© Jacek Nadolny
"Everyone sat in their homes in silence, windows shut as tightly as possible," she said.
The 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, to be attended by world leaders and survivors, raises painful questions for residents of Oswiecim where Nazi occupiers created one of the most relentless extermination machines in history, claiming the lives of an estimated 1.5 million people.
How did their parents go about their daily business when such inhumanity was taking place just the other side of a barbed wire fence? How much did they know of what was going on?
"Of course people knew what was going on," said Bogumila, who lived through the occupation as a child.
The mass extermination of prisoners and the incineration of thousands of bodies, she said, were no secret. Some describe having to live with the stench from bodies being incinerated at Auschwitz, but keeping quiet to survive.
"Every now and then, my mum and I would walk toward the camp, and see the disgusting glow on the horizon," she said.
But during the war, survival was uppermost in the minds of most of the town's population. The occupation was brutal.
While some local people recall residents bravely sheltering Jews in their homes, others speak of Jews betrayed to the Nazis by their neighbors.
"Most of them did nothing, because they were scared," said Bogumila.
Bogumila was one of four women, meeting in a cafe in Oswiecim this month, sharing memories of growing up in Oswiecim at the time and of what their parents told them about it.
They declined to give their family names, fearing that by speaking candidly they would anger other people in the town who prefer not to dwell on their wartime past.
Between 1940 and 1945, Auschwitz developed into a vast complex of barracks, workshops, gas chambers and crematoria.
PROTECTION, BETRAYAL
Despite extremely strict laws against those aiding Jews in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany, some Poles still risked their lives trying to help.
Today, Poland boasts the highest number of rescuers who were granted the Righteous Among the Nations title by the Israeli Holocaust research institute Yad Vashem, with 6,454 Poles officially recognized for their efforts to save Jews.
"My aunt was hiding a Jewish girl in her house in Oswiecim during the war," said Wanda, a retired hairdresser.
But with Jews making up around 10 percent of the country's pre-war population, anti-Semitism was also rife among Poles.
The Jewish girl whom Wanda's aunt was trying to protect was captured and killed after two young Polish women spotted her in the street and pointed her out to German soldiers, Wanda said.
Some also tried to benefit from the situation financially, either by trading information to the Germans, or by blackmailing Jews in hiding. This was punished by death by the Polish underground.
Some Poles also benefited from the death of Jewish countrymen by acquiring their property. Joanna, a retired accountant born shortly after the war, grew up hearing tales of people digging around the camps after 1945, searching for gold.
"We know people who got rich, who made the money they have today from it," said Ewa, a Polish woman of Jewish descent, who was two years old when the war ended.
Born in Oswiecim to a Jewish mother and a Polish father, she decided to stay in her hometown after the war. Today, she says she is one of the very few Jews remaining there.
"Mum was kept in the camp for three months," Ewa said. "She was smuggled out for money, hidden under a cart full of beans."
"She only survived thanks to a Volksdeutcher, who was paid off by my father," she said, referring a group of people considered ethnically German by the Third Reich.
"He worked closely with the Germans, so he would come to my father and say: make her disappear for two weeks."
"How many he sent to the camp - that I don't know. But I know he helped my mum. That he did it for money? Tough. Back then this was something you had to pay for."
Seven decades on, Oswiecim is trying to put the bleak past behind it, a giant "City of Peace" banner displayed next to the main railway hub, which once saw hundreds of thousands transported in cattle wagons into the camp's gas chambers.
Oswiecim's residents are also trying to move on. "Subconsciously, all of that is still with me," said Ewa. "But I never talk about it. Best to draw a veil of silence over it."
How many 'holocaust' memorial 'holidays' are there, anyway? I'm losing count. Too many to 'remember', I'm afraid.
But please understand well that they are absolutely critical to continuing to squeeze every ounce of 'goyim guilt' from an event that actually killed far more Slavs and Gypsies, both in total and in percentage, than Jews. But hey, who's counting, right?
