Category Archives: Life & Death

EXAMINING THE EPITOME OF EVIL — MY INTERVIEW WITH REICHSFUHRER-SS, HEINRICH HIMMLER

Heinrich Himmler was second in command of Nazi Germany’s Third Reich, subservient only to the Fuhrer himself—Adolf Hitler. Himmler rose in power from a simple chicken farmer to become head of the Schutzstaffel—the dreaded black-shirted SS—and also chief architect of the Holocaust, responsible for the deaths of millions of people. The exact numbers will never be known, but it’s historically correct to say Himmler was one of history’s most prolific mass murderers.

Recently, a news article reported a collection of occult books from the Nazi regime being discovered in a Czech Republic warehouse. This revived the decades-old speculation that the Nazis, and specifically Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, were obsessed with the occult and pursued black magic in their thirst for power.

Was this true? Or is it just one of many conspiracy theories that refuse to go away? To better understand Nazi interest in forces unknown, I tapped into historical records and got a fascinating look at Himmler’s motivation and mindset through the documented words of a truly evil man.

Here’s my internet-influenced interview with Heinrich Himmler.

Herr Himmler, is there any truth the Nazi regime, and you specifically, held a fascination with the occult and used it to aid your military and political goals?

The answer to that is “no” and “yes”. Yes, in that we investigated all sorts of myths, legends, and avenues of history in the pursuit of understanding our Aryan archeological and anthropological heritage. No, in that none of the core people within the National Socialism movement actually believed in witchcraft, spells, or any sort of black magical forces. I, myself, was the exception.

Please elaborate.

First, you must understand my background and how I rose to such height of position. I was born to a strict but well-educated Catholic Aryan family and had an intense interest in military service. I was too young to serve in World War One, however my brother was a decorated soldier who I both admired and felt jealousy of. I studied agronomy in a Munich Institute during the interwar time and became introduced to my Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, who was organizing the National Socialist Party.

After the failed Beer Hall Putsch where my Fuhrer and others were jailed, I continued organizing the movement and became focused on the Jewish question as it was obvious, as my Fuhrer correctly identified, the Jews are a sub-human race and responsible for much of the hardship endured by the Germanic people—the true ones being of Aryan descent. Once my Fuhrer gained complete control of power—this would have been 1933—I was tasked to develop an elite force of genetically pure men to protect my Fuhrer’s internal security and to provide guardianship over racial purity for strengthening German ethnic stock in a Reich that was to last a thousand years.

One of the challenges in organizing such a force was to instill absolute loyalty and obedience in each man. Part of that was indoctrinating a sense of inherent pride in their Aryan roots and to establish a true map of their genetic history. Just as a tree withers if its roots are removed, so a people fail if they do not honor their ancestors.

To do this I founded an institute known as the Ahnenerbe to research the archeological and cultural history of the Aryan race. Part of the mission was to find new evidence of the racial heritage of the Germanic people and one of the avenues we followed was the folklore of occult tales.

As we investigated these stories, we found they belonged to specific undesirable groups like the Jews, the Gypsies, the Freemasons—I could go on, but what these groups had in common were being cults who organized for purposes not in alignment with Nazi interests. In fact, they were deemed to be threats to internal security and, therefore, it was necessary to know as much about their operations as possible.

This required more investigation into this so-called occult and, as we progressed, I took a particular interest in how their techniques could be used to my advantage in forging the mindset of my people within the Schutzstaffel and for the entire Aryan people. I would say that over the years, the intent and purpose of the general Nazi interest in the occult has been misunderstood and somewhat blown out of proportion.

Sounds like it was a handy tool, both external and internal.

Yes. Precisely. The mystique of the occult was another weapon in our arsenal.

It’s been recorded that Adolf Hitler claims to have had a personal experience with the paranormal. In fact, he documented this in his book “Mein Kampf”.

Yes, as my Fuhrer was recovering from a gas attack which temporarily blinded him in World War One, he experienced what he described as a “vision from another world”. This entity instructed my Fuhrer “to perform an act of creation, a divine operation, the goal of a biological mutation which will result in an unprecedented exaltation of the human race and the appearance of a new race of heroes, demi-gods, and god-men”. I believe it was my destiny to assist in this vision.

