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''The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century'', by Prof. Arthur Butz

   I remember how shocked I was about 5 years ago, when reading the word 'Holo-hoax' for the first time in a mail from a USA-acquaintance.
Seeing Bishop Williamson on tv, hearing his argumentation and being surprised that nobody even bothered to give him some 'facts', I started doing my own research. At that moment I knew for sure that Americans were barbarians to whom nothing was sacred ...The outcome was a surprise : I found NOTHING confirming the six million, the contrary. 

Much has changed in the meantime.
There was proof of labour camps, not of extinction camps, not of gas chambers and not of ovens. 
The only solid figures came from the Red Cross (1979), 273.000 deaths in total, with 53.000 for Auschwitz : jews, communists, gypsies and homosexuals. Russian archives opening some years ago confirme this.

A open debate on this issue is not possible in the mainstream press, this falsification of history may not be exposed. 
Anybody in the West may deny the suffering of Jesus Christ, may deny he ever existed, may deny the existence of a supreme being, but the 'Holocaust' and the 'suffering of the jewish people' may not be denied. There is no choice ; everybody must BELIEVE, if not you could find yourself in jail. 'A-holocaustism' is NO option here, this freedom we do not have.

Arthur Butz's book gives facts : pls read and make others read. Understand the injustice done to the German people and the disgrace of the ongoing plundering of Germany by zionists. Understand the falseness of the argumentation of people like Netanyahu, when defending Israeli agression. Understand most of all that WE THE PEOPLE are mainly fed lies on practically every issue.


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QUOTE 
FROM 'THE NEW BLASPHEMY'

Do I "deny the Holocaust"? No! No indeed. 

I hope the holocaust is not denied and never forgotten. 

I hope the holocaust is remembered as the greatest propaganda effort and hate campaign ever waged against a civilized people. 

We must never forget. We must look at the despoliation of our people and our culture and ask : 

Why do the heavens not darken? 

We have lost the will and courage to defend ourselves. 

The time has come to commit the new blasphemy. It is time to deny the gods of the New World Order.’

Tom Blair



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THE HOAX OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

THE CASE AGAINST THE PRESUMED EXTERMINATION OF EUROPEAN JEWRY


Arthur R. Butz
Theses & Dissertations Press
PO Box 257768, Chicago, Illinois 60625
September 2003

The Author
Arthur R. Butz was born and raised in New York City. He
received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering
from M.I.T. and his Ph.D. in Control Sciences
from the University of Minnesota in 1965. In 1966 he
joined the faculty of Northwestern University, Evanston,
Illinois, where he is now Associate Professor of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Sciences. Dr. Butz is the author
of numerous technical papers.

HOLOCAUST Handbook Series, vol. 7:
Arthur R. Butz:
The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.
The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry
3rd edition.
Chicago (Illinois): Theses & Dissertations Press,
Imprint of Castle Hill Publishers, September 2003
ISBN: 0-9679856-9-2
ISSN: 1529-7748

© by Arthur R. Butz 1976, 2003
Distribution Australia/Asia: Peace Books, PO Box 3300,
Norwood, 5067, Australia
Distribution Rest of World: Castle Hill Publishers
UK: PO Box 118, Hastings TN34 3ZQ
USA: PO Box 257768, Chicago, IL 60625
Set in Times New Roman.

5
Table of Contents
Page
Foreword to the 2003 Edition .........................................................................8
Acknowledgments..........................................................................................17
Foreword ........................................................................................................19
A Short Introduction to the Study of Holocaust Revisionism ....................23
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis ................................................................27
Trials and Doubts........................................................................................27
How Many Jews? .......................................................................................32
Our Method, Argument, and Conclusion....................................................38
The War Crimes Trials................................................................................39
Chapter 2: The Camps ..................................................................................61
Horror Scenes and ‘Extermination’ Camps ................................................61
The Camps and Their End ..........................................................................63
The Industrial Role of Auschwitz...............................................................75
Chapter 3: Washington and New York ........................................................81
The Rubber Crisis of 1942 .........................................................................81
Auschwitz of Great Interest to Americans..................................................85
The First ‘Extermination’ Claims and Washington ....................................89
The First ‘Extermination’ Claims and New York .....................................100
German Reactions ....................................................................................128
The War Refugee Board Report: Birth of the Auschwitz Legend ............129
Rudolf Vrba ..............................................................................................138
Chapter 4: Auschwitz ..................................................................................143
Structure of the Legend ............................................................................143
The Höss ‘Confession’ .............................................................................144
Contradictions at the Outset .....................................................................148
When Did It Start?....................................................................................149
The Alleged Gassings and Zyklon............................................................150
Lines of Authority.....................................................................................154
Transports to Auschwitz ...........................................................................155
A Hospital for the People Being Exterminated?.......................................157
“Special Treatment”..................................................................................160

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
6

The Crematories .......................................................................................163
Back to the ‘Gas Chambers’.....................................................................171
Why in English? .......................................................................................174
The Role of Birkenau ...............................................................................175
Summary for Auschwitz ...........................................................................183
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews ................................................................185
The International Red Cross.....................................................................185
1944 Propaganda ......................................................................................202
Where are the pictures? ............................................................................207
Air raids on Auschwitz: Rudolf Vrba overreaches himself ......................208
Documentary evidence? ...........................................................................210
The Producers...........................................................................................221
What Happened in Hungary? ...................................................................233
Can Anybody Believe Such a Story?........................................................235
Chapter 6: Et Cetera ...................................................................................237
More ‘Extermination’ Camps ...................................................................237
Logic of Defense Testimonies ..................................................................240
Josef Kramer, ‘Beast of Belsen’ ...............................................................240
Hermann Göring, et. al. at the IMT ..........................................................242
Oswald Pohl at Nuremberg.......................................................................248
Adolf Eichmann .......................................................................................249
West German Trials ..................................................................................253
Precedents for the Trials? .........................................................................256
Torture?.....................................................................................................257
Adolf Hitler ..............................................................................................260
Heinrich Himmler,....................................................................................262
Joseph Goebbels .......................................................................................265
The Einsatzgruppen..................................................................................266
Chapter 7: The Final Solution ....................................................................277
The German Policy and the Wannsee Conference....................................277
Numbers Deported: Whence and Whither................................................292
The Polish Ghettos ...................................................................................297
What Happened to Them? ........................................................................299
Zionism Again ..........................................................................................305
Migration to the USA ...............................................................................312
Table of Contents

7

Recapitulation...........................................................................................315
J. G. Burg ..................................................................................................315
Conclusions ..............................................................................................316
Himmler Nailed it Perfectly .....................................................................317
Chapter 8: Remarks ....................................................................................319
Miscellaneous Objections.........................................................................319
Postwar Germany and Willy Brandt.........................................................322
The Talmud...............................................................................................325
Credentials................................................................................................327
Other Matters............................................................................................329
Some Implications....................................................................................330
Appendices ...................................................................................................333
Appendix A: The “Statement”..................................................................333
Appendix B: SS Ranks .............................................................................347
Appendix C: Deportation of Jews ............................................................349
Appendix D: The Belsen Trial..................................................................355
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican .......................................................377
Supplements .................................................................................................399
Supplement 1: The International Holocaust Controversy ........................399
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust
Controversy ..........................................................................................413
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust
Revisionism..........................................................................................445
Supplement 4: Zyklon B and Gas Detectors in Birkenau
Crematorium II .....................................................................................469
Supplement 5: Vergasungskeller...............................................................481
Illustrations ..................................................................................................489
References.....................................................................................................525
Index .............................................................................................................533
8

Foreword to the 2003 Edition
My investigations of the Jewish “Holocaust” commenced in 1972 and
twenty seven years have passed since the first publication of this book in 1976
in England as The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Twenty six years have
passed since the release of the slightly revised second British and first American
edition of 1977. This text consists of the last, preceded by a short article I
wrote for the student newspaper at Northwestern University in 1991,1 and followed
by five supplements representing writings from 1979-1997. There is
also an addendum to Appendix E (“The Role of the Vatican“), consisting of
the obituary/tribute I wrote on Rev. Robert A. Graham. All were published in
the Journal of Historical Review. Also Appendix A, on Kurt Gerstein, has
been revised somewhat.
I am proud that this book remains of interest to anybody a quarter century
after publication. Nevertheless the age of this text, and the great advances that
have subsequently occurred in Holocaust revisionism, require some comments
on the value of the book to today’s reader. How can a quarter century old text
not be obsolete today? What does today’s reader gain from it? Would it not be
better to revise this text to take into account more recent developments?
From the perspective of today the book has defects, and several people, of
whom I am one, could now do better. In admitting such defects, I can plead
that I was one man working with little help. Except for Wilhelm Stäglich, the
correspondents I had before publication in 1976 were not then, and have not
subsequently become, significant in revisionist work. The literature of revisionist
orientation was scanty. Some of it was rubbish that constituted a minor
nuisance. On the positive side were Paul Rassinier, Thies Christophersen, and
Wilhelm Stäglich. At that time the writings of Rassinier, a former political
prisoner at Buchenwald, were of interest both as a primary source, relating
personal experiences, and as historical exposition (today Rassinier is of interest
only as a primary source). Christophersen and Stäglich, Germans who had
been stationed near Auschwitz, were of value only as primary sources, although
Stäglich later wrote a book of historical exposition. Even taking these
three into account, the historical complex was not there, as I shall explain below.
A common complaint about this work has been that I am not a trained historian
or history professor. It is, however, not unusual for people who are not
academic historians to make contributions to history. The great American historian
Francis Parkman was no history professor; he had only a brief academic
appointment as Professor of Horticulture at Harvard. The late Arnaldo Momigliano
urged wariness of academic historians and pointed out that none of
1 Rhodes, 347. Daily Northwestern, May 13, 1991, correction May 14.
Foreword to the 2003 Edition
9

the three leading nineteenth century historians of the ancient world was a history
professor, e.g. Mommsen was a Professor of Law.2
However, such examples do not satisfactorily illustrate the fact that history
has a closer relationship to popular culture than most other academic disciplines.
This is easily clarified and proved. In the major book reviews (New
York Times, New York Review, etc.) one can find reviews of, and advertisements
for, many works on the leading edge of historical research, i.e. works
not specifically written for popular readership. No such attention is given to
leading edge works in electrical engineering and most other academic disciplines.
Many intelligent laymen can read such historical works with comprehension.
If many can read them, then some can write them. I could give reasons
for this relatively popular status of serious history study, but it would
carry us too far afield. In any case, there is no venality on the part of academic
historians in approving of such popular promotion of their books.
Such observations show, however, that there is hypocrisy in their common
implication, when denouncing Holocaust revisionism, that only people with
their kinds of Ph.D. degrees are competent to deal with historical issues.
The style of my book is certainly not elegant. I believe my style has improved
much since then but, like most men with a technical education, my
style remains at best dry and not elegant. It was, however, good enough to do
the job. I have even sometimes wondered if elegance of style might be incompatible
with a subject as dreary as the present one.
It is not immodest for me to say that mine is the best book of its type, because
it is the only book of its type. To compare my book to others, the approach
of mine is horizontal, the others vertical. Subsequent investigators
have taken specific subjects and gone more deeply into them than I did. Such
vertical approaches should be contrasted with my horizontal. I attempted to
cover every reasonably relevant aspect of the problem. The question of the existence
of gas chambers was only one of many. I tried to show what did happen
as well as what did not. I showed the relevance of the Zionist and related
movements. I discussed the Allied policies and the Jewish influences in them.
My use of sources (e.g. the Nuremberg trials, Red Cross reports, Vatican
documents, contemporary newspaper accounts) today seems obvious but it
was not then. To aid in comprehending the early war crimes trials, I gave
witchcraft trials as a useful precedent.
I claim an additional contribution of this book that may seem ridiculous on
its face. I treated the German concentration camps as specific institutions that
existed in specific locations, with the alleged events that took place in them
taking place, if at all, in real space and real time, together with other events
that happened simultaneously in those same camps or in real space. By “real
2 A. Momigliano, “History in an Age of Ideologies,” American Scholar, Autumn 1982, pp.
495-507.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
10

space” I mean a space that we all exist in so that, whatever happened at
Auschwitz, it happened at the same time President Roosevelt held meetings in
Washington, and I as a child went to school, etc., and in the same space.
That is so obvious that it may seem preposterous for me to present it as an
original perspective, but please hear me out. My impression of the extant literature
was that the events claimed there may as well be imagined as having
taken place on Mars if at all, so absent was a concern for the broader context.
As I reminded readers in my Chapter 5: “There was a war going on during
World War II.”
Consider my presentation of Auschwitz, the principal alleged “extermination
camp”. I started by describing Auschwitz as a camp that performed functions
similar to those performed by typical German camps that are not claimed
to have been extermination camps; I outlined those functions and I presented a
map showing where the German camps were. Then I described Auschwitz in
its unique respects and showed, why the Allies would have been interested in
events transpiring at Auschwitz. I presented pictures of crematorium ovens at
Auschwitz and other camps. I presented a map of the Auschwitz region and a
plan of the “Birkenau” section of the Auschwitz camp. That plan and the various
maps showed the reader exactly where, in Europe, Poland, and at Auschwitz,
the great gas chambers were supposed to have been located. Then I considered
one of the specific groups of Jews, the Hungarian Jews, not only from
the point of view of allegations of events in German camps but from the point
of view of events in Hungary. That is, for me the problem of the Hungarian
Jews was as much a problem of what happened in Hungary as what happened
at Auschwitz. Even in considering events at Auschwitz, I chose to place my
perspective elsewhere, among the Allies who, at the time in question, were
very interested in Auschwitz as an industrial bombing target and would have
photographed the camp for that purpose.
The photographs were produced almost three years after publication of my
book and confirmed my conclusions, but that is not the point that I am now
trying to emphasize. My point is that, as unlikely as it may seem, my method
of placing Auschwitz in its general historical context was essentially unique in
this historical area. True, some of what I said in that respect is to be found in
earlier books that purported to relate how the “exterminations” transpired, but
in scattered bits and pieces that were usually incidental to those accounts.
Even so, much had to be culled from diverse sources. For example, though it
seems obvious that any useful discussion of the Auschwitz problem required a
map of the Auschwitz region and of the Birkenau camp, the former had to be
constructed by me from several sources and the latter had to be lifted, not
from one of the standard “Holocaust” books such as those by Hilberg or
Reitlinger, but from a book about a German trial of Auschwitz personnel that
took place in 1963-5. Hilberg, Reitlinger, and similar authors were very stingy
with maps and pictures, except in books specifically devoted to presenting
Foreword to the 2003 Edition
11

pictures. We can say, with only minor oversimplification, that they would sell
you a book of pictures or a book of text, but not one book integrating the two
in any useful way.
I believe my analysis provoked investigations of specific problems, even
when such influence was not acknowledged. My implied skepticism about the
reality of the mysterious “German industrialist” who in 1942, according to the
World Jewish Congress, passed along information that a plan to exterminate
the Jews had been discussed in Hitler’s headquarters, may have provoked the
later investigations attempting to determine his identity. Walter Laqueur and
Richard Breitman, in Breaking the Silence, 1986, unconvincingly proposed
Eduard Schulte. I also stressed the inaction of the Allies with respect to
Auschwitz, which Laqueur (The Terrible Secret, 1980) and Martin Gilbert
(Auschwitz and the Allies, 1981) tried without success to explain.
The existence and relevance of the 1944 aerial reconnaissance photos of
Auschwitz were, to the best of my knowledge, first argued in my book.3 I also
believe that my book provoked, perhaps through some intermediary, the 1979
release of these photos by the CIA, but again such influence is not admitted.
I analyzed the specifics of the alleged extermination process at Auschwitz.
I showed that all of the specific material facts required a dual interpretation of
relatively mundane facts, e.g. transports, selections, showers, shaving hair,
Zyklon B, crematoria etc., all real and all relatively mundane, had been given
a second interpretation. That insight scarcely merits the label today, but it did
then. It has been the main paradigm for all subsequent revisionist writing on
Auschwitz and other alleged “extermination camps”. It may seem very simple
and obvious after one reads this book; it certainly was not when I wrote it. The
reader is shown what sorts of questions he should ask if he wants to go further.
Those who have studied the development of ideas understand that the
right answers are not attainable until the right questions are formulated (yes,
questions can be right or wrong). This book, even today, shows how to do
that.
I consider my book generally “right” even today in the sense of how the
historical parts fit together, and they fit perfectly without major or fundamental
mysteries. Contrast the gyrations of the typical historians, who have nothing
but mysteries. How and when was an order to exterminate given? Was
such an order given at all? Why didn’t the Allies recognize what was (allegedly)
happening at Auschwitz? Why didn’t the Pope forthrightly condemn
physical extermination, even after the German had been driven out of Rome?
Why didn’t the Allied press give greater prominence to reports of extermina-
3 There is an unconfirmed and disputed claim that U.S. Army Capt. Jakob Javits (later U.S.
Senator) used the photos, in 1944, to argue for bombing Auschwitz. See letters in the New
York Jewish weekly Forward, 23 Feb. 2001, p. 10, and 6 April 2001, p. 16. If the claim is
true, the photos were forgotten until I argued, in my 1976 book, that they had to exist. I am
inclined to think the claim is not true.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
12

tion of Jews, rather than bury them in the back pages of the larger newspapers?
This horizontal analysis remains unique in the revisionist literature. The
book presented a historical complex that remains valid today. The book made
specialized studies easier because investigators did not have to worry about
coherence of the larger picture; they could direct a curious person to my book.
I did a good enough job for that, even if not a perfect job. The proof is that,
among revisionists, defects of the book are certainly seen but, unfortunately,
there seems to be no great demand for an improved integrated work of comparable
scope, and no aspiring author in view.
An example. You want to discuss the question of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
My old book won’t help if you want to be current, and there would not
necessarily be any reason to cite it. There are much more recent and conclusive
writings, but I could not imagine a person securely venturing into such a
controversy without having a grasp of the general historical complex, as provided
in my book. Thus I cannot imagine contemporary Holocaust revisionism
existing without a book such as mine, even if it is never necessary to cite it today.
It is still the only book of this sort. A better one would be nice but there are
two problems that occur to me. First such a book, if written from the point of
view of our knowledge today, would not fit into a single volume. This explains
why I reject the idea of trying to bring this book up to date. Such a project
would quickly run away from “updating”, resulting in an entirely new
work. Any attempt to respect the original content and organization of the book
would be a handicap in the updating project. The best single volume for bringing
the reader up to date on revisionist scholarship is a compilation of papers
by many people, not an integrated work.4
Second, a paradox: a weakness of the book explains some of its strength.
From the present point of view, there seems much in the book that is awkwardly
presented. This is because I did not write this book as an expert. The
book was written as works of research normally are: I was myself struggling
to understand, as would an intelligent and serious reader. Thus the book expresses
a relationship of common perspective, and therefore implicit mutual
empathy, between author and reader that could not exist in a new book, written
today from a position of expertise and directed at a neophyte reader, which
is the only relationship possible today. I believe this explains the occasional
overwhelming effect the book has. From this point of view the book is still
contemporary, as well as “right”, and ought not undergo major revision.
4 Germar Rudolf (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of “Truth” and
“Memory”, 2nd edition, Theses & Dissertations Press, PO Box 257768, Chicago, IL 60625,
USA, 2003. Expanded version of the text originally published as Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte:
Ein Handbuch über strittige Fragen des 20. Jahrhunderts, Grabert-Verlag,
Tübingen, 1994. Probably not available from Grabert now, but available from T&DP.
Foreword to the 2003 Edition
13

For these reasons, I have rejected any idea of “updating” this book. Rather,
several later writings from 1979 on have been provided here, as specified
above.
That this book is still valuable today is due to the distortions and misrepresentations
that have continued to issue from the media and academe, resulting
in millions of people so uninformed that a viewpoint of 1976 is a great revelation
for them in 2003.
I consider this book as successful as could have been judiciously hoped
under the circumstances, but it is important to view it as one of the successes
in the phenomenon of Holocaust revisionism, for which no single person, or
set of specific persons, can take credit. It seems to me to be just something
that was timely and had to develop and that I was just a part of this development.
I discussed this in my paper reproduced as Supplement 1 but, to try to
make my point clearer, let me emphasize that the Jews have played a very important
role in this development; they must take some of the credit. It was they
who chose, in 1977, to spread the news of this obscure book to the most remote
corners of the universe. Who could have imagined such massive publicity
for a book from an unknown publisher, written by an unknown author, and
only barely available in the USA? They have used their powerful positions in
the media to keep the subject of “Holocaust” uppermost in the minds of the
populace; we get it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The present “Holocaustomania”,
which younger readers may believe has been a permanent feature of
our public affairs since World War II, can be fairly said to have started with
the 1978 NBC-TV “docudrama” Holocaust. Only Jewish groups (either formally
Jewish or having a largely Jewish membership), on the campus of
Northwestern University, have maintained students’ interest in my work on
the “Holocaust”. Such mutual dependency only holds for things that had to
happen.
When I wrote this book, there were perhaps a half dozen serious Holocaust
revisionist researchers (most not known by me). Today there are too many for
me to even try to list, and readers of contemporary Holocaust revisionist literature
in all languages certainly number in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps
millions.
There are many back-handed compliments to our success. Perhaps the most
conspicuous is the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. A February 1992 funds
appeal for it, signed by “National Campaign Chairman” Miles Lerman named
“revisionists” as those whom the museum would “counter”. The Museum formally
opened in April 1993 “Intent on refuting revisionist attempts to diminish
the scope of the Holocaust”.5 As if that weren’t enough, the 104th Congress
passed, without dissent, a resolution making only two points: it “deplores”
revisionism and “commends the vital, ongoing work of the […] Mu-
5 Chicago Tribune, 23 April 1993, sec. 1, p. 18.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
14

seum.”6 That silly Museum is an ironic monument to Holocaust revisionism.7
The Museum will not be the last such monument. In 1996, Jewish Senators
Barbara Boxer and Arlen Specter handed Jewish movie director Steven Spielberg
a check representing a $1 million federal grant for his “Survivors of the
Shoah Visual History Foundation” (a project of videotaping accounts of “survivors”
– “Shoah” is the Hebrew word used in place of “Holocaust”). Specter
motivated the grant in terms of opposing the considerable success of revisionists.
8
A more recent example is the projected Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. A
July 2001 advertisement, appealing for funds, raised the danger of revisionism.
9
Revisionist apostasy has been rare. It has been most visible in cases where
some public figure who was not actually a revisionist made public remarks
supportive of revisionism. A 1996 example was Abbé Pierre, a sort of French
Mother Teresa (although more active in public affairs) who, despite his quick
recantation of his revisionist remarks, will never be forgiven by his former
friends.10 This episode is one of many that illustrate the handicaps that Holocaust
revisionism has labored under.
A final proof, if needed, of our success is the fact of laws passed in recent
years, in several European countries, criminalizing the publication of revisionist
views on the Holocaust. Such literature circulated freely in Europe until the
present revisionist movement started making its impact in the late 70s. In the
United States we are still free of state suppression, although there is considerable
whining in some quarters about “First Amendment absolutism”. Here the
repression works largely by extra-legal means of intimidation and reprisal. For
example, Fred Leuchter was the leading execution technologist in the USA
when he published his famous 1988 report on the alleged Auschwitz gas
chambers.11 Since then, his business has been ruined and his marriage de-
6 Senate resolution 193 passed 9 Nov. 1995, and House resolution 316 passed 16 April 1996.
7 Perhaps the most telling point is that the Museum, after so much promotion and millions
spent, has failed to depict a homicidal gas chamber. Robert Faurisson has commented on
this and related his humorous encounter with the Museum’s director, Dr. Michael Berenbaum.
Journal of Historical Review, Jan./Feb. 1994, p. 23; Nov./Dec. 1994, p. 4.
8 Boston Globe, 24 July 1996, p. A6. Spielberg got into “Shoah business” (from an American
expression – “there’s no business like show business”) via his Schindler’s List movie, which
also failed to depict a gassing or homicidal gas chamber. On the basis of his other movies
and other scenes in this one, I could not attribute the failure to squeamishness on Spielberg‘
s part. He is a good enough showman to have realized that a complete depiction of a
gassing via Zyklon B, faithful to the legend and to physical possibility, would have been far
too preposterous even for him. The Jewish worker who was shot for exceeding her assigned
tasks was routine rubbish, but the gassing would have been too much.
9 NY Times, 18 July 2001, p. A6.
10 NY Times, 1 May 1996, p. A6. Boston Globe, 23 July 1996, p. A5.
11 S. Lehman, “A Matter of Engineering,” Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1990, pp. 26-29. Also see the
letters in the May issue; Fred A. Leuchter, An Engineering Report on the alleged Execution
Foreword to the 2003 Edition
15

stroyed. All such developments are of course back-handed and evil tributes to
the success of Holocaust revisionism. Even the most naive reader will see the
point: they don’t want you to know these things! They are trying to hold back
the wind.
We are successful, but we have a long way to go, as the brute strength of
the dying monster is considerable.
Evanston, Illinois
June 2003
Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland, Samisdat Publishers Ltd.,
Toronto 1988; for an update on this issue, see Germar Rudolf, The Rudolf Report. Expert
Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the ‘Gas Chambers’ of Auschwitz, Theses &
Dissertations Press, PO Box 257768, Chicago, IL 60625, USA, 2003.

17
Acknowledgments
A number of individuals contributed valuable suggestions and critiques
which are reflected in the text of this book, but of course the responsibility for
any errors of fact or interpretation, if such be found, is entirely my own. I also
wish to reserve for myself any problems that may arise on account of the reaction
to this book, and for this reason I refrain from making the applicable personal
acknowledgments here.
Institutional acknowledgments are made to the US National Archives, the
US Army Audio-visual Agency and the Foreign Affairs Document and Reference
Center of the US Department of State, Washington, DC, to the Panstwowe
Museum, Oswieçim, and to the Library of the University of Chicago
and the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago.
Special acknowledgment is made to the staffs of the Imperial War Museum,
London, the national office of the Netherlands Red Cross, The Hague,
and the Library of Northwestern University (especially the inter-library loan
department), Evanston, all of whom contributed more than routine services
without, of course, being aware of the exact nature of the research involved.
A.R. Butz

19
Foreword
In common with virtually all Americans, who have had their opinions
formed since the end of World War II, I had, until not very long ago, assumed
that Germany had given the world a particularly murderous outburst during
World War II. This view has ruled Western opinion since 1945 and earlier,
and I was no exception in accepting the essentials of it.
An important qualification in the preceding is the term “essentials,” for the
collection of crimes of which the Germans were supposedly guilty in World
War II grows rapidly smaller as one examines the evidence and arguments assembled
in readily available “revisionist” books. An elementary critical examination
reveals that most of the crimes that are real even in the minds of
“intellectuals” (e.g. lampshades manufactured by some Germans from the
skins of human beings killed in concentration camps for the purpose) obviously
had no basis in fact. Likewise with legends about mistreatment of
American and British prisoners of war. Moreover, the general problem is
elaborated considerably when one weighs, as the revisionists do, the appalling
wartime and postwar brutalities of the Western Allies.
Such an investigation does not overturn the “Holocaust” legend, however,
and the “six million” Jews murdered, mainly in “gas chambers,” can seem
immovable fact. The revisionist books which overturn some of the most popular
misconceptions seem to accept the gas chambers as factual. All educated
opinion that the investigator consults accepts the “extermination” story. Professors
of history who have specialized in Germany, if asked, seem to consider
the charge as established as the Great Pyramid. Liberal and conservative
publicists, though they have very different attitudes toward World War II and
America’s entry into it, and though they squabble with each other on almost
everything else, close ranks on the reality of the “Holocaust.” Noting the obvious
ways in which this legend is exploited in contemporary politics, notably
in connection with the completely illogical support that the US extends to Israel,
I had long had lingering doubts about it, and there was also the fact that
there existed a small number of respected observers whose views had not been
formed entirely after World War II and who, in the very limited channels open
to them and with various degrees of explicitness, denied even the approximate
truth of the legend. A good example is the distinguished American scholar
John Beaty, who was called to active duty in the military Intelligence Service
of the War Department General Staff just before the entry of the US into the
war and attained the rank of Colonel by the end of the war. Among other
things, Beaty was one of the two editors of the daily secret “G-2 Report,”
which was issued each noon to give persons in high places, including the
White House, the world picture as it existed four hours earlier. In his book
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
20

Iron Curtain Over America, published in 1951, he ridiculed the six million
legend with a few remarks that were unfortunately brief and inconclusive, but,
coming from a man who was one of the best informed in the world during the
war, carried some amount of authority.
Elementary investigation into the question, of the sort the non-historian
customarily does, led me nowhere. The meager amount of literature in the
English language which denied the truth of the legend was not only unconvincing;
it was so unreliable and unscrupulous in the employment of sources,
when sources were employed, that it had a negative effect, so that the case for
the truth of the essentials of the legend (disregarding quantitative problems,
e.g., whether it was six million or four million or only three million) seemed
strengthened. At the time I became aware that there existed additional literature
in French and German but, being quite unaccustomed to reading texts in
those languages except on rare occasions when I consulted a paper in a French
or German mathematics journal, I did not undertake to acquire copies of the
foreign language literature.
Moreover, I assumed that if such literature was worth more than what was
being published in English, somebody would have published English translations.
Still possessing my lingering doubts I sat down, early in 1972, and started
to read some of the “Holocaust” literature itself rather more systematically
than I had previously, in order to see just what claims were made in this connection
and on what evidence. Fortunately, one of my first choices was Raul
Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews. The experience was a shock
and a rude awakening, for Hilberg’s book did what the opposition literature
could never have done. I not only became convinced that the legend of the
several million gassed Jews must be a hoax, but I derived what turned out to
be a fairly reliable “feel” for the remarkable cabalistic mentality that had given
the lie its specific form (those who want to experience the “rude awakening”
somewhat as I did may stop here and consult pp. 567-571 of Hilberg12).

Although my long-lingering skepticism in regard to the legend was no
longer on the defensive, my information could not, early in 1972, be considered
conclusive and my knowledge of the subject was not comprehensive so I
set out, at first in my “spare time,” to investigate the subject with the thoroughness
that was required.
The reader will have surmised that my “spare time” eventually expanded
considerably.
Several, for me startling, discoveries made the subject irresistible in a
purely intellectual sense. I acquired the foreign language literature. Ultimately
I spent the entire summer of 1972 working on an exposé of the hoax, since by
then I had penetrated and demolished the whole sorry mess so that, while the
12 Vol. 3, pp. 885-890 in the “revised and definitive edition” of 1985.

Foreword

The book you are holding differs considerably in quantity of factual content and
general quality from the picture I had formed by the summer of 1972, that picture,
whose essentials are transmitted here, was in such overwhelming contradiction
to the lies that Western society had equipped me with, that my attention
could not be drawn from the subject by any appeal to prudence or any
such practical calculation. Because even early in the summer of 1972, it was
evident that my research had carried the subject beyond the existing literature,
I felt an inescapable obligation and an intellectual imperative to put forward
for society’s evaluation what I knew about this most pernicious hoax. It
quickly became clear that only a book would do; the subject could not, given
the years of propaganda, be treated in a research paper or pamphlet and, a fortiori,
it could not be treated in the form of a lecture.

The body of a text was written in the summer of 1972 and then the manuscript
was gradually improved in the course of the next two years. A trip to
Europe in the summer of 1973 was very rewarding, as was a trip to Washington
later in the year. The book was essentially finished in late 1974.
There will be those who will say that I am not qualified to undertake such a
work and there will even by those who will say that I have no right to publish
such things. So be it.

If a scholar, regardless of his specialty, perceives that scholarship in acquiescing,
from whatever motivation, in a monstrous lie, then it is his duty to expose
the lie, whatever his qualifications. It does not matter that he collides
with all “established” scholarship in the field, although that is not the case
here, for a critical examination of the “holocaust” has been avoided by academic
historians in all respects and not merely in the respect it is treated in
this book. That is, while virtually all historians pay some sort of lip service to
the lie, when it comes up in books and papers on other subjects, none has produced
an academic study arguing, and presenting the evidence for, either the
thesis that the exterminations did take place or that they did not take place. If
they did take place then it should be possible to produce a book showing how
it started and why, by whom it was organized and the line of authority in the
killing operations, what the technical means were and that those technical
means did not have some sort of more mundane interpretation (e.g. crematories),
who were the technicians involved, the numbers of victims from the
various lands and the timetables of their executions, presenting the evidence
on which these claims are based together with reasons why one should be
willing to accept the authenticity of all documents produced at illegal trials.
No historians have undertaken anything resembling such a project; only nonhistorians
have undertaken portions.