Indeed, when it comes to shamelessly promoting Tribal interests, the zionist-controlled MSM never misses an opportunity to remind the world of the great debt that is still (and will ALWAYS be) owed to The Tribe for that nasty old Holocaust, and once again completely ignoring the suffering of the Slavs and the Gypsies (and most especially ignoring that pesky Armenian holocaust circa WWI, which might also compete for those oh-so-scarce 'holocaust dollars'.) There was no mention of the Slavs or Gypsies or their suffering in the Yahoo article above, was there? Nope, not a single word. Auschwitz was just another, 'jews only' Holocaust affair, as usual. Nobody else matters, or even exists in that totally Tribally-centric view. They are simply ignored, or at the very most, classed as a single group by the clearly dismissive term "others', not even deserving of specific mention or attention.
Think I'm kidding? Check out this direct quote from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ("USHMM"):
"The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II." (See Wikipedia, "Holocaust Victims", second full paragraph.)
Yep, millions of innocents suffering and dying are simply and glibly relegated to the anonymous category of "others".
And by making their suffering anonymous, they eventually become forgotten, and THAT leaves the whole juicy cash-cow Holocaust pie to Tribal elites to slice up amongst themselves, sharing none with these non-descript, utterly unimportant "others".
As the great Norman Finklestein pointed out so perfectly in his book, "The Holocaust Industry", the Holocaust is a never-ending billions-a-year cash cow for the Tribal elites who, he claims, never really share the billions with the actual survivors of places like Auschwitz, but instead use the vast majority of cash generated on lavish salaries for these Holocaust industry 'leaders' and to build even MORE 'Holocaust Museums' all around the world to endlessly promote the message to "Never Forget" jewish-only suffering, so as to really ramp up the revenue generating guilt and anger that only the Holocaust can rake in! Like a cancer cell, the Holocaust industry never dies, but instead just grows and spreads further into its hosts.
Talk about the most cynical of situations! According to Finklestein, these Holocaust 'leaders' are simply (anxiously?) waiting for the last actual Holocaust survivor to die, so the charade can be dropped, and the cash cow be refashioned into an eternally productive 'Holocaust Golden Cow' that never, ever dies, but instead keeps the well-oiled financial wheels of international 'responsibility' and collectively-induced sorrow at 'jewish-only' suffering powering their "Holocaust, Inc" money-making machine at full throttle indefinitely.
Yes, the new "Holocaust Approved" edition of the famed 'Golden Calf', er, I mean, "Golden Cow", is slated to continually produce an ever-expanding income base for these 'goyim guilt' pushers to cash in on and milk forever and ever, amen.
And as the "Holocaust Industry" is truly BIG business, the leaders of these various Holocaust groups and organizations need (and richly deserve, of course) REALLY BIG SALARIES, too! Quite an 'industry' here going on, no doubt!
Yet somehow, according to Finklestein, the actual Holocaust survivors, see precious little, if any, of the billions collected through the Holocaust Industry's incessant shake-downs and fund-raising appeals world-wide. Imagine that!
Being of combined Jewish, Slavic and Gypsy (Roma) descent myself, I find this situation absolutely nauseating and utterly intolerable. Two thirds of my ancestor's suffering are to be wholly ignored by the Western media, while the Jewish one third gets all the attention and sympathy (and money, but only for the elites)?
Beyond being wildly hypocritical and highly unethical, it smacks of fraud, this hiding and minimizing the suffering of others to the point of effective total exclusion, just to monopolize the funds derived therefrom (and then to allegedly not even share any with your OWN actual Holocaust survivors!) This is utter greed gone absolutely and cruelly psychopathic.
But worst of all, it literally re-writes the world's collective consciousness of recent history, just as in Orwell's "1984". The suffering and murder of many millions of Slavs and Gypsies is essentially ignored, as if it never actually happened. And all to benefit a small cabal of Tribal elites with Holocaust mega-bucks on their minds.
Now, THAT'S Tribal power!
Sound familiar?
(Why am I not surprised in the least...... ? )
The Holocaust was a horror beyond imagining directed at hapless peoples all across Europe, which included Jews, Slavs, Roma, Gays, Lesbians, the mentally and physically-challenged, and whatever category of 'untermensches' these evil Nazi scum decided to terrorize that day.
No one group deserves priority or exclusive drawing rights on the Holocaust trademark. It was truly a crime against humanity, and need always to be remembered as such, and NOT as a 'Jews Only" affair, despite the profit potential for a few well-placed Tribal members trying to cash in on one of the most horrific and tragic events in human history.