Hmmm. You speak of loyalty and obedience. How did that apply to your relationship with Hitler?

The motto of the SS was “My Honor Is Loyalty”. They are cardinal virtues and every SS-man swore an oath of obedience to our Fuhrer until death. I was tasked with being the praetorian guard, always at my Fuhrer’s service and unswervingly loyal to him. The Fuhrer was always right, whether the subject was evening dress, bunkers, or the Reich motorways.

So how far would you have gone to serve Hitler?

Let me put it as this. If my Fuhrer were to tell me to shoot my mother, I would do it and be proud of my Fuhrer’s confidence.

Harsh. How did you instill this in the average SS soldier?

I will quote from my speech to the SS Group Leaders in October 1943.

“It is absolutely wrong to project your own harmless soul with its deep feelings, our kind-heartedness, our idealism, upon alien peoples. Our principle must be absolute for the SS man: We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to no one else. What happens to the Jews, what happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs, is a matter of utter indifference to me. Such good blood of our own kind as there may be among the nations we shall acquire for ourselves, if necessary by taking their children away and bringing them up to serve us. Whether other inferior peoples live in comfort or perish in hunger interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; apart from that it does not interest me. Whether or not ten thousand Russian women collapse from exhaustion while digging a tank ditch interests me only in so far as the tank ditch is completed for Germany. We shall never be rough or heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also adopt a decent attitude toward these human animals, but it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and to bring them ideals”.

Okay. How did this mindset result in the Holocaust?

Your use of the word “Holocaust” is foreign to me. If you are referring to the Final Solution, then you must know this was a natural progression from the truth in Nazi ideology that the Aryan race is the master race and this has been guaranteed by human genetics. It stands that in order to progress, a culture must have unconditional liberation from the old social world of caste, class, and family and must proclaim its own law as springing unconditionally from the mere fact of belonging to a new community. To expand, we had to organize Europe economically and politically on a basis that would destroy all pre-existing boundaries with the New Order in the background. The extermination, not the expulsion, of the Jews was the proper solution to removing them from the lands necessary for Aryan expansion and to eliminate them as a threat to our Order.

Just who was responsible for developing the Final Solution?

I was tasked by my Fuhrer to implement an efficient plan to exterminate the estimated ten million Jews and other undesirables such as Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political opponents, asocials, homosexuals, the mentally retarded, the recidivist convicts and incorrigible criminals who were of no use to our plan. The idea of mass extermination by way of Zyklon B gas occurred one day when I was witnessing an execution of several hundred condemned by the method of firearm. I observed inefficiency as well as possible psychological effects on the shooters from carrying out prolonged executions, not to say the time effects from individual terminations and grave burials. There was a need to carry the pace significantly faster and it occurred that mass-gassing and then incinerating on a production line scale would be much more efficient and effective. A rampant expansion of the killing was necessary. The Schutzstaffel, already under my control and command, was the proper vehicle for which to accomplish this, yet maintain secrecy.

Right. How were you able to “control and command” the SS.

You must take into account that we had systematically selected and conditioned these men for an eight-year period. They were of the highest discipline and instilled with the highest values of service. For example, here is a record of how I instructed them to act during the Final Solution.

“The wealth which they (the Jews) had, we have taken it for the betterment of our State. But we, ourselves, have taken none of it. SS individuals who have offended against this principle will be punished according to an order which I issued at the beginning and which threatens: He who takes so much as a mark shall die. A certain number of SS men—not very many—will disobey this order and they will die, without mercy. We have the moral right, we have the duty to our people, to kill these undesirable peoples. But we have no right to enrich our personal selves by so much as a fur, a watch, or a cigarette, or anything else. I shall never stand by and watch the slightest rot develop or establish itself here. By and large, however, we can say that we have performed this task in love of our people. And we suffered no damage from it in our inner self, in our soul, in our character.”