With these preliminary remarks, therefore, I invite your study of the hoax
of your century.
Evanston, Illinois
August 1975

23

A Short Introduction to the Study of Holocaust Revisionism

First published in the Daily Northwestern, May 13, 1991, correction May 14.
I see three principal reasons for the widespread but erroneous belief in the
legend of millions of Jews killed by the Germans during World War II: US
and British troops found horrible piles of corpses in the west German camps
they captured in 1945 (e.g. Dachau and Belsen), there are no longer large
communities of Jews in Poland, and historians generally support the legend.
During both world wars Germany was forced to fight typhus, carried by
lice in the constant traffic with the east. That is why all accounts of entry into
the German concentration camps speak of shaving of hair and showering and
other delousing procedures, such as treatment of quarters with the pesticide
Zyklon. That was also the main reason for a high death rate in the camps, and
the crematories that existed in all.
When Germany collapsed in chaos then of course all such defenses ceased,
and typhus and other diseases became rampant in the camps, which quartered
mainly political prisoners, ordinary criminals, homosexuals, conscientious objectors,
and Jews conscripted for labor. Hence the horrible scenes, which
however had nothing to do with “extermination” or any deliberate policy.
Moreover the west German camps involved were not the alleged “extermination
camps”, which were all in Poland (e.g. Auschwitz and Treblinka) and
which were all evacuated or shut down before capture by the Soviets, who
found no such scenes.
The “Final Solution“ spoken of in the German documents was a program
of evacuation, resettlement and deportation of Jews with the ultimate objective
of expulsion from Europe. During the war Jews of various nationalities were
being moved east, as one stage in this Final Solution. The legend claims that
the movements were mainly for extermination purposes.
The great majority of the millions allegedly exterminated were east European,
not German or west European, Jews. For that reason study of the problem
via population statistics has been difficult to impossible, but it is a fact
that there are no longer large communities of Jews in Poland. However, the
Germans were only one of several parties involved in moving Jews around.
The Soviets deported virtually all of the Jews of eastern Poland to their interior
in 1940. After the war, with Polish and other Jews pouring out of the east
into occupied west Germany, the Zionists moved large numbers to Palestine,
and the US and other countries absorbed many Jews, in most cases under conditions
making impossible a numerical accounting. Moreover the Polish borders
were changed drastically at the end of the war; the country was literally
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
24

moved west.
Historians generally support the legend, but there are precedents for nearly
incomprehensible blindness on the part of scholars. For example throughout
the Middle Ages even the Pope’s political enemies conceded his false claim
that the 4th century Emperor Constantine had ceded rule of the west to the
Pope, although all knew very well that Constantine had been succeeded by
more emperors. Near unanimity among the academics is especially suspect
when there exist great political pressures; in some countries Holocaust revisionists
have been prosecuted.
It is easy to show that the extermination legend merits skepticism. Even the
casual reader of the Holocaust literature knows that during the war virtually
nobody acted as though it was happening. Thus it is common to berate the
Vatican, the Red Cross and the Allies (especially the intelligence agencies) for
their ignorance and inaction, and to explain that the Jews generally did not resist
deportation because they did not know what was in store for them. If you
add all this up you have the strange claim that for almost three years German
trains, operating on a continental scale in densely civilized regions of Europe,
were regularly and systematically moving millions of Jews to their deaths, and
nobody noticed except for a few of our Jewish leaders who were making public
“extermination” claims.
On closer examination even those few Jewish leaders were not acting as
though it was happening. Ordinary communications between the occupied and
neutral countries were open, and they were in contact with the Jews whom the
Germans were deporting, who thus could not have been in ignorance of “extermination”
if those claims had any validity.
This incredible ignorance must also be attributed to Hans Oster’s department
in German military intelligence, correctly labeled “the veritable general
staff of the opposition to Hitler” in a recent review.
What we are offered in evidence was gathered after the war, in trials. The
evidence is almost all oral testimony and “confessions.” Without the evidence
of these trials there would be no significant evidence of “extermination”. One
must pause and ponder this carefully. Were trials needed to determine that the
Battle of Waterloo happened? The bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima
and Nagasaki? The slaughter in Cambodia?
Yet this three year program, of continental scope, claiming millions of victims,
requires trials to argue its reality. I am not arguing that the trials were illegal
or unfair; I am arguing that such historical logic as the legend rests on
must not be countenanced. Such events cannot happen without generating
commensurate and evidence for their reality, just as a great forest fire cannot
take place without producing smoke. One may as well believe that New York
City was burned down, if confessions to the deed can be produced.
Detailed consideration of the specific evidence put forward in support of
the legend has been a focus of the revisionist literature, but I shall mention one
A Short Introduction to the Study of Holocaust Revisionism
25

point here. The claim of the legend is that there were no technical means provided
for the specific task of extermination, and that means originally provided
for other purposes did double duty in improvised arrangements. Thus
the Jews were allegedly gassed with the pesticide Zyklon, and their corpses
disappeared into the crematories along with the deaths from “ordinary” causes
(the ashes or other remains of millions of victims never having been found).
Surely any thoughtful person must be skeptical.

27
Chapter 1:
Trials, Jews and Nazis
Trials and Doubts
The “war crimes trials” which the victors in World War II conducted,
mainly of Germans but also of many Japanese, were precedent-shattering in
their scope and in the explicitness of the victorious powers’ claims to some
sort of legal jurisdiction in respect of laws or understandings which did not exist
at the time they were allegedly broken by the Axis powers. Thus in disregard
of European honor conventions which had been respected for centuries,
German civilian and military prisoners, many of the highest rank, met violent
deaths while in Allied captivity as a supposed consequence of these extraordinary
proceedings.
Nothing resembling the trials of 1945-1949 which were conducted by the
wartime enemies of Germany has ever occurred before. The case of Joan of
Arc comes to mind, but that involved a solitary prisoner, not an entire state,
and the English who were, in the last analysis, responsible for the trial did
everything to make the issue appear to be one of heresy and witchcraft, already
formally proscribed, to be decided by an impartial and universal church
according to pre-existing rules of evidence and procedure.
In the United States, the real progenitor of the trials, opinion on the appropriateness
of having conducted such trials has always been divided, but the
balance has varied. In the immediate post-war period, opinion generally favored
the trials with, however, some significant voices in opposition. In the
middle of the heated election campaign of 1946, just before the major Nazis
Göring, Ribbentrop et. al. were to be hanged, Senator Robert A. Taft delivered
a speech attacking both the legal basis for the trials and the sentences which
had been imposed; his speech seems to have hurt his Republican Party in
those elections.
A decade later views had evidently changed somewhat, since at that time
the then obvious presidential candidate John F. Kennedy published a book,
Profiles in Courage (a survey of various people whom Senator Kennedy
thought courageous) in which he commended Taft for taking this stand, adding
that Taft’s views “are shared […] by a substantial number of American
citizens today.”13
13 Kennedy, 216-219; 236-239 in Memorial Edition.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
28

With the Eichmann abduction in 1960 and subsequent “trial” and with the
associated later publicity, opinion seemed to move again, however slowly, toward
approval of the trials. Many reasons may be offered for this extraordinary
reversal but it seems to me that what had happened was that in a peacetime,
generally non-hysterical atmosphere the world’s attention had been focused
on one tale of a peculiarly macabre sort: the killing, mainly in “gas
chambers,” of several (usual figure, six) million Jews, of all ages and conditions,
by the Nazis during the war, as part of a program of ridding Europe of
Jewry. Gerald Reitlinger’s The Final Solution, 2nd edition (1968) is generally
accepted as the most detailed and useful presentation of this claim, and Raul
Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews (1961) tells essentially the
same story. Other writings are Nora Levin’s The Holocaust (1968), several
books by Léon Poliakov, and The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, by Lucy
S. Dawidowicz (1975).
Returning to the problem of the appropriateness of the war crimes trials,
everybody would agree as to the (at least) shaky legal foundations of the trials,
but apparently many people would go along with the claim that the trials were
appropriate anyway because normal wartime excesses were not involved; the
extraordinary nature of the crime, the extermination of the European Jews,
called for extraordinary proceedings. Such cruelty must not only be punished
but documented as well, the argument goes.
I do not propose in this book to settle the question of what degree of cruelty
justifies what degree of legal irregularity. Rather, a rarely heard point
which is at least relevant to the debate is insisted upon here; it is a fact that
without the evidence generated at these trials, there would be no significant
evidence that the program of killing Jews ever existed at all. One has only to
examine the sources employed by Hilberg and by Reitlinger to see this. If the
trials had not been held, a person claiming the existence of the extermination
program could not, if challenged, produce any evidence for this save a few
books (not including Hilberg or Reitlinger) whose claims are just as unsupported
as his original claim. Thus the problem that had been involved in deciding
whether or not to hold trials on the Jewish extermination aspect was not
a simple question of whether or not to try mass murder; unlike the usual murder
case there was legitimate and very solid doubt that the deed had been
committed at all.
This may surprise the reader who regards the tale of Jewish extermination
as a near certainty; such is simply not the case. There are many considerations
supporting this view and some are so simple that they may surprise the reader
even further. The simplest valid reason for being skeptical about the extermination
claim is also the simplest conceivable reason; at the end of the war,
they were still there.
This must be qualified only slightly. Consider a West European observer,
who had been familiar with the status of European Jewry prior to the war,
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
29

making a survey of West European Jewry in, say, late 1946 (East European
Jewry was out of bounds). He would have found Italian, French, Belgian and
Danish Jewry essentially unscratched (these points will be discussed more
fully in later chapters). On the other hand, he would have found that large
numbers of Jews, possibly majorities, were missing from Luxembourg, the
Netherlands and Czechoslovakia (then accessible from the West). German-
Austrian Jewry was confused because, although most had emigrated before
the war, it was difficult to be precise about what numbers had emigrated to
where. In any case large numbers, possibly majorities, of those who had remained
were no longer resident in their former homes.
However, the absences were offset by the obvious fact that displaced persons’
camps in Germany were full of Jews (a figure of more than 250,000 has
been given14) and that many European Jews had emigrated to the US or Palestine
or elsewhere since the beginning of the war. The facts available to the
West European observer in late 1946 argued very strongly against the extermination
claims which had received such wide publicity during the war and at
the recent trial at Nuremberg.
The passage of a quarter of a century has, despite superficial developments,
gradually strengthened this view of the extermination tale, although for many
years there was only one serious writer in the field, the late French geographer
Paul Rassinier. In 1948, he published a book, Passage de la Ligne, on his experiences
as a left wing political prisoner at Buchenwald, 1943-1945, “generally
received with sympathy, provoking only muffled and inconclusive gnashings
of teeth on a certain side.” Then in 1950 he published Le Mensonge
d’Ulysse (The Lie of Ulysses), a critical study of the concentration camp literature
in which he challenged the certainty of the gas chambers: “It is yet too
early to pronounce a definitive judgment on the gas chambers.” This provoked
a violent press campaign which led ultimately to legal actions in which author,
preface author and publisher were first acquitted then found guilty with judgments
involving fines, damages and suspended prison sentence, and finally
acquitted again.
In 1955, the two books were combined as Le Mensonge d’Ulysse, 2nd edition,
in which material increasingly critical of the gas chamber claim had been
added. The most common (but not very common) edition today is the fifth
(referenced here), published in 1961, in which year Rassinier also published a
short “complementary” volume, Ulysse Trahi par les Siens, consisting of three
essays showing that he had moved rather strongly in the direction of a negative
judgment on the gas chambers; the last essay is the text of a speech given
in several German and Austrian cities in the early spring of 1960 (just before
the Eichmann affair). In 1962 followed Le Véritable Procès Eichmann (The
Real Eichmann Trial), a study of the entire range of alleged German crimes in
14 Grayzel, 792.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
30

their historical and political contexts; by this time he had reached a definitive
conclusion on the tale of extermination of the Jews: “a historic lie: the most
tragic and the most macabre imposture of all time.”15
Rassinier employed two basic approaches to reach this conclusion, the material
and the demographic.
By the material approach we mean the analysis of the evidence that mass
executions of Jews by gassings or other specific means were in fact conducted
by the Germans during World War II. The material approach is nearly synonymous
with analysis of the war crimes trial evidence, or of the trials evidence
as interpreted by Hilberg and by Reitlinger, and as supplemented by
them with similar evidence. Rassinier only tentatively explored the demographic
approach in Le Véritable Procès Eichmann, but in his final general
work on the Jewish extermination problem, Le Drame des Juifs Européens
(The Drama of the European Jews), 1964, he presented a lengthy analysis of
the question from a demographic point of view. In 1965, he published
L’Opération “Vicaire,” a critique of Rolf Hochhuth’s play, The Deputy. One
must comment that it is necessary to check up on Rassinier in his interpretation
of sources; some do not check out and, in addition, he employs some
clearly unreliable sources at a few points. There are also some glaring but
relatively irrelevant errors of fact, such as characterizing Hanson Baldwin as
the New York Times’ “expert in matters of Jewish population” (it is doubtful
that the Times ever had a staff member who could be characterized thus), and
in asserting that the majority of American Jews are anti-Zionist and support
the outlook of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism (which was
never a politically significant organization). However, Rassinier was a courageous
pioneer in an ignored area and, despite the various shortcomings of his
work, no fair minded person could read it without becoming at least skeptical
about the “exterminations.” Rassinier passed away in July 1967. His books
had appeared in German, Spanish and Italian translations, but no English
translation was published for some years.
Rassinier’s books were followed by three books which Josef Ginsburg
published under the pseudonym J. G. Burg: Schuld und Schicksal (Guilt and
Fate), 1962, Sündenböcke (Scapegoats), 1967, and NS-Verbrechen (National
Socialist Crimes), 1968. Ginsburg’s books are not particularly well researched
since his views are based mainly on what he had read in the newspapers plus
his personal experiences as a Jew who, together with his family, was deported
during the war to occupied eastern territory by the Nazis and the Romanians.
After the war Ginsburg took his family to Israel but he eventually became
very anti-Zionist and moved back to Europe, eventually setting up a bookbindery
in Munich. While he believes that many Jews perished as a result of
the combined effects of Nazi policies and wartime conditions, he denies that
15 Rassinier (1961), 9, 175; Rassinier (1962), 112.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
31

the German government ever contemplated the extermination of the Jews of
Europe and he is particularly scornful of the six million figure. He is unsure of
the existence of gas chambers, but he believes that many Jews perished on account
of epidemics, pogroms, air raids and executions of partisans, and offers
an estimate of about three million as the maximum possible number of victims,
although he believes the correct figure is much lower. As a reward for
his efforts to get at the truth, Ginsburg, a small man and not young, was
beaten up by Jewish thugs while visiting his wife’s grave in the Israelite cemetery
in Munich.
In 1969, a short book was published in the United States, The Myth of the
Six Million, attributed to an anonymous author. While some things can be said
in favor of this book, e.g. I learned of Rassinier there, it also contains so many
errors of fact that it illustrates that it is not enough that a book’s thesis be correct,
for quite a few people who used it as a basis for prosecuting public controversy
got burned as a result.
The next development was the publication in Germany of a book by Emil
Aretz, Hexen-Einmal-Eins einer Lüge (The Witches’ Multiplication Table of a
Lie), of which only the third edition, Munich, 1973, seems to have attained
significant circulation. Aretz carries the case against the exterminations only
slightly beyond Rassinier. He depends heavily on Rassinier in this respect, although
he provides some new material. A major function of his book is the
presentation of a remarkably bold and forthright general defense of the German
nation.
The unreasonable continuation of war crimes trials in West Germany, and
the absence of any statute of limitations, with respect to alleged war crimes by
Germans, have had a seldom remarked implication; people who “were there”
have been afraid to come forward and report what, to their knowledge, actually
happened. They would rather not call attention to the fact that they “were
there.” However it was inevitable that a few courageous individuals would
come forward nevertheless. The most important of these, to date, has been
Thies Christophersen, author of the booklet Die Auschwitz Lüge (The Auschwitz
Lie). Christophersen was at Auschwitz from January to December 1944,
and in 1973 published his recollections and his firm view that no exterminations
over took place there. An English translation of Christophersen’s booklet,
to which some colorful announcements had been added, was published in
1974. Christophersen was followed by Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich, a Hamburg
judge, who had been assigned to an anti-aircraft unit near Auschwitz during
1944, and had visited the camp on a few occasions.16
In late 1973, Austin J. App, a retired English professor in Maryland, published
a short booklet, The Six Million Swindle. Early in 1974 Wolf Dieter
16 Nation Europa, vol. 23 (Oct. 1973), 50; vol. 25 (Aug. 1975), 39. The Ginsburg beating incident
is well known and is mentioned by App, 20.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
32

Rothe published the first volume of his study, Die Endlösung der Judenfrage,
and later in 1974 Richard Harwood published in England his book, Did Six
Million Really Die? Harwood’s booklet is quite good in convincing power, although
it has some weak points and the reader is referred to Rassinier for a definitive
treatment of the subject. It was favorably reviewed by Colin Wilson in
the November 1974 issue of the influential British monthly, Books and Bookmen,
setting off a months-long controversy in the pages of that journal.
In early 1975 Harry Elmer Barnes’ translation of one of Rassinier’s books,
The Drama of the European Jews, was issued by a small publisher in the
United States.
How Many Jews?
In this introductory chapter we quickly review the principal problems that
arise when demographic questions are asked. We then indicate how demographic
problems are resolved in this book, but indicate that the specific task
of resolution must be deferred until later in the book.
The problems inherent in a demographic study are formidable. First, all
sources of post-war primary data are private Jewish or Communist sources
(exclusively the latter in the all important cases of Russia and Poland). Second,
it appears that one can get whatever results desired by consulting the appropriately
selected pre-war and post-war sources. Consider world Jewish
population. The 1939 study of Arthur Ruppin, Professor of Jewish Sociology
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, gave 16,717,000 Jews in the world in
1938.17 Because Ruppin (who passed away in 1943) was considered the foremost
expert on such matters, on account of many writings on the subject over
a period of many years, the estimates of other pre-war sources tend to agree
with him. Thus the American Jewish Committee estimate for 1933, which appears
in the 1940 World Almanac, was 15,315,359. The World Almanac figure
for 1945 is 15,192,089 (page 367); no source is given but the figure is apparently
based on some sort of religious census. The 1946 World Almanac revised
this to 15,753,638, a figure which was retained in the editions of 1947
(page 748), 1948 (page 572) and 1949 (page 289). The 1948 World Almanac
(page 249) also gives the American Jewish Committee estimate for 1938 (sic),
15,688,259 while the 1949 World Almanac (page 204) reports new figures
from the American Jewish Committee which were developed in 1947-1948:
16,643,120 in 1939 and 11,266,600 in 1947.
However Hanson Baldwin, New York Times military expert, in an article
written in 1948 dealing with the then forthcoming Arab-Jewish war on the ba-
17 Ruppin, 30-33.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
33

sis of information available at the UN and other places, gave a figure of 15 to
18 million world Jewish population, as well as figures for such things as Jews
in Palestine, Jews in the Middle East, Arabs in Palestine, total Arabs, total
Moslems, etc.18
Such a sketch illustrates some of the simpler uncertainties that exist in a
demography study. To carry the matter further, the 11-12 million postwar
world Jewish population figure which it is necessary to claim in order to maintain
the extermination thesis is very vulnerable on two points. The first is the
set of statistics offered for the US and the second is the set offered for Eastern
Europe. Both, especially the latter, are subject to insuperable uncertainties. Let
us first consider the United States. Census figures for the total US population
are:19
Table 1: US total population
YEAR POPULATION
1920 105,710,620
1930 122,775,046
1940 131,669,275
1950 150,697,361
1960 179,300,000
while US Jewish population figures, as given by the Jewish Statistical Bureau
(subsidiary of either the American Jewish Conference or the Synagogue of
America), H. S. Linfield, Director, are:20
Table 2: US Jewish population
YEAR JEWISH POPULATION
1917 3,388,951
1927 4,228,029
1937 4,770,647
1949 5,000,000
1961 5,530,000
It is important to note that all of the US Jewish population figures are given
by the same source (Linfield).
The indicated growth of US Jewish population, 1917-1937, is 40.8% while
the growth of total US population, 1920-1940 is 24.6%. This contrast is generally
reasonable since in the period under consideration Jewish immigration
was fairly heavy. However Jewish immigration into the US raises some problems
of its own. The American Jewish yearbook gave a net Jewish immigra-
18 New York Times (Feb. 22, 1948), 4.
19 World Almanac (1931), 192; (1942), 588; (1952), 394; (1962), 251.
20 World Almanac (1931), 197; (1942), 593; (1952), 437; (1962), 258.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
34

tion for the years 1938-1943 and 1946-1949 (inclusive) of 232,191.21 Figures
for 1944 and 1945 do not seem to be available. It was in those two years, incidentally,
that an indeterminate number of Jews were admitted to the US “outside
of the regular immigration procedure.” It was claimed that there were
only 1,000 such Jews quartered at a camp near Oswego, New York, and that
they were not eligible for admission to the US. This was supposed to be a US
contribution to relieving the problems of refugees, but the whole episode
seems most strange and suspicious.22
Rather than attempt to settle the problem of the extent of Jewish immigration,
suppose one allows the Jewish population a growth rate in 1937-1957 at
least equal to that of the US Jewish population of 1917-1937, as seems at least
reasonable in view of various facts, e.g., the reasons which sent 1.5 million
Jews to Palestine during the World War II and aftermath period appear to motivate
immigration to the US just as well, and no national or racial immigration
quotas were applicable to Jews as such. In such a case there should be as
least 6,678,000 Jews in the US in 1957, not the 5,300,000 that are indicated.
There are about 1,400,000 Jews missing from the interpolated figures for
1957, and we consider this a conservative figure for the reason given. The period
1937-1957 was one of Jewish movement on an unprecedented scale.
On the other hand we can adopt an equally conservative approach and assume
that the 4,770,647 Jews of 1937 grew in 1937-1957 at the same rate as
the US population in 1940-1960. Under this assumption these should have become
6,500,000 Jews in the US in 1957. If one adds the reasonable figure of
300,000 more due to immigration we have 6,800,000 in 1957. Thus by either
method of extrapolation the figures offered for post-war US Jewish population
are at least approximately 1.5 million short for 1957.
The specific major fault of the US Jewish population figures is the inexplicably
small claimed growth from 1937 to 1949 despite record Jewish movement
and a very open US immigration policy.
Eastern Europe, however, presents the core of the demographic problem. In
order to avoid very serious confusion, one must first recognize that there have
been extensive border changes in Eastern Europe in the course of the twentieth
century. A map of Europe on the eve of World War I (1914-1918) is given
as Fig. 1. A map for January 1938 showing, essentially, Europe organized according
to the Treaty of Versailles, before Hitler began territorial acquisitions,
is given in Fig. 2, and Fig. 4 shows the post-war map of Europe. The principal
border change at the end of World War II was the moving westward of the
Soviet border, annexing the three Baltic countries (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia)
and parts of Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Prussia. Poland
21 World Almanac (1952), 438.
22 US-WRB (1945), 64-69; New York Times (June 10, 1944), 1; (June 13, 1944), 1; (Aug. 10,
1944), 5; (Oct. 24, 1944), 14; (Oct. 25, 1944), 13; Myer, 108-123.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
35

