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The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
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Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership - JPFO

Excerpts of an interview between Aaron Zelman (1991) founder of JPFO and
WWII concentration camp survivor H. L. Cahn.

Gun Control: Knowing How To Shoot
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A World War II concentration camp inmate's story of surviving attempts
by Nazis to exterminate him and other inmates by stealing guns and using
them in self defense...

[excerpts]

[Initially in Auschwitz, then moved to Dora where the following takes place]

A.  Cont'd....
    When this camp was to be evacuated in early April 1945, this time under
    pressure of the U.S. Army, I had the good fortune to be in the hospital
    and managed to fake sufficient weakness to be left behind.  The 15,000
    detainees, evacuated by the SS, drowned in the Baltic.  Some 900 hospital
    patients stayed in the camp.  After what I had witnessed on the way from
    Auschwitz, I was under no illusion that the Nazis would let us wait
    quietly for the liberation but rather expected imminent execution.

    As soon as the SS were gone, I hastened to the armory, where I discovered
    hundreds of heavily damaged rifles of many types and thousands of rounds
    of ammunition.  By a process of cannibalization, I managed to assemble
    three Carcano carbines and a couple of hundred rounds for each.  Among
    the many ex-soldiers it was not difficult to find a number of volunteers
    prepared to try my plan of defense.

    This "plan" was based on the topography of our camp, situated in a crater-
    like depression, accessible only by a single road from the heavily bombed
    Nordhausen.  When two days later a number of armed characters approached
    on this road, we opened fire, and had the satisfaction to see some fall
    and others flee.  In fact, by force of our arms, we remained alive -
    though weak and hungry - until after a week a U.S. Army patrol informed
    us that the Nazis were gone from that vicinity.

    That the suspicious armed characters intended to murder our 900 sick and
    wounded was proved when U.S. forces discovered the nearby camp of
    Ollerich 90 corpses, all lying in hospital beds and all killed by the
    so-called "Genick-Schuss."  Gasoline and paint had been poured over them
    and ignited, but a heavy rainstorm extinguished the flames.

    Members of the "Vollessturm" later testified that they had been ordered
    to execute all detainees remaining in Dora.  They were, however, received
    at the gate by a storm of fire and had losses.  Most important, the 
    unfamiliar sound of the Italian rifles had given them the impression
    that our camp was already in Allied hands.  Life or death of some 900
    human beings had been decided by three firearms and a handful of people
    who "knew how to handle them."

Q.  What message would you like to share with the American Jewish community
    on the issue of gun ownership?

A.  A month's visit to the States recently gave me the impression that the 
    land of the free is becoming less and less free, certainly in the area
    of firearms ownership.

    How a victimized minority (practically everywhere in the whole world)
    like the Jews can object to have their natural weakness bolstered by
    firearms is beyond me.  Look at Israel, where 4 million Jews had and
    have to use arms to first win independence and eventually, until this
    day, to just survive in a sea of hundreds of millions of enemies.

    My advice to anyone, but particularly to all minorities is to consider
    firearms as an equalizer; as a protector of the few and the physically
    weak from the many and the strong.

    Unfortunately, many Jews are prepared to die on other people's barricades.
    Those who feel like that, should hurry up, before they manage to infect
    the "normal" ones.

    If the history of the U.S.A. in connection with firearms is not enough
    for them, perhaps the history of Israel or rather Palestine before the
    proclamation of the State will convince them that firearms give a chance 
    to survive.  Without them, one is as helpless as we were 50 years ago
    under Nazi rule.

Q.  How do you urge others to learn the skill of shooting?

A.  Guns should be at least as accessible and accepted socially as motor cars.
    As long as polite society places guns on a level with drugs and 
    prostitution, only danger will induce the average citizen-civilian to buy
    them and carry them constantly, discuss them freely and to use them in
    case of desperate necessity.

    People should be made aware that motor cars are much more dangerous tools
    than firearms.  In Israel, it is a recognized fact that traffic accidents
    have killed and maimed more people than enemy action in our unending
    wars!

    It looks to me that American gun owners are fighting a purely defensive
    rearguard action, that they keep withdrawing and that the Second Amendment
    is getting full of holes.  Stop the defense and begin the counter-attack
    by the motto "No GUN control, but GUNNER control!"  And, of course, long
    prison terms for those who abuse gun ownership.

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