Kevin Williamson, a right wing propagandist for National Review, claims Bernie Sanders is a Nazi. Really.
I think it's time we took Mr. Williamson and the rest of that bunch on a virtual tour of Konzentrationslager Mauthausen, with none other than Hank Himmler, known to Hitler as der treue Heinrich (rough translation: "jus' a good ol' boy") as a tour guide.
You can be the judge -- is Bernie Sanders really a Nazi -- or is Kevin Williamson another cheap-ass Holocaust denier/minimizer along the lines of David Irving?
Mauthausen concentration camp was located about 10 miles east of the Austrian city of Linz, Hitler's adopted home town, on the north side of the Danube river. It was run by the arch-Nazi organization called the SS, run by Himmler since before the Nazi takeover. There is a remarkable collection of images available at Wiki Commons which show Himmler and his staff visiting Mauthausen camp and quarry, on at least two occasions, once in April 1941, and another time in June 1941
Unlike Hitler, who never so far as can be determined ever came near a concentration camp, Himmler toured a number of them. The SS plan was to exterminate, via forced labor various minorities, disfavored groups, and conquered nations, through the construction of the physical plant of a state within a state, or perhaps more accurately an international racist organization.
Image 1: Leading Nazis tour Mauthausen, April 1941. Himmler intended Mauthausen to be a castle-like headquarters for the SS. The construction of the citadel employed the slave labor of thousands of persons incarcerated at Mauthausen, which, although it was not purely a killing center such as Treblinka, was still well capable of working or starving prisoners to death.Mauthausen was located near an existing commercial quarry, and the SS profited from leasing out slave labor to the construction firms which worked the quarry. An access road was built from the main camp down to the edge of the quarry, where access to the quarry floor was made by a set of 186 rough-hewn granite steps.
Prisoners were forced to carry large blocks of stone up the steps, and if they fell, which was common, they would kill or seriously injure themselves and others on the steps, which became as the “stairs of death”.
Image 1 is a photograph originally taken at Mauthausen by an SS photographer, probably someone on Himmler’s staff, and probably showing the April 1941 visit.
This shows, on the road leading down to the quarry, in the front (left to right), four leading Nazis, all war criminals and Holocaust perpetrators: Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Franz Ziereis (Mauthausen camp commandant), Himmler, and August Eigruber, wearing the black SS uniform, a wannabe Hitler who like many of his fellow toadies aped the Hitler upper lip decoration.
All four would die inglorious deaths, Kaltenbrunner and Eigruber by hanging, Himmler by suicide to avoid the same fate.
Ziereis, a particularly odious creep, would be "shot while trying to escape" and following his death, his naked body hung on the camp's barbed wire, with swastikas painted on the buttocks.
Does one see an elderly Jewish socialist among these skunks? I don't think so. But let's be clear: these are the people with whom Kevin Williamson ranks Bernie Sanders.