was compensated with the remainder of East Prussia and what used to be considered
eastern Germany; the effect was to move Poland bodily westward.
Pre-war (1938) Jewish population estimates for Eastern Europe were offered
by H. S. Linfield and the American Jewish Committee in the 1948 (sic)
World Almanac (page 249). Post-war (1948) figures are published in the 1949
World Almanac (page 204).
Table 3: Eastern European Jewish
population (est.)
COUNTRY 1938 1948
Bulgaria 48,398 46,500
Hungary 444,567 180,000
Poland 3,113,900 105,000
Romania 900,000 430,000
USSR 3,273,047 2,032,500
TOTALS 7,779,912 2,794,000
The claimed Jewish loss for Eastern Europe is thus 4,985,912. The figure
for the USSR includes, in both cases, the three Baltic countries and the Jews
of Soviet Asia. The pre-war figures are in all cases in close agreement with the
figures that Ruppin published shortly before the war. To the extent that the extermination
legend is based on population statistics, it is based precisely on
these statistics or their equivalents.
The trouble is that such figures are absolutely meaningless. There is no
way a Western observer can check the plausibility, let alone the accuracy, of
such figures. He must either be willing to accept Jewish or Communist
(mainly the latter) claims on Jewish population for Eastern Europe or he must
reject any number offered as lacking satisfactory authority.
It is possible to reinforce our objection on this all important point, and simultaneously
deal with a reservation that the reader may have; it would appear
excessively brazen to claim the virtual disappearance of Polish Jewry if
such had not been essentially or approximately the case, or if something like
that had not happened. This seems a valid reservation but one must recall that
much of the territory that was considered Polish in 1939 was Soviet by 1945.
It was possible for Polish Jewry to virtually disappear if, during the 1939-1941
Russian occupation of Eastern Poland, the Soviets had dispersed large numbers
of Polish Jews into the Soviet Union, and if, during 1941-1944, the Germans
had concentrated Polish Jews eastwards, with the Soviet Union ultimately
absorbing many of these Jews into the Soviet Union, with those who
did not wish to remain in the Soviet Union emigrating, mainly to Palestine and
the US, but also to some extent to the new Poland and other lands. This, in
fact, is what happened to the Jews who had resided in Poland before the war.
Whatever may be said about Soviet Jewish policy after, say, 1950, it is
clear that the earlier policies had not been anti-Jewish and had encouraged the
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
36
absorption of Jews into the Soviet Union. It is known that many Polish Jews
were absorbed during, and immediately after the war, but of course numbers
are difficult to arrive at. Reitlinger considers this problem and settles on a figure
of 700,000, without giving reasons why the correct figure might not be
much higher. He then notes that the evidence that he employs of extermination
of Jews in Russia (documents alleged to be German) indicates about the same
number of Soviet Jews exterminated, from which he correctly infers that, in
the period 1939-1946, the Soviet Jewish population may have actually increased.
23 This important concession, coming from the author of The Final Solution,
shows that our unwillingness to accept the Communist figures need not
be regarded as motivated merely by the necessities of our thesis. The figures
are inarguably untrustworthy. It is claimed by the Soviets that their Jewish
population declined by 38%, despite the acquisition of territory containing
many Jews. Since the USSR is one of the lands where “Jew” is a legally recognized
nationality the Soviets do, indeed, possess accurate figures on the
number of Jews they have but have chosen (in Reitlinger’s opinion if you
choose not to accept this author’s) to claim an utterly mythical Jewish population
loss of 38%.
Likewise with the value to be attached to the remainder of the figures offered.
The most relevant research by a demographer appears to be that of Leszek
A. Kosinski of the University of Alberta (Geographical Review, Vol. 59,
1969, pp. 308-402 and Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. 11, 1969, pp. 357-
373), who has studied the changes in the entire ethnic structure of East Central
Europe (i.e. excluding Germany and Russia) over the period 1930-1960. He
explains the extreme difficulties with basic statistics:
“The criteria used in compilation differ from country to country and
are not always precise. In principal, two types are used: objective criteria,
such as language, cultural affiliation, and religious denomination, and
subjective criteria, based on the declaration of the persons themselves.
Each type has virtues and deficiencies. Objective criteria define nationality
only indirectly and are difficult to apply in marginal cases (for example,
bilingual persons).
The same criticism applies even more to subjective criteria. External
pressure and opportunism can influence the results, especially where national
consciousness is not fully developed or where an honest answer can
bring undesirable consequences. Official data are not always reliable,
then, even when they are not forged, as has also occurred. However, criticism
of the official data cannot be applied in the same degree to all the
countries, and reliability is very much a function of national policy.”
Jews are of course one of the groups Kosinski is interested in and he pre-
23 Reitlinger, 534, 542-544.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
37
sents various figures, generally comparable to those given above, for numbers
of pre-war Jews. However his post-war data are so useless from this point of
view that he does not even attempt to offer specific post-war numbers for
Jews, although he offers post-war figures for other groups, e.g. gypsies, giving
numbers less significant, statistically, than the numbers of Jews who, according
to the extermination mythologists, survived in Eastern Europe. It is true
that he accepts the extermination legend in a general way and presents a bar
graph showing a catastrophic decrease in the Jewish populations of Poland,
Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. He also remarks that the combined
war-caused population losses for Yugoslavs, Jews, Poles and east Germans
was about 12.5-14 million, not breaking the total down, and referring the
reader to the statistical summary Population Changes in Europe Since 1939
by Gregory (Grzegorz) Frumkin, whose figures for Jews come from the
American Jewish Congress, the Zionist Organization of America, and the
Centre de Documentation juive contemporaine (Center for Contemporary
Jewish Documentation) in Paris.
However the point is that Kosinski arrives at no figures for Jews, as he obviously
should not, given the problems he has noted. The ethnic population
figures from Communist Hungary are based on language, and the figures from
Communist Poland, Communist Czechoslovakia and Communist Romania are
based on “nationality,” whatever that means in the various cases. Naturally he
apologizes for his use of “official statistics, imperfect as these may be.” We
will return to demographic problems, especially those which involve the Polish
Jews, in Chapter 7.
We must also remember that the problem of counting Jews in Western
countries contains enormous difficulties on account of the lack of any legal,
racial or religious basis for defining a “Jew.” As an example, the statistics
available to Reitlinger indicate to him that early in World War II there were
300,000 Jews in France, including refugee German Jews.24
The Nazis, on the other hand, thought that there were 865,000, and I see no
motivation for deliberate inflation of this figure; other figures used by the Nazis
were not wildly inflated compared to the figures of other sources.25 I
should add that I really have no idea how many Jews there are in the US. I can
consult the World Almanac, which will tell me that there are about 6,000,000
but I cannot see how that figure was arrived at, and have little confidence in it.
As far as I know, the correct figure could as easily be 9,000,000. There must
be at least 4,000,000 in the New York area alone.
To summarize what has been said with respect to Jewish population statistics:
the problem of compiling such statistics is formidable even without political
interference or pressure. Moreover, in the demographic argument for a
24 Reitlinger, 327.
25 NG-2586-G in NMT, vol. 13, 212.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
38
five or six million drop in world Jewish population, the sources and authorities
for the figures used are Communist and Jewish and thus, by the nature of the
problem we are examining, must be considered essentially useless. In addition,
the post-war figures for the United States are demonstrably too low by a
significant amount.
One should not form the impression that it is essential to my argument that
any demographic conclusions seemed to be reached above be accepted by the
reader. It has only been shown what sorts of problems arise if one attempts a
too direct demographic approach; it is not possible to settle anything in such a
manner. In the final analysis the difficulty is that the figures available amount
to nothing more than statements, from Jewish and Communist sources, that
millions of Jews were killed. Such claims are to be expected, but they must
certainly not deter us from looking deeper. We will take up the demographic
problem later in the book, however, because the nature of the situation is such
that reasonably useful demographic conclusions are possible once it is understood
what, in general, happened to the Jews.
Rassinier’s demographic study, in fact, does not really even attempt to settle
the problem, strictly speaking. His basic approach is to analyze the inferences
that have been drawn from two different sets of data, that of the Centre
de Documentation juive contemporaine and that of Hilberg, both of whom infer
from their data five to six million Jewish victims of the Nazis. Rassinier’s
conclusion is that the former can only claim 1,485,292 victims form its data,
and the latter 896,892.26 Rassinier accepts the reality of about a million Jewish
victims of Nazi policies, while rejecting the claims of extermination. For example,
it is known that some East European peoples took advantage of general
political-military conditions to persecute Jews. Also, many Jews who were
deported from their homes no doubt perished as a result of generally chaotic
conditions which accompanied the latter part of the war.
Believing that the task is not possible, I will offer here no definite estimate
of Jewish losses. However, I have no strong reason to quarrel with Rassinier’s
estimate.
Our Method, Argument, and Conclusion
As stated, the “material” approach will be extended here and, in addition, a
“historical-political” approach will be “introduced.” This is just a fancy way
of saying that we will grasp that there are two political powers involved in the
problem, not just one. That is to say, we have a tale of extermination and we
should inquire into the circumstance of its generation. Clearly, there are two
26 Rassinier (1964), 220.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
39
states involved in the problem. Germany had an anti-Jewish policy involving,
in many cases, deportations of Jews from their homes and countries of citizenship.
That is certain. The wartime policy of Washington was to claim extermination
and the post-war policy was to hold trials at which there was generated
the only evidence that we have today that these wartime claims had any foundation.
That is also certain. The policies of both states are necessarily of interest
and, if there is any respect in which this book may be breaking fundamentally
new ground on the problem, it is in its insistence in seeing Washington as
an active agent in the generation of the story. Thus we are interested not only
in what Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Goebbels and Heydrich were doing during
the war in regard to these matters, but also what Roosevelt, Hull, Morgenthau
and the New York Times and associated media were doing during the war, and
what the various tribunals controlled or dominated by Washington did after
the war. This is not only a fair but, more importantly, an illuminating historical
approach.
The conclusion is that Washington constructed a frame-up on the Jewish
extermination charge. Once this is recognized, the true nature of German Jewish
policy will be seen.
The War Crimes Trials
Before we review the details of the story it should be pointed out that there
are excellent a priori grounds for expecting a frame-up. There is of course the
very general argument that political enmity of a magnitude to bring on armed
conflict between two states necessarily excludes the impartiality on the part of
one of them which is a necessity for a fair trial, and for which there exists no
substitute. The judges had pursued political careers in the contexts of the internal
politics of the Allied powers hostile to Germany and after the trials
would, assuming they had not done anything highly improbable at the war
crimes trials, return to these careers. They had, in addition, for several years
heard only the anti-German viewpoint. In sitting on the military tribunals, they
were ad hoc political appointees. Such considerations exclude approximate
impartiality.
There are, however, much more specific reasons for expecting a frame-up.
In order to see this it is only necessary to consider the easily obtainable facts
concerning the various tribunals involved.
First there was the “big trial” conducted by the “International Military Tribunal”
(IMT) at Nuremberg immediately after the war. This was the trial of
the top Nazis Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop et. al. which ran from November 1945
to October 1946. The judges and prosecutors were American, British, French
and Russian. As with all “military” tribunals, there was no jury. There were
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
40
three acquittals, seven prison sentences and eleven death sentences. The latter
were carried out almost immediately after the trial except that Göring escaped
the noose by swallowing a potassium cyanide capsule just before the hangings.
It was never determined where Göring had obtained the poison, or how
he had managed to hide it for any length of time. A unique sequel to this episode
was that the first Nuremberg prison psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley,
a leader in the treatment of psychiatric disorders with drugs, shortly later published
a book on his experiences at Nuremberg, giving Göring and Göring’s
last act a laudatory treatment:27
“He stoically endured his long imprisonment that he might force down
the Allied Tribunal and browbeat the prosecuting lawyers on their own
terms. […] His suicide […] was a skillful, even brilliant, finishing touch,
completing the edifice for Germans to admire in time to come. […] History
may well show that Göring won out at the end, even though condemned by
the high court of the Allied powers.”
A decade later Dr. Kelley followed Göring by taking one of several potassium
cyanide capsules which he possessed, said to be ‘souvenirs’ taken off
Göring’s body.
The IMT trial was the only one that received very great attention. It was
important in the sense that the Allied powers committed themselves to a specific
version of the extermination claim, but there was little evidence presented
of any substantial nature, relative to Jewish extermination; it was almost
entirely testimony and affidavits, not at all difficult for the victorious
powers to produce under the circumstance. The only relative merit of the IMT
trial, for our purposes, is that the complete transcript and a reasonably complete
selection of the documents put into evidence are readily available (see
References) in numerous libraries as a 42 volume set with a very complete
subject and name index.
From 1946 to 1949 a series of twelve superficially less important trials
were held by the Americans before what is here called the Nuremberg Military
Tribunal (NMT). They are referred to variously according to the “case
number,” the major defendant, or a more descriptive title, see Table 4.
Several death sentences resulted from these trials but the great majority received
prison sentences, in many cases rather lengthy ones. However, almost
all were free by the early Fifties.
The only cases among these that will concern us here in any way are Case
1, a trial of medical personnel involved in euthanasia and medical experiments,
Case 4, a trial of concentration camp administration, Cases 6 and 10,
self explanatory, Case 8, dealing with German resettlement policies, Case 9
(the Einsatzgruppen were used for rear security in the east) and Case 11, a
trial of officials of various ministries. The US Government published a fifteen
27 Kelley, 76-77; New York Times (Jan. 2, 1958), 18; Robertson, 266.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
41
volume set of books, referred to here as the “NMT set,” in which may be
found “summaries” of the cases, along with very limited “selections” of the
documents put into evidence. The volume numbers corresponding to the various
cases are listed in the above table.
On this point the student encounters a significant difficulty because, as can
be seen by consulting Hilberg and Reitlinger, almost all the evidence for the
extermination claim was developed at the NMT, not the IMT. That is to say
the important documents, those which, for better or for worse, constitute major
source material for writing any history of Nazi Germany, are those of the
NG, NI and NO series, and these documents were put into evidence at the
NMT trials. Documentary evidence is, especially in view of the irregular legal
and political circumstances which prevailed, immeasurably more weighty than
testimony, as has been suggested. The relevant documentary evidence generated
at the NMT consists of certain kinds of material allegedly supporting the
extermination charges: documents dealing with concentration camp administration,
with crematory construction, with deportations, with certain Farben
and Krupp operations which employed prisoner labor, with general Jewish
policies of the German Government, etc. There is of course no direct documentary
evidence for an extermination program. As Dr. Kubovy of the Center
for Jewish Documentation in Tel-Aviv admitted in 1960, “there exists no
document signed by Hitler, Himmler, or Heydrich speaking of exterminating
the Jews and […] the word ‘extermination’ does not appear in the letter from
Göring to Heydrich concerning the final solution of the Jewish question.”28
The difficulty for the normally circumstanced person is that only small
fractions of the NMT testimonies and documents are widely accessible, in
English translations (in the fifteen volume NMT set). Additionally, these
28 Rassinier (1962), 83. See also Dawidowicz, 121.
Table 4: NMT Trials
CASE NO. US VS. DESCRIPTION NMT VOLS.
1 Brandt Medical Case 1,2
2 Milch Milch Case 2
3 Alstötter Justice Case 3
4 Pohl Concentration Camps Case 5, 6
5 Flick Business Men Case 6
6 Krauch I. G. Farben Case 7, 8
7 List Hostages Case 9
8 Greifelt RuSHA Case 4, 5
9 Ohlendorf Einsatzgruppen Case 4
10 Krupp Krupp Case 9
11 Weizsäcker Wilhelmstrasse, or Ministries, Case 12, 14
12 von Leeb High Command Case 10, 11
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
42
translations cannot always be trusted, as will be seen. Also, the extracts which
are published have been selected by unknown criteria.
Finally, the fifteen volume NMT set is likely to be found only in cities of
moderately large size.
The situation is better if one lives in a very large city, since reasonably
complete collections of documents together with the mimeographed trial transcripts
(almost always in German) exist in certain library centers. However,
the normally circumstanced person may encounter trouble in arranging to examine
specific pieces which he may call for, and in some cases general browsing
even by university faculty is not welcome. In addition, no subject or name
indexes exist for the NMT trials (indexes of testimonies of witnesses, with
many errors, appear in the NMT volumes).
The IMT and NMT trials are almost the only ones of significance here. Of
general significance are a series held by the British; of these, only the Belsen
case and the Zyklon B case interests us to any extent. The Poles, Russians,
French, Dutch and Italians have all held trials of no significance except to the
victims. The Bonn Government has held some trials of slight interest, for example
the “Auschwitz trial” of 1963-1965, reported on by Langbein, by
Laternser and by Naumann.
The manner in which the IMT and the NMT were constituted can be set
forth with sufficient completeness for our purposes. Since the autumn of 1943,
there had been in existence a United Nations War Crimes Commission, headquartered
in London. However, the Commission never really did anything except
realize, at one point, that if anything was to be done, it would be done by
the individual Allied governments.
The first serious moves started in the United States. In August 1944 the
Joint Chiefs of Staff considered a proposed program for dealing with war
crimes. The proposal had been approved by the Judge Advocate General of
the US Army. On October 1, 1944, the Joint Chiefs approved this proposal
and, at about the same time and in accordance with directives of the Secretary
of War, a “War Crimes Branch” was established in the Department of the
Judge Advocate General. The War Crimes Branch, headed by Brigadier General
John M. Weir, with Colonel Melvin Purvis as his assistant, was responsible
for handling all war crimes matters for the State, War and Navy Departments.
The proposal that had been approved by the Joint Chiefs did not survive for
very long, for its character had been rather traditional, in that it contemplated,
basically, the trial of persons who had broken the accepted laws of war in the
field. Thus, offenses committed before the war or acts by enemy authorities
against their own nationals were not considered to be under Allied jurisdiction.
Thus, for example, all measures against German Jews were considered
outside the jurisdiction of the planned war crimes trials. The concept of war
crimes was, at this point, strongly under the influence of the principle, never
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
43
questioned, that a belligerent may try enemy soldiers for the same sorts of offenses
for which he may try his own soldiers.
The Secretary of War, Stimson, had a conference with President Roosevelt
on November 21, 1944, at which Roosevelt made it clear that he had in mind a
much broader idea of war crimes, and that the proposals approved by the Joint
Chiefs were completely unsatisfactory.
Accordingly, in January 1945, Roosevelt designated Judge Samuel
Rosenman as his personal representative in discussions on war crimes problems.
A meeting of January 18, among Stimson, Rosenman, Attorney General
Francis Biddle and others resulted in general agreement on very much expanded
conceptions of war crimes to be tried.29
Biddle was later to sit as a judge at the IMT although, for Roosevelt’s use
at the Yalta conference, he had written in January 1945 that “the chief German
leaders are well known and the proof of their guilt will not offer great difficulties.”
The Russian IMT “Justice” Nikitchenko was slightly more direct in declaring
before the trial that “we are dealing here with the chief war criminals
who have already been convicted.”30
In early May 1945, President Truman approved the revised proposals and
appointed Robert H. Jackson, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, to
act as Chief of Counsel for the US in the forthcoming trial, and also to represent
the US in negotiations with foreign governments relative to constituting
the trial. On June 6, 1945, Jackson made an interim report to the President and
later in June, Jackson and his staff set up headquarters in London, where much
of the preliminary work for the IMT was done.
A key member of Jackson’s London staff was Colonel Murray C. Bernays,
who was one of the first people who had been involved in war crimes problems.
Graduated from Harvard in 1915, he established a law practice in New
York. He was given a commission in the Army in 1942 and, in October 1943,
he was made chief of the Special Projects Branch, Personnel Division, Army
General Staff. His major project in this position was the preparation of plans
for trials of German “war criminals.” After each stage of negotiations with the
White House and others he made the appropriate revisions in the plans being
considered although, if one is to credit his account, he was the author of the
plan that was eventually settled on. In any case, shortly after the appointment
of Jackson, Bernays was awarded the Legion of Merit, the citation reading in
part:
“Early recognizing the need for a sound basis in dealing with the problem
of war criminals and war crimes, he formulated the basic concept of
such a policy and initiated timely and appropriate action which assured its
adoption as the foundation of national policy.”
29 Taylor (Aug. 15, 1949), 1-3; New York Times (Feb. 1, 1945), 4.
30 Davidson, 6, 18, 21n.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
44
Bernays returned to the US in November 1945 and immediately resigned
from the Army. Because, as we have seen, there was considerable dialogue at
higher levels relating to plans for war crimes trials, it is doubtful that one can
take Bernays’s claims at full value, but he no doubt had a great deal to do with
the drafting of the plans for the trials. Moreover, he had certainly been an appropriate
choice for something as novel as the formulation of the “legal”
structure for the war crimes trials, since his views of justice were equally
novel. After his return to the US he had a chat with some editors (who characterized
him as “the man behind the gavel”), and in answer to their queries as
to “how the small fry are going to be hooked,” he replied:31
“There are a good many Nazi criminals who will get off if the roundups
aren’t conducted efficiently. But if we establish that the SS, for example,
was a criminal organization, and that membership in it is evidence per se
of criminality, the Allies are going to get hold of a great many more criminals
in one swoop. You know, a lot of people here at home don’t realize
that we are now the government of Germany in our zone and that no judicial
system can exist other than one we approve. We are the law. If we
wanted to, for instance, we could try Germans for crimes twenty, thirty,
forty years old.
We’ll be too busy with the current crop of war criminals, though, to
have much time to look into ancient wrongdoings.”
In London, Jackson negotiated with the Allies on the trials, and his interim
report of June 6 became the basis for the “London Agreement” of August 8,
signed by the US, Britain, Russia and France. And “indictment” was filed
against twenty four individuals and six organizations (the SS, the General
Staff, etc.) on October 18 and the trial opened at Nuremberg on November 20,
1945. Three of the listed defendants did not stand trial. Martin Bormann was
never found, Robert Ley committed suicide before the trial, and Gustav Krupp
was too ill and too old to stand trial. An attempt was made by the prosecution
to substitute Krupp’s son as defendant, but this was too much even for that
court, so the trial of Alfred Krupp had to wait until the NMT.
In passing we should note that Justice Jackson, in addition to being the
American chief prosecutor at the trial, was also in a formal sense the leading
personality in the London negotiations relative to the formulation of the legal
system under which he was to operate at the trial. A rare opportunity for a
prosecutor, and probably an utterly unprecedented one in respect to proceedings
that civilized people have seriously considered to be trials.
Equally unique features of the final charter of the IMT were that its jurisdiction
was not restricted to acts taken in connection with the war but extended
over the entire life of the Nazi Party, that the defense of superior orders
31 New York Times (June 21, 1945), 6; (Dec. 16, 1945), sec. 4, 8; New Yorker (Nov. 17, 1945),
24; Survey Graphic (Jan. 1946), 4-9; Reader’s Digest (Feb. 1946), 56-64.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
45
was inapplicable and that defendants could be compelled by the prosecution to
testify.
The War Crimes Branch that had been set up in 1944 did not cease to operate,
because in connection with the IMT trial Jackson had “enlisted the cooperation
and participation of the War Crimes Branch of the Judge Advocate
General’s Department.” Moreover, in the early months of the IMT trial (and
perhaps also later), the ordinary prosecution staff, exclusive of Jackson, was
“on the payroll of the Judge Advocate General.”32
A significant role for the Judge Advocate General’s department (JAG) was
most natural under the circumstances because the JAG was the legal agency of
the Army, and the basic American administrative machinery in Germany immediately
after the war was that of the US Army. The traditional role of the
JAG had been the administration of military justice: courts-martial and related
matters. However, during World War II the operations of the JAG had spread
to all phases of military activity where legal matters arose; it even got involved
in litigations relative to war production contracts. The Judge Advocate
General, Major General Myron C. Cramer, had given a speech in May 1945 in
which he declared that the pursuit and arraignment of Nazis was to tax to the
utmost the capacity of the War Crimes Branch and become a major activity of
the JAG, whose resources he pledged to Jackson. While it is not specified exactly
what the War Crimes Branch did in connection with the IMT, it is most
likely that it effectively supervised the American (hence major) role in the
screening and selection of prosecution and defense lawyers and staff, in the
selection of other staff such as translators, and in interrogations. Of course,
Jackson formally held much of this authority, but it is reasonably sure that
such responsibilities were, in fact, exercised by the War Crimes Branch.33
The involvement of the War Crimes Branch in trials was, however, much
deeper.
While the IMT and NMT trials were being conducted, several lesser trials
were taking place. Among these were the trials held at the Dachau camp (outside
Munich, and thus not far from Nuremberg) of the staffs of some concentration
camps (Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Dachau) that had been captured by
the Americans, and of those accused of killing 83 American prisoners at
Malmédy during the Battle of the Bulge. These trials were supervised by the
War Crimes Branch.34 They were perhaps the most shameful episodes in US
history.
The entire repertoire of third degree methods was enacted at Dachau: beatings
and brutal kicking, to the point of ruining testicles in 137 cases, knocking
out teeth, starvation, solitary confinement, torture with burning splinters, and
32 Taylor (Apr. 1949), 248-255; Select Committee, 1536.
33 New York Times (Oct. 17, 1943), sec. 6, 10; (May 20, 1943), 15.
34 Kolander; Taylor (Aug. 15, 1949), 4, 10, 13, 14.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
46
impersonation of priests in order to encourage prisoners to “confess.” Low
rank prisoners were assured that convictions were being sought only against
higher ranking officers, and that they had absolutely nothing to lose by cooperating
and making the desired statements. Such “evidence” was then used
against them when they joined their superiors in the dock. The latter, on the
other hand, had been told that by “confessing” they had taken all responsibility
onto themselves, thereby shielding their men from trial. A favorite stratagem,
when a prisoner refused to cooperate, was to arrange a mock trial. The
prisoner was led into a room in which civilian investigators, dressed in US
Army uniforms, were seated around a black table with a crucifix in the center,
with two candles providing the only light. This “court” then proceeded to hold
a sham trial, at the conclusion of which a sham death sentence was passed.
The “condemned” prisoner was later promised that, if he cooperated with the
prosecutors in giving evidence, he would be reprieved. Sometimes interrogators
threatened to turn prisoners over to the Russians. In many cases the prisoner’s
family was threatened with loss of ration cards or other hardships if cooperation
was not obtained.
The official, as distinct from the mock, trials were also an apparently deliberate
mockery of any conception of due process. The mockery started with
the “indictment,” which made only general reference to very broad categories
of crimes allegedly committed in the years from 1942 to 1945 (in the cases of
concentration camp personnel), and then proceeded to present a long list of
defendants accused of being criminal in the extremely general sense stated.
Specific crimes by specific people on specific dates were not part of the indictments
(e.g. document 3590-PS).
In some cases, the “defense counsel” was an American with no legal training,
who could not speak German. Competent interpreters were not provided
at the trial. The “prosecution” also lacked legal training, as did the “court,”
which consisted of ten US Army officers. There was one person with legal
training present, all of whose rulings on the admissibility of evidence were final.
There were 1,416 convictions out of 1,672 tried, with 420 death sentences.
While the prosecution could hunt all over Europe for witnesses and, if necessary,
torture or otherwise coerce Germans in order to get “evidence,” the accused,
cut off from the outside world and without funds, were rarely able to
summon anybody to their defense.
In addition, the “Association of Persons Persecuted by the Nazis,” by a
propaganda campaign, forbade former concentration camp inmates to testify
for the defense.
The American lawyer George A. McDonough, who had had the rather peculiar
experience of having served as both a prosecutor and defense counsel in
the war crimes program, and later on as a member of a reviewing board and an
arbiter on clemency petitions, wrote to the New York Times in 1948 complainChapter
1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
47
ing about the lack of legal basis for the trials, and remarking that “in nine
problems out of ten the authorities and the textbooks had no answer” to the legal
questions that regularly and consistently came up for anybody seriously
concerned with matters of legality. For McDonough, the major problem was
whether or not a defense of superior orders should be accepted in war crimes
trials. He wrote:
“At the Dachau trials, the claim of the accused that he would have been
shot himself if he had not obeyed his superior’s order to commit an act
which he, in ignorance, may have believed to be a legal order, or knew to
be illegal, seemed to be handled by the courts as an issue of fact. The
availability of this defense seemed to depend upon the age and the rank of
the accused, and the state of battle existing at the time of the offense. Again
it would seem high-handed procedure to hold an enlisted man to the
knowledge of the illegality of a particular act when the international authorities
themselves are in disagreement as to its illegality or have never
defined the act at all.
[…] Hearsay evidence was admitted indiscriminately and sworn statements
of the witnesses were admissible regardless of whether anybody
knew the person who made the statement or the individual who took the
statement. If a prosecutor considered a statement of a witness to be more
damaging than the witness’ oral testimony in court he would advise the
witness to go back to his home, submit the statement as evidence, and any
objection by defense counsel would be promptly overruled.”
One notable incident occurred when investigator Joseph Kirschbaum
brought a certain Einstein into court to testify that the accused Menzel had
murdered Einstein’s brother. When the accused was able to point out that the
brother was alive and well and, in fact, sitting in court, Kirschbaum was
deeply embarrassed and scolded poor Einstein:
“How can we bring this pig to the gallows, if you are so stupid to bring
your brother into court?”
The US Army authorities in charge admitted some of these things. When
the chief of the Dachau War Crimes Administration Branch, Colonel A. H.
Rosenfeld, quit his post in 1948 he was asked by newspapermen if there was
any truth to the stories about the mock trials, at which sham death sentences
had been passed. He replied: “Yes, of course. We couldn’t have made those
birds talk otherwise […] It was a trick, and it worked like a charm.”35
The Malmédy defendants had had a competent defense attorney, Lieutenant
Colonel Willis M. Everett, Jr. It was Everett’s repeated appeals to, among
others, the US Supreme Court, plus a chorus of protests from German clergy-
35 New York Times (Apr. 31, 1946),Utley, 185-200; Chicago Tribune (Apr. 30, 1948),12; (Feb.
13, 1949), 3; (Feb. 14, 1949), 3; (Feb. 17, 1949), 8; New York Times (Oct. 31, 1948), sec. 4,
8.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
48
men and others, plus such details regarding what was going on that managed
to get into the press by various routes, that persuaded the American military
governor, General Lucius D. Clay, to request an investigation of the trials at
Dachau. On July 29, 1948, the Secretary of the Army appointed a commission
consisting of two American judges, Gordon Simpson of Texas and Edward
Van Roden of Pennsylvania, both JAG reserve colonels. They were assisted
by JAG Lieutenant Colonel Charles Lawrence, Jr. The commission submitted
its report to the Secretary of the Army in October 1948, and selected portions
were made public in January 1949.
Subsequent public remarks by Van Roden and also, to some extent, by
Simpson, plus an independent investigation by a review board appointed by
Clay, decisively exposed the whole affair, to the point where the defenders of
the trials could only haggle about the numbers of German prisoners subjected
to brutalities. The review board confirmed all that Van Roden claimed, taking
exception only in respect to the frequencies of the brutalities.36 Oddly, in his
book, Decision in Germany, Clay denies the brutalities, but he is contradicted
by his own review board.
The cases, especially the Malmédy case, attracted a good deal of attention
through 1949, and a subcommittee headed by Senator Baldwin conducted an
investigation. One witness, formerly a court reporter at the Dachau trials, testified
that he was so repelled by what had gone on there that he quit the job. He
said that the “most brutal” had been Lieutenant Perl, Frank Steiner and Harry
W. Thon. He explained that both Perl and his wife had been in Nazi concentration
camps, and that the Nazis had killed Steiner’s mother.
Judge Gordon Simpson (unlike Van Roden, trying to put the best interpretation,
even if very strained, on the sorry facts that had come out) conceded
that this was probably “a poor team,” and explained that the shortage of German-
speaking American lawyers and interpreters had forced the Army to
“draw on some of the German refugees.” Steiner, Kirschbaum and Thon (later
chief of the evaluation section of the civil administration division of the US
military government) appeared later and denied all, but they were shaken by
the testimony of investigator Bruno Jacob, who admitted a few things. Speaking
for the press, investigators Dwight Fanton and Morris Elowitz also denied
all. Colonel Rosenfeld denied almost all. He charged that Lieutenant Colonel
Harold D. McGown, commander of the American soldiers massacred at
Malmédy, had fraternized with SS Colonel Joachim Peiper, the German commander,
and this explained why McGown had appeared at Dachau as a defense
witness for Peiper and had testified that Peiper had held talks with him
and had been responsible for saving a number of Americans. As evidence for
the fraternization, Rosenfeld claimed that McGown and Peiper had been “en-
36 New York Times (Jul. 30, 1948), 5; (Oct. 7, 1948), 15; (Jan. 7, 1949), 1, 9; (Mar. 2,1949), 1,
14; (Mar. 5, 1949), 1, 4; (May 5, 1949), 8.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
49
tirely too friendly during those nights they spent talking together” and that,
when Peiper and his men were later able to escape a US Army trap, “McGown
was with them.” Of course, McGown was Peiper’s prisoner.37
It will, of course, be argued that these nightmarish Dachau “trials” have little
to do with our subject because the standard maintained in the trials at Nuremberg
were not comparable and because the bearers of the extermination
legend do not cite any of the “evidence” produced at these trials. There is partial
truth to these contentions; brutality and coercion were not nearly as extensive
at the prominent Nuremberg trials as they were at the Dachau trials, and
mass exterminations were not emphasized in the Dachau trials (although gas
chambers made occasional appearances in testimony). However the Dachau
trials cannot be waved aside so easily because the administering agency, the
War Crimes Branch, was also deeply involved in the Nuremberg trials, as we
have noted, and as we are to reconfirm shortly in a particularly striking respect.
In addition coercion was, in fact, employed in order to get evidence at
the Nuremberg trials, but that subject is discussed in a later chapter.
None of the four powers was happy with the IMT arrangement and after