Now I realize the SS was an elite unit with rigorous mental training to withstand carrying out the Holocaust, but how was this applied to the average German soldier who had to round up and deliver the prisoners?

Exactly the same thing happened at forty degrees below zero in Poland when we had to carry off thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands when we had to be so hard—as to shoot thousands of leading Poles. When we had to be so hard, because otherwise vengeance would have fallen on us later. It is a great deal easier in many cases to go with a seasoned company into battle than to operate with an inexperienced company in some region suppressing a rebellious population at a low level of culture, carrying out executions, transporting people away, taking away howling and weeping women.

I’m going to put you on the spot. There were unspeakable experiments done to concentration camp prisoners. How in the world do you justify that?

Simply, I am a patron of science.

Truly enlightening. Some within your own party are on record describing you as a crackpot with a fascination in the occult and impractical projects to further your personal ambitions as being Hitler’s successor.

To the contrary. My strength lay in being an exceptionally capable organizer with a keen sense of selecting the right people and being able to properly motivate and reward them. I had a burning desire to serve my country, my race, and my Fuhrer. Moreover, I understood my SS men and knew how to secure their loyalty to myself, my Fuhrer, and to the rightful cause which was the movement of the Reich to secure its rightful place in the domination of Europe. Next to my Fuhrer, there was no one more capable of achieving this but myself.

Changing focus—what was the turning point in the Second World War? When did the tide switch when you Nazis were on such a roll?

The Battle of Britain. Had we aggressed a few more days, we would have destroyed the Royal Air Force and that would have taken the Commonwealth out of the war. They would have sued for peace and therefore the Americans would not have joined the European Theater. This was solely Goering’s fault. Hermann Goering. Goering poorly advised my Fuhrer while he pursued his own lavish and to that end Goering was responsible for treachery against the Reich and he was the triggering factor in the irreversible downfall of the Reich and the furtherment of the Germanic racial cause. Goering. Lucifer Goering was the Reich and my Fuhrer’s equivalent of the anti-Christ.

Looking back, what do you make of Adolf Hitler’s mental state?

Toward the end of the war, he was a tired and stressed man who was abandoned by many who he served. He was not well. But my Fuhrer rose up out of our deepest need when the German people had come to a dead end. He was one of those brilliant figures which always appear in the Germanic world when it has reached a final crisis in body, mind, and soul. Gothe was one such figure in the intellectual sphere, Bismark in the political—my Fuhrer in the political, cultural, and military combined. It was ordained by the Karma of the Germanic world that he should wage war against the east and save the Germanic peoples—a figure of the greatest brilliance was incarnate in his person.

Seventy years of history would argue that point.

History views in different ways, in different times, in different peoples. With great solemnity and effect, it is clear to me that my Fuhrer is a person who men will regard in centuries to come with the same reverence that they accord to Christ.

Herr Himmler, your military actions are certainly at odds with your Christain upbringing.

I dismissed Christain doctrine once I became aware the Supreme Deity had chosen the German people to rule the world and to achieve this was impossible by loving one’s enemy or turning the other cheek. The teachings of Christ are for the weak with no stomach to ensure the rightful survival of their sub-species. Aryan people are genetically proven to be the strongest sub-species and, to this cause, I dedicated my life to the service of my people and to my Fuhrer. I apologize to no one. Heil Hitler!

THE CREEPY CASE OF THE FLOATING FEET

Since 2007, sixteen shoes containing severed human feet have washed up on the shores near the mouth of British Columbia’s Fraser River which supplies freshwater to the tidal Pacific Ocean at the Canadian Strait of Georgia and Washington State’s Puget Sound. Curiously, the majority of the found flotsam-footwear are large, men’s runners holding a disarticulated right foot.

The story quickly gained international attention and refuses to go away. Just last month (February 2016) two more New Balance sneakers with their feet ran aground at Botanical Beach on Vancouver Island. Public speculation has stepped-up—not surprisingly given that, historically, the Pacific Northwest has the largest number of prolific serial killers per capita in the world.

