Lot 1048

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ARMY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER'S ACCOUNT OF MAIDANEK
A chilling letter by C. Ralph Fletcher, who entered the Army Air Corps in April, 1942 as an intelligence officer, serving in the 94th Bombing Group (Heavy), which raided Axis Europe from RAF bases. After organizing bomb raids for several years, Fletcher was given the unique assignment of a posting to Russia. This rare war-date T.L.S. with superb content, 5pp., 4to., "Somewhere in Russia", Sept. 28, 1945, notes in detail to his wife the conditions at concentration camp Maidanek. Fletcher had shared a room with Bill Lawrence of the New York Times, who had broken the Maidanek and Katyn stories, as well as read accounts in the Moscow papers not available in the U.S., which he now shares. In part: "...1,500,000 people from 21 countries were murdered in cold blood...this was known as the Camp of Extermination, but I prefer to call it a Death Factory...early in 1941 the Germans dug great ditches and the prisoners laid in the bottom of it face down. When they had been shot, another layer laid down on top of them and the process was continued until the trench was filled. After the exposure at Katyn Woods, murder by the firing squad was abandoned and gas was used..." . Fletcher relates gruesome details of daily camp administration, including: "...They were stripped of all clothing and possessions...In 5 days 1200 of all the intellectuals of Greece were slaughtered...There is a carbon copy of a letter to Hitler from the Commandant of the camp stating that on the morning of one day there were 18,600 prisoners in the camp, and at nightfall, there were only 600 left, proving the efficiency...they worked feverishly to build five ovens generating a heat of 1200 degrees c...". Fletcher even describes the process of death selection amongst the Nazi guards: "...A real death factory was set up. The prisoners came into one large building...they were diverted to work in the camp with practically no food...the pretty girls were given a short reprieve to serve in capacities which might be expected. One who refused was taken to the furnaces and shoved in alive...the run of the mill prisoner removed his clothing...to go into a hot shower. Here the pores were opened...the next room held 1300 people at a time, and was the gas chamber...from here they were put on tables and examined for gold in their teeth...from here they were loaded like cord wood on long flat trailers and taken to the furnaces...the bones were removed and crushed by the prisoners in a bone mill. This was mixed with dung, canned and shipped to the fatherland. This fertilizer sold for 2500 Reichmarks per ton..." . Fletcher's final note on Maidanek is perhaps the most representative: "...Lawrence visited the four storey warehouse in Lublin where the clothing and valuables were sorted...there were literally thousands and thousands of shoes...thousands of children's toys, pencil boxes, dolls...bills of laden in the warehouse showed that these items were sent by the trainload to German cities. One letter forbids the manager of the warehouse from sending out any blood stained clothing as the German people object to it...one eye witness in Lublin reported that on one day he saw 52 truckloads of children between the ages of 2 and 6 being taken into the death camp. They never came out...". A horrific but important contemporary account of Nazi atrocities, in fine condition.

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May 14, 2009 10:00 AM EDT
Stamford, CT, US

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