the “big trial” they split up and held the kinds of trials they were interested in.
The British trials reflected a general interest but on points of relatively minor
significance here. The only major French trial was of Saar industrial magnate
Hermann Röchling, whom the French had also tried, in absentia, after World
War I. Planning for the American NMT trials had actually started in 1945, and
in March 1946 a division of Jackson’s office, headed by Telford Taylor, had
been created for this purpose.
It is worth noting that in all of these trials of Nazis, from the IMT through
the Eichmann “trial” of 1961 (in which defense witnesses were not permitted)
to the “Auschwitz trial” of 1963-1965 (which the Bonn Government would
not allow Rassinier to attend as observer), the defense lawyers had no staff of
trained research assistants to go through the documents and, in addition, almost
all of the documents which were available to them were controlled by
the prosecuting powers.38 Whatever the legalistic evaluation of such a situation,
it can produce a very distorted historical picture if not approached skeptically.
Under the legalistic schema of the occupation, there was an important constraint
on the NMT and other single-nation tribunals:
“The determination of the International Military Tribunal in the judgments
[…] that invasions, aggressive acts, aggressive wars, crimes, atrocities
or inhumane acts were planned or occurred, shall be binding on the
tribunals established hereunder and shall not be questioned except insofar
37 New York Times (Mar. 5, 1949), 4; (Apr. 30, 1949), 2; (Sep. 6, 1949), 9; (Sep. 7, 1949), 9;
(Sep. 8, 1949), 9.
38 Arendt, 201, 251, (221, 274 in 1964 edition); Aretz, 28-29.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
50
as the participation therein or knowledge thereof by any particular person
may be concerned. Statements of the International Military Tribunal in the
judgment […] constitute proof of the facts stated, in the absence of substantial
new evidence to the contrary.”
Two administratively distinct organizations functioned at the NMT. One
was the collection of “Military Tribunals,” the judges, functioning administratively
through a Secretariat, headed by a Secretary General. The judges were
recruited in the US “by the Department of the Army.” There were three or
more judges at any one trial.
The second organization was the Office, Chief of Counsel for War Crimes
(Telford Taylor) which had come into existence on October 24, 1946, immediately
after Ribbentrop et.al. had been killed. It filed its first indictment the
next day. Although there was a trivial difference in their titles, Taylor, who
had been an associate trial counsel at the IMT, was really the successor to
Jackson in the trials being staged in the Nuremberg courthouse.39
We will have much to say of the NMT trials in this volume. However, the
reader can grasp much of the spirit of these proceedings even from remarks
made by some of the American judges who had been recruited by the US
Army to serve at Nuremberg. Understandably, these people were normally
very reluctant to speak out publicly against what they observed. Thus, the remark
of one of the judges in the Farben trial, that there were “too many Jews
on the prosecution,” was a privately expressed hint to the prosecution, certainly
not intended for publication. However, the presiding judge in Case 7
(trial of German generals for alleged wholesale murder of hostages), Charles
F. Wennerstrum, spoke out publicly and forcefully, immediately after sentences
had been pronounced:40
“If I had known seven months ago what I know today, I would never
have come here.
Obviously, the victor in any war is not the best judge of the war crime
guilt. Try as you will it is impossible to convey to the defense, their counsel,
and their people that the court is trying to represent all mankind rather
than the country which appointed its members.
What I have said of the nationalist character of the tribunals applies to
the prosecution. The high ideal announced as the motives for creating
these tribunals has not been evident.
The prosecution has failed to maintain objectivity aloof from vindictiveness,
aloof from personal ambitions for convictions. It has failed to
strive to lay down precedents which might help the world to avoid future
39 Taylor (Apr. 1949), 272-276.
40 DuBois, 182. Chicago Tribune (Feb. 23, 1948), 1, 2; (Feb. 24, 1948), 3; (Feb. 25, 1948), 4;
(Feb. 26, 1948), 1, 8; (Feb. 28, 1948), 4, 8; (Feb. 29, 1948), 2; New York Times (Feb. 23,
1948), 5; (Feb. 25, 1948), 10; (Feb. 29, 1948), 10; (Mar. 6, 1948), 6.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
51
wars.
The entire atmosphere here is unwholesome. Linguists were needed.
The Americans are notably poor linguists. Lawyers, clerks, interpreters
and researchers were employed who became Americans only in recent
years, whose backgrounds were imbedded in Europe’s hatreds and prejudices.
The trials were to have convinced the Germans of the guilt of their
leaders.
They convinced the Germans merely that their leaders lost the war to
tough conquerors.
Most of the evidence in the trials was documentary, selected from the
large tonnage of captured records. The selection was made by the prosecution.
The defense had access only to those documents which the prosecution
considered material to the case.
Our tribunal introduced a rule of procedure that when the prosecution
introduced an excerpt from a document, the entire document should be
made available to the defense for presentation as evidence. The prosecution
protested vigorously. General Taylor tried out of court to call a meeting
of the presiding judges to rescind this order. It was not the attitude of
any conscientious officer of the court seeking full justice.
Also abhorrent to the American sense of justice is the prosecution’s reliance
upon self-incriminating statements made by the defendants while
prisoners for more than two and a half years, and repeated interrogation
without presence of counsel. Two and one-half years of confinement is a
form of duress in itself.
The lack of appeal leaves me with a feeling that justice has been denied.
[…] You should go to Nuremberg. You would see there a palace of justice
where 90 per cent of the people are interested in prosecution.
[…] The German people should receive more information about the trials
and the German defendants should receive the right to appeal to the
United Nations.”
Ironically, the validity of Wennerstrum’s attack on the low or non-existent
standard of integrity maintained by the Nuremberg prosecution was confirmed
even by the nature of Telford Taylor’s reaction to Wennerstrum’s statements,
which were made in supposed privacy in Nuremberg, for publication in the
Chicago Tribune. The Tribune reporter, Hal Foust, sent the message to Berlin
for transmission to the US on a wireless channel which was supposedly secure
from prying. However, the prosecution, apparently by employment of a ruse,
managed to obtain a copy of the message. Ernest C. Deane, Taylor’s press officer,
immediately phoned Foust in order to attempt “to talk him out of sending
the story.” However, the story had already been sent, and Foust replied
that “Taylor could not properly have knowledge of the article until its publicaArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
52
tion.” Taylor thereupon prepared a reply to Wennerstrum’s remarks, and the
reply was actually made public before the Tribune published the Foust story
containing Wennerstrum’s attack. Taylor accused the judge, among other
things, of making remarks “subversive to the interests and policies of the
United States.” Wennerstrum, on arrival in the US shortly after the publication
of Taylor’s “reply” and of the Tribune story, stood firm on his remarks and
again criticized Taylor.
This incident was one of the notable “government spying” incidents of the
year 1948. The Army issued an order against such spying, and there was much
speculation that Taylor might be court-martialed. When reporters asked Taylor
for his opinion on the legality of his action, the following exchange occurred:
“I don’t know whether it was legal or not,” he replied.
“Weren’t you general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission
for two years before being commissioned in the army?
Yes, but what does that have to do with it?”
Taylor steadfastly refused to express an opinion of the legality of his action
but
“off the record indicated he was as pleased with himself as a field officer
[…] which he never was […] who had just scored against the enemy by a trick
outside the rules of warfare as prescribed by the 1907 Geneva convention.”
The quote is from Hal Foust’s story about the Taylor press conference.
Foust claimed that this was the second instance of Army interference with his
messages to his newspaper, and that in the first instance he had been picked up
by Army agents for interrogation after his story had been sent.
Who was in Charge?
In our examination of the Nuremberg trials we are naturally interested in
who supervised the NMT proceedings. Pro forma, Taylor supervised almost
everything except the appointments of the judges, since the Chief of Counsel’s
formal responsibilities were not confined to the mere prosecution of cases. His
Office was also charged with determining who should and who should not be
tried (there was no separate proceeding for formulating indictments, such as a
grand jury), what the former were to be charged with and how the latter were
to be disposed of. The Office also took over the functions of the Nuremberg
staff and hence one may assume that the Office took over, at least formally,
the (expanded) Nuremberg staff itself. Thus the Office was responsible for interrogations,
field work examination of documents, court reporting, and translating
and interpreting.41
We have given reasons why one should expect that this Nuremberg staff
41 Taylor (Apr. 1949), 272-276.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
53
had been under the effective supervision of the War Crimes Branch and it will
shortly be seen that, whatever Taylor’s formal powers, his actual functions do
not suggest that he ever took over the Nuremberg staff in any effective sense.
The War Crimes Branch, although quartered in far-off Washington, continues
to be involved in our consideration of the Nuremberg trials.
On June 12, 1948, the American press carried a story which reported that
an officer of the US Army, Colonel David “Mickey” Marcus, a West Point
graduate operating under the alias “Mickey Stone,” had been killed in action
while serving as supreme commander in the Jerusalem sector in the Jewish-
Arab war for the control of Palestine (actually, Marcus had been erroneously
shot by one of his own sentries). The New York Times summarized his career.
He had been Commissioner of Corrections in New York before the war and,
as an Army officer, had helped draft the German and Italian surrender terms.
He was a legal aid at the Potsdam conference (summer of 1945), after which
point, if one judges for the adulatory New York Times article only, his career
ended, since we are told of no other activity of Marcus‘ until he turns up with
the Haganah in Palestine in January 1948, visits the US in April, receiving a
medal at a ceremony in the British Embassy in Washington (probably a cover
for negotiations on the details of the final British capitulation), and then returns
to Palestine after three weeks to take over in Jerusalem. The only hint we
get of any activity in the period August 1945 to January 1948 is a story on
June 24, p. 15, reporting that the London Daily Telegraph of the same date
said that:
“He was at the time of his death a full colonel in the Judge Advocate
General’s office of the organized reserve of officers. […] Although not
subject to military discipline he had agreed to remain subject to recall.”
Marcus had, in fact, been Weir’s successor as head of the War Crimes
Branch. Immediately after the war, he had been “number three man in making
American policy” in occupied Germany, but was taken out of this position
early in 1946 in order to take the war crimes job. His appointment was effective
as of February 18, 1946, but he spent a few months in Japan after leaving
Germany and then moved into the Washington office of the War Crimes
Branch until April 1947, when he retired from the Army and went into private
law practice.42
Our previous observations obviously suggest that it was in reality the War
Crimes Branch that exercised the crucial functions in respect to the NMT.
This is the case, as is made clear by a careful reading of Taylor’s official final
report on the NMT trials, although the fact is not emphasized there.43 The fact
is confirmed by the remarkable book by Josiah E. DuBois, who headed the I.
42 Marcus; Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 11, 1945; Berkman, 44-45; Saturday Evening Post
(Dec. 4, 1948), 179.
43 Taylor (Aug. 15, 1949), 13, 14, 34, 35.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
54
G. Farben NMT prosecution, and Berkman’s book about Marcus provides
some sketchy information on this aspect of Marcus’ career.44
Marcus was made head of the War Crimes Branch primarily in order “to
take over the mammoth task of selecting hundreds of judges, prosecutors and
lawyers” for the NMT and Far East (Tokyo) trials. In December 1946, DuBois
had been summoned to Marcus‘ office in Washington to discuss the possibility
of DuBois’ taking over the prosecution of leading officials of the great
German chemicals firm, I. G. Farben. DuBois had been undecided so he conferred
at length with Marcus on the problems involved; one of the problems
being whether or not there was sufficient evidence to charge Farben with an
“aggressive war” plot and, if so charged, the possible political repercussions
that might ensue. They discussed the general advantages of bringing the Farben
men to trial. One point Marcus made was that a trial might show how
Farben managed to develop certain weapons in total secrecy. Then too, if they
went free, they might start working for the Russians. Marcus displayed great
knowledge of Farben. He pointed out that there was a “warehouse full” of
Farben records in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, a fact that DuBois forgot until
later events forced him to recall and act on it during the pre-trial investigation.
They got around to the required length of the pre-trial investigation. Marcus
said: “As far as I’m concerned, you could go over there for as long or as
short a time as you liked.” Dubois suggested that he would need about four
months, and Marcus replied: “I have no objection to that. Within a few days
after you get home, you should get a wire from Telford Taylor agreeing to it.”
Taylor, of course, was in Europe in his capacity of Chief of Counsel. Du-
Bois records Taylor’s activities relative to the Farben trial. He responded favorably
to a staff member’s suggestion that DuBois (under whom the staff
member had worked in the Treasury Department during the war) be appointed
to prosecute Farben. He passed the recommendation on to Washington. After
DuBois had taken the job, he had plans to see Taylor to get his okay for adding
another man, specified by DuBois, to the prosecution staff. The okay was
granted. Taylor went to Paris to plead before the French cabinet for the extradition
of a key Farben man. Taylor gave the opening speech at the Farben trial
and them disappeared from the proceedings. Taylor was not involved in the
pre-trial investigation or in the formulation of the specific charges made by
the prosecution.
All of this suggests rather strongly that Taylor’s role was in public relations
and that he was not deeply involved in the details of the running of the
trials which were his formal responsibility. Such situations are not unusual in
large scale operations.
The facts show that the real organizers of the NMT trials were not as much
in the public eye as Taylor was; in effect and possibly in intention Taylor was
44 DuBois, 19-22, 31, 53, 63, 69-70, 74-75; Berkman, 195-199, 157-159.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
55
a front man. Marcus, as head of the War Crimes Branch, no doubt exercised
effective control of much of the Nuremberg staff, and he selected the judges
and lawyers for the trials (with only a handful of exceptions). The book by
Dubois shows that Taylor was not involved with the trials on the working
level so the inescapable conclusion is that the substantial powers of Taylor’s
office were actually exercised either by the War Crimes Branch or by persons
subordinate to Taylor. In examining the prominent persons in the latter group
one encounters Robert M. W. Kempner, who is discussed in Chapter 5.
Marcus seems to have had a real importance quite incommensurate with
his relatively common rank of Colonel, because we are told that during the
war he had made a “favorable impression on FDR […] he was one of the
anonymous handful who charted American policy behind the scenes.” A man
whose career was remarkably intertwined with that of Marcus was General J.
H. Hilldring, who headed the Army Civil Affairs Division to which Marcus
was assigned in 1943. The CAD had been created in 1943 within the Army
General Staff in anticipation of a need for a group to concern itself with policies
to be followed in occupied territories. It had been thought that Fiorello
LaGuardia was to head the CAD, but the job went to Hilldring. Marcus became
a member, and later the chief, of the Planning Branch of the CAD. It
was as a consequence of Marcus‘ activities in the CAD that he made his mark;
his assignment to the military government of Germany was a direct result of
his CAD responsibilities. It was Hilldring who, several months later, pulled
him out of his military government position and assigned him to head the War
Crimes Branch (which was transferred from the JAG to the CAD on March 4,
1946). Then Hilldring immediately moved over to the State Department as an
Assistant Secretary of State in charge of occupied areas problems; in this capacity
he headed a secretariat which coordinated Army, Navy and State Department
policies in Germany. In September 1947 he left the State Department
and became an Adviser to the US delegation at the United Nations, where the
diplomatic battle between the Zionists and the Arabs was being waged.
Hilldring “was a tower of strength from the outset […] as information link
with the Jewish representatives, he frequently conversed with Zionist strategists.”
Then, at about the time Marcus was made supreme commander in Jerusalem,
Hilldring was appointed back to the State Department as Assistant Secretary
of State for Palestine. Zionist sources have subsequently boasted that
both the UN and second State Department appointments were direct result of
Zionist lobbying.45 Quite a pair, Marcus and Hilldring.
The filling of the War Crimes Branch position with a fanatical Zionist, the
“first soldier since Biblical times to hold the rank of General in the Army of
45 Marcus; Berkman, 191-193, 199; John & Hadawi, vol. 2, 209n, 367; Zink, 209, 210; New
York Times (Apr. 8, 1943), 12; (Apr. 16, 1943), 10; (Mar. 17, 1946), 15; (Sep. 16, 1947), 10;
(Apr. 29, 1948), 16; Blum, 383.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
56
Israel,” is not only significant in terms of what the Zionist might do in the position,
but also significant in revealing, in a simple way, the nature of the
overall political forces operating at the trials. This is the important point. It is
simply not possible to imagine an appointment that would make these trials
more suspect.
Under these political conditions it is simply silly to expect anything but a
frame-up at the “trials.” The associated “extermination” hoax will be exposed
with complete clarity in these pages.
The Nazis
This book is written for people who are already informed on the European
side of World War II and the immediately preceding years. We have no intention
of reviewing the nature of the Nazi state, the roles of Göring, Himmler,
Goebbels, etc., or the anti-Jewish measures that were taken prior to the war,
except that these matters will be touched upon here and there as a matter of
course. The major events and approximate dates associated with the war are
assumed known by the reader.
When Europe was dominated by the Germans it was not organized according
to the plan of the Treaty of Versailles; Figure 3 presents a map of Europe
as it was organized in the autumn of 1942, at the apex of Hitler’s power. Germany
had annexed Austria, Alsace-Lorraine, part of Czechoslovakia, and a
great deal of Poland (essentially the part that had been taken from Germany
after World War I). The part of Poland that remained was called the “General
Government” and had the status of a subject province governed by the Germans,
as did the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In the
same subject status were White Russia, the Ukraine, Bohemia-Moravia (formerly
western Czechoslovakia), and Banat (long a part of Hungary dominated
by ethnic Germans). The eastern part of Czechoslovakia had become the independent
state of Slovakia, and Yugoslavia had been reorganized as Croatia
and Serbia, corresponding to the two dominant of the five nationalities that
had constituted Yugoslavia. Italy also had an interest in this area of Europe,
controlled Albania, and shared influence in adjoining countries with her German
ally. Finland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were also allied with
Germany, and the Waffen-SS (regular military units within the SS) recruited
troops all over Europe, particularly in the Baltic states, in the Ukraine, in
Scandinavia, and in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and much (later all) of
France were occupied by the Germans. Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal
remained neutral throughout the war.
It is convenient to review, at this point, some matters pertaining to the SS,
a strange bureaucracy which had responsibility for certain improbable combinations
of functions.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
57
Only three of these functions, security, concentration camp administration
and resettlement policies, are of interest in our study.
The best known agency of the SS was the RSHA, Reich Security Main Office,
which embraced the Gestapo (Secret State Police, headed by SS Lieutenant
General Heinrich Müller), the SD (Security Service, headed by SS Lieutenant
General Schellenberg), the Kripo (Criminal Police, headed by SS Lieutenant
Generals Nebe and, later, Panzinger) and related functions. The first
head of the RSHA had been SS General Reinhard Heydrich, an ambitious and
ruthless young man whose methods generated many enemies for him.
Ever since the Röhm purge of 1934, the substantial ambitions of the SS in
respect to military matters had resulted in growing conflict between the SS
and the regular military establishment, the Wehrmacht, and Heydrich was not
in the least bit delicate in the methods he employed to prosecute the conflict.
In 1938 he had forced the resignation of the Minister of War, General Blomberg,
by showing that Blomberg’s new wife had been a prostitute. Blomberg’s
obvious successor was General von Fritsch, so Heydrich constructed a frameup
of von Fritsch, based on perjured allegations of homosexuality. Although
von Fritsch was eventually exonerated, his career had been ruined, and the bitterness
toward Heydrich swelled.
The SS had a second basis for rivalry with the military establishment. The
German intelligence services were the Abwehr, German military intelligence,
responsible to the military high command and headed, since 1935, by Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris, and the SD, the political intelligence arm, responsible to
Heydrich and Himmler. Since the two types of intelligence activity cannot be
strictly separated, Canaris and Himmler inevitably became rivals. Heydrich
appears to have attempted to be cooperative with Canaris, at least at first; this
may have been due to Heydrich’s own background as a naval intelligence officer
who, during the twenties, had served and trained under Canaris and had
even been a frequent visitor to his home.
More significantly, the Admiral was a traitor; he is one of the awesome
mysteries of World War II. During, and even before (he was in contact with
Churchill in 1938) the war Canaris betrayed Germany at every opportunity. A
British official has expressed the role of Canaris most succinctly: “We had
Admiral Canaris.” The man’s motivations remain as mysterious as his personality
and his antecedents. Ian Colvin, one of the authorities on World War II
intelligence operations, wrote a whole book about Canaris and, yet, never deciphered
him:
“The readers will have to judge for themselves whether Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris was a German patriot or a British spy, a European
statesman or a cosmopolitan intriguer, a double agent, an opportunist, or
a seer. It will not be easy for them to make up their minds.”
It may be of some relevance that the man whom Colvin, in his 1951 book
characterized as one of Canaris’ “close personal friends,” Otto John, the AbArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
58
wehr man in the all important neutral capital of Lisbon during World War II,
later became Chief of State Security for the Bonn Government, and was subsequently
exposed (in 1956) as a Soviet agent.46
The Canaris case is sometimes confused by grouping Canaris with the men
behind the abortive coup d’état of July 20, 1944. This is utterly erroneous
since Canaris used all his powers to betray Germany, whereas the men of July
20, merely betrayed Hitler, and would never have betrayed Germany. No Englishman,
after the war, could have truthfully said, “we had Erwin Rommel.”
The most one can say about Canaris’ involvement is that he was no doubt
aware of the conspiracy in its early states, and naturally gave its members the
impression that he was with them. Canaris was a grand master at giving such
impressions.
To return to Heydrich, great ambition had gotten the young SS General appointed
Deputy Protector of Bohemia-Moravia in late 1941; he was thus starting
to look bigger than his superior, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. It
might also be interesting to speculate that, at about this time, Heydrich may
have started to grasp Canaris’ game; as chief of the RSHA and as a former associate
of Canaris, no man was better situated and motivated to penetrate Canaris’
secret than Heydrich was. When one considers the long burning antagonism
of the Army, it appears that Heydrich, by early 1942, had accumulated a
very long list of powerful enemies in Germany. It was thus remarkable that at
this point in Heydrich’s career the English, it is said, fortuitously removed him
in May 1942 by dropping two assassins from the sky. In accord with the alltoo-
common scenario for political assassinations (e.g. the Abraham Lincoln
and John F. Kennedy assassinations), the alleged assassins were said to have
been killed before they got an opportunity to talk.
In an appointment that caused general astonishment, Heydrich was succeeded
in early 1943 by the relatively obscure and much less ambitions Dr.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Evidently desirous of avoiding repetition of the situation
that had developed with Heydrich, Himmler retained a rather more direct control
of the Gestapo and the SD than he had held previously. However both
agencies continued to be formally responsible to the head of the RSHA, now
Kaltenbrunner. Himmler also charged Kaltenbrunner with a special task: to
build up the intelligence service of the SD. This was a particularly timely decision
on the part of Himmler, since Canaris fell from power (without being
fully exposed) in February 1944 and, by a special Hitler decree, all military
and political intelligence functions were taken over by the RSHA, thus uniting
all intelligence activity under SD chief Schellenberg.
Canaris was arrested after the July 20 coup and he was executed shortly before
the end of the war.
46 Colvin, vii, 1-6; New York Times (Dec. 23, 1956), 1; (Jul. 6, 1969), 11. See Sturdza, 161-
162, for an episodic illustration of Canaris at work.
Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
59
Concentration camp administration was under the WVHA, Economic-
Administrative Main Office, headed by SS General Oswald Pohl. As its name
suggests, the WVHA was concerned with the economic role of the SS which
had arisen, for the most part, on account of the availability of the labor of concentration
camp inmates. The commandants of the concentration camps reported
to the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, headed by SS Brigadier
General Glücks, who reported to Pohl. Pohl reported to Himmler, and was
formally equal in rank to Kaltenbrunner and Heydrich.
It is convenient to state at this point, in very general terms, what was going
on with respect to the Jews of Europe during the life of the Nazi regime. Before
the war, the German Government had used all means to encourage the
emigration of Jews from Germany, and most German Jews had left Germany
before the outbreak of the war. The persistent problems in connection with
this emigration program were, first, the dislocations of the economy which
were entailed in moving the Jews out and, second, the difficulty in arranging
for other countries to take the Jews. By the summer of 1941 Germany was at
war with Russia and huge numbers of Jews, i.e., the greater part of all the
Jews of Europe, were in the German sphere of influence. However the war
had also opened up, temporarily, vast new territories for the Germans and,
consequently, a program of Jewish resettlement got under way in the autumn
of 1941. Through the course of the war, as long as Germany controlled any
significant amount of eastern territory, European Jews were being resettled in
the East. There were also a certain number of young, adult Jews conscripted
for labor.
On account of certain political problems and the priority of war requirements,
the resettlement program was only partially carried out and, of course,
nowhere near six million Jews were involved. Excluding Polish and Romanian
Jews, perhaps 750,000 Jews were resettled, primarily in the Ukraine, White
Russia and Latvia. Not all Polish Jews fell under German domination. Apart
from those who managed to flee before or after the German occupation, several
hundred thousand or perhaps a million Jews had been deported from Poland
by the Russians in 1940 and had been dispersed in the Soviet Union. For
the most part, the Polish Jews who came into German hands were crowded
into ghettoes in eastern Poland (1939 boundaries).
What happened to all of these people can be established only in a very
general way, because all of the territory that the Jews had been resettled onto
became Soviet territory after the war, and because the victorious powers engaged
in considerable suppression of the data. However there is sufficient evidence
to permit us to see approximately what happened. Although it is very
likely that a fair number perished in the disorderly and chaotic conditions that
accompanied the German retreats, it is established that a large number of
Jews, predominantly of pre-war Polish nationality, were absorbed into the Soviet
Union, and the remainder of the Jews who had been uprooted ultimately
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
60
resettled in Palestine, the US, Europe and elsewhere.
These general remarks are supplied here to serve as a background to assist
the reader in interpreting the analysis of the “extermination” claims, which is
the task of the next few chapters. However, the major evidence for these remarks
concerning what actually happened to the Jews will not be presented
until Chapter 7.
The RSHA was responsible for carrying out most aspects of this Jewish
policy. Within the Gestapo there was an office, “B4,” which designated the
“religions and cults division – Jewish religion subdivision,” headed by one
Karl Adolf Eichmann, whose highest attained rank had been Lieutenant Colonel
or Colonel.47 Eichmann did the routine chores associated with the Jewish
emigration and resettlement policies of the German Government; most of his
time was spent arranging with the various Jewish Councils to draw up transport
lists of Jews, and arranging for transportation for the deportees. There is
no evidence that Eichmann ever participated in formulating policy and, since
he was not involved in concentration camp administration, he could not have
been directly involved in whatever it was that happened in those camps.
It is, therefore, quite ridiculous that it was possible to get so many people
excited about the case of a person such as Eichmann, who had performed
completely routine functions in Nazi Germany. Those functions were carried
out in accordance with specific orders transmitted by his superiors. His Jerusalem
testimony was given “after consulting Reitlinger and Poliakov, (producing)
seventeen multicolored charts, which contributed little to a better understanding
of the bureaucratic machinery of the Third Reich.”48 I see no point in
viewing the Eichmann affair as anything but a publicity stunt on the part of a
state accustomed to disregarding the constraints that other states feel bound to
respect. A short discussion of the Eichmann case, and of Eichmann’s Jerusalem
testimony, is provided in Chapter 6.
Other departments of the SS which were involved in resettlement activities
were the RKFDV (Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom,
headed by SS General Ulrich Greifelt), the RuSHA (Race and Settlement
Main Office, headed by SS Generals Otto Hofmann and, later, Richard
Hildebrandt) and the VoMi (Liaison Office for Ethnic Germans, headed by SS
General Werner Lorenz). The most important responsibility of these departments
was the resettlement of ethnic Germans on conquered territories, and
Greifelt was the main personality in this program. However they inevitably
got involved in the program of Jewish resettlement to some degree.
47 Reitlinger, 28; Red Cross (1947), 99; Eichmann, session 75, V1, W1.
48 Arendt, 136 (152 in 1964 edition).
61
Chapter 2: The Camps
Horror Scenes and ‘Extermination’ Camps
When Germany collapsed in the spring of 1945 it was after a long allied
propaganda campaign that had repeatedly claimed that people, mainly Jews,
were being systematically killed in German “camps.” When the British captured
the camp at Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany they found a large
number of unburied bodies lying around the camp.
Photographs such as Fig. 10 and pictures of guards with unfortunate facial
expressions, such as Fig. 12, were accordingly reproduced all over the world.
It is, I believe, Belsen which has always constituted the effective, mass
propaganda “proof” of exterminations, and even today you will find such
scenes occasionally waved around as “proof.” In fact these scenes, repeated in
varying degrees at other German camps, e.g. Dachau and Buchenwald, were
much less related to “extermination” than the scenes at Dresden after the British-
American raids of February 1945, when many, many times as many bodies
were found lying around.49 The deaths at Belsen were the result of a total loss
of control, not a deliberate policy. Equivalent scenes could easily have existed
in any country invaded on all sides by enemy armies, crippled by powerful
“strategic” bombings which had caused all sorts of shortages and chaotic conditions.
The major cause of the deaths at Belsen was a typhus epidemic. Everybody
agrees that typhus was a constant menace in all German camps and eastern
military operations; for this reason there was a real fear of typhus spreading
throughout Germany and vigorous countermeasures were applied.50 The typhus
problem will play a most significant role in our story because it was not
merely at the end of the war that it manifested itself; the scenes at the end of
the war were due to the total collapse of all measures against a disease that
had plagued the German concentration camps since early in the war. The typhus
was of the sort carried by the body louse and consequently defensive
measures consisted in killing the lice, whose spread was due mainly to the
constant rail traffic with the East.
Thus all “survivor literature,” sincere or inventive, and regardless of the
type of camp involved, report the same basic procedures involved in entering
a German camp: disrobe, shave hair, shower, dress in new clothes or in disin-
49 Veale, 133-136; Martin, 121.
50 Reitlinger, 122, 402; Hilberg, 570-571; DuBois, 127.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
62
fected old clothing.51
At Belsen, the trouble had started in October 1944 with a breakdown of
these measures. In the account of a political prisoner there:52
“Towards the end of February 1945 my own situation changed completely.
By that time typhus had become a serious danger for the whole camp. It
was the species of typhus which is transmitted by lice. At one time all the
transports which arrived at Belsen had had to pass through a ‘human
laundry’ and this disinfection seems to have been effective enough to keep
the camp free from lice until the autumn of 1944.
At the end of October a big transport had, for the first time, been admitted
to the camp without being disinfected, because there had been some
damage to the machinery of the shower-baths. Unfortunately the people of
this transport were louse carriers, and from that day the lice gradually
spread over the whole camp. […] Typhus broke out in Camp I about the
end of January. At first there were only a few cases, but a month later a
dozen had appeared, and it became impossible to check the disease […].”
Another serious complication was that, in the final months, Belsen was
considered a Krankenlager, a sick camp, so that many people entering were
sick to begin with.53 The British could not check things at once and over a
quarter of those alive when they took over the camp were to perish in the first
four weeks.54
Despite the very effective propaganda role of the Belsen scenes, nobody
acquainted with the most easily obtainable facts claims exterminations at Belsen
and the British military court which tried the commandant, SS Captain
Kramer, never accused him of supervising an extermination camp at Belsen.55
Today, in fact, exterminations at any of the concentration camps in Germany
are not claimed by anybody trying to be serious; Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau,
etc. were not extermination camps. The extermination camps are all
supposed to have been in occupied Poland, namely the camps referred to as
Auschwitz, Belzec, Kulmhof (Chelmno), Lublin (Majdanek), Sobibor and
Treblinka.56
Also, exterminations of Jews were supposed to have been conducted in
Russia by the Einsatzgruppen, employing either mass shooting or “gasmobiles.”
The camps in Poland are also claimed to have employed “gas chambers”
but, except for the case of Chelmno, stationary rather than mobile ones.
Thus the exterminations are supposed to have taken place only at locations
51 Burney, 9; Buber, 188; Lenz, 31; Cohen, 120-122.
52 Sington, 117-118.
53 Fyfe, 152.
54 Sington, 48.
55 Fyfe, 17.
56 Hilberg, 561-564; Reitlinger, 94, 147-150, 154.
Chapter 2: The Camps
63
which had been abandoned before being captured by the Russians, not at
camps which were still functioning, however disastrously, when captured by
Western troops.
Although six extermination camps are claimed, one of them, Auschwitz, is
the key to the whole story. It is for Auschwitz that quantities of documentary
evidence are offered; there is little of any sort offered for the others. It was
Auschwitz, as will be seen, that got the very special attention of Washington
long before the end of the war. Thus much of this work is necessarily concerned
with the claim that at Auschwitz Jews were being exterminated during
World War II.
The Camps and Their End
The subject of this book is the question of whether or not the Germans attempted
to exterminate the European Jews. We are not concerned with considering
in any detail the general question of alleged Nazi brutalities of all
sorts or with presenting a complete picture of the functioning of German
camps. However, it has been found that many people have such distorted
views of these camps that, because at Auschwitz there were camps, it is difficult
to separate Auschwitz at the outset and consider it in isolation from other
camps. Thus a few general words about the camps are in order. Fig. 23 presents
a map (January 1938 boundaries) that shows the locations of a few of the
most frequently referred to camps together with the locations of a few large
cities.
There were many types of German camps and only a fraction of them were
called “concentration camps.” There were thirteen German concentration
camps, each of them actually being a collection of neighboring camps. Only
two of the six alleged “extermination camps,” Auschwitz and Lublin, were
“concentration camps.” A table of many types of German camps, which includes
many ordinary prisons, is given by Aronéanu, pp. 203-251, who lists
about 1,400 “camps,” together with their locations and “characters.” While
this table gives some idea of the scope and diversity of the German prison and
camp systems, it has obvious major errors, such as giving the “character” of
Birkenau as “medical experiments.” The major significance of Oranienburg,
near Berlin, was that it quartered the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps,
and was thus in direct communication with all concentration camps.
The typical inmate of a German concentration camp was a person being
detained for punitive or security reasons. There were five major categories and
