Alligator Alcatraz, the New “Model” MAGA Concentration Camp

Trump, DeSantis, and Noem laughing at Alligator Alcatraz

Yesterday Gauleiter Ron DeSantis gave Der Führer, Donald Trump, and Reichsführerin Kristi Noem a tour of his hastily built Alligator Alcatraz Concentration Camp. The camp was built with FEMA funding but will be run by the State of Florida. The first prisoners arrive tomorrow morning. The camp will initially hold up to 5,000 people in horrific conditions. They will be held in cages inside large tents in the oppressive heat and humidity of the Everglades coupled with the torrential downpour of tropical rainstorms, and yes, by the way Tropical Storms and Hurricanes. Of course, there are also the alligators, pythons, and swarms of mosquitoes which are vectors for all sorts of diseases including malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, and encephalitis. All of these, plus the basic health needs of the prisoners will overwhelm the rudimentary medical clinic that will provide them with medical care. But then the guards and staff will all be vaccinated against them and have access to medical care outside the facility.

Trump has promised that many more camps will be built. While no others will be in the Everglades, it is sure that most will be in equally inhospitable places.

Let us remind ourselves of what a Concentration Camp is, which is far different from a normal prison, a Prisoner of War camp, or a temporary detention facility. The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term in this manner:

1. A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable.

2. A place or situation in which extremely harsh conditions are imposed by those in authority.

These two definitions encapsulate what the new camp and those to follow it are. However, a better definition in found in the Encyclopedia Brittanica:

“concentration camp, internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and without benefit either of indictment or fair trial. Concentration camps are to be distinguished from prisons interning persons lawfully convicted of civil crimes and from prisoner-of-war camps in which captured military personnel are held under the laws of war. They are also to be distinguished from refugee camps or detention and relocation centres for the temporary accommodation of large numbers of displaced persons.”

The British used them in the Boer War, Imperial Germany used them in their genocidal campaign against the Herero in their colony of German Southwest Africa, today’s Namibia. Of course the term is most known through the Nazi use of such camps, which should not be confused with the killing centers located in German occupied Poland, or labor camps where people were simply worked to death. Auschwitz was a hybrid camp which served as a labor camp for German industry, as well as a killing center of unmatched efficiency. Those doing labor only remained alive so long as they could work, and when they couldn’t, they too were exterminated.

But, since Alligator Alcatraz is the first of its kind, we should look to Dachau, the first and “model” Concentration Camp.

I first visited Dachau in November, 1996. I took the train from Würzburg, and arrived in the late morning. The weather was cloudy and cold with temperatures hovering a bit above freezing. The cold penetrated through my clothes as I walked through the streets of Dachau to the camp. On my way I stopped at a Gasthaus for coffee and a Brötchen to warm up. I think that the weather was perfect for such a visit. I think that one should experience the elements that people were exposed to when visiting such a place. It helps to make a greater impression. The same is true of battlefields. One should not learn about history which seated comfortably and enjoying a beverage.

Dachau in 1933. Prisoners laboring to build camp facilities

On March 20th 1933, barely a month and a half after the Nazi takeover of the German government and three days before the passage of the Enabling Act the Police President Of Munich, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler ordered the establishment of the Dachau Concentration Camp. He appointed SS Standartenführer Hilmar Wäckerle as Commandant and the first 200 political prisoners from Munich’s Stadelheim prison arrived at Dachau on March 22nd.

The Nazis did publicize Dachau, especially in Bavaria, but most of the coverage was devoted to its efficiency and benefits, showing relatively fit prisoners. People did know, but unless they knew a guard or other staff member didn’t know most of the details. They only knew that people they hated were being punished. The cruelty and violence of the camp was not discussed openly, nor would it be. However, unlike Trump’s White House the Nazis didn’t publicize their cruelty and turn it into propaganda as the White House did.

Wäckerle’s brief tenure as Commandant was marked by extraordinary brutality on the part of his staff, so much so that charges were brought against him by the Munich courts which resulted in his relief by SS Gruppenführer Theodore Eicke in July 1933. Eicke would establish the regulations which governed all the later Concentration Camps, and make Dachau the model camp for all others. Eicke was cruel, but judicious in how he used cruelty against the prisoners, since many would be released after the Nazis consolidated power.

Among the later SS killers of the Holocaust who served at Dachau were Adolf Eichmann, and the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rüdolf Höss. It became a training ground for other Concentration Camp commanders and staff. Those selected for Concentration Camp duty became part of the Tötenkopf Verbande, or Death’s Head units. During the war many of these men were transferred to form the 3rd SS Panzer Division, under the command of Theodore Eiche. Others would become leaders in the Waffen SS and the Einsatzgruppen death squads. As the war progressed and casualties mounted, many of these men guards were men unfit for service on the front.