The Northwest Noir is home to Ted Bundy—the College Dorm Slayer, Gary Ridgway—the Green River Killer, Robert Pickton—the notorious Pig Farmer, Clifford Olson—the Beast of BC, Harvey Carignan—the Want-Ad Murderer, Robert Silveria—the Box-Car Killer, Gilbert Jordan—the Boozing Barber, and at least one currently active serial killer who’s terrorizing the Highway of Tears.

Could it be there’s another homicidal maniac on the loose—one with a fiendish foot-fetish? Someone who’s cutting off his victim’s feet and chucking them in the ocean? Possibly the Reebok Ripper at work?

Or is it more likely just as the authorities say—all the feet belong to suicide victims—jumpers from any one of more than thirty-two bridges in the Vancouver area?

Looking at the case facts that are readily available from the police and coroner websites, ten of the feet have been identified through DNA to individuals who were suspected of taking their own life. Six of the shoes belonged to three different people and eleven of the sixteen feet detached themselves from the right leg at the ankle.

The police and coroner departments are clear there are no striation marks on the bones to suggest any mechanical manipulation by way of severing the feet with a knife, ax, or saw. The forensic specialists assure the appendages appear entirely consistent with disarticulating, or pulling away, from a body that’s been submerged in water and undergoing a natural decomposition process that’s slowed due to the cold waters of the Fraser and the Pacific.

Nothing to see here, folks, they say.

Well, hang on a minute. I’m a curious old cop and coroner. This flotsam-foot thing is something you don’t see every day. Why is this foot phenomenon unique to the region? Why did it recently start to occur? And why are so many feet from the right? I decided to tread into this with an open mind—and the help of acquaintances from my forensic days.

Foot Distribution Map

Dr. Gail Anderson is the Professor of Entomology at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University. She pioneered a project to study decomposing pig carcasses 300 feet under the nearby Pacific and monitors the process via remote cameras to her laptop. She’s found that an entire adult hog can be left skeletonized within three weeks—being devoured by crabs, shrimp, and sea worms—as well as breaking down through a microbial process.

But, Gail says, getting at meat wrapped up in a rubber running shoe is a whole different challenge. And floating upside down on the ocean’s surface would prevent seabirds like gulls from attacking the foot from above.

Bill Inkster is a former dentist who now manages the identification unit for the B.C. Coroners Service. He takes the disarticulation and floatation process a step further.

“They’re not severed, they’re disarticulated,” Bill explains. “As the body decomposes, the feet are separated from the rest of the body. Time was, the feet would have stayed underwater with the rest of the body. But Nike Air, and all the other high-buoyancy sneakers that followed, changed that with designs that featured little air pockets. These floating feet are enclosed in their own PFD’s (personal floatation devices) and just bob to the surface once freed.”

A little internet research into running shoe technology confirms that by 2005 the footwear industry profoundly changed materials in their products. Where the lightweight designs were first developed for the high-priced athletic market, the chemical advancement of switching from polyurethane (PU) mid-soles to ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) closed-cell blowing agents not only reduced the weight but drastically reduced manufacturing and shipping costs.

This allowed third-world makers of Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Reebok, Brooks, and other major sporting-shoe players to supply discount retailers like Walmart with cheap, yet decent runners.

Richard Thompson is a physical oceanographer with Vancouver Island’s Institute of Ocean Sciences. He shed light on why this was happening in the Fraser River region. Thompson explained the Fraser is a heavily-mudded waterway that carries silt from the province’s interior and deposits it in a vast delta extending miles out into the Pacific. The ever expanding bridge construction along the lower Fraser has created a series of dams due to their pilings that require continual dredging to maintain the shipping lanes.

It follows that victims who jump from one bridge may be carried along the bottom—pushed down by the weight of the silt—and become lodged in another piling dam. Dredging then shakes the body which has now decomposed to the point where the feet easily detach at the ankle and the high-buoyancy shoes sneak themselves to the surface where they drift on out to sea.