they were distinguished by colored insignia which were associated with their
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
64
uniforms:57
Table 5: Concentration camp inmate insignia
COLOR CATEGORY
Green Criminals
Red Political prisoners (mainly communists)
Pink Homosexuals
Black Asocials (vagrants, drunkards, etc.)
Purple Considered disloyal on account of
religious views (mainly Jehovah’s Witnesses)
At Auschwitz and some other camps a triangle of the appropriate color was
attached to the uniform. If the prisoner was Jewish, a yellow triangle was superimposed
on the first triangle, forming a star of David. This is referred to as
the Auschwitz “star system.”
Economic conditions being what they were, the German government made
every effort to use concentration camp inmates for labor. Prisoners of war
(POWs) were also used to the extent that such use did not conflict with the
relevant conventions, as the Germans interpreted their obligations under them.
Thus Russian POWs were used freely, because Russia did not respect the conventions.
Employment of western POWs was restricted to cases where certain
legalistic “transformations” into civilian workers were possible, as with many
French POWs,58 or some cases where the work was not considered to be ruled
out by the conventions, as with some British POWs employed under conditions
to be discussed.
The number of inmates in the entire German concentration camp system
was about 224,000 in August 1943 and 524,000 a year later.59 These figures
include only camps referred to by the Germans as concentration camps, and
do not include any transit camps or camps referred to in other terms, such as
the Theresienstadt ghetto, or any other establishments intended for quartering
families.
It is generally accurate to say that there was no such thing as a “concentration
camp” for Jews as such, but this remark must be clarified; there are three
distinct categories of Jews which must be considered in this connection.
First, a fraction of those interned for punitive and security reasons were
Jews and under the national socialist system it was natural, in the camps, to
segregate them from the “Aryan” inmates. Thus sections of the camps could,
in this sense, be considered “for Jews.” Second, specific legislation existed for
the labor conscription of Jews and many selected specifically for labor found
their ways into concentration camps on this basis.
57 Cohen, 26-28.
58 Red Cross (1948), vol. 1, 546-547.
59 1469-PS and NO-1990 in NMT, vol. 5, 382, 389.
Chapter 2: The Camps
65
The third category was Jewish families, but the closest they got to “concentration
camps” was in certain Durchgangslager, transit camps, which in some
cases were independent camps such as Westerbork in the Netherlands60 and
others (to be mentioned) and in some cases were separate compounds which
existed at some concentration camps, e.g. Belsen, possibly Dachau,61 and others
(to be mentioned). The transit camp, as its name suggests, was intended
only for temporary quartering pending transport to some other destination.
In addition to the transit camps there were “camps” for some Jewish families,
such as Theresienstadt in Bohemia-Moravia and others far to the East, but
the most pejorative term applicable in these cases would be “ghetto,” not
“concentration camp.” In addition, as we shall see, toward the end of the war,
as the Russians were approaching on the eastern front, the Germans put many
formerly free Jews into ghettos for security reasons.
The full story regarding the position of Jews relative to German-controlled
camps of all types is rather complicated. Rather than attempt to say here exactly
what that position was, the subject will be touched on at many points in
the book and the reader will be able to form a reasonably complete picture.
There is no point in attempting to discuss the entire German camp system
here. For our purposes it will suffice to discuss the three that are referred to
most frequently (excluding Auschwitz): Belsen, Buchenwald and Dachau
(inmate populations in August 1943: 3,000, 17,600 and 17,300 respectively62).
Then we will pass on to preliminary discussion of the alleged “extermination
camp” Auschwitz in Poland.
Belsen
Belsen had only a very brief history. It had originally been a Wehrmacht
camp for wounded POWs. In mid-1943 the SS took over half the camp for the
purpose, among others, of turning it into an “exchange camp,” a transit camp
for foreign nationals and Jews whom the Germans contemplated exchanging
for Germans held abroad. Some new grounds and buildings were also added to
the camp. Jews from Salonika, Greece, who possessed Spanish passports were
the first Jewish arrivals (it was hoped to send them to Spain) but eventually
the Dutch Jews predominated (about 5,000). A fraction of the Dutch Jews
were there on a semi-permanent basis because they numbered many of the
skilled craftsmen of the essential Amsterdam diamond cutting industry and
thus their diamond cutting operations had merely been moved to Belsen. The
quarters for Jews at Belsen formed what was called the “Star Camp,” which
was strictly separated from the rest of the camp and was essentially untouched
60 Cohen, xiii.
61 Aronéanu, 212.
62 1469-PS in NMT, vol. 5, 382.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
66
by the typhus epidemic of the last months.63
The Dutch Jews were particularly heavily hit by deportations; reasons for
this will be given later. It was at Belsen in March 1945 that Anne Frank is said
to have perished.64 Because there were many Dutch Jews at Belsen this could
easily be true but it is difficult, to say the least, to guess the cause of death in
such a case. There were no exterminations and the Jewish families were isolated
from the typhus epidemic. The question of the authenticity of the diary is
not considered important enough to examine here; I will only remark that I
have looked it over and don’t believe it. For example, as early as page 2 one is
reading an essay on why a 13-year-old girl would start a diary, and then page
3 gives a short history of the Frank family and then quickly reviews the specific
anti-Jewish measures that followed the German occupation in 1940. The
rest of the book is in the same historical spirit.
The remainder of the Belsen concentration camp contained the usual assortment
of inmates, and the fate of the camp has been seen. Bergen-Belsen
never had a significant economic-industrial aspect, except for the diamond
cutting.
Buchenwald
The major significance of Buchenwald was industrial; its satellite camps at
Beuchow, Dora, Ellrich, Elsing, Gandersheim and Halberstadt existed primarily
for the sake of an underground aircraft factory which employed the usual
concentration camp and foreign labor in addition to regular German labor.65
There were, however, two other aspects, the medical experiments conducted at
the main camp Buchenwald and the activities of commandant Koch; these offer
quite perfect illustrations on how the meanings of facts have been distorted
in speaking of these camps. We are fortunate in having a book by Christopher
Burney, a former inmate; this book not only indulges in some of this distortion
but also offers us some facts or hints which enable us to see through the distortion.
Burney’s book should illustrate to any reader the necessity, when
reading “personal experience” literature of this sort, of sharply and rigorously
distinguishing between the scenes the author actually claims to have witnessed
or the claims he had read or heard, on the one hand, and the inferences he has
drawn or pretended to draw on the other. The differences are often most stark.
Describing commandant Koch:66
“No cruelty was foreign to him, no single cell of his brain had not at
some time or other contributed to the planning of new refinements of anguish
and death for the rats in his trap.”
63 Reitlinger, 364-365, 406; Hilberg, 377-379, 632-633.
64 A. Frank, 285.
65 Aronéanu, 207, 213, 214, 217, 220.
66 Burney, 10-14.
Chapter 2: The Camps
67
Burney goes on to explain that, because Koch was a homosexual, Frau Ilse
Koch used to make out with the prisoners, “who were then sent to the crematorium,”
except that highly valued tattooed skin was saved for lampshades. At
this point in Burney’s book things obviously look bad for him, especially if he
has tattoos and Frau Koch finds him but, happily, all of that had happened before
he arrived there in early 1944. Koch had been arrested in 1943 for embezzlement
and was succeeded by Pister who was “one of the mildest concentration
camp commanders in history” so that:
“in the last year of its existence a casual observer who came to the
camp and looked generally at it without probing its corners, would have
seen little or no beatings, a large number of men doing no work, a much
larger number working with a lethargy taught them by the Russians […],
living blocks which were clean, kitchens with huge, horrifyingly modern
soup-cookers and a hospital which would just pass muster at first glance.”
The Koch arrest had, in fact been part of the breaking of a ring of corruption
which had spread through the German concentration camp system and
had involved the murder of some prisoners who knew too much. It was exposed
through the efforts of SS Judge Konrad Morgen. Koch was executed by
the SS.67
The tattooed skin was undoubtedly due to the medical experiment role of
Buchenwald. As remarked by Burney, when a Buchenwald inmate died the
camp doctors looked his body over and if they found something interesting
they saved it.68 It is fairly certain that the collection of medical specimens thus
gathered was the source of the tattooed skin and the human head that turned
up at the IMT as “exhibits” relating to people “murdered” at Buchenwald.
What is probably the greater part of the collection is pictured in Figure 32.
The head is normally pictured, without any explanation, in the company of
some soap (Fig. 24), allegedly made from human bodies, which was submitted
as evidence by the Russians who, when they learned there was to be a trial,
evidently read up on what the Germans had been charged with in World War
I.69 By the time the IMT was done “developing” the fact about the tattooed
skin found at Buchenwald, we had an official deposition:70
“In 1939 all prisoners with tattooing on them were ordered to report to
the dispensary. No one knew what the purpose was, but after the tattooed
prisoners had been examined, the ones with the best and most artistic
specimens were kept in the dispensary and then killed by injections. […]
the desired pieces of tattooed skin were detached from the bodies and
treated. The finished products were turned over to Koch’s wife, who had
67 Hoehne, 383-387 (434-436 in paperback).
68 Burney, 10.
69 3420-PS; 3422-PS. For pictures see, e.g., Andrus, photographs. A “macabre collection” of
specimens from Buchenwald is also pictured in Pélissier, 640 opp.
70 3421-PS; IMT, vol. 3, 515; quoted Shirer, 984.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
68
them fashioned into lampshades and other ornamental household articles.
I myself saw such tattooed skins with various designs and legends on them,
such as ‘Hansel and Gretel’ which one prisoner had on his knee, and designs
of ships from prisoners’ chests.”
Frau Koch was convicted of such crimes at her trial before a US military
court but in 1948 the American military governor, General Lucius Clay, reviewed
her case and determined that, despite testimony produced at her trial,
Frau Koch could not be related to the lampshades and other articles which
were “discovered” (i.e. planted) in the Buchenwald commandant’s residence
when the camp was captured in 1945. For one thing, she had not lived there
since her husband’s, and her own, arrest in 1943. Also her “family journal,”
said to be bound in human skin, and which was one of the major accusations
against her, was never located, and obviously never existed. Clay thus commuted
her life sentence to four years imprisonment, for ordinary sorts of brutalities.
What happened after the commutation provided one of the many episodes
which, together with the 1948-49 revelations of what had transpired at the Dachau
“trials,” exposed quite effectively the lawlessness that prevailed in the
war crimes trials. Rabbi Wise and other influential people protested the commutation
so strongly that there was a Senate investigation into the matter,
which concluded that:
“military authorities say they have been unable to find evidence of any
other crime Ilse Koch committed on which she could be tried without violating
the rule of double jeopardy. However […] because the trial conducted
by our special military government court was based on charges that
the various accused had mistreated ‘non-German nationals,’ the German
courts might well try Ilse Koch under their law for crimes committed
against German nationals. […] Should the German people bring Ilse Koch
to trial on such charges, the subcommittee is convinced that it would then
be the duty of our military authorities to give complete cooperation to the
German authorities.”
This distinction between crimes against Germans and crimes against non-
Germans was merely a bit of sophistry that was trotted out for the occasion.
Not only had the US war crimes courts always assumed jurisdiction in cases
of alleged crimes against German Jews, but the distinction was irrelevant
anyway, for Clay’s commutation of her sentence was based on a conclusion
that she was not guilty of the major charges against her, which had to do with
lampshades and the like, irrespective of the nationality of the alleged victims.
Clay did not change his position throughout the long public controversy
concerning efforts to try Frau Koch a second time on essentially the same
charges, a controversy which, according to the New York Times, “rocked the
United States and Europe.” Clay was firm on his decision in the Ilse Koch
case, and explained that:
Chapter 2: The Camps
69
“examination of the record, based upon reports which I received from
the lawyers, indicated that the most serious charges were based on hearsay
and not on factual evidence. For that reason the sentence was commuted.
I hold no sympathy for Ilse Koch. She was a woman of depraved character
and ill repute. She had done many things reprehensible and punishable,
undoubtedly, under German law. We were not trying her for those
things. We were trying her as a war criminal on specific charges.”
Despite this empathic stand of the American military governor, pressures
from the US induced the German authorities to move against Frau Koch after
she was released from American detention in October 1949. She was again
tried on the familiar “lampshade” charges. Although the defense was able to
show that the testimonies of two of the prosecution witnesses contradicted
declarations that they had made in connection with earlier proceedings, thus
forcing the German court to strike their testimonies from the record, Ilse Koch
was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. She hanged herself in
her cell in 1967.71
Burney reports some Belsen-like scenes at Buchenwald, but mainly among
incoming prisoners evacuated from more eastern locations during the final
chaotic weeks. So much for Buchenwald.72
Dachau
Dachau was one of the oldest Nazi concentration camps, with an emphasis
on Austrian political prisoners, Roman Catholic priests (detained for reasons
that need not be examined here) and old and semi-employable people of all
categories. The camp also had its group of ordinary criminals. Work was
mainly at outside factories but a herb plantation was being built up at the
camp and some prisoners worked at draining swamps.73
It is useful here to go into some detail on how, at the end of, and immediately
after the war, Dachau was misrepresented as an extermination camp with
gas chambers. In showing that such events never took place at Dachau we are
not, of course, contradicting the present story put forward by the bearers of the
extermination legend, who do not claim Dachau in this connection, and build
their story around the camps in Poland, with Auschwitz occupying the central
position in this respect. The point of exploring these details regarding Dachau
is that the credibility of the US occupation is thereby demolished. The US
propaganda had claimed exterminations in the German camps and Dachau
was the major camp taken over by the Americans (Buchenwald was later surrendered
to the Russians). Thus an effort was made to distort and misrepresent
71 New York Times (Sep. 24, 1948), 3; (Oct. 1, 1948), 11; (Oct. 8, 1948), 10; (Oct. 22, 1948), 5;
(Dec. 27, 1948), 1, 12; (Dec. 20, 1950), 15; Jan. 16, 1951), 1; (Sep. 3, 1967), 1.
72 Burney, 106-109.
73 Lenz, 32, 42, 78; 1063-PS.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
70
what had happened at the Dachau concentration camp. A recognition of the
amazing crudeness and clumsiness of that effort, and the ludicrous nature of
the “evidence” put forward, will prime the reader quite suitably for our analysis
of the central part of the hoax, the Auschwitz lie.
The conditions in the camps had forced the German government, in March
1945, to take the final step in reversal of its earlier policy of absolute exclusion
of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from the concentration
camps (existing conventions covered POWs, not concentration
camp inmates). On March 29, 1945, SS General Kaltenbrunner authorized the
ICRC to place one delegate in each camp for the purpose of distributing relief
supplies, on the conditions that the delegate remained there until the end of the
war.74 The ICRC organized road transport for relief supplies (use of the railways
was out of the question) but its effectiveness was to a degree influenced
by the attitudes of individual concentration camp commanders; for example
the reception at Mauthausen on April 23-30 was at first negative. SS Colonel
Ziereis claimed that he had not heard of the Kaltenbrunner order.75
At Dachau the ICRC had gotten a relatively warm reception on April 27
(after some coolness on April 26) and a delegate was allowed to establish
himself in the camp. By Sunday, April 29, it was found that most of the German
officers, guards and employees had fled and the effective command of
the camp had fallen to a certain SS Lieutenant Wickert who had similar intentions
of leading a flight of the remaining guards. Because this raised many
dangers, notably violence by prisoners against German civilians of the area
and the spread of epidemics, the delegate talked Wickert out of this. They
came to an agreement regarding surrender of the camp, which the ICRC delegate
was to do his best to have respected. First, guards would remain in the
towers to prevent the escape of prisoners.
Second, the soldiers not standing guard would assemble, unarmed, in one
of the courtyards.
Third, the garrison would be allowed to withdraw to its own “battle lines,”
after the transfer of the camp to the Americans.
The ICRC delegate then affixed a white towel to a broomstick and, taking
a German officer with him, left the camp to hunt up some Americans. After a
while they encountered an American motorized unit and the delegate presented
himself to the American general (not named in the delegate’s report on
these events) who, on learning the identities of his new guests, immediately
asked that the delegate and the German officer accompany them for the purpose
of taking press photos at the camp, particularly of a certain train which
was full of dead bodies. Although the Red Cross delegate had been at the
camp for two days, he had apparently been too busy to learn of this train while
74 Red Cross (1948), vol. 1, 620; vol. 3, 83, 184; Red Cross (1947), 82-84.
75 Red Cross (1947), 134-137.
Chapter 2: The Camps
71
at the camp, and learned of it from the general.
With its mission thus defined, the column set off for the camp. On the way,
the delegate was able to ask a Major Every to communicate to the general the
agreement for the transfer of the camp, but apparently this attempt to communicate
with the general was not successful.
On arrival at the camp they found that some Americans had already arrived,
the German guards in the towers had been replaced and all the Germans
had surrendered. The inmates were in great disorder and some were armed;
shots were fired at SS guards and this resulted in some killed on both sides.
The delegate was finally able to gain the attention of the general to present the
plan for the transfer of the camp. The general assented to the plan, but the
German prisoners were not allowed to leave anyway, and many of them suffered
at the hands of inmates seeking vengeance. As many of the inmates were
disarmed as possible, but this did not end the disorders. Some inmates embraced
the American soldiers while others tore down barbed wire fences and
escaped. Some shots were fired by the Americans over the heads of inmates
and an uneasy calm was finally reached by 10 p.m. There were, however, occasional
shots fired during the following night. The following day, April 30, it
was possible to pass out adequate food and on the next day, Tuesday May 1,
some members of the ICRC legation arrived and, according to the delegate,
they visited not only piles of corpses but “equally the execution chamber, the
gas chamber, the crematory ovens, etc.”76
The preceding is a summary of the report of the Red Cross delegate. It contains
no assertions similar to later assertions made independently by former
inmates Johann M. Lenz and Nerin E. Gun, both of whom claim that the
Americans, on arrival, started killing all SS guards in sight (unquestionably at
least an exaggeration).77 Gun claims that this policy even extended to the dogs
in the kennels, while Lenz claims that the general ordered a two hour bombardment
of the defenseless town of Dachau (he was eventually dissuaded
from this) in retaliation for the bodies which had been found lying around.78 If
there is any truth to these claims, the ICRC delegate made a fairly significant
omission in his report.
It is very important to recognize what the Red Cross delegate refers to as
the “gas chamber” in his report. The tone of the delegate’s report is tongue-incheek
and contemptuous at several points, for it was written in defensive
awareness of all the drivel that was being given mass circulation in the press.
Thus he remarks, in connection with the bodies found on the train at Dachau,
76 Red Cross (1947), 144-146, 149-152.
77 Editor’s note: This massacre was photographed by the U.S. troops, see Fig. 21, bottom
right. Compare also Howard A. Buechner, Dachau. The Hour of the Avenger. An Eyewitness
Account, Metairie, LA, Thunderbird Press, 1986; see also Dachauer Hefte, 1985, issue 1:
“Die Befreiung”.
78 Lenz, 270; Gun, 63-64.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
72
that “many of these men had been killed while the others were probably dead
of hunger.” Also, while the delegate is happy to pass along the names of le
lieutenant Wickert and le major Every and others, he refuses to mention the
name of the US commander (apparently either Linden or Patek), who is referred
to only as “le general.”
There were two types of rooms which were claimed as gas chambers by the
US propaganda after the camp was captured, and Gun reproduces the relevant
photographs. Here we present Figs. 16 and 22. The former shows an ordinary
shower which the US propagandists had the audacity to claim was a gas
chamber disguised as a shower. Fig. 19 shows the entrance to this “Brausebad”
(shower bath).
The second type of room which was claimed as a gas chamber was, indeed,
a gas chamber, the door of which is shown as Fig. 22. This door certainly appears
to be genuine and not manufactured for the propaganda. To see what is
involved, examine Fig. 13. On the left one can perceive the very same door
and, near the door, a heap of dirty prisoner clothing. That “gas chamber” was
obviously a chamber for disinfecting clothing; such equipment was necessary
and existed at all of the German concentration camps. The interior of the disinfection
room is shown in Fig. 6.
The building shown in Fig. 13 housed disinfection chambers, the shower
bath of Fig.16, and the crematory of Fig. 17. This building has been maintained
and is regularly visited by tourists. It is removed from the main part of
the camp, located in a relatively isolated spot. It was perfectly logical to locate
both the disinfection chamber and the crematory in such a way that inmates
did not come into frequent contact with such things (the former for reasons of
health and the latter for reasons of morale). The shower was necessary, obviously,
to decontaminate the people who worked in this building before they
returned to the main part of the camp. I do not know whether this shower bath
also serviced incoming prisoners, or if a separate shower existed for that purpose.
As suggested by Fig. 16, and confirmed by the literature, it was almost
always the shower bath, rather than the disinfection chamber, which served
the propaganda as a “gas chamber.”79 The latter was probably considered too
small to represent as a gas chamber which had claimed countless victims.
Naturally, the “war crimes trials” produced witnesses who claimed gassings
at Dachau (e.g. IMT witness Franz Blaha, who also claimed tattooed
skin scenes as at Buchenwald80). Naturally, the people whose bodies had been
found at the camp when it was captured, especially those on the train, were
always represented as having been murdered.
The number of bodies on the train at Dachau was approximately 500. Finding
dead people on trains in Germany toward the war’s end was not unusual
79 M. J. Smith, 94-95.
80 IMT, vol. 5, 167-173; Rassinier (1962), 78.
Chapter 2: The Camps
73
even on ordinary passenger trains; in January 1945, 800 Germans, frozen to
death, had been found on a train which had arrived in Berlin.81 The German
rail system was in utter chaos and conditions in April 1945 are difficult to
imagine, but some attempt should be made to see some of these corpse-laden
trains in context. Some thought might also be given to the possible conditions
of people as they started their journeys on these trains. It is entirely possible
that the typical individual concentration camp commander, presented with
what he considered insane orders to “transfer” N inmates to X camp, reasoned
that putting the half dead on the train had the double merit of minimizing
numbers of deaths and also getting some of the dying off his hands. However,
such problems are not of essential or central interest here.
The truth about Dachau was not long in coming out, but did not receive
wide publicity. The causes for the dead bodies which were found at the camp
when it was captured were described in a 1948 publication of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. As the US Army advanced into
Germany, it encountered the sorts of conditions which its medical services had
anticipated and for which they had prepared counter-measures:82
“Germany in the spring months of April and May was an astounding
sight, a mixture of humanity traveling this way and that, homeless, often
hungry and carrying typhus with them. […] The more territory that was
uncovered, the greater was the number of reported cases; for Western
Germany in the areas of the American advance was rather uniformly
seeded with typhus. To be sure, there were heavily involved communities
and others lightly affected. There were great accumulations of cases in the
concentration and prison camps, and in nearby small communities.
As estimated 35,000-40,000 prisoners were found in [Dachau], living
under conditions bad even for a German camp of this kind and worse than
any other that came into American hands. Extreme filthiness, louse infestation,
and overcrowding prevailed throughout the camp buildings. Several
car-loads of human bodies were found packed in box cars in the railroad
yards adjacent to the camp, the vestiges of a shipment of prisoners from
camps further north who were transferred to Dachau in the late days of the
war to escape the advancing United States troops.
The number of patients with typhus fever at the time the camp was first
occupied will never be known. Days passed before a census of patients
could be accomplished. Several hundreds were found in the prison hospital,
but their number was small compared with the patients who continued
to live with their comrades in the camp barracks, bed-ridden and unattended,
lying in bunks 4 tiers high with 2 and sometimes 3 men to a narrow
shelflike bed; the sick and the well; crowded beyond all description; reek-
81 Burney, 107; Red Cross (1947), 151.
82 Gordon, 23-25.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
74
ing with filth and neglect – and everywhere the smell of death.”
It is not surprising that Dachau had experienced catastrophes very similar
to those at Belsen. Since the beginning of 1945, there had been an estimated
15,000 prisoner deaths from typhus, mostly in the final two months.83
The Americans brought the camp under control and it served, as we have
seen, as an American camp and center of “war crimes trials.” An American
lawyer, Stephen S. Pinter, who was stationed there and evidently disapproved
of what had been carried out there in the name of the United States, wrote in
1959:84
“I was in Dachau for 17 months after the war, as a US War Department
Attorney, and can state that there was no gas chamber at Dachau.
What was shown to visitors and sightseers there and erroneously described
as a gas chamber, was a crematory. Nor was there a gas chamber in any of
the other concentration camps in Germany. We were told that there was a
gas chamber at Auschwitz, but since that was in the Russian zone of occupation,
we were not permitted to investigate, since the Russians would not
permit it.
[…] uses the old propaganda myth that millions of Jews were killed by
the national socialists. From what I was able to determine during six postwar
years in Germany and Austria, there were a number of Jews killed, but
the figure of a million was certainly never reached, I interviewed thousands
of Jews, former inmates of concentration camps in Germany and
Austria, and consider myself as well qualified as any man on this subject.”
In 1960, the Institut für Zeitgeschichte of Munich, “the paragon of hostility
and resistance to Nazism,” declared that:85
“The gas chamber in Dachau was never completed and put into operation
[…] The mass extermination of Jews by gassing started in 1941/1942,
and took place […] with the aid of installations technically designed for
this purpose, above all in occupied Polish territory [but nowhere in the Old
Reich …].”
This is essentially the Dachau myth as it stood in the summer of 1973: the
information given the visiting tourist at Dachau correctly identified the disinfection
room as such, without any attempt to represent it as a gas chamber for
exterminating people. In regard to the shower bath the leaflet explained that
“This gas chamber, camouflaged as a shower room, was not used. The
prisoners selected for ‘gassing’ were transported from Dachau to the
Hartheim Castle, near Linz (Austria) or to other camps.”
So much for Dachau, a close examination of which was necessary in order
83 Red Cross (1947), 150.
84 Letter by Pinter in Catholic weekly Our Sunday Visitor (Jun. 14, 1959), 15.
85 Die Zeit (Engl. Edition, Aug. 26, 1960), 14 (letter by M. Broszat); Rassinier (1962), 79.
Rassinier refers to the German edition of Die Zeit (Aug. 19, 1960).
Chapter 2: The Camps
75
to evaluate the general credibility of the US propaganda.
The Industrial Role of Auschwitz
The camps at Auschwitz were, of course, part of the same concentration
camp system as the camps we have just discussed. However the operations referred
to with the term “Auschwitz” were really, in many ways, in a class by
themselves. This is so much the case that, in order to see the role of Auschwitz
clearly, it is necessary to go back considerably in time. It is also necessary, unfortunately,
to indulge in a certain amount of discussion that may seem excessively
technical at first.
The principal cause of the German defeat in World War I in 1918 had been
shortages brought about, chiefly, by the British blockade. Shortages of such
things as oil and rubber had been crippling the Army, and near starvation conditions
in Germany had made the internal political situation unpredictable and
unstable. Germany capitulated, a victim of, among other things, the twentieth
century’s first “energy crisis.”
The extreme vulnerability of Germany in respect of raw materials had, of
course, been realized by the German chemical industry during the war, and after
the war the popularity of the concept of “autarky,” non-reliance on imports
or foreign aid, was partially based on this consideration. The only raw materials
that concern us here are oil and rubber, of which there was essentially none
in Germany. In Europe, only Romania had significant oil resources, and there
was no natural rubber anywhere in Europe. There were, however, huge
sources of coal in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
The great German chemicals company, I. G. Farben, was in 1918, a collection
of six smaller companies which later combined in 1925 to form Farben.
The principal predecessor company, Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik (BASF)
of Ludwigshafen-am-Rhein had, starting early in World War I, been working
on processes for producing synthetic oil and synthetic rubber from coal. These
investigations continued after the formation of Farben and also after the rise of
Hitler in 1933. The Nazi government soon adopted a policy of subsidizing
these autarky-oriented developments.86 Thus on account of government encouragement,
the real need for the synthetics, and the general German scientific-
technological pre-eminence of the time, especially in chemistry and
chemical engineering, Germany was substantially ahead of the rest of the
world in these areas.
Synthetic oil was by far the easier of the two problems. Coal is mainly carbon;
the general principle is that coal treated with hydrogen gas at high pres-
86 Howard, 3, 11-22, 44, 60-62; NMT, vol. 7, 79-80.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
76
sure and temperature (“hydrogenation”) resulted in oil. The usual range of
chemical products could be made from this oil: dyes, explosives, drugs, etc.
Another state of hydrogenation yielded gasoline. The idea was basically simple,
although the process was inherently expensive, and most research consisted
in a search for the most effective catalysts. During World War II there
were many synthetic oil plants in and around Germany; they produced about
75 percent of the oil available to the Germans; the rest came mainly from Romania.
87
Synthetic rubber was a different matter; the technical problems in developing
a sufficiently economic synthetic rubber suitable for tires were most severe
and were not really resolved until approximately the beginning of the
war.
The basic steps in making rubber are first making long chains of molecules
of some sort, polymerization, and then causing these chains to “cross-stitch” –
to join each other at various points – vulcanization. One needed a molecule
congenial to polymerization and vulcanization and it was found that butadiene
was particularly suitable. In the late Twenties it had been found that sodium
was an excellent catalyst for polymerization of the butadiene, and consequently
the synthetic rubber that was being made from butadiene with sodium
(Na) as catalyst was called “Buna” rubber. The sodium had been dropped by
1935, but the term “Buna” was retained. By replacing 25 per cent of the butadiene
with styrene, “Buna-S” rubber, the type particularly suited for tires was
obtained.88
The earliest serious German Buna-S plant, and the largest, was the
Schkopau plant, started in 1937 and completed in 1939. It had a capacity of
6,000 tons per month. A second plant was started at Hüls in 1938 and was in
operation in August 1940; its capacity was 4,000 tons per month. A third plant
was started in January 1941 at Ludwigshafen, Farben research headquarters,
and it was producing Buna in March 1943; its capacity was 2,500 tons per
month. The fourth, at Auschwitz, was begun in 1941 and was designed for a
capacity of 3,000 tons per month.
During all this plant construction, research on new processes continued and
the differences in the processes used in the four plants reflected this. All
started from coal but at Schkopau the butadiene was produced via a classical
calcium carbide-acetylene-butadiene sequence; at Hüls the carbide state was
replaced by one involving hydrocarbon gases. Ludwigshafen reverted to the
classical sequence but the superior Reppe process was introduced for the
acetylene-butadiene state. The Buna plant at Auschwitz also used a version of
the classical sequence.89
87 Craven, 172.
88 Howard, 35-37.
89 Dunbrook, 50; Naunton, 107.
Chapter 2: The Camps
77
The reason for the appearance of Auschwitz in this context is very simple;
Auschwitz was a huge industrial operation.
When Germany annexed a large part of Poland after the partitioning of Poland
in 1939 by Germany and Russia, it came into the possession of the great
coal fields of Polish Upper Silesia. It was naturally decided to exploit this and
the possibilities for a hydrogenation and Buna plant were examined. It was
found that the little town of “Oswieçim” (population 13,000), translated into
German as “Auschwitz” (Auschwitz had been a duchy of the Habsburg Empire
before World War I), was ideally located because the three rivers that
joined there could provide the necessary water, while a fourth river for carrying
off the waste was nearby. In addition, Auschwitz was on the southern border
of the Silesian coal fields, the Kattowitz (Katowice) mining region of Poland.
90
In early 1941 it was decided to build a hydrogenation and a Buna plant at
Auschwitz employing both free and prisoner labor. By pure chance there was
already near the town a partisan POW camp holding 7,000 prisoners (it had
formerly been a Polish artillery barracks); this camp became the nucleus for
expansion via its own enlargement and also the construction of additional
camps. It was quickly transformed into and remained to the last a camp for political
prisoner-workers; it is usually referred to as Auschwitz I. The terms
“main camp,” “Hauptlager,” and “Stammlager” are also sometimes used.91
Sometime in 1941 work had begun on a second camp, Auschwitz II, generally
referred to as Birkenau. It was one to one and a half miles northwest of
Auschwitz I and was initially referred to as a POW camp. Part of it was completed
by April 1942; Russian POW labor was used for constructing the camp.
Its functions will be examined at length.
Some 4,000 Jews were moved out of the town to another town to make
room for free labor attached to the industries. On November 16, 1941, it was
decided to build a third camp, generally referred to as Monowitz, three miles
east of the town and close to the Farben plant, for quartering labor working on
and in the plant. Russian POW’s were again used for constructing the camp.92
The relative locations of the three camps are shown in Fig. 5.93
There was also a large number of smaller camps in the outlying region,
most of them within a radius of 25 miles. These “outer camps,” of which
Raisko and Harmense were two relatively close-in examples, were administered
by the Auschwitz camp administration and the number has been variously
given as 13 to 39, depending upon what is considered a single camp.
The smaller or outer camps were mainly for those who worked at the five
90 DuBois, 154-155.
91 Reitlinger, 110, 128; NO-034 in NMT, vol. 5, 356-358.
92 Reitlinger, 114-115; DuBois, 156.
93 Central Commission, Figs. 2, 4; Langbein, 929.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
78
blast furnaces or five coal mines. Monowitz and the collection of all outer
camps taken together are sometimes referred to a Auschwitz III. The collection
of all camps, Auschwitz I, Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and Auschwitz III,
together with the industries which employed the inmates, is usually what is referred
to under the blanket term “Auschwitz.”94
The prisoner population of Auschwitz II was nothing unusual except that
there was a significant number of British POWs.95 The NMT judgment was
that the use of British POWs was not contrary to the Geneva Convention because
the Buna factory had an ultimate peaceful purpose.96 The Red Cross apparently
concurred because, although it was specifically aware of this situation,
it did not mention the employment of British POWs in its later report on
the problems it had encountered during the war in respect to the use of POWs
for war-related work.97
Typical camp strengths were 20,000 for Auschwitz I, 35,000 for Birkenau
(30 to 60 percent women) and 15,000 for Auschwitz III. By a wide margin,
Auschwitz was the largest complex of concentration camps in the German
system; in August 1943 the second largest was Sachsenhausen with a population
of 26,500.98 There were also many free laborers working and living in the
area. For example, less than thirty per cent of the workers at the Farben plant
were in the “prisoner” category; more that half were free foreign workers who
had enlisted voluntarily for labor and the remaining approximate twenty per
cent were ordinary German employees.99
Auschwitz I was the administrative center for all SS functions at Auschwitz.
These SS functions included the guarding, feeding, clothing, housing,
recreation and disciplining of the prisoners, and also their medical services.
The working hours at Auschwitz were those standard for the German concentration
camps: eleven hours per day, six days a week, with extra work on Sunday
mornings in “emergencies.”100 At Auschwitz there were divers recreational
activities: concerts, cabaret performers, movies and athletic contests.
