Thanks for sharing. I'm reminded of one of the poorly thoug…

Thanks for sharing. I'm reminded of one of the poorly thought out arguments I've commonly heard:

just the existence of so many survivors, especially survivors that survived long stays at the camps, puts into question the idea of the camps as death camps. You will often see memes showing pictures of a pool, sports teams and musical bands at the camps. "How can they be death camps if we have many stories of relatively civil accommodations?" They would say.

It wouldn't surprise me if your grandfather reported treatment more closely approaching a temporary military prison camp.

The truth is these memes and arguments are based on a straw man. Nothing in the mainstream narrative of the camps claims that they were exclusively death camps. According to all mainstream historical literature, they were first and foremost labor and prison camps.

The occupancy of Auschwitz could range from ~100,000 - 150,000 prisoners. The camps were usually at or near capacity. They were after all providing labor that supported the German military effort.

Mainstream holocaust history says that at particular moments in time, the camp infrastructure was leveraged for large scale extermination campaigns. Most of those exterminated were not the standard camp population but, as in the case of Auschwitz, hundreds of thousands of deportees that arrived by train and were immediately put to death.

In my research, I was surprised to learn that a very large proportion of the estimated 1.1 million that died at Auschwitz actually died during the span of 60 days.

In just roughly 2 months, near the end of the war, May - July of 1944, the Hungarian govt coordinated with the Nazis to deport ~450,000 jews straight to Auschwitz. For the vast majority of those 450k, the records end with their arrival at Auschwitz. Based on tons of testimony and physical evidence, it's hard to imagine where else they might have dissappeared to.

The Hungarian deportation of Jews to Auschwitz remains one of the most difficult to deny instances of mass murder in my experience. The documentation of the rail transport and the witness testimony of what happened after they arrived is just too extensive.