Like the yesterday’s announcement, the Nazis announcement of Dachau’s Opening was reported by the German press. However, no senior Nazi officials were at its opening. The press release said:

On Wednesday the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5000 people. ‘All Communists and—where necessary—Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated here, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons, and on the other hand these people cannot be released because attempts have shown that they persist in their efforts to agitate and organize as soon as they are released.

The order was unprecedented, for Dachau operated extrajudicially, not as an organ of the State, but as an organ of the Nazi Party. Many of the prisoners had been tried and acquitted in the German Court system, but the Gestapo was waiting for them when they left the court or the prisons where they were being held and transported to Dachau or other Concentration Camps without having been tried, sentenced, or given a sentence that indicated how long they would be incarcerated.

The new camps may receive Federal funding, and run by States or private prison corporations, but they will be extrajudicial camps as was Dachau and the other Nazi camps in Germany.

Dachau prisoners in 1933

Dachau began as a political prisoner camp for the Nazis to imprison Socialists, Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, some Jews, and other dissidents. It wasn’t a “death camp” designed to exterminate people even though tens of thousands of people died or were executed there. The same was true about Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, and Flossenburg. Dachau was designed to terrorize, dehumanize, and destroy the souls of its inmates.

Dachau was a place of terror, and the administrative center of a network of over 30 large and 100 small sub-Camps which were used as sources of slave labor for the German armaments industry. As the war broke out and continued, the SS rented prisoners to German industrial giants, many with plants in the Munich area, all for profit. We should not be surprised if the prisoners are eventually used for forced labor.

This was because the SS was not simply an instrument of terror, but an institution devoted to profit. Prisoners were valued in what their lives equated in profits. A prisoner was valued in what he or her could produce versus the expenses of keeping them alive for a period of 6 to 12 months. Under Himmler and his assistant for production and profits, Obergrüppenfuhrer Oswald Pöhl the Concentration Camps, as well as the death camps became centers of profit for the SS in collaboration with German industrial concerns and industries owned by the SS itself.

Dachau prisoners in a weapons factory near Munich

There were many other crimes against humanity committed at Dachau, and it provided the commanders to other camps including Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss ran a hybrid camp, part regular Concentration Camp and labor camp, with connections to SS run or private industrial corporations, and served as a camp where Medical experiments were conducted by SS Doctor Josef Mengele. It was also a death camp at which over a million people, primarily Jews, were exterminated in gas chambers that could accommodate up to 2,000 people in one operation. When asked about the operations at Auschwitz Höss, who had been called by the Defense at Nuremberg to give Earnest Kaltenbrunner an alibi for not visiting Auschwitz, was cross examined by the prosecution. His answers were damning, not only to him but to the entire Concentration Camp system stated:

“when I was appointed Commandant of Auschwitz. I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease making a total dead of about 3,000,000. This figure represents about 70 or 80 percent of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries; included among the executed and burned were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of prisoner-of-war cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder of the total number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews, and great Numbers of citizens, mostly Jewish, from Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944…

The ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time, there were already in the General Government three other extermination camps: Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek. These camps were under the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD. I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations. The camp commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of onehalf year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used monoxide gas, and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Zyklon B. which was a crystallized prussic acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about onehalf hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special Kommandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses…

Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chamber to accomodate 2,000 people at one time whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each. The way we selected our victims was as follows: We had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under the clothes, but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated…”

Höss had learned well at Dachau. He learned to follow his orders without question, and likewise was willing to speak of his crimes in open court.

In September 2020 President Trump suggested that he agreed with extrajudicial killings by police or others. In June 2020 he wanted Secretary of Defense Esper, and General Mark Milley to open fire on Black Lives Matter protesters in Lafayette Park outside the White House, thankfully both refused to give the order. Since his return to power he has frequently signed “Executive Orders” which defy our laws and Constitution which will lead to many deaths, in the United States and around the world. Sadly, despite push backs by Federal Courts, the Supreme Court has often delayed or overturned their injunctions. This culminated last week in Trump v. CASA they ruled that lower courts could not issue nationwide injunctions against Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions.

With Trump and his contemptible and criminal Regime in power and a subservient Congress and Supreme Court, there is no end to the evil the Regime can do, unless we impede their actions in every legal way possible. Unlike the Germans of 1933, the Trump Regime has telegraphed its plans before the whole world. While in time, few Germans could ever honestly say that they had no idea of the Nazi’s crimes, as in the beginning the Nazis were much more discreet than Trump’s Regime. Americans will never have the excuse that they didn’t know what was happening. ICE is grabbing people off the streets, from courthouses, from schools, and businesses, and quite often their actions are caught on video or film.

Never forget the words of Yehuda Bauer:

“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans.

So, though I have much more that I want to write, I must end for tonight. Until tomorrow, resist and watch your six.