There was even a brothel for the prisoners, staffed by professionals recruited
for the purpose.101 Medical services receive further comment later on.
The providing of such extensive services naturally meant that companies
using the labor of the prisoners “rented” them from the SS; a typical rate
Central Commission, 30; Reitlinger, 492; NO-021 in NMT, vol. 5, 385.
95 DuBois, 217-218, 223-227; Reitlinger, 115.
96 NMT, vol. 8, 1183-1184.
97 Red Cross (1947), 92; Red Cross (1948), vol. 1, 546-551.
98 Central Commission, 31; Reitlinger, 123, 492; 1469-PS and NO-021 in NMT, vol. 5, 382,
385.
99 NI-11412-A in NMT, vol. 8, 311-312.
100 NO-1290 in NMT, vol. 5, 371.
101 Cohen, 180; Christophersen, 34. See also the discussion of the Dachau brothel in Gun, 38-
40.
Chapter 2: The Camps
79
seems to have been RM 4.00-RM 6.00 ($1.00-$1.50) per day and up.102 Thus
the prisoners were at the basis of Himmler’s bureaucratic and economic empire
and accordingly this resource, together with the supporting functions of
feeding, clothing, etc. were jealously guarded. Nevertheless Farben had been
big enough to get a special arrangement for those at Monowitz; it was granted
full authority for the care of the prisoners there and consequently the payments
to the SS were reduced. This led to the expected scraps between the SS
and Farben. The SS complained of beatings and other mistreatment such as
unsanitary conditions at the Monowitz hospital. Also, one-fifth of the people
who had been registered at this hospital were discharged by being sent to
Birkenau, at which time the Farben appropriations for their care immediately
ceased and they became the responsibility of the SS which, already wounded
by not being accorded its customary rights in regard to employable prisoners,
was incensed at receiving in return only the unemployable from Monowitz.
The SS therefore demanded that the Monowitz hospital, which had only 300
beds, be enlarged, but the reply to this, of course, was that “if they aren’t
strong enough to work, they don’t belong on the factory grounds.”103
Birkenau, like Auschwitz I, had a responsibility of supplying labor for Farben
and for sub-contractors to Farben. It also supplied labor for other enterprises
such as the Krupp fuse plant and the Siemens electrical factory. In addition
inmates worked at clearing demolished structures, draining the marshy
land, road construction, operating an establishment for the cultivation of special
plants (Raisko), building and operating a model farm (Harmense), clothing
manufacture, etc.104 Birkenau had other functions, as will be seen. It will
be particularly necessary to examine the claim that at Birkenau a program of
mass killings of Jews via gas chambers was in operation, the Jews having
been transported to Auschwitz primarily for this purpose.105
The rough figures given above for camp populations are only illustrative;
actually the Birkenau figure varied a great deal and, in addition, the Birkenau
camp was never completed. The projected capacity of Birkenau seems to have
been 200,000 prisoners while Auschwitz I expanded to a capacity of about
30,000 and then stabilized.106 Thus, on the basis of seniority and also on account
of quartering the Auschwitz SS administrative offices, Auschwitz I was
indeed the “main camp,” but Birkenau, designed for the specific requirements
of the Auschwitz operations, was clearly intended as the “principle camp” in
terms of inmate accommodating functions.
While the Auschwitz-Kattowitz region was ideal from a technical point of
102 NMT, vol. 9, 121; Central Commission, 37.
103 DuBois, 164, 220-224.
104 DuBois, 141; NMT, vol. 6, 207, 233; NMT, vol. 9, 120; US-WRB (1944), pt. I, 1-2; Christophersen,
23-25.
105 Reitlinger, 115, 157; Hilberg, 565, 574.
106 Central Commission, 31.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
80
view, it was also wretched from a human point of view. The ground was extremely
flat with no means of draining away water in many places; it was dotted
with stagnant ponds which poisoned the air and caused the area to be constantly
muddy. Malaria and typhus were natural, not wartime-created, dangers
in this region; the war conditions greatly aggravated matters. It is said that
“motor cars were disinfected after each journey carrying prisoners or their
clothing.”107
After 1942, the hydrogenation plant at Auschwitz produced oil and gasoline
and other chemicals, but by the time the camp was evacuated in January
1945 it had not produced any Buna; it was only at the point of producing acetaldehyde
from acetylene.108 This relative slowness in plant construction was
no doubt due to the initially virgin character of the area, the use of prisoner labor
and the bad health of many prisoners; the latter had further implications
which will be seen later in proper context.
I do not know whether the Auschwitz Buna plant was to have been essentially
the same as the Ludwigshafen plant, an improved version of the latter, or
a new generation in Buna plant construction. In any case, if it had been finished,
there would have been no more advanced Buna rubber plant in the
world at the time.
107 Central Commission, 27-29; Dubois, 130; Friedman, 33.
108 DuBois, 341; Naunton, 107; Bebb & Wakefield, 945.
81
Chapter 3:
Washington and New York
The Rubber Crisis of 1942
The military situation of the Allied powers in 1942 was superficially a desperate
one. After the winter of 1941-1942 the German armies continued their
advance across Russia. The destruction of most of the American Pacific fleet
at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, had made the Pacific a virtual Japanese
lake. America was suddenly faced with a problem that was, for her, a strange
one: lack of a crucial raw material without which no war effort appeared possible.
Japan controlled what had been the source of ninety per cent of America’s
rubber, Malaya and the East Indies, and the source of the other ten per
cent, Central and South America, was hopelessly inadequate.109
The manner in which America extricated herself from this grave situation
will go down as one of the great ironies of history. America, one would expect,
could not resolve this problem because nobody in America had thought
in terms of “autarky.”
Standard Oil of New Jersey had the essentials of the I. G. Farben Buna
rubber process. This was on account of a series of agreements between the
two companies, commencing in 1927, covering technical cooperation and mutual
licensing arrangements. Standard was quite interested in Buna rubber because
it could also be made (more easily) from oil.
The cooperation continued, with the consent of the German government,
right up to the outbreak of war and even, to some extent, after the outbreak of
war. The American side benefited hugely from these arrangements, but the
German side got almost nothing out of them.110
The outbreak of war in September 1939 between Germany on the one hand
and England and France on the other, threw these arrangements between Farben
and Standard into a certain amount of legal confusion which need not be
explored here. Farben wished to clarify the confusion and so a meeting was
arranged at the Hague, on September 22, at which certain legal arrangements
were made. Standard official Frank A. Howard was puzzled by all of this:111
“I could not escape the conviction, however, that the Germans them-
109 Howard, 4-7, 216; U.S. Special Committee, 24.
110 Howard, chapters 2-9.
111 Howard, 82-83.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
82
selves were the only people who could profit from a military standpoint by
leaving the relations between Standard and the I. G. in the situation into
which the war had thrown them.”
The arrangements that had been made at the Hague soon proved to be inadequate
so it was decided in the spring of 1940 that another meeting was
necessary. Howard saw another motivation for an additional meeting:
“[…] we intended also to ask them to supply some of their detailed designs
of manufacturing equipment and technique for Buna. We hoped that
I. G. might obtain permission of its government to sell to us the plans for
the Buna polymerization plants they had erected in Germany under the
government program.”
These hopes were dashed at the conference between Standard and Farben
which finally took place in Basle, Switzerland in mid-April 1940, during the
German occupation of Norway which signaled the end of the Sitzkrieg. The
new political conditions arising from the German realization that the situation
was a serious one brought about at the conference the effective termination of
the relations between Farben and Standard. Naturally Standard got nowhere
with its proposals to buy plant designs. However, as Howard explains:
“One other point was very much on our minds. We wanted to make
sure, if possible, that the Germans had not, since the outbreak of the war in
Europe, made any radical change in their Buna manufacturing processes
or formulas. Direct questions were out of order, since the I. G. men could
not discuss any phase of Germany’s industrial war effort. But during the
settlements of patent transfers and discussions of license definitions needed
to implement the Hague agreement, we obtained sufficient data to feel sure
that all of the fundamentals of the Buna operation had remained unchanged.
This conclusion was later fully confirmed.”
This was the “last direct contact Standard had with the Germans on Buna
rubber.”112
All American knowledge of the Buna processes, which made the American
war effort possible, came from these relationships with I. G. Farben, and this
is accepted fact in the rubber industry.113 Nevertheless Standard later came
under some rather stupid criticism and even later legal action on account of
them.114
The sudden unavailability in 1942 of a source of rubber set off a major political
crisis in the United States. There had been a Buna program in existence
since mid-1940, when the Rubber Reserve Corporation had been created
within the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. This agency, headed by Jesse
H. Jones, supervised the stockpiling of reserve crude rubber and also spon-
112 Howard, 104-108.
113 Naunton, 104.
114 DuBois, 284.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
83
sored the construction of Buna plants, which started in 1941. However, nobody
in authority had foreseen the complete loss of the Far East rubber, so the
synthetic rubber program had been modest in scope. Consequently, in 1942
there was almost no practical experience with large scale use of the Farben
processes.
The emergency had been realized immediately after the attack on Pearl
Harbor because, three days later, the US government banned the sale of new
automobile tires for civilian purposes. General rationing of rubber followed
quickly. Early in 1942 it became realized that, if there was to be any American
war effort, a gigantic synthetic rubber industry would have to be created in record
time. The apparently dismal prospects for such an achievement were the
cause of some amount of panic and, naturally, scapegoats were sought. Jesse
Jones was a favorite target, and his claim that 300,000 tons of synthetic rubber
would be produced in 1943, and 600,000 tons in 1944, was jeered at (US rubber
consumption in 1940 was 648,500 tons). Standard Oil also came in for
outrageously unfair abuse by people who interpreted the Farben-Standard
agreements as a conspiracy to retard synthetic rubber development in the US.
Harry S. Truman, chairman of a Senate committee which investigated war
production problems, first became prominent in connection with the rubber
crisis of 1942.
The crisis also set off internal political conflicts. The big oil interests had a
long lead in the production of Buna-S, but the farm bloc was dominant in
Congress. Now, Buna can be made not only from coal and oil, but also from
alcohol, an agricultural product. Foreseeing the birth of a major new industry,
the farm interests started arguing in favor of making Buna from alcohol (the
most expensive method). They cited the fact that the Russians, also long active
in the synthetic rubber field, started from alcohol. They also produced a
Polish refugee who was supposed to have made some revolutionary invention
in connection with making Buna from alcohol.
There was another political bloc tied up with South American interests,
which proposed subsidies for plantations. There was also a small farm bloc
which pressed for more extensive planting of the guayule plant in the southwest.
The effect of these internal political battles was to generate massive confusion
and retard the progress of the existing US Buna program.
The rubber crisis filled the press in 1942 and was, in fact, the major crisis
the US faced in connection with the war. There was constant lamenting that
Germany was well ahead of the US, and that the US lacked the vital experience
with the processes that the Germans possessed. Methods being used in
Germany were cited in connection with discussing the prospects of the US
program.115
115 As stated, the rubber crisis “filled the press,” but the following stories seem to summarize
the crisis adequately: Business Week (Jan. 31, 1942), 22+; (Mar. 14, 1942), 15+; (May 30,
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
84
The farm bloc’s battle against what it called the “oily interests” achieved a
temporary major success in July 1942 when the Congress passed the weird
“Rubber Supply Act of 1942.” The Act would have established a new agency
for rubber production, entirely under the control of Congress and outside the
domain of the War Production Board, the Army, the Navy or any executive
agency of the Government. Of course, the Act also specified that the rubber
was to be made from grain alcohol. President Roosevelt vetoed this bill on
August 6, and announced the appointment of a committee to study the rubber
problem and make some recommendations in regard to the organization of an
American synthetic rubber program: “probably the most widely acclaimed action
on the domestic front in the history of the war program.” The members of
the committee were Dr. James D. Conant, President of Harvard, Dr. Karl T.
Compton, President of MIT, and the financier and political leader Bernard M.
Baruch, who served as Chairman. The committee is normally referred to as
the Baruch Committee.116
These three men were chosen partially because they were not considered
connected with any specific interests in the conflict, and also because of their
expertise. The appointment of Baruch as chairman of such a technically oriented
group may seem peculiar at first, but this is not the case. Besides being a
man of diverse talents and important financial, industrial and political connections,
he had chaired the War Industries Board during World War I. Moreover,
for a period of more than thirty years he had been interested in industrial ventures
involving rubber and had independently inventoried, with war requirements
in mind, American rubber stocks in the spring of 1941. As a consequence
he had gotten into fights with various people, mainly Jesse H. Jones.
In addition, unlike the usual chairman of a “name” Washington ad hoc committee,
Baruch threw all his energy into the work of the Committee. His assistant
Sam Lubell also was put to work on the Committee’s assignment. Even
after the issuing of the final report Baruch maintained interest: Howard reports
that Baruch later expressed a wish to speak to the Standard people, and that a
meeting was accordingly held, at which the major technical-economic problems
were discussed.117
The work of the Baruch Committee was completed with remarkable speed
and the final report was issued on September 10, 1942; the best explanation
for this speed would appear to be Baruch’s independent prior involvement in
the problem.
We must attempt to see this problem as the Committee must have seen it in
1942), 15+; (Jun. 20, 1942), 15+; (Aug. 15, 1942), 15+; (Sep. 19, 1942), 15+; (Dec. 19,
1942), 28+; Newsweek (Apr. 6, 1942), 46+; (Apr. 13, 1942), 56+; (June 1, 1942), 46+; (Sep.
21, 1942), 58+; New York Times (Jan. 11, 1942), sec. 7, 6+; (Jul. 26, 1942), sec. 7, 3+; Fortune
(June 1942), 92+; Nature Magazine (May 1942), 233+; Harper’s (Dec. 1942), 66+.
116 Naunton, 108; Howard, 210-213.
117 Howard, 221-222; Coit, 120-121, 162-222, 513-520.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
85
1942. Primarily, it was a political problem requiring the reconciliation of the
various interests contending for the synthetic rubber business. Thus the final
report of the Committee recommended the creation of a capacity to produce
100,000,000 gallons of additional grain alcohol per year. A second problem
involved the lack of practical American experience with the Buna processes.
Technical specifications were at hand, but there existed many questions on
many details and quite a few alternative versions of the processes.
Thus, in order to accelerate the American synthetic rubber program, the
Baruch Committee saw a need to learn as much as possible of the experiences
of others. It made a specific recommendation that an immediate effort be
made to learn the experiences of the Russians in the production of synthetic
rubber and make use of them in the American program (Jesse Jones had been
charged with overlooking this possibility). The effort was made but yielded no
results of any value.118 Under such conditions it is necessary to assume that
somebody in America looked into new developments in Germany in as close
detail as possible at the time, and the new German development in rubber in
1942 was Auschwitz, the site of the most advanced developments in Buna
rubber at that time.
Auschwitz of Great Interest to Americans
The point to be made in our discussion of the American rubber crisis of
1942 is that American intelligence must have known what was going on at
Auschwitz in that year.
Clearly, it would be delightful if we could learn exactly what US military
intelligence knew about events in and around Germany during the war. However,
intelligence agencies are notoriously reluctant to release such information,
even many years after the events in question. With respect to World War
II intelligence operations, a few sensational episodes are known but, on the
whole, the content of Allied intelligence information has not been divulged.
The intelligence relative to Auschwitz will be a long, long time in being made
public, if it is ever made public.
In attempting to estimate, therefore, what information was possessed by
Allied intelligence agencies, one must proceed very much on the basis of
common sense. The difficulty is that my common sense may differ very much
from another’s, and that agreement on such matters may be most difficult to
arrive at. Now, my common sense tells me that, quite apart from the rubber
crisis, Allied intelligence would have known, in mid-1942, what was happening
at the largest German concentration camp. If additionally, as every version
118 Howard, 227-228; U.S. Special Committee, 13, 18, 50-51; Dunbrook, 40-46.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
86
of the extermination legend asserts, there had been anything as outré as a program
of systematic extermination of Jews at Auschwitz in the summer of
1942, then my common sense tells me that it is a certainty that US military intelligence
would have known about it.
If another’s common sense does not lead him to the same conclusion it is
very doubtful that the disagreement could be settled by discussion. However,
with Auschwitz we have the fact that it was of interest not only as a large concentration
camp (and also, if the extermination claims were correct, an extermination
camp), but also as the site of the most advanced developments in
synthetic rubber. In 1942, no location in the German Reich was of greater interest,
and no industrial operations of greater strategic importance. Therefore,
if one wishes to claim that US (or the closely related British) intelligence did
not know what was happening at Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, then I am
afraid that one must logically claim the complete ignorance and incompetence
of these intelligence agencies.
Auschwitz was of the greatest interest to the US in mid-1942 on account of
its enormous technological significance. Above we saw Howard’s great interest,
in 1940, in any information about possible new developments that could
be obtained directly or inferred indirectly. A similar interest on the part of the
Americans in 1942 must be assumed. It is a certainty that intelligence had developed
the basic facts about the industry at Auschwitz: a plant for hydrogenation
and other chemical processes aimed at producing gasoline and rubber. It
has been seen that each one of the German Buna rubber plants employed
processes differing in important details from the others and that the Auschwitz
processes were to be the beneficiary of accumulated experiences with several
different versions. We are thus justified in assuming, on account of the peculiar
urgency of the rubber problem and the peculiar position of Auschwitz
relative to this urgency, that the intelligence had gone into unusual detail in
regard to Auschwitz, probably going over every inch via aerial photographic
intelligence, and that the assembled information was available to various people
in the US. The information probably included many details not greatly
relevant to the rubber problem, such as the employment of prisoner and POW
labor at Auschwitz.
Although concealment of information has been the rule in the area of military
intelligence, we can nevertheless assume that the means of gathering intelligence
data on Auschwitz included more or less conventional methods: exploitation
of contacts with commercial representatives of Farben who were
stationed in neutral countries (Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Sweden, Switzerland),
aerial photographic intelligence (aircraft used for such purposes may always
have longer ranges than bombers on account of their lack of armaments), general
knowledge of German industrial and economic matters, spies and informers
in German industry and in the German government (e.g. Admiral Canaris),
and informers in the employ of advantageously situated neutral organizations
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
87
(such as the Swiss and Swedish diplomatic corps and also firms doing business
in Germany). Although all of these means no doubt played a role, photographic
intelligence was probably particularly important; the technology of
photographic intelligence had attained a respectable level in 1942 so that a
“you are there” effect was possible in blown-up aerial photos of even heavily
defended positions. There were other channels of information, whose nature
and existence are of some particular importance here, and which will be discussed
in due course.
Not being sufficiently acquainted with the technical problems that were associated
with Buna at the time, we have no idea what information the Americans
might have been after and how it could be inferred from the intelligence
data, any more than we have an understanding of what questions were on the
minds of the Standard people at the Basle meeting and how partial answers
could be inferred from the legal ritual that took place at that meeting. We can,
however, offer one possibility by way of example without any claim that such
was the specific case.
We have seen that the first German Buna plant at Schkopau employed a
carbide-acetylene-butadiene process and that at the Hüls plant the process was
hydrocarbons-acetylene-butadiene. The new plant at Ludwigshafen, nearing
completion when the Baruch Committee was meeting, had reverted to making
the acetylene from carbide and had modernized the acetylene to butadiene
stage. Because either a carbide or a hydrocarbons process was potentially applicable
to the processes to be employed in the US (which could have started
from oil or grain alcohol), it was no doubt of great interest whether Auschwitz
was to employ a carbide process (as was the case), suggesting abandonment of
the hydrocarbons version on the basis of the Hüls experience, or was to employ
a hydrocarbons or other process, suggesting failure to make a commitment
to carbide processes.
Moreover the carbide vs. hydrocarbons question could probably be answered
on the basis of aerial intelligence, if necessary.
What was the ultimate value, in terms of the problems the Americans
faced, of the detailed information about contemporary German Buna developments
which, we feel certain, they examined closely approximately in middle-
late 1942? Perhaps none, as was the case with most categories of information;
it is just that you don’t miss a bet in the sort of situation in which the
Americans found themselves regarding rubber in 1942.
Consideration of technical matters has been necessary here because it was
in a technical context that Auschwitz first became prominent in Washington.
However it is not the technical matters that have been our objective here but
simply the fact of prominence, or heavy exposure, in US inner circles in the
summer of 1942; this is the only point relevant to our subject. We have no direct
evidence of this but we have reviewed reasons why such exposure may be
assumed. It remains to show that events at Auschwitz at this time were such as
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
88
to suggest an “extermination factory” charge to those in the inner political circles,
who were alert to the appearance of semi-factual bases for atrocity stories.
The events at Auschwitz in late 1942 – early 1943 will be covered in a
second context in the next chapter, and hence are not annotated here.
The eeriest aspect that Auschwitz must have presented while the Baruch
Committee was meeting was that of the site of a ghost factory; starting around
August 1, the Buna plant had been closed. There was no activity to be seen
except possibly an occasional watchman. This must have excited great curiosity
and no doubt special steps were taken to find out what was going on.
Our ugly old friend typhus was at Auschwitz; an epidemic had shut down
the Buna plant for two months, so that work did not resume until late September.
By this time the number of dead must have been a few thousand, although
there is a large degree of uncertainty here. The German policy was to cremate
the bodies of camp inmates who died, but the epidemic caught the Auschwitz
authorities with inadequate crematory facilities. There was a small crematory
at Auschwitz I but more extensive facilities at Birkenau, plans for which existed
in January 1942, were still under construction in 1942, and the first complete
new unit, consisting of fifteen conventional crematory ovens, was not
available until January 1943. It appears that many of the victims of the epidemic
were immediately cremated in pits, but it is possible that many were
buried, at least temporarily. That the Germans were constructing crematories
at Birkenau was probably evident to continued Allied surveillance (which we
assume existed) in the autumn of 1942. The buildings housing the Birkenau
ovens had certain halls, rooms, or cellars which the accusations say were the
“gas chambers.”
Several books offer versions of Fig. 7, which is claimed to be a photograph
of gassed victims about to be burned in pits, taken by an Auschwitz inmate in
1944.119 We have no way of knowing when, where or by whom it was taken.
However such scenes were common at Auschwitz in 1942, when the camp
presumably attained some prominence in Allied intelligence. Indeed the poor
quality of the picture caused some initial speculation on my part that it is an
aerial intelligence photograph; the low angle does not rule out the possibility
because such angles were frequently attained even with highly defended positions.
120 Also, the versions I examined in the various books do not have the
border material which tends to support the claim that it was taken on the
ground. Our Fig. 7 is reproduced from a print obtained in 1973 from the museum
operated by the Polish government at Auschwitz, and there remain a
number of mysteries concerning it. The version reproduced here is the only
one, so far as I know, that is not obviously falsified to some extent. However
119 The photograph appears in Schoenberner, 162 (206 in paperback), and in Central Commission,
Fig. 39.
120 C.B. Smith, 166-171 and photographs.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
89
such an observation does not settle the matter because of the strange fact that
the falsified (or, at least, retouched) versions display more apparently genuine
background detail (e.g. the fence and trees).
In any case Birkenau was, in a very real sense, a “death camp;” dead, dying
and sick people were sent there and, after the crematories were built, the dead
were disposed of in them. If one is to claim an “extermination camp” when
there is none, what better choice is there but a “death camp”?
While the preceding adequately suggests how the Auschwitz lie originated,
it is not relevant to the circumstances under which the more general extermination
legend originated. The claims of exterminations of Jews have their origin
not in Allied intelligence information but in the operations of the World
Jewish Congress, whose leaders were at first either unconcerned with, or uninformed
about, the facts pertaining to Auschwitz.
In this connection one must reject two possible fallacious expectations. The
first is that Allied propaganda would strive to maximize Auschwitz propaganda
after it was realized that the propaganda possibilities were excellent.
The second is that the claims made in the Allied propaganda relative to
Auschwitz would be almost completely devoid of real fact.
The second fallacious expectation is that American propaganda relative to
Auschwitz would be almost free of fact. We have indicated already that this
should not be expected. Washington had excellent and accurate information
about Auschwitz, as it had about all important phases of German industrial activity,
and it has been remarked above that the real facts about Birkenau
seemed to invite distortion of interpretation.
If, as is claimed here, there was no German extermination program but certain
propagandists in the US wished the acceptance of the thesis that there
was, it would have been a most serious blunder for the propagandists to give
maximum emphasis to Auschwitz or any other place as an alleged extermination
camp for this would amount to making a charge that the Germans could
answer. If high US officials, such as Roosevelt or his cabinet members, had
made specific remarks about exterminations, naming sites where exterminations
were taking place, under circumstances where their remarks received the
wide publicity normally given to public statements by officials of their rank,
then both the Germans and the Allies would have been put on the spot on the
question and the truth would not have been long in coming out. On the contrary,
as we shall see in a later chapter, the first period in which there was a
persistence of references to Auschwitz as an extermination camp, appearing
even under obscure circumstances, was immediately after D-Day (June 6,
1944), when nobody was paying any attention to such stories. Later in the
summer of 1944, the emphasis shifted to the Lublin camp, which the Russians
had just captured. The first reference to emerge from a US government source
that was high enough so that it could not be ignored, and which charged exterminations
at Auschwitz, came in late November 1944, after the exterminaArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
90
tions are supposed to have been terminated.121 Otherwise, people such as Roosevelt
and Churchill and their ministers spoke only in very general moralistic
terms about exterminations. It is only if one believed there actually were exterminations
taking place at Auschwitz, and one wanted to stop them, that one
would have made a specific charge concerning Auschwitz to which the Germans
would have felt obliged to respond. No such challenge ever materialized.
Despite the fact that in all versions of the extermination legend the
Auschwitz exterminations had certainly started by the late summer of 1942,
and despite the fact that US military intelligence must have known whatever it
was that was going on at Auschwitz at that time, no specific extermination
charges came from any high source until much later.
The First ‘Extermination’ Claims and Washington
The first “inside” events relative to the extermination propaganda were in
the context of a conflict involving the US State and Treasury Departments and
the World Jewish Congress (and American Jewish Congress), headed by
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. The prominent characters in the story are Treasury
Secretary Morgenthau, later the nominal author of the notorious “Morgenthau
Plan” for the despoliation of Germany, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and
Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, who were mildly reluctant to be carried
along by the propaganda, and Assistant Secretary of State J. Breckenridge
Long, who was very resistant to the propaganda. Also involved are the World
Jewish Congress representatives in Switzerland, Gerhard Riegner and Professor
Paul Guggenheim, who transmitted stories of supposedly European origin
to Wise or to other persons in the US, notably to the State Department through
the US Ambassador to Switzerland, Leland Harrison, or through the US Consul
in Geneva, Paul C. Squire. The principal work that has set forth the events
surrounding the birth of the extermination legend is Arthur D. Morse’s While
Six Million Died, a book which is supplemented to some extent by Henry L.
Feingold’s The Politics of Rescue. Additional material had been contributed
by post-war accounts given by Morgenthau, historians J. M. Blum and Anthony
Kubek (in interpreting Morgenthau’s papers, the latter for the US Senate
publication Morgenthau Diary), historian F. L. Israel (in summarizing the
papers of J. Breckenridge Long), and J. DuBois, who was at first Chief Counsel
of the Treasury’s Foreign Funds Control, involved in these matters chiefly
in connection with efforts to extend assistance to refugees.122
121 Hilberg, 631; Reitlinger, 493-495.
122 Unless otherwise noted, our treatment of the early extermination propaganda, related developments
in Washington and New York and the conflicts between the State Department, on
the other hand, and Zionists and the Treasury Department on the other, and the events leadChapter
3: Washington and New York
91
The first extermination claim appears to have been made by the London
section of the World Jewish Congress in June 1942. It was claimed that one
million Jews had been killed in some undesignated and unlocated “vast
slaughterhouse for Jews” which had been established in Eastern Europe. The
only attempt to provide evidence for this claim was a remark that the Polish
government in exile in London had received confirming information. The allegation
was carried in the New York Times in a story that will be reviewed below.
The evidence for this London claim was obviously too flimsy to serve as
effective propaganda, so an effort was made to improve matters slightly. On
August 8, 1942, Riegner and Guggenheim approached the US Consulate in
Geneva, which had been cooperating with the World Jewish Congress to the
extent of allowing it to use diplomatic channels for messages, with a story that
some anonymous German industrialist had informed them that he had learned
of a decision to kill all non-Soviet Jews under German control. Discussions,
which the industrialist had overheard, were being held in the Führer’s Headquarters
regarding the methods to be employed. One method under discussion
was gassing with Prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide gas) after the Jews had been
concentrated at camps in Eastern Europe. This story was forwarded to Washington
by the Consulate, via US diplomatic channels, and to London via British
diplomatic channels. The “industrialist” has remained anonymous to this
day.
When the US State Department received the message, it was evaluated and
it was decided that:
“[…] it does not appear advisable in view of the […] fantastic nature of
the allegations and the impossibility of our being of any assistance if such
action were taken, to transmit the information to Dr. Wise as suggested.”
The message was accordingly suppressed, but Wise learned of its contents
anyway. It is said that he learned from London, but it is also possible that he
had composed the message in the first place, and learned of its transmission
and suppression through his various connections.
Wise immediately contacted Welles, who had approved the decision to
suppress, in order to protest the State Department’s handling of the matter.
Welles replied that the “information” was somewhat too unsubstantiated to be
taken seriously, and that some confirmation should be obtained before any
public announcement was made. Welles then instructed the US representative
in the Vatican to attempt to check the allegations with Vatican sources. At the
time, almost nobody in Washington pretended to take these claims seriously,
and even President Roosevelt assured Justice Felix Frankfurter that the Jews
ing up to the establishment of the War Refugee Board, is based on Morse, 3-99; Feingold,
167-247; Dubois, 183-189; Blum, 207-227; Israel; 173-174, 216-217, 306-337; Morgenthau.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
92
who had been deported to the East were merely being used to help build fortifications.
In September two anonymous persons showed up in Geneva, claiming to
have escaped from German controlled areas. They reported the extermination
of Polish Jews and the utilization of the Jewish corpses for the manufacture of
fertilizer. This was forwarded to Washington through diplomatic channels,
and again an attempt was made to get confirmation by the Vatican (which had
thus far ignored the first request for confirmation). At about the same time,
Wise had received a message from a World Jewish Congress official in
Europe reporting on the “manufacture of soap and artificial fertilizer” from
Jewish corpses.
In late September Riegner came forward with two new documents. The
first had, he said, been prepared by an (anonymous, naturally) officer attached
to the German High Command, and had reached Riegner through several intermediaries.
The anonymous officer claimed that there were at least two factories
in existence which were manufacturing soap, glue and lubricants from
Jewish corpses, and that it had been determined that each Jewish corpse was
worth 50 Reichmarks. The second document consisted of two coded letters
that had, it was said, been written by a Swiss Jew resident in Warsaw. The
anonymous Jew reported wholesale exterminations of Warsaw Jews deported
to the East. All of these messages were forwarded to Washington and then
filed.
In passing we should note the resemblance of such claims to World War I
propaganda, and the appalling lack of originality and creativity on the part of
the World Jewish Congress. It scarcely requires remarking that the soap and
glue factories were a very transient propaganda phenomenon, and that the
only similar charges made at Nuremberg were made by the Russians. These
charges were largely ignored even then and nobody, to my knowledge, has
since come forward with the locations of these factories, the identities of the
persons who managed them, or similar information. Reitlinger does not claim
the existence of such factories, and Hilberg (page 624) does not believe they
existed.
On October 10, the Vatican finally informed the US representatives that it
had been unable to confirm the many reports it had heard of severe measures
against the Jews.
On October 22, Riegner met with Ambassador Harrison and presented him
with more of the same sort of “evidence,” this time reporting “information”
provided by yet another anonymous German informant (whose name, however,
is said to have been presented to Harrison in a sealed envelope, and to
have been kept secret from everybody but the Office of Strategic Services
[OSS]) and also an anonymous official of the International Red Cross. Harrison
forwarded this material to Washington, but also wrote two personal letters
to Welles in late October, claiming that he knew the name of the German inChapter
3: Washington and New York
93
dustrialist, and also claiming that the anonymous Red Cross official was Carl
Jacob Burckhardt, the distinguished Voltaire-Goethe scholar who was prominent
in the International Red Cross during the war. He enclosed an affidavit
that Guggenheim had deposed before Squire on October 29, in which Guggenheim
claimed that he had obtained from an anonymous German informant
information confirming Riegner’s claims. The anonymous German informant
had gotten his information from an anonymous official of the German Foreign
Ministry, and from an anonymous official of the German Ministry of War.
Moreover, an anonymous Swiss informant, resident in Belgrade, had also
given information to Guggenheim supporting the claims.
In order to confirm the claims, Squire arranged an interview with Burckhardt,
which took place in Geneva on November 7. On November 9, Squire
communicated to Harrison his memorandum on the interview, in which he had
recorded that Burckhardt’s information was that Hitler had signed an order
that before the end of 1942 Germany must be free of all Jews. Squire’s account
of the interview explains:123
“I then asked him whether the word extermination, or its equivalent,
was employed, to which he replied that the words must be Juden-frei (free
of Jews) were utilized. He then made it clear that since there is no place to
send these Jews and since the territory must be cleared of this race, it is
