had all but collapsed.
Her last story of falling behind on a ‘death march’ – a badly named event that actually refers to the forced evacuation of the prisoners from the camp via foot because alternative transport was not available – also is perfectly feasible and the fact that she fell behind and then hid in an abandoned railroad shack makes sense.
Thus, we can see that the general outline of Strnad’s testimony makes sense but when examined closely the details of her testimony are self-contradictory or actually support the revisionist – not the orthodox – version of the ‘Holocaust’.
This is why studying the narratives of ‘Holocaust survivors’ is so vital because in so doing we show that in fact their testimony when examined with a critical eye does not actually support the ‘Holocaust’ theory about the fate of the jews in German-controlled Europe between 1941 and 1945.
References
(1) https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/at-93-a-holocaust-survivors-testimony-still-serves-justice/
(2) See for example: Juliet Golden, 2006, ‘Remembering Chelmno’, p. 189 in Karen Vitelli, Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh (Eds.), 2006, ‘Archaeological Ethics’, 2nd Edition, AltaMira Press: Rocket Creek
(3) https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/at-93-a-holocaust-survivors-testimony-still-serves-justice/
(4) Geoffrey Mergaree, 2009, ‘The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopaedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945’, Vol. 1, 1st Edition, Indiana University Press: Indianapolis, p. 1421
(5) https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/photos/6544317
(6) https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/at-93-a-holocaust-survivors-testimony-still-serves-justice/
(7) https://web.archive.org/web/20160322132425/http://stutthof.org/historia/