kongx

(From the book, "KZ Buchenwald" 1937-1945: Das SS-Konzentrations-Lager bei Weimar in Thüringen [Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937-1945: The SS Concentration Camp near Weimar in Thüringen], published by the Imprimerie St. Paul, Luxembourg, 1985, with the participation of the Comité Buchenwald, Luxembourg.)

The first photograph shows Dr. Albert Kongs of Luxembourg on the day of his release from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. The second photograph shows him appearing at a ceremonial reception hosted by Mayor Diderich of Luxembourg in honour of returning inmates (“We're Home Again: Reception at the Mayor's Office of the City of Luxembourg by Mayor Diderich …”) on April 30, 1945. Dr. Albert Kongs apparently went on a crash diet, losing well over twenty pounds in less than three weeks, for the sole purpose of looking as haggard as possible, with an air of great suffering and gratuitous lies; even the smile has disappeared. The caption directly beneath the first photograph claims that he escaped "certain death" by switching name tags on a corpse, after which the Germans were stupid enough to cremate somebody else thinking it was the overweight Dr. Kongs of Luxembourg [!][?].

(Click twice on images for largest size - first two enlarge with difficulty; you may have to click several times)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Healthy, well-fed inmates, including children, leaving Buchenwald.

ENLARGEMENT:

Frontspiece of the book from which the photos are derived, with the usual "living skeleton" propaganda picture.

References.

(Click twice on images for largest size)

In publishing these photographs, perhaps I should stress once again that my motivation for doing so is a love of truth. I have nothing against former concentration camp inmates, many of whom I believe to have been decent people; but they weren't the only people who were having a hard time. Nobody was dropping phosphorous or jellied gasoline on them (except when the Americans bombed them at the end of the war, more or less by accident, as at Nordhausen, April 4, 1945; see my article NATIONAL ARCHIVES HEAD FAKES CAPTIONS TO HOAXOCO$T POSTER EXHIBIT, last photo; the deaths, caused directly or indirectly by Allied bombings, were, and are, simply blamed on the Germans). I think that is an unjustice.

Most of these deaths could have been avoided had the Americans permitted conditional surrender, or obeyed international law.

CARLOS W. PORTER
AUGUST 10, 2004