obvious what the net result would be.”
This, the report of an ambiguous remark, made by an imperfectly informed
Swiss citizen, reported by an intermediary who was friendly to the World Jewish
Congress and eager to discover a sinister interpretation to such facts as
were available, is as solid as this “evidence” ever got. To my knowledge,
Burckhardt never spoke out publicly, during or after the war, in connection
with these matters. He answered some written questions which were put to
him by Kaltenbrunner’s defense during the IMT trial, but these questions, relating
to Kaltenbrunner’s efforts to permit the Red Cross to enter the German
camps toward the end of the war, were not relevant to our subject. Nobody
asked Burckhardt about exterminations.124
Late in November, the State Department received “information” from an
anonymous Vatican source, consisting of a three page description, in French,
of events allegedly transpiring in Poland. The document is unsigned and the
only sort of endorsement is a handwritten notation, “from Mr. F. at Vatican
City,” which appears in an unknown hand on the first page. The document re-
123 Guggenhiem’s affidavit is in dispatch no. 49 of October 29, 1942, of the retired files of the
U.S. Consulate, Geneva, which are in the archives of the Foreign Affairs Document and
Reference Center, Department of State, Washington. Squire’s memorandum of his interview
with Burckhardt is attached to Squire’s personal letter of November 9, 1942 to Harrison,
which is in the same file.
124 The question put to Burckhardt, and his answers, are IMT document Kaltenbrunner 3, IMT
Vol. 40, p. 306.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
94
ports, inter alia125
“Farms for the breeding of human beings are being organized to which
women and girls are brought for the purpose of being made mothers of
children who are then taken from them to be raised in Nazi establishments.
[…] Mass execution of Jews continues. […] They are killed by poison gas
in chambers especially prepared for that purpose (often in railway cars)
and by machine gun fire, following which the dead and the dying are both
covered with earth. […] Reports are being circulated to the effect that the
Germans are making use of their corpses in plants manufacturing chemical
products (soap making factories).”
During the late summer and autumn of 1942, Wise had continuously campaigned
for the Allied governments to take a public position directly condemning
the alleged exterminations of Jews in Europe. On December 8, Wise
led a delegation to the White House and presented to President Roosevelt a
twenty-page document entitled Blue Print for Extermination, which was based
on the sort of “information” we have reviewed. Related Jewish pressures finally
brought capitulation to Wise on the mythical exterminations, and on December
17, 1942, the Allies, led by Washington, issued a statement condemning
the exterminations. A related statement, released two days later, claimed
exterminations at Belzec and at Chelmno, but Auschwitz was not mentioned
(the relevant news stories are reviewed below).
Despite this public declaration, the group headed by J. Breckenridge Long
continued to resist the propaganda. On January 19, 1943, Riegner gave Harrison
the “information” that “in one place in Poland 6,000 Jews are killed
daily.” On January 21, Harrison communicated this material to the State Department
and also to certain unspecified “private Jewish agencies,” apparently
meaning Wise. The message was merely filed and the Department made no
public mention of it. For a time, the private Jewish agencies were also silent
about the message. On February 10, Long’s group took a further step in suppression
of such propaganda. It instructed Harrison, in a message signed by
Welles (who is said to have not read the message), and with particular reference
to Harrison’s cable of January 21,
“in the future, reports submitted to you for transmission to private persons
in the United States should not be accepted unless extraordinary circumstances
make such action advisable. It is felt that by sending such private
messages which circumvent neutral countries’ censorship we risk the
possibility that neutral countries might find it necessary to take steps to
curtail or abolish our official secret means of communication.”
Finally, on February 14, the New York Times published the story (see below).
For explanation of the delay of four weeks in publishing the story, de-
125 The statement of the “Vatican source” is in the U.S. National Archives as Department of
State file 740.00116 EW/726.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
95
spite its being received by “private Jewish agencies” on January 21, and despite
the evident policy of publishing the unsupported claims of such agencies,
we can only conjecture that certain unknown persons were hoping that the
State Department, given the precedent of the declaration of December 17,
would release the “information” so as to confer a greater credibility than
would have been granted to the story as it eventually appeared: a claim indistinguishable
in terms of authority from the average sort of atrocity claim.
The Treasury (which, because of Morgenthau’s long crusade against Germany,
had repeatedly interfered in the conduct of foreign affairs since at least
1936126) was soon to come into conflict with State over this suppression. A
second and more substantial basis for conflict between the two Departments
was also established in February 1943. It was learned that the Romanian government
was prepared to transfer 70,000 Jews to Palestine on Romanian ships
bearing Vatican insignia (it is unlikely that the Romanians really cared where
the Jews were sent, so I assume that the Palestine destination must have been
somehow specified by the Zionists involved in the formulation of the proposals).
An important condition was specified by “officials who were in charge in
Romania of Jewish interests.” A cost of 250 pounds (about $1200) per capita
was specified. There were other difficulties. The British policy at the time was
not to antagonize the Arabs, especially in view of the potentially catastrophic
consequences of an Arab uprising in wartime, and thus the British at first refused
to consider the admission of so many Jews to Palestine. The British took
the position that if such Jews were to be taken out of Europe, the US should
provide camps in North Africa for them. In addition, both the British Foreign
Office and the US State Department took the position that there would inevitably
be spies in such a large group of people, that the logistical problems involved
in transporting and accommodating such numbers were formidable,
and that the money demanded might fall into the hands of the enemy (who
valued Allied currency for various purposes). The Treasury was eager to get
into the business of aiding Jewish refugees and thus it sought to overcome
such objections. By July 1943 there was said to be bribe money demanded for
the Romanian Jews, $170,000, and the Treasury and the World Jewish Congress
proposed that Romanian Jewish businessmen could produce the bribe
money if they could be reimbursed after the war with money to be held in escrow
in Switzerland. However, the British objections to admitting Jews to
Palestine stood, and efforts to circumvent them by proposing other destinations
for the Jews ran into the opposition of various candidate countries and
also into US immigration laws.
The State Department, especially J. Breckenridge Long and associates,
considered all the talk about “exterminations” to be just wartime propaganda,
in the same spirit as the stories invented during World War I. They were, after
126 Hull, 471-473.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
96
all, continually considering proposals to move these exterminated people out
of Europe; as late as January 1944 the Department was taking steps to encourage
Jews to leave Poland for Hungary. Long wrote that one danger in supporting
the proposals of Wise was that it “may lend color to the charges of Hitler
that we are fighting this war on account of and at the instigation and direction
of our Jewish citizens.” State considered the whole project pointless and, indeed,
in conflict with the requirements of an optimum war effort. Long wrote
that:
“Wise always assumes such a sanctimonious air and pleads for the ‘intellectuals
and brave spirits, refugees from the tortures of the dictators’ or
words to that effect. Of course only an infinitesimal fraction of the immigrants
are of that category – and some are certainly German agents. […] I
did not allude to the Navemar – en route from Lisbon to Havana and New
York – a freight boat, passenger accommodations for 15 and 1200 poor
Jews above and below decks with no sanitary arrangements, no service, no
kitchen facilities, at from $700 to $1500 apiece, 4 dead before reaching
Bermuda, 6 hospitalized there, 1 of which died, victims of the greed of their
fellows – not of Germany or the United States policy. The vessel is a menace
to the health of any port where it stops and a shame to the human
greed which makes it possible. But I did not allude to it in reply to Rabbi
Wise. Each one of these men hates me. I am to them the embodiment of a
nemesis. They each and all believe every person, everywhere, has a right to
come to the United States. I believe nobody, anywhere has a right to enter
the United States unless the United States desires.”
The State Department either procrastinated on the matter or actively sabotaged
the proposed project. At the end of the summer of 1943 it was learned
that 6,000 Jewish children could be taken out of France, and this possibility
got involved in the problem.
The people from the Treasury and the World Jewish Congress kept pressing
for the proposed projects and continually asserted, with apparent complete
seriousness, that the only alternative was the death of the people in question at
the hands of Hitler. It was even openly charged that the failure to approve the
projects was “acquiescence of this Government in the murder of the Jews.”
Pressure was also put on the British by various people. Long had become a
whipping boy both publicly and within government circles, and he wrote bitterly
that
“the Jewish agitation depends on attacking some individual. Otherwise
they would have no publicity. So for the time being I am the bull’s eye.”
As a result of this campaign, Wise and Morgenthau achieved a breakthrough
in December 1943, when arrangements were finally made for the
evacuation of Romanian Jews and money was put into a Swiss account controlled
by Riegner and the US Treasury. Moreover, in December Romania put
out peace feelers and was assured it would be treated well if it treated its Jews
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
97
well; Romania immediately decided to repatriate Jews it had resettled by the
Sea of Azov in Russia.
This Morgenthau victory had been achieved at a December 20 meeting of
Hull, Long, Morgenthau and John Pehle, chief of the Treasury’s Foreign
Funds Control. Morgenthau had evidently decided on a showdown with State
over the entire matter for at that meeting he casually requested a copy of the
complete text of the February 10 message from Welles to Harrison (the suppression
instruction). The State Department complied, but deleted the reference
to Harrison’s message of January 21, thereby causing the message of
February 10 to appear utterly routine. In thus editing the message, State was
obviously unaware that the complete contents of this correspondence had already
been leaked to DuBois in the Treasury by Donald Hiss of the State Department
(brother of Alger Hiss and later identified in Bentley-Chambers testimony
as a Communist, although he denied it), who had acquired copies of
the messages only with great difficulty and, in complying with DuBois’ request,
nevertheless cautioned the latter that the messages were “none of
Treasury’s business” and that Hiss could lose his job for the leak.127
When Morgenthau received the edited message he knew that he had another
weapon to use against Long and associates and, thus, he brought on a
collision by charging editing of the message and demanding to see the unedited
files, which were produced shortly later, exposing State’s clumsy attempt
at concealment. The State Department people were now very much on the defensive,
and further examination of the State Department files (which the
Treasury was now in a position to insist on) revealed that, in response to a request
by Wise, Welles had cabled Harrison in April to meet with Riegner and
transmit new information that Riegner was supposed to have obtained. The
confused Harrison did as requested (Riegner’s information had to do with
proposals to assist Jewish refugees in France and Romania) and also remarked
to Welles that such material should not be subjected to the restriction imposed
by the February 10 message.
Morgenthau was victorious in the State-Treasury collision; Roosevelt,
drawn into the issue, sided with him by establishing in January 1944 the socalled
War Refugee Board consisting of Morgenthau, Hull and Secretary of
War Stimson. However, the executive director was “Morgenthau’s fair haired
boy,” John Pehle, and Josiah DuBois was the general counsel. It was thus
Morgenthau’s Board. The WRB naturally acquired the powers that had been
held by the three Government Departments that were involved in the proposed
projects for taking Jews out of Europe. Thus, the State Department became
committed to appointing special attachés with diplomatic status on the recommendation
of the Board (the UNRRA – United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration – set up the previous November, was to have a simi-
127 Morgenthau Diary, 6.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
98
lar function but only after the war ended).128
In order completely to grasp the nature of its development, and its import
in terms of our subject, we should go beyond noting the obvious fact that the
WRB was to serve, to a great extent, as simply an instrument of the World
Jewish Congress and other Zionist organizations. The Communist apparatus
was also one of the directors involved, for the person to whom Morgenthau
had delegated all of the Treasury’s powers in the areas relevant to the WRB
was Harry Dexter White, later exposed as a Soviet agent. White became a
member of Morgenthau’s inner circle in the spring of 1938. A week after
Pearl Harbor, Morgenthau announced that “on and after this date, Mr. Harry
D. White, Assistant to the Secretary, will assume full responsibility for all
matters with which the Treasury Department has to deal having a bearing on
foreign relations […] ” The extreme generality of the wording of this order,
especially the phrase “having a bearing on,” were to create grand opportunities
for White in the years ahead. In early 1943 Morgenthau amplified White’s
responsibilities:
“Effective this date, I would like you to take supervision over and assume
full responsibility for Treasury’s participation in all economic and
financial matters […] in connection with the operations of the Army and
Navy and the civilian affairs in the foreign areas in which our Armed
Forces are operating or are likely to operate. This will, of course, include
general liaison with the State Department, Army and Navy, and other departments
or agencies and representatives of foreign governments on these
matters.”
White, who became an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in early 1945,
took full advantage of these powers, especially in connection with occupation
policy in Germany. It is also evident that, because the WRB was to a large degree
an arm of the Treasury, its operations fell into White’s domain. It is also
worth remarking that the general counsel of the WRB, Dubois, was “closely
associated” with the Communist agent, William L. Ullmann, and was also a
witness of White’s will.129
Long had mixed and, as it developed, prescient thoughts about the implications
of these developments:
“[…] it will be only a few more days now before I relinquish jurisdiction
in connection with refugees and let somebody else have the fun. And it
has been a heavy responsibility – domestic as well as foreign, because
there are 5 million Jews in the country, of whom 4 million are concentrated
in and around New York City. And we have no Arab or Moslem
population, but we do have increasingly important commercial interests –
128 New York Times (Jan. 22, 1943), 6; (May 13, 1943), 8; (Sep. 5, 1943), 7; (Sep. 6, 1943),
7.23, 1944), 11.
129 Morgenthau Diary, 6-9.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
99
principally oil – in the Moslem countries. In addition our ally England has
hardly any Jewish citizenship but a very large political interest in the Near
East. So our policy is increasingly based in part – a large part – on a domestic
situation, while England’s is based entirely on a foreign affairs base
– and the two are hard to reconcile […] it is good news for me […] this
ensures me staying out. What they can do that I have not done I cannot
imagine.”
Long miscalculated on the last point for the WRB eventually did a considerable
amount of Jew relocation, and its acts on behalf of refugees are of great
importance in this book and are discussed in a later chapter. It also aided concentration
camp inmates, through the Red Cross, in the final weeks of the
war.130 As an instrument of Wise and other Zionists, the WRB also did considerable
propagandizing131 and its most consequential propaganda achievement
was a booklet, German Extermination Camps: Auschwitz and Birkenau,
Executive Office of the President, Washington, November 1944. The booklet
is hereafter referred to as the WRB report.
The WRB report constituted the formal birth of the “official” thesis of exterminations
via gas chamber at Auschwitz. In it all of the essentials and many
of the details of the later Auschwitz hoax are found. The Nuremberg charges
grew out of the WRB report. There does not seem to have been any particularly
strong reaction, one way or the other, to the WRB report at the time that
it was issued. However, an American journalist, Oswald F. Schuette, wrote a
critical letter to Stimson (one of the signers of the report), but Schuette did not
get a satisfactory reply.132
Of course, the WRB report failed to change the opinions of the State Department
people who had scoffed at the extermination propaganda from the
very beginning. In private with DuBois, they were blunt in their opinion of the
WRB report:
“Stuff like this has been coming from Bern ever since 1942. […] Don’t
forget, this is a Jew telling about the Jews. […] This is just a campaign by
that Jew Morgenthau and his Jewish assistants.”
The WRB report was said to have been transmitted from Bern to Washington.
The report will be discussed in depth after we have surveyed a key part of
the wartime propaganda, in its public aspect. First, however, we should point
out that some otherwise keen observers misinterpret the role of Auschwitz in
the extermination legend. The distinguished American journalist and historian,
Harry Elmer Barnes, wrote in 1967 that the extermination133
“[…] camps were first presented as those in Germany, such as Dachau,
130 DuBois, 198-199; Red Cross (1947), 20, 23, 59-60; US-WRB (1945), 9-10, 56-61.
131 US-WRB (1945), 45-56.
132 Morgenthau Diary, 805-810; Aretz, 366-368.
133 Barnes Quoted in Anonymous, 3.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
100
Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Dora, but it was demonstrated
that there had been no systematic extermination in those camps. Attention
was then moved on to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno, Jonowska,
Tarnow, Ravensbruck, Mauthausen, Brezeznia, and Birkenau, which does
not exhaust the list that appears to have been extended as needed.”
The basis for Barnes’ misunderstanding, of course, is that at the end of the
war the mass media, for the sake of sensation mongering did, indeed, seize on
the scenes found in the German camps as proof of exterminations, and it is
also true, as we indicated in the previous chapter, that these scenes have
served as the mass propaganda “proof” of exterminations. However, our
analysis shows that Auschwitz had been carefully chosen in 1944 as the core
for the extermination hoax. This point will be supported by material to be reviewed
below and also in a later chapter. By publishing the WRB report in
November 1944, Washington committed itself to a specific form of the hoax.
That form was maintained in the trials in Nuremberg and, even today, the
form of the hoax does not differ in any significant respect from the WRB report.
After his WRB victory, Morgenthau busied himself with other things, particularly
with the policies to be followed in occupied Germany. He found that
existing plans actually paid regard to the Hague and Geneva Conventions, to
which the United States was signatory, and which prohibited such things as
the seizure of private personal property of no military significance, the detaining
of POWs long after the end of hostilities, and the needless imposition of
starvation rations. He therefore campaigned for the harsher policies which
later became known as the Morgenthau Plan, and of which many were actually
adopted and put into practice. David Marcus, in the CAD, sponsored
Morgenthau’s objectives there and kept him informed about his opponents.
Colonel Bernard Bernstein, long associated with Morgenthau, performed a
similar function for him at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces
(SHAEF) in London. Baruch also helped out.134
The First ‘Extermination’ Claims and New York
The thesis of this book is that the story of Jewish extermination in World
War II is a propaganda hoax. Obviously, therefore, we must examine the origins
of the hoax in wartime propaganda. We have already discussed many of
the “inside” aspects, and the public aspects remain to be examined.
The enormity of the task plus the “controversial” nature of the subject
seem to have discouraged a thorough study of the propaganda. There have
134 Blum, 343, 383.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
101
been studies of special aspects. John T. Flynn, in While You Slept, surveyed
the propaganda in respect to communist and pro-communist influences, especially
in regard to Asia. James J. Martin made a study of the manner in which
the American media treated the Soviet Union, the negotiated peace question,
and the Allied terror bombings during the war.
It is out of the question to survey all of the atrocity and extermination
propaganda pertaining to the European theater in World War II. Here we may
economize on the magnitude of the survey to be undertaken by noting that we
are interested only in the Jewish extermination question, and only in what important
people were doing. We will therefore find that examination of stories
concerning alleged Jewish extermination that appeared in the New York Times,
spring 1942 through 1943, together with a summary of 1944 propaganda
which will be presented in a subsequent chapter, is all that is required to get a
satisfactory conception of the propaganda. Therefore, we start here with
spring 1942 stories.
Concurrent commentary will be made. In many cases there is involved a
story – allegedly originating in Europe – claiming mass killings, and the matters
of particular interest in such cases are the source of the story, the location
of the alleged killings and the method of killing allegedly employed. It should
also be kept in mind that the post-war extermination legend claims only three
varieties of mass exterminations: gassing at six sites in Poland, “gasmobiles “
in Russia, and mass shootings in Russia.
“REPORTS NAZI SLAUGHTER OF JEWS
April 6, 1942, p. 2 Kuibyshev, Russia, April 5 (AP) – The Anti-Fascist
Jewish Committee reported today that the Germans have killed 86,000
Jews in and around Minsk, 25,000 at Odessa and ‘tens of thousands’ in
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In Estonia, the report said, the entire Jewish
population numbering 4,500 was wiped out.”
“NAZIS BLAME JEWS FOR BIG BOMBINGS
June 13, 1942 Berlin, June 12 (From German broadcast recorded by
the United Press in New York) – Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
said tonight that Germany would carry out a mass ‘extermination’ of Jews
in reprisal for the Allied air bombings of German cities which, he acknowledged,
have caused heavy damage.
Dr. Goebbels, in an article in the publication The Reich, said the Jews
would be exterminated throughout Europe ‘and perhaps even beyond
Europe’ in retaliation against the heavy air assaults.”
Goebbels’ remark was directed against the Jewish controlled press, which
he regarded as largely responsible for the propaganda atmosphere which made
the terror bombings possible. His remark in Das Reich was:
“In this war the Jews are playing their most criminal game, and they
will have to pay for that with the extermination (Ausrottung) of their race
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
102
in Europe and perhaps far beyond. They are not to be taken seriously in
this conflict, because they represent neither British nor American, but exclusively
Jewish, interests.”
Now this is indeed an extermination threat, because the primary meaning
of the term “Ausrottung” is “extermination” (the English “uprooting,” to
which the word is related etymologically, is only a secondary meaning). Similar
totally public utterances were also made occasionally by Hitler. Examples
are “the result of this war will be the destruction of Jewry,” and “it will not be
the Aryan peoples that will be annihilated but it will be Jewry.”135
In reaction to this one should observe that (a) extreme statements were a
pervasive feature of Nazi oratory and rhetoric, (b) the extermination mythologists
find it necessary to claim that the exterminations were carried out in the
most extreme secrecy, which makes it somewhat untenable to take such occasional
references in the public declarations of Nazi leaders as evidence of exterminations,
(c) it is necessary to fully grasp the specific circumstances of the
Goebbels remark, i.e. it was a reaction to Allied terror bombings, (d) people
can say heated things in wartime, and bloodthirsty statements were made by
supposedly responsible people on both sides during the war, and (e) it is often
the case that a complete understanding of context is necessary when interpreting
the specific meaning of a reference to “extermination” or “annihilation”
(or, in German, “Ausrottung,” “Vernichtung,” respectively). Moreover, the
German word for “Jewry,” das Judentum, is ambiguous in meaning. Let each
of these five points be examined in order.
(a) It is well known that Nazi oratory and rhetoric tended to have a provocatively
inflammatory character whose origins go well back into the days
when the Nazis were a minor party in Weimar Germany. It appears that this
was a result of a deliberate and studied policy, for in 1931 Hitler explained the
reasons for it in a private interview;136
“What some madman of an editor writes in my own press is of no interest
to me. […] We can achieve something only by fanaticism. If this fanaticism
horrifies the bourgeoisie, so much the better. Solely by this fanaticism,
which refuses any compromise, do we gain our contact with the
masses.”
Put more simply, he often found that he could get attention by making wild
statements.
Naturally, all of the Nazi leaders, especially Goebbels, were infected with
this attitude to some degree. It is true that after the Nazis came to power and
assumed responsibility for ruling Germany, their public declarations became
much more moderated in tone, but the tendency never entirely departed from
them, and of course the war and the problem of attempting to reach public
135 Das Reich (Jun. 14, 1942), 2; Jaeckel, 62-63.
136 Calic, 34-35. Hitler also made relevant remarks in Mein Kampf.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
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opinion in the Allied countries revived the feature somewhat. Under the circumstances,
it is actually remarkable that Hitler and Goebbels only rarely
made such declarations.
(b) We shall see in following chapters that the extermination mythologists
are forced to take the position that the Nazis went to extremes to preserve the
secrecy of their killing program of continental scope, and did in fact preserve
this secrecy to a most remarkable extent. What is known of the behavior of
European Jews during those days, for example, despite the claims of some individual
authors and the indubitable fact that there were all sorts of rumors
current, shows that the Jews were not conscious of any extermination program.
When they were told to pack up for transport, they did just that, and
went without resistance. On p. 121??? we shall note Theresienstadt Jews volunteering
for transport to Auschwitz as late as August 1944, for the Jews at
Theresienstadt knew nothing of any extermination program at Auschwitz or
anywhere else. On p. 243??? we shall note that the Nazis were allegedly even
unwilling to commit anything to confidential documents for, we are told, “the
drafting of circumspect minutes was one of the major arts of Hitler’s Reich.”
Because this is the case put forward by the extermination mythologists, then it
is not merely that occurrences of the sort of remarks under consideration do
not support their case; the problem becomes that of explaining such occurrences.
(c) The Goebbels remark should be seen for what it was: a professional
propagandist’s reaction to the Allied bombings, which obsessed German policy
in various ways from May 1940 on. Because the facts in this connection,
although well established, are not well known, they are very briefly summarized
here but, in order to avoid an inexcusably long digression, the summary
is indeed brief. The reader interested in more thorough treatment is referred to
Veale and to Colby.137
At the outbreak of war in 1939, German air doctrine viewed the bomber as
a form of artillery and thus a weapon to be used in support of ordinary ground
operations. It was in this connection that the well-publicized bombings of
Warsaw in 1939 and Rotterdam in May 1940 took place: only after these cities
had actually become the scenes of military operations and the laws of siege
applied. “Strategic bombing,” as we understand the term, played no role in
German combat operations (although of course it had been and was under
study by German military planners).
This was not the case in Britain, however, for at the time that the Germans
were using their bombers as artillery in the Netherlands, the British made the
“splendid decision” to bomb German civilian targets, knowing perfectly well
that Hitler had no intention or wish to engage in warfare of this sort (Hitler,
indeed, did not want war with Britain at all).
137 Frederick J. P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism, and Benjamin Colby, ‘Twas a Famous Victory.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
104
There was a moderate amount of German bombing of targets in England
during the early summer of 1940, but only specifically military targets were
attacked, even while such cities as Hamburg and Bremen were undergoing
general attack. It was only after three months of this, and with the greatest reluctance,
that Hitler felt himself forced to reply in kind, and in this way the
well publicized “Blitz” hoax was established. The British people were not
permitted to find out that their government could have stopped the German
raids at any time merely by stopping the raids on Germany.
The British raids on Germany, while of no military significance in 1940,
had put the German government on the spot in German popular opinion, because
the German people naturally thought that their government should be
able to do something about them. The only reason the Germans adopted retaliatory
bombing was as a last resort. In announcing the policy, Hitler declared
in a Sportpalast speech of September 4, 1940 that:138
“If the British Air force drops two or three or four thousand kilograms
of bombs, we will drop a hundred and fifty, a hundred and eighty, two hundred
thousand, three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand kilograms
and more in a single night.”
This was a gross exaggeration of his capabilities relative to the British for,
although at the time his bombers were numerically superior to the British, they
were designed for support of troops and not for the “strategic bombing” for
which the British bombers were equipped. Nevertheless violent words are
cheap and, after the Luftwaffe, which was never more than a nuisance for the
Allied bombing operations, violent words (sometimes coupled with promises
of secret new weapons) were about all Hitler and Goebbels were able to come
up with, in 1940 or at any subsequent time, to oppose the bombings. It is in
this context that the Goebbels remark should be grasped.
(d) There were bloodthirsty remarks made on both sides during the war. In
the US there were many examples of wild views earnestly put forward by apparently
civilized persons, which were received with apparently thoughtful reactions
of approval by equally respected persons. Because there were so many
such people, it will suffice to remark only on Clifton Fadiman, the well known
author and critic who, at the time, was the book review editor of the New
Yorker weekly magazine.
Fadiman was the principal luminary of the Writers War Board, a semiofficial
government agency that did volunteer writing for government agencies
in connection with the war. The Board was chaired by Rex Stout. The
thesis that Fadiman and Stout carried to the writers’ community in 1942 was
that writings on the war should seek “to generate an active hate against all
Germans and not merely against Nazi leaders.” This generated some heated
controversy and writers and observers took sides in what became a debate hot
138 Hitler, 848.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
105
enough for Fadiman to declare that he knew of “only one way to make a German
understand and that’s to kill them and even then I think they don’t understand.”
These were not isolated outbursts for, through his column in the New
Yorker, Fadiman welcomed the opportunity to set down his views on Germans
in a more organized context. In April 1942 he had found the juvenile concept
he needed in a book by de Sales, The Making of Tomorrow. Taking for
granted the reader’s concurrence that the Nazis were at least the worst scourge
to come along in centuries, he wrote that de Sales’
“argument is simply that the present Nazi onslaught is not in the least
the evil handiwork of a group of gangsters but rather the final and perfect
expression of the most profound instincts of the German people. ‘Hitler is
the incarnation of forces greater than himself. The heresy he preaches is
two thousand years old.’ What is the heresy? It is nothing more or less
than a rebellion against Western civilization. Mr. de Sales traces five such
German rebellions, beginning with Arminius. At first you are inclined to be
skeptical of the author’s grand indictment – his anti-Germanism may conceivably
stem from his French ancestry – but as you follow his argument it
becomes more and more cogent and the true proportions of this war
emerge with great clarity.”
His reviews of books on the war expressed the historical concept that he
had found in de Sales’ nonsense. Scoffing at Howard K. Smith’s claim that “If
we can offer (the Germans) a real alternative to extermination, the nation,
though it may not succumb to actual revolution, will fall into our hands,”
Fadiman wrote:
“The world has been appeasing the Germans ever since their human
wolf packs broke out of their forest lairs in the time of Arminius. The result
is a Europe on the verge of suicide.”
This was followed by his obvious approval of “Hemingway’s extraordinary
[…] suggestion that ‘the only ultimate settlement’ with the Nazis is to sterilize
them. He means just that, in a surgical sense.” Of course, Fadiman also saw no
distinction between Nazis and other Germans and ridiculed Dorothy Thompson’s
“passionate argument” for such a distinction, as well as her conviction
“that our postwar efforts must be directed toward the construction of a European
federation of states, with Germany, under democratic leadership, occupying
a leading position.” Although Fadiman never advocated the killing of
all or most Germans, at least not in so many words, this was the clear sense of
his declarations. After all, what else can be done with “wolf packs who broke
out of their forest lairs,” are now trying to enslave the rest of the world, “understand”
only if you “kill them” and must not be given “a real alternative to
extermination?”139
139 New York Times (Oct. 29, 1942), 20; New Yorker (Apr. 18, 1942), 62; (Sep. 12, 1942), 53;
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
106
Clifton Fadiman was only a very prominent and semi-official example of a
“school of thought” that existed among leaders of opinion in the US during the
war. James J. Martin and Benjamin Colby have published longer studies of
Allied propaganda based on hatred of all Germans, the latter presenting a particularly
thorough study of the Writers War Board.
The climate of wartime opinion in Britain, of course, was about the same
and, on account of England’s earlier entry into the war, of longer standing. In
reacting to Hitler’s Berlin Sportpalast speech on the initiation of German air
raids on British cities (quoted above), the London Daily Herald gloated that
Hitler had made “a frantic effort to reassure his raid-harassed people” who
“are in an extremely nervous condition and stay awake even when there is no
alarm.” The same issue of the Herald goes on to present the recommendations
of the Reverend C. W. Whipp, vicar of St. Augustine’s Leicester:
“The orders ought to be, ‘wipe them out,’ and to this end I would concentrate
all our science towards discovering a new and far more terrific
explosive.
These German devils (that is the only word one can use) come over our
cities and turn their machine-guns on women and children.
Well, all I hope is that the RAF will grow stronger and stronger and go
over and smash Germany to smithereens.
A Minister of the Gospel, perhaps, ought not to indulge in sentiments
like these.
I go further, and I say quite frankly that if I could I would wipe Germany
off the map.
They are an evil race and have been a curse in Europe for centuries.
There can be no peace until Hitler and all those who believe in him are
sent to hell which is their place of origin and their final home.”
The Herald remarked that Whipp “has aroused considerable local controversy,”
so it is evident that in Britain, as in the US, there were many people
who kept their heads despite the Fadiman types.
The peculiar ad hoc philosophy of history enunciated by de Sales and promoted
by Clifton Fadiman also made its apparently independent appearance in
England. An article by Reginald Hargreaves in the June 1941 issue of the respected
journal National Review (not to be confused with the National Review
that was founded in the US in 1955) proposed as a war aim (as distinct from
an unavoidable consequence of the war) that “at least three million Nazi soldiers
(be) put permanently out of action,” it being:
“[…] an absolutely vital prerequisite to the laying down of arms that a
sufficient number of the present-day corrupted, brutalized and delirious
young dervishes of Nazidom should be left dead upon the field.”
The necessity for this arose from the consideration that:
(Oct. 24, 1942), 64f; (Nov. 28, 1942), 82; (Dec. 5, 1942), p. 82.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
107
“[…] throughout her whole history Germany has shown herself as utterly
uncivilized and worthy of nothing but detestation and disgust. From
the very beginning the behavior of the Teutonic peoples had qualified them
for the role of pariahs – the outcast mad dogs of Europe. […] Our real war
aim must be, not only military triumph in the field, but the reduction of the
German people to such a shrunken and delimited condition that never
again will they be in such a position to ‘start anything’ to the detriment of
generations yet to come. Our conflict, despite mushy affirmations to the
contrary, is with the German people; a race so savage, so predatory, so
unscrupulous and so utterly uncivilized that their elimination as a major
power is the only hope for a world that has no choice but to take the surgeon’s
knife and cut out this cankerous growth from its body-politic, thoroughly,
relentlessly, once and for all.”
Such declarations seem even more extraordinary when one considers that
they came from a nation noted for understatement.
The point of this discussion is not that there had grown up any consensus
in the US and Britain that all Germans are by nature monsters and should be
killed or at least sterilized. Everybody would agree that no such consensus existed
(and even the extermination mythologists would agree, I think, that no
consensus favoring extermination of the Jews existed in Germany). Moreover,
as we all realize, the genocidal policies advocated or implied by many leaders
of opinion in the US and Britain were not, in their literal form, within the
bounds of the possible; the American and British people would never have
permitted such deeds to be done in their names. The point is that during the
heat of wartime the most extraordinary things were said. For the most part
(unfortunately, one can only say for the most part) such lunacies were not realized
in events, but they were expressed nevertheless.
Murderous things were said on both sides and, in my opinion and dim recollection
of the times, the rhetoric in the US (especially in regard to the Japanese)