Once the shoe-encased foot meets the tidal water, it enters what Thompson describes as a giant, endless spin cycle created by the freshwater outflow, the incoming currents, twice-daily tide action and, of course, the wind. The combination of these recirculation actions results in the wide—seemingly random—distribution of where the floating feet eventually beach themselves.

Once I objectively listened to the experts explaining the science behind decomposition, dredging, disarticulation and distribution of the sixteen severed feet, it made sense to me—except for one troubling fact.

Why are nearly three-quarters of the recovered runner-wraps from the right?

I got the answer from Professor Curtis Ebbesmeyer. He’s known as the rubber-duck man and the co-author of the fascinating book Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science. Ebbesmeyer spent his lifetime studying ocean currents, including the aftermath of a shipping accident involving thousands of Nike runners being discharged into the Pacific during a storm. The resulting locations where the shoes hit land was a landmark breakthrough in a better understanding of ocean drift.

So if anyone knows how a sneaker sneaks about in the water, it’s Professor Ebbesmeyer.

He says that left and right shoes behave differently due to their curvature—lefts tend to drift in a clockwise pattern and rights will turn counter-clockwise. This contributes to a distribution pattern where the rights went to the closest land and the lefts possibly headed for the open ocean or perhaps to more deserted beaches.

Ebbesmeyer also pointed out an interesting and apparently verified fact—whether or not it bears weight on the floating feet. With ninety percent of the population being right-handed, most people tend to tie their right shoe tighter than the left and most people’s right foot is slightly larger than their left.

With maybe more slack in a left shoe, it’s possible more of the disarticulated left flesh and bone matter would fall out of its runner, then its shoe would go to a beach empty-handed and be ignored.

There’s one last factor in these recently-found, sixteen feet and that’s the Vicious Cycle effect. The floating-foot story is so widely known throughout the Pacific Northwest that by now nobody walks by a shoe on the shoreline without picking it up and checking inside.

Stefan Fonseca, my ex-colleague with the British Columbia Coroners Service, puts it well. “People will actually wade out to go look at a shoe. It’s creepy, but I guess that’s the fascination.”

EIGHT EFFECTIVE WAYS TO DISPOSE OF A BODY

According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, the worldwide human death rate averages nearly 8 per 1,000 in population. With over six billion people on the planet, that’s about 55.3 million deaths per year — 151,600 a day, 6,316 an hour, 105 a minute, and nearly 2 per second. That’s a lot of bodies to dump.

Conventional cemetery burial and fossil-fuel cremation are the two main means of corpse disposal but both have drawbacks by way of cost, use of natural resources, and effects on the environment. Today, many people are looking for alternate solutions in sending-off their dearly departed.

Here are eight other effective ways to dispose of a body.

1. Promession is the process of freeze-dying human remains. Whereas cremation incinerates a body resulting in ash (ashes to ashes—dust to dust, as the saying goes), promession produces .04 inch (1 millimeter) diameter particles of organic material that can be returned to the earth in many ways.

The process is relatively simple… and gentle.

First, the corpse is frozen at 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celcius) and then placed in a vat of liquid nitrogen where the temperature drops to -320 Fahrenheit (-196 Celcius). A mechanical device vibrates the body which disintegrates in minutes, then the material is freeze-dried in a vacuum chamber, removing the water and reducing the weight to thirty percent of the original mass. Metals such as fillings and artificial devices are picked-out then the dry powder is placed in an urn and returned to the family.

2. Biodegradable caskets and burial shrouds are replacing exotic wood and metal coffins which used to be buried six feet underground in crowded, designated cemeteries. The thinking was to preserve the body as long as possible and delay the natural decomposition process.

Today, innovative interment containers made of wicker, bamboo, seagrass, cotton, or banana leaves break down quickly when laid in the earth’s organic layer which averages two feet in depth.

3. Green or woodland burials are becoming popular throughout North America where land space in rural areas is still readily available. Recognizing that a human body is designed to naturally recycle in the earth after death, families choosing green burials have their member return to the earth.

Green burial spaces respect the natural environment by encouraging grass and tree growth which are fertilized by organic compounds in human bodies. Gravesites are marked through GPS coordinates rather than by headstones.

