The epicenter for the Holocaust was in Nazi occupied Lublin, Poland from where many of the decisions on the ground to murder the Jews was under the direction of SS General Odilo Globocnik (1904-45), the very man who was in charge of Operation Reinhard that claimed more than two million Jewish lives in death camps like Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. Globocnik was originally from Wolf Mountain (Wolfsberg) in the Austrian Alps of Carinthia. After the SS virtually liquidated Polish Jewry, the death camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were completely dismantled, cleaned up, re-afforested and converted into farms by the fall of 1943 to provide green cover for its colossal crimes.

Yet the concrete orders to implement Operation Reinhard came from Lublin. It was near Lublin that the Nazis also built Majdanek that also claimed almost 100,000 Jewish lives as well during the war. Majdanek was more of a concentration camp connected to slave labor of Soviet POWs, rebellious Poles, and other political prisoners - including many Jews as well, particularly from the immediate area. The massive area was used for farming too, which was true of many Nazi concentration, work, and death camps - something which receives little attention. Many of them were considered organic or biodynamic. Howeer, because the Nazi so abused its labor force through its virtual work to extermination government program, gas chambers and crematoriums were also built there too.

As I continue to look over the landscapes of such camps, I continue to find Nazi Oaks still populating these camp areas. Grounded in German pride, oak leaves and acorns were the primary symbols of the SS, whose leader, Heinrich Himmler, was a green pagan mystic and deeply attracted to organic farming as well. Historically, the oak tree itself had often been described as Germany’s national tree or even characterized as its holy tree rooted in the pagan past. In German paganism, the oak tree symbolized fertility, power and sacrifice—and sacrifice was the means by which fertility and power were obtained.

Such qualities were were all virtually worshiped by the National Socialists in one form or another, no matter how scientific or secular many of its adherents would try to couch their ideology. Indeed, the great desire of National Socialism was to become fertile and powerful through sacrificial eugenic measures based on the presumed scientific prinicples of Social Darwinism where fascism was simply viewed as politically applied biology. Tragically, the holocaust of the Jews stood at rock bottom of their lunatic and criminal minds.