4. Eternal Reefs combine a cremation urn, ash scattering, and burial at sea into one meaningful, permanent environmental tribute to life.

Reef balls have been used for years. There are over 700,000 reef balls used in more than 4,000 projects in over 70 countries and are considered the gold standard in artificial reef development and restoration—particularly in building coral reefs.

Brilliantly designed, the balls are made of Ph-neutral concrete and are round, hollow, and perforated to allow the flow of water and population by marine life. Eighty percent of the weight is built into the bottom of the balls preventing them from being washed away by currents or storms.

Human remains, whether diminished by cremation or promession, can be mixed with the concrete or set in individual pockets built into the reef ball. Creating a healthy and sustainable marine environment is a wonderful tribute to a passed friend.

4. Green Embalming replaces the toxic, carcinogenic method of using formaldehyde fluids in preserving a cadaver whether the purpose is to make viewing presentable or long distance shipping possible.

For thousands of years, civilizations have been using organic compounds in their mortuaries. They include essential oils like pine, juniper, onion, and palm, as well as resins like lichen, oloeo-gum, beeswax, cassia, bitumen, and myrrh. Frankincense was used to mask odors and bodies were washed in wine.

These naturally occurring precursor agents are non-polluting and environmentally stable, unlike the chemicals found in traditional embalming fluid. While initially retarding a body’s breakdown, the effects quickly wear off and allow decomposition to proceed, which is what mother nature intended.

5. Bios Urns allow someone become a tree. This patented product is essentially a cone or a sphere which contains soil, the deceased’s ashes, and a seed. The urn itself is biodegradable so you just plant the entire container, water it, and watch a sapling tree sprout from what used to be a relative.

The Bios Urns website offers a choice of plantings including maple, pine, gingko, beech, or ash as well as providing for custom orders. There’s also an app which alerts your smart phone of a need for hydration or an automatic watering system can also be bought.

6. Donating a body to medical science has been an option available for years and it’s always in demand. Anatomical students need actual human cadavers for study and dissection and it’s an honorable use of deceased remains to provide schooling for the next generation of doctors and researchers.

Although there’ve been huge technological advancements in anatomical models and computer generated simulators, there’s nothing quite like the real thing for practicing professionals.

7. Donating a body to forensic science is another option and something relatively new. Since the success of The Body Farm, which was pioneered by Dr. Bill Bass of the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility near Knoxville, six more farms were developed to study the decomposition process of human remains to aid in the forensic investigation of human deaths.

These farms accept over one hundred bodies per year and currently have in excess of thirteen hundred registered donors—when their time comes.

8. Human composting is a concept that’s proposed but not yet in operation. Architect Katrina Spade’s Urban Death Project is a dignified way to turn remains into nutritive compost as quickly as possible.

The Urban Death Project is more than just a compost-based renewal system. It’s a new model for death care in overcrowded cities and is replicable, scalable, not-for-profit, and totally beneficial to the planet.

In a bold departure to the status quo—never before have humans been composted—the Urban Death Project will be an architectural first that’s built as a three-storey compost core. Ramps will allow a funeral procession to carry a shrouded deceased to the top of the bin and conduct a service before “laying-in”.

The body is not embalmed as fast decomposition is essential to the process. Over the span of a few months, aerobic and microbial activity transforms the deceased—along with others—into a rich, organic compost that can be used to fertilize urban spaces such as rooftop edible gardens.

The Urban Death Project is working with Western Carolina University’s Forensic Osteology Research Station (FOREST) in studying the human composting process to develop a safe, effective, and dignified way of caring for the deceased. Osteology is a specialized branch of anthropology that deals with studying bone structure.

The organization aims to “fundamentally alter the way that Western Society thinks about death. The goal is to un-do the over-commercialization and needless distance currently created between ourselves and this inevitable human event”.

The first human composting facility is being planned for the city of Seattle in Washington State. Check out their website at www.urbandeathproject.org.

Dying Words

Provoking Thoughts on Life, Death, and Writing