seems to me to have been more violent than anything that now seems to
have been current in Germany during the war, although such a comparison is
difficult and perhaps should not be attempted in regard to degree, on account
of the very different roles played by “public opinion” and by the statements of
political leaders in the two political systems involved.
On the Axis side, one should also note that Fascist Italy had various anti-
Jewish laws that were however very mild in application and certainly never
approached murder. Nevertheless the anti-Jewish rhetoric in the Fascist press
was at least as violent as anything generated in Germany and, assuming the
New York Times (October 22, 1941) reported accurately, it even advocated
that all Italian Jews be “annihilated as a danger to the internal front” Because
“this is the moment to do away with half-way measures.”
(e) A final point is that one must use some common sense and a feeling for
the context in interpreting references to “extermination” and “annihilation”
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
108
properly. In the American Civil War, many wanted Lincoln to “annihilate” the
South, and it is not inaccurate English to say that Lincoln did just that, but it
was understood, then as now, that the killing of all Southerners was not contemplated.
Naturally the same observation may be made in connection with public
declarations of Nazi leaders, but there is an additional point to be made in this
connection. Very often the Jews were referred to via the German word das
Judentum, one of whose correct translations is “Jewry,” but which can also
mean “Judaism” or even “Jewishness” or “the idea of Jewishness.” Thus a
Hitler reference to “die Vernichtung des Judentums,” if lifted out of context
and interpreted in a purely literal way, can be interpreted as meaning the killing
of all Jews, but it can also be interpreted as meaning the destruction of
Jewish influence and power, which is what the politician Hitler actually meant
by such a remark, although it is true that he could have chosen his words more
carefully. Alfred Rosenberg made specific reference to this ambiguity in his
IMT testimony, where he argued that “die Ausrottung des Judentums,” a term
he had used on occasion, was not a reference to killing in the context in which
Rosenberg had used it.
The lengthy digression made necessary by Goebbels’ “Ausrottung” remark
being concluded, we return to the survey of stories in The New York Times for
1942-1943.
“258 JEWS REPORTED SLAIN IN BERLIN FOR BOMB PLOT AT ANTI-RED
EXHIBIT
by George Axelsson – by telephone to the New York Times Stockholm,
Sweden, June 13. At the Gross Lichterfelde Barracks in the western suburbs
of Berlin 258 Jews were put to death by the SS on May 28, and their
families deported, in retaliation for an alleged Jewish plot to blow up the
anti-Bolshevist ‘Soviet Paradise’ exhibition at the Lustgarten. […] If there
were any bombs, they evidently were discovered before they had time to
explode. […] The SS wanted the executions to be published. […] Instead
[…] leaders of the Jewish colony were called in […]”
“1,000,000 JEWS SLAIN BY NAZIS, REPORT SAYS
June 30, 1942, p. 7 London, June 29 (UP) […] spokesmen for the
World Jewish Congress charged today.
They said Nazis had established a ‘vast slaughterhouse for Jews’ in
Eastern Europe […] A report to the Congress said that Jews, deported en
masse to Central Poland from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and the
Netherlands were being shot by firing squads at the rate of 1,000 daily.
Information received by the Polish Government in London confirmed
that the Nazis had executed ‘several hundred thousand’ Jews in Poland.”
No such “slaughterhouse” where executions were by “firing squad” is
claimed today. As noted above, this was the start of the World Jewish ConChapter
3: Washington and New York
109
gress‘ campaign of extermination propaganda. It is quite possible that this first
story was inspired by Goebbels’ then recent “Ausrottung” remark.
“NAZI PUNISHMENT SEEN BY ROOSEVELT
July 22, 1942, p. 1 […] President Roosevelt declared last night in a
message read to 20,000 persons at Madison Square Garden […]
President’s Message
‘The White House
‘Washington
‘July 17, 1942
‘Dear Dr. Wise:
‘[…] Citizens […] will share in the sorrow of our Jewish fellow-citizens
over the savagery of the Nazis against their helpless victims. The Nazis will
not succeed in exterminating their victims any more than they will succeed
in enslaving mankind.
The American people […] will hold the perpetrators of these crimes to
strict accountability in a day of reckoning which will surely come […]’
Text of Churchill Message
‘[…] you will recall that on Oct. 25 last, both President Roosevelt and I
expressed the horror felt […] at Nazi butcheries and terrorism and our resolve
to place retribution for these crimes among the major purposes of
this war […]’”
Such vague statements of the wartime leaders, while devoid of any specific
charges, carried more weight among the public than any of the more specific
stories that the leaders may have seemed, by their statements, to be endorsing.
We shall see that the specific claims of the time, at least for several months,
did not very much resemble the claims made at the later trials. Nevertheless
the politics of the situation, as perceived by Roosevelt and Churchill, made it
opportune for them to “go along,” at least to the extent of making vague public
statements supporting the propaganda.
“50,000 JEWS DYING IN NAZI FORTRESS
September 3, 1942, p. 5 London, Sept. 2 (UP) – Fifty thousand Jews
from Germany and Czechoslovakia have been thrown into the fortress at
Terezin and several thousand who are ill or charged with ‘criminal’ acts
are in underground dungeons where they are ‘dying like flies’ a Czech
Government spokesman said tonight.
‘All hope for them has been abandoned,’ the spokesman said. […] The
spokesman said the Germans had launched a campaign to exterminate
Jews from the protectorate and that of 40,000 Jews formerly in Prague
only 15,000 remain. Pilsen and Bruenn have been cleared of Jews, he said,
many of them being sent to Terezin, largest concentration camp in Nazicontrolled
Europe.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
110
A European observer said the Germans planned to exterminate the
Jews not only in Europe, but throughout the world. He declared the Nazis
had executed 2,000,000 Jews in the past three years […].”
The only truth in this story lies in the fact that the death rate of Jews was
rather high at Terezin (Theresienstadt) due to the German policy of sending all
Reich Jews over 65 there. Another category at Theresienstadt was the “privileged”
Jews – the war veterans – especially those with high decorations. There
were other Jews, many of whom were eventually moved out but, if they suffered,
it was not at Theresienstadt. The place was visited by the Red Cross in
June 1944 and the resulting favorable report angered the World Jewish Congress.
140 There will be more to be said about Theresienstadt in subsequent
chapters. While it was not the “largest concentration camp in Nazi-controlled
Europe,” it nevertheless plays an important role here.
“US REBUKES VICHY ON DEPORTING JEWS
September 5, 1942, p. 3 Washington, Sept. 4 – The State Department
has made the ‘most vigorous representations possible’ to the French Government
through the American Embassy in Vichy over the mass deportation
of Jews from unoccupied France, it was announced today by the
American Jewish Committee.
The protest followed representations by four Jewish organizations, and
the action was communicated to them in a letter by Sumner Welles, Under-
Secretary of State. […] Mr. Welles said: ‘I have received your communication
of Aug. 27, 1942, enclosing a letter […] in regard to the mass deportation
of Jewish refugees from unoccupied France.
‘I am in complete agreement with the statements made concerning this
tragic situation, which provides a new shock to the public opinion of the
civilized world. It is deeply regretted that these measures should be taken
in a country traditionally noted for adherence to the principles of equality,
freedom and tolerance.
‘The American Embassy at Vichy […] has made the most vigorous representations
possible to the highest authorities at Vichy […].’
[…] The letter of the four organizations to the Secretary of State follows:
‘On behalf of the organizations we represent […] the undersigned respectfully
request our government to transmit to the government of France
a solemn protest against the action taken recently by that government to
turn thousands of refugees over to the agents of the Nazi government for
deportation to Poland and to other Nazi-occupied regions in Eastern
Europe.
‘Reports reaching us […stating] that the government of France is per-
140 Reitlinger, 176-186.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
111
mitting the […] deportation by the Nazis of Jewish refugees who have been
interned in a number of camps in the south of France. This action began
about Aug. 8, when a total of 3,600 men, women and children were
rounded up, loaded on trains and sent off without any word regarding their
destination.
‘The reports agree that these 3,600 were the first contingent of a total
of 10,000 Jewish refugees which the French government has agreed to deport
to eastern territories […]
‘[…] Mass deportations of Jews from Germany and from territories under
German occupation have been going on ever since the conquest of Poland.
In accordance with the announced policy of the Nazis to exterminate
the Jews of Europe, hundreds of thousands of these innocent men, women
and children have been killed in brutal mass murders. The rest are being
herded in ghettos in Eastern Europe under indescribably wretched conditions,
as a result of which tens of thousands have succumbed to starvation
and pestilence.’”
We should only note at this point that even the four Jewish organizations
are not completely secure in claiming exterminations, because they allow
themselves an “out” by referring to those being “herded in ghettos.” Welles’
reply, while “in complete agreement” with the letter, avoids direct endorsement
of the extermination claim.
“HEBREW PAPERS MOURN
November 24, 1942, p. 10 JERUSALEM, Nov. 23 (UP) – The Hebrew
press appeared today with black borders around reports of mass murders
of Jews in Poland. The reports, received by the Jewish Agency, asserted
that systematic annihilation of the Jewish population was being carried out
by a special German ‘destruction commission’ […] on the former frontier
between German and Russian Poland, thousands were thrown into the Bug
river and drowned.”
“TARDY WAR REPORT HELD AID TO FAITH
December 13, 1942, p. 21. […] Rabbi Israel Goldstein declared: ‘Authenticated
reports point to 2,000,000 Jews who have already been slain by
all manner of satanic barbarism, and plans for the total extermination of
all Jews upon whom the Nazis can lay their hands. The slaughter of a third
of the Jewish population in Hitler’s domain and the threatened slaughter of
all is a holocaust without parallel.’”
“11 ALLIES CONDEMN NAZI WAR ON JEWS
December 18, 1942, p. 1 Special to the New York Times Washington,
Dec. 17 – A joint declaration by members of the United Nations was issued
today condemning Germany’s ‘bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination’
of Jews […]. The declaration was issued simultaneously through the
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
112
State Department here, and in London. […]
Text of Declaration
‘[…] From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported in
conditions of appalling horror and brutality to Eastern Europe. In Poland,
which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettos established
by the German invader are being systematically emptied of all Jews
except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of
those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly
worked to death in labor camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and
starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number
of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands
of entirely innocent men, women and children.’”
This was the beginning of the State Department involvement in the extermination
legend, and that it came from such a seemingly official source was
the basis for special comment in the Times editorial of the same day:
“HITLER’S TERROR
December 18, 1942, p. 26 Despite all that has been written about Nazi
persecution of the Jews, the facts in the joint statement issued yesterday in
Washington, London and Moscow in the name of the United Nations will
come as a shock to all civilized people who have preserved a modicum of
human decency. For this statement is not an outcry of the victims themselves
to which many thought it possible to close their ears on the ground
that it might be a special plea, subject to doubt. It is the official statement
of their own governments, based on officially established facts. […]”
Clearly, it was believed that atrocity claims apparently coming from the
State Department were more credible than claims coming from such groups as
the World Jewish Congress, which is no doubt what is meant by the “victims
themselves.” However we have seen that Wise was also behind the “joint declaration.”
The December 17 statement marked the start of US and British government
complicity in the extermination legend. The German government did
not see the event as laden with import, and von Stumm of the Foreign Office’s
press section flippantly explained to the neutral press that the Allied declaration
was for the purpose of helping the Christmas sales of the Jewish department
stores of New York and London.141
“ALLIES DESCRIBE OUTRAGES ON JEWS
December 20, 1942, p. 23 What is happening to the 5,000,000 Jews of
German-held Europe, all of whom face extermination, is described in a
statement released yesterday by the United Nations Information Office.
[…]
141 Reitlinger, 439.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
113
[…] Novel methods of mass execution by shooting and lethal gas are
cited in the main body of the report, which states that this destruction of
the Jews is not ‘isolated in one country but is continent-wide. Early in December
1942 the State Department in Washington gave some figures showing
that the number of Jewish victims deported and perished since 1939 in
Axis-controlled Europe now reached the appalling figure of 2,000,000 and
that 5,000,000 were in danger of extermination. […]
The document concludes. […]
‘The means employed in deporting from the ghetto all those who survive
murders and shooting in the street exceeds all imagination. In particular,
children, old people and those too weak for work are murdered. Actual
data concerning the fate of the deportees is not at hand, but the news is
available – irrefutable news – that places of execution have been organized
at Chelmno and Belzec, where those who survive shootings are murdered
en masse by means of electrocution and lethal gas.’”
The alleged electrocutions at Belzec appeared a few times in the propaganda,
and will be discussed again in Chapter 5. They are one of the versions
of exterminations that were quickly forgotten about after the end of the war.
Nevertheless we can see, at this point, a clear tendency of the propaganda to
resemble the claims which have become the fixed features of the legend, the
gas chambers and the approximate 6,000,000 killed during the course of the
war. We will have more to say a bit later on the origin of the six million figure.
“DEMAND JEWS BE SAVED
December 28, 1942, p. 21 Albany, Dec 27 (AP) – Dr. Wise, president of
the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress [… urged]
formulation of an Allied program to halt the Nazi slaughter of civilians.”
“93 CHOOSE SUICIDE BEFORE NAZI SHAME
Jan. 8, 1943, p. 8 Ninety-three Jewish girls and young Jewish women,
the pupils and the teacher of a Beth Jacob School of Warsaw, Poland,
chose mass suicide to escape being forced into prostitution by German soldiers,
according to a letter from the teacher, made public yesterday by
Rabbi Seth Jung of the Jewish Center of New York City.”
“IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH
[magazine article by Sholem Asch] February 7, 1943, VI, p. 16 […] gas
chambers and blood poisoning stations which are established in the outlying
countryside, where steam shovels prepare community graves for the
victims.”
“TYRANNY OF NAZIS SHOWN
February 14, 1943, p. 37 Warsaw is being subjected to a deliberate
Nazi pattern of death, disease, starvation, economic slavery and wholesale
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
114
elimination of population, the Office of War Information states in a twentyfour
page pamphlet, ‘Tale of a City,’ published today.
Declaring that Warsaw has been the testing ground for Nazi plans of
world conquest […]
‘[…] there is no way of telling at this time exactly how many Poles have
been murdered by the Nazis in Warsaw.’ The execution spot is now
Palmiry, near Warsaw, where mass shootings occur either at dawn or during
the night.”
“EXECUTION ‘SPEED-UP’ SEEN
February 14, 1943, p. 37 Mass executions of Jews in Poland on an accelerated
tempo was reported by European representatives of the World
Jewish Congress in a communication made public by Rabbi Stephen S.
Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress.
In one place in Poland 6,000 Jews are killed daily, according to the report,
dated Jan. 19. Jews left in Poland are now confined in fifty-five ghettos,
some in the large towns and some in the smaller towns that have been
transformed into ghettos.”
This was the propaganda story involved in the conflict between State and
Treasury. As noted in connection with the remarks on the Times editorial of
December 18, if this story had managed to emerge from the State Department,
greater credibility would, apparently, have been attached to it. Unfortunately
for the propaganda inventors at the time, they had to settle for Rabbi Wise as
ostensible source.
“NAZIS SHIFT 30,000 JEWS
February 16, 1943, p. 7 Geneva, Switzerland, Feb. 15 (ONA) – All the
aged and feeble (from Czestachowa, Poland) were sent to Rawa-Russka, in
Galicia, for execution by the Nazis, sources from inside Poland said.”
“ATROCITIES PROTESTED
February 23, 1943, p. 23 Thirty-five hundred children […] held a solemn
assembly of sorrow and protest against Nazi atrocities in Mecca Temple,
133 West Fifty-fifth Street […] Six refugee children related their experiences
at the hands of the Nazis.”
“SAVE DOOMED JEWS, HUGE RALLY PLEADS
March 2, 1943, pp. 1, 4 Immediate action by the United Nations to save
as many as possible of the five million Jews threatened with extermination
[…] was demanded at a mass demonstration […] in Madison Square Garden
last night.
[…Rabbi Hertz said] ‘appalling is the fact that those who proclaim the
Four Freedoms have so far done very little to secure even the freedom to
live for 6,000,000 of their Jewish fellow men by readiness to rescue those
who might still escape Nazi torture and butchery[…]’
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
115
[…Wendell Wilkie said] ‘Two million human beings, merely because
they are Jews, have already been murdered by every fiendish means which
Hitler could devise. Millions of other Jews […] face immediate destruction
[…]’
[…Chaim Weizmann said] ‘Two million Jews have already been exterminated.
[…]
‘The democracies have a clear duty before them. […] Let them negotiate
with Germany through the neutral countries concerning the possible
release of the Jews in the occupied countries. […] Let the gates of Palestine
be opened to all who can reach the shores of the Jewish homeland
[…]’”
“600 JEWS SENT TO SILESIA
March 7, 1943, p. 30 Stockholm, Sweden, March 6 (Reuter) – Nearly
600 Norwegian Jews […] are now known to have reached Polish Upper
Silesia. Most of the men have been sent to work in the mines near Katowice.”
“40,000 HERE VIEW MEMORIAL TO JEWS
March 10, 1943, p. 12 Forty thousand persons listened and watched
[…] last night to two performances of ‘We Will Never Die,’ a dramatic
mass memorial to the 2,000,000 Jews killed in Europe. […] The narrator
said ‘There will be no Jews left in Europe for representation when peace
comes. The four million left to kill are being killed, according to plan.’”
“FRENCH JEWS SENT TO A NAZI OBLIVION
April 1, 1943, p. 2 Wireless to The New York Times London, March 31
– A system of ‘death convoys’ under which French Jews are being rounded
up […] and then shipped out to various points in Eastern Europe, after
which they are no longer heard from, was described here today by the British
section of the World Jewish Congress, which charged that the ‘full
force’ of the Nazi and anti-Jewish terror now was being concentrated in
France.
Basing its report on first hand information supplied by a prominent
French Jew who has escaped to a neutral country, the Congress declared
the last ‘convoy’ left France about Feb. 20. It involved 3,000 Jews of all
classes and ages, and all that was known about its eventual destination
was that it was somewhere in the East.
In mid-February, the Congress added, the Gestapo raided the Lyon
headquarters of the General Union of French Jews, arrested the entire
staff, removed them to the Drancy concentration camp and since has
shipped them, too, to some ‘extermination center’ on the other side of
Europe.”
Reitlinger (page 327) tells us that “less than a tenth of the Jews who were
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
116
deported (from France) possessed French nationality.” By his figures that is
perhaps 5,000 of the 240,000 French Jews, suggesting that maybe the 5,000
enlisted for work voluntarily or were actually “politicals” or partisans.
“NAZIS ERASE GHETTOS IN TWO POLISH CITIES
April 12, 1943, p. 5 London, April 11 (AP) – The Polish Telegraph
Agency said tonight that the Germans had erased the ghetto at Krakow in a
three-day massacre that started March 13, and also had eliminated the
ghetto in Lodz.
The fate of the Jews in the latter city was unknown, but the agency said
it was believed they also were killed.”
“2,000,000 JEWS MURDERED
April 20, 1943, p. 11 London, April 19 (Reuter) – Two million Jews
have been wiped out since the Nazis began their march through Europe in
1939 and five million more are in immediate danger of execution. These
figures were revealed in the sixth report on conditions in occupied territories
issued by the Inter-Allied Information Committee.
[…] The report said lethal gas and shooting were among the methods
being used to exterminate the Jews.”
“RESCUE OF JEWS URGED
April 20, 1943, p. 11 The Jewish Agency for Palestine, in a memorandum
addressed to the Bermuda Refugees Conference yesterday, urged that
measures of rescue be launched immediately on behalf of 4,000,000 Jews
estimated to be still surviving in Nazi occupied countries.
The Agency, headed by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, is recognized in the
Mandate for Palestine as a body to advise and cooperate with the Government
of Palestine on matters affecting the establishment of the Jewish
National Home.
The memorandum declares that ‘should the announced policy of the enemy
continue unchecked, it is not impossible that by the time the war will
have been won, the largest part of the Jewish population of Europe will
have been exterminated.’”
“SCANT HOPE SEEN FOR AXIS VICTIMS
April 25, 1943, p. 19 Special Cable to the New York Times Hamilton,
Bermuda, April 24 – The large scale movement of refugees is impossible
under wartime conditions, and neither the United States nor Great Britain,
alone or jointly, can begin to solve the refugee problem. These two concrete
impressions have emerged after almost a week’s discussion of the
refugee problem by the American and British delegations here.”
Because almost all Jews outside the Continent, particularly those in the US,
believed the extermination claims, they brought political pressures which reChapter
3: Washington and New York
117
sulted in the Bermuda Conference. It was believed,142 correctly, that the Nazis
wished the emigration of the Jews from Europe (under appropriate conditions)
and this put the British and American governments, on account of the propaganda
basis for their war, into an awkward position around which they were
obliged to continually double-talk.143 We have described the conflict between
State and Treasury in this regard. The British had, at that point, no intention of
opening Palestine, and both the British and Americans had no intention of
providing the resources, in the middle of the war, for massive operations undertaken
for reasons that were valid only to the degree that their propaganda
was taken seriously. No sane modern statesmen believe their own propaganda.
This is the dilemma which J. Breckenridge Long and other State Department
officials felt themselves facing.
Another point that should be made here before proceeding with the survey
of the propaganda is that, apparently, the six million figure had its origin in
the propaganda of 1942-1943. An examination of the problem of the origin of
the six million figure could easily lead to the conclusion that it had its origin at
the IMT, where the indictment mentioned a figure (supplied by the World
Jewish Congress) of 5,721,800 “missing” Jews and Wilhelm Höttl of the SD
signed an affidavit, 2738-PS, asserting that he had gotten a figure of six million
from Eichmann. According to Höttl, Eichmann had visited his Budapest office
in a depressed mood because he was convinced that the war was lost,
thought that the Allies would punish him as a major war criminal, and then declared,
with no other witnesses present, that four million Jews had been killed in
extermination camps and that two million had met death in various other ways,
mainly through executions carried out by the Einsatzgruppen in Russia.
Here we offer a different theory regarding the origin of the six million figure.
Its very first appearance seems to be Rabbi Goldstein’s statement of December
13, 1942, followed by the story of December 20 to the same effect,
except that it specified a potential seven million in danger of being exterminated,
rather than the six million implied by Goldstein’s statement. However,
it could correctly be argued that one must not infer the origin of the six million
figure purely on the basis of these stories.
However, the appearances of the two million killed – four (or five) million
to be killed – extermination claim, at the public affairs reported on March 2
and 10, 1943, must be taken much more seriously. More information about the
latter affair can be extracted from an advertisement that also appeared on
March 10 (page 10), reporting that the show had been organized by the
“Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews,” headed by
Senator Johnson of Colorado. The advertisement makes the same extermination
claim (two million killed, four million to be killed) and also lists the
142 Dubois, 197.
143 New York Times (Nov. 1, 1943), 5; (Dec. 11, 1943), 1; (Dec. 13, 1943), 11; (Jan. 3, 1944), 9.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
118
sponsors of the organization, which included many members of Congress and
other notables. The same organization had also run a full page advertisement
on February 16 (page 11), specifying two million killed and four million to go
(and also claiming that the only Arabs who objected to massive Jewish immigration
into Palestine were Nazi agents). The two stories of April 20 suggest
rather widespread usage of the two million killed – four (or five) million to be
killed – form of the extermination claim in early 1943. We therefore have very
general usage of the six (or seven) million figure, long before the end of the
war, by the political establishment that wrote the charges at Nuremberg so, I
believe, we can take late 1942 – early 1943 propaganda as the origin of the six
million figure. The complete independence of that figure of any real facts
whatever is reflected in Reitlinger’s elaborate apologies for his belief that he
can claim only 4.2 to 4.6 million Jews, almost all East European, who perished
in Europe during World War II, one third of them dying from “overwork,
disease, hunger and neglect.”144 However, Reitlinger’s figures are also
mostly independent of any real facts, but that matter will be discussed in
Chapter 7.
It is not at all remarkable that after the war somebody could be found to
declare, at Nuremberg, that the propaganda figure was correct. Höttl, indeed,
was a completely appropriate choice, because he was one of those stereotype
“operators” with which the world of intelligence work is plagued. Born in
1915, he entered the SD in 1938 and soon acquired a reputation for mixing official
business with personal business deals. His teaming up with a Polish
countess friend in a Polish land deal led, in 1942, to an SS investigation of his
activities. The report of the investigation characterized him as “dishonest,
scheming, fawning […] a real hoaxer,” and concluded that he was not even
suitable for membership in the SS, let alone a sensitive agency such as the SD.
He was, accordingly, busted down to the ranks, but then the appointment in
early 1943 of his fellow Austrian and Vienna acquaintance, Kaltenbrunner, to
head the RSHA seems to have reversed his fortunes, and he rose to the rank of
Lieutenant Colonel by the end of the war, and played a responsible role in foreign
intelligence work. After the war he worked, until 1949, for the US Army
Counter-Intelligence Corps in lining up ex-SS personnel to give information.
It is said that he managed to make this job rather lucrative. After 1949 he immersed
himself in the snake pit of Vienna cold war politics, maintaining links
with neo-Nazis, Soviet agents, and nearly everybody else. He had a particularly
close relationship with one Soviet agent Kurt Ponger, a naturalized US
citizen whom he had met when Ponger was employed as a translator at the
IMT (in addition a Kurt Ponger, probably the same person, was a prosecution
lawyer in NMT Case 4). Höttl consequently became suspect in the Verber-
Ponger espionage case of 1953, and was arrested by US authorities in March
144 Reitlinger, 533, 545, 546.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
119
in Vienna but released a few weeks later. In the mid-Fifties, he published two
books on his wartime experiences. In 1961, he signed a prosecution affidavit
for Eichmann’s trial (substantially the same as his IMT affidavits).145
Authors on my side have written that, during the war, Höttl was an Allied
agent. This is not correct. The only real fact that is involved in this claim is
that Höttl was in touch with Allen Dulles, of the OSS in Switzerland, toward
the end of the war. This was a part of his duties: the RSHA was attempting to
arrange a favorable conclusion of the hostilities and Höttl was one of the persons
involved in the secret contacts with the western Allies.
No doubt, during the very last weeks of the war many of these intelligence
officers started acting with their personal interests in mind and, also without
doubt, Höttl would have been delighted to have been enlisted as an Allied
agent at this juncture of the war, and may even have volunteered some favors
to Dulles with this development in mind. However, these contacts are no more
evidence that Höttl was an Allied agent than they are that Dulles was an Axis
agent (Dulles is even said to have peppered his conversation with anti-Semitic
remarks when he was trying to win the confidence of some German contacts146).
If Höttl had been an Allied agent, it would seem that he would boast
about this in one of his two books (The Secret Front and Hitler’s Paper
Weapon), but he makes no such claim. In addition, Ian Colvin, who knows as
much about these matters as anybody, wrote the Introduction for The Secret
Front, and makes no remarks in this connection.
“NORWEGIAN DEPORTEES DIE
April 27, 1943, p. 10 Stockholm, Sweden, April 26 (ONA) – Reports
from Oslo said today that most of the Norwegian Jewish women and children
deported from the country […] had died of starvation.
Transports of deportees that left Oslo in November and February were
removing them toward an ultimate destination in the Silesian mining region
around Katowice. […]”
“BRITAIN SCORED ON JEWS
May 3, 1943, p. 12 An audience of 1,500 persons […] heard Pierre van
Paassen […] assert that Palestine presented the only solution to the refugee
problem.
[…] Mr. van Paassen said that Great Britain had made a ‘hollow
mockery’ of the refugee conference in Bermuda by excluding discussion of
Palestine among the possible solutions.
‘Britain feels that the modernization of Palestine by the Jews endangers
the pillars of her empire. […] That is the real reason many more Jews face
145 Time (Jul. 12, 1954), 98, 100; New Republic (Dec. 20, 1954), 22; New York Times (Apr. 7,
1953), 20; (Apr. 12, 1953), 33; Eichmann, session 85, A1-L1; IMT, vol. 11, 228.
146 R. H. Smith, 214-215.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
120
death because Britain wants to keep the doors of Palestine shut to them.’”
“EDEN TIES VICTORY TO REFUGEE HOPES
May 20, 1943, p. 12 Special Cable to the New York Times London,
May 19. […] Eden […] insisted that it was not fair to accuse the British
Government of utterly ignoring the situation.
[…] he disclosed that the war Cabinet had approved the [Bermuda
Conference] report […]”
[WJC DISAPPOINTED WITH BERMUDA CONFERENCE]
“London, May 19 (Reuter) – The World Jewish Congress […] expressed
deep disappointment with the results of the Bermuda Conference.
The note […] pointed out that the way to Palestine is now also free.”
“JEWS LAST STAND FELLED 1,000 NAZIS
May 22, 1943, p. 4 Wireless to the New York Times London, May 21 –
Nearly 1,000 Germans were killed or wounded in the battle in the Warsaw
ghetto in the last two weeks when the Nazis undertook the final liquidation
of the ghetto.
[…] More news of the anti-Jewish campaign in Poland was picked up
today from SWIT, the secret Polish radio station. It said the Nazis had
started liquidating the ghetto of Cracow and Stanislawow […] shooting
Jews wherever they were found or killing them in gas chambers.”
“‘RALLY OF HOPE’ IS HELD
June 7, 1943, p. 15 Six thousand children […] participated yesterday in
a ‘Rally of Hope’[…]. […] Jewish children and their parents are tortured
and put to death by a barbarous enemy. […]”
[DEPORTATIONS OF JEWS]
“June 9, 1943, p. 3 London, June 8 (Reuter) – No fewer than 3,500
Jews have recently been deported from Salonika, Greece, to Poland, it was
stated here today. Men, women and children were herded indiscriminately
into cattle trucks, which were then sealed, it was added.”
“NAZI GAS KILLINGS OF REFUGEES CITED
June 13, 1943, p. 8 By Telephone to the New York Times Stockholm,
Sweden, June 12 – More than 10,000 Jews were killed since last October
in the Brest-Litovsk district […] according to the Swedish language Jewish
Chronicle published in Stockholm.
Thousands were gassed to death in hermetically sealed barns and others
have been shot in groups of sixty in adjoining woods, the paper says.
[…] When Dr. Robert Ley, chief of the German Labor Front, recently
spoke at Koenigsberg, Bialystok and Grodno he said: ‘The Jews are the
chosen race, all right – but for extermination purposes only.’”
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
121
“NAZIS DEPORT 52,000 BELGIANS
June 15, 1943, p. 8 London, June 14 (AP) – The Belgian Government in
exile said today that the Germans had removed nearly all 52,000 Belgian
Jews to concentration camps in Germany, Poland and occupied Russia.”
Reitlinger reports for Belgium the same situation as in France. Among the
Jews deported from Belgium, “virtually none” were Belgian Jews. It is worth
remarking that essentially the same held for Italy and Denmark.147
“BERMUDA PARLEY SCORED
June 21, 1943, p. 2 A resolution condemning the ‘inaction’ of the Bermuda
Conference and another calling upon President Roosevelt and Prime
Minister Winston Churchill to open the doors of Palestine to refugees were
adopted unanimously yesterday by the order of the Sons of Zion […] at the
Hotel Pennsylvania.”
“ROMANIANS BLAMED FOR KILLING OF 5,000
June 21, 1943, p. 3 Berne, Switzerland, June 20 (UP) – Swiss newspapers
said tonight that 5,000 bodies reported by Axis propagandists to have
been buried near Odessa were those of Romanian Jews killed by the Romanian
secret police.
The Romanian press announced the discovery of the mass tomb on
April 22, claiming the bodies were those of Romanians killed by the Russians
after the latter occupied Bessarabia and Bukovina in 1940.”
“NETHERLAND JEWS OUSTED BY NAZIS
June 23, 1943. p. 8 London, June 22, (UP) – All Jews in Amsterdam
have been deported by the Germans to Poland, thus completing the removal
of the entire Jewish population of the Netherlands, the Aneta news
agency said today.”
This story is not true; nevertheless the majority of Dutch Jews were deported.
The reasons for the great differences in policy in the Netherlands (and
Luxembourg) on the one hand and in Belgium and France and other countries
on the other will be seen in a later chapter. It will be shown that the ultimate,
as distinct from immediate, destination of the Jews deported from the Netherlands
was most probably not Poland. Of the 140,000 Dutch Jews, about
100,000 were deported.148
[ARYANIZATION OF JEWISH PROPERTY]
“June 28, 1943, p. 8 London, June 27 (Reuter) – A German radio
broadcast tonight quoted Premier Nicholas von Kallay of Hungary as stating
that all remaining property of Jews in Hungary would pass into ‘Aryan’
hands at the end of this year. This property will be distributed among
147 Reitlinger, 367, 370-371, 378.
148 Reitlinger, 352.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
122
those who have distinguished themselves in the war and families with many
children, it is said.”
“NAZIS EXECUTE 150 JEWS
June 29, 1943, p. 6 London, June 28 (Netherlands News Agency) – The
Germans have launched mass executions of Netherlands Jews deported to
Poland, it was reported tonight.
[…] 150 Jews in the village of Turck had been mowed down with machine
gun fire. […] At Socky […] 340 Netherlands Jews were machinegunned,
and 100 women and children were slain near Potok. […] They
were among the thousands of Jews who had been transported from the
Netherlands to the notorious Treblinka concentration camp.”
It seems odd to transport people out of an extermination camp and then kill
them. Whoever composed this story was evidently not only uninformed on
what Treblinka was supposed to be, but also on the order of magnitude of the
numbers that were supposed to be thrown around.
“QUICK AID IS ASKED FOR EUROPE’S JEWS
July 21, 1943, p. 13 Immediate action to rescue the Jews of Nazidominated
countries was demanded last night by speakers at the opening
session of the Emergency Conference to Save the Jews of Europe, held at
the Hotel Commodore.
[…] Representative Rogers pointed out that some 3,000,000 of
Europe’s 7,000,000 Jews already have perished and insisted that ‘this is a
problem which cannot be solved through the exercise of vocal cords and
routine protests.’
[…] ‘Certainly there are enough open spaces and unpopulated areas to
accommodate 4,000,000 tortured human beings,’ he said. ‘Palestine is the
logical place. It is nearer and over land instead of over water […]’
[…] Count Sforza voiced the hope that Jews and Arabs would be able
to cooperate in the future in the building of a great Near East federation,
with Palestine as a member.”
“16,000,000 MADE REFUGEES BY AXIS
August 2, 1943, p. 10 Washington, Aug. 1 – A survey of the European
refugee problem, published today by the Foreign Policy Association, said
that only a collective effort on the part of the great powers or an international
organization could deal effectively with the situation that would follow
the end of the war.
[…] On the basis of reports from the governments in exile and other informants,
the report said, it was estimated that of the Jews who in 1939 inhabited
European countries now held by the Axis, two million already have
been deported or had perished from various forms of mistreatment or deliberate
extermination.”
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
123
The Foreign Policy Association does not seem to be very secure in asserting
exterminations, because it gives the impression that most of the Jews had
been “deported,” even though by this time other propagandists were speaking
of three million dead Jews.
“2,000,000 MURDERS BY NAZIS CHARGED
August 8, 1943, p. 11 London, Aug. 7 – Polish Labor Fights, a publication
issued here today, printed an account of a house maintained by the
Germans at Treblinka, Poland, for the extermination of Jews. In this place
alone, it is said, the Germans have killed 2,000,000 persons.
[…] ‘When the cells are filled they are closed and sealed. Steam is
forced through apertures and suffocation of the victims begins. At first
cries can be heard but these gradually subside and after fifteen minutes all
is silent. The execution is over.
[…] Often a grave digger is too weak to carry two bodies, as ordered,
so he ties arms or legs together and runs to the burial ground, dragging
them behind him.’”
Of course, the post-war story was that the bodies were burned, not buried:
these millions of buried Jewish bodies simply did not exist.
“REPORT BARES FATE OF 8,300,000 JEWS
August 27, 1943, p. 7 […] a 300-page survey made public yesterday by
the […] American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress.
More than 3,000,000 Jews have been destroyed by planned starvation,
forced labor, deportations, pogroms and methodical murders in Germanrun
extermination centers in eastern Europe since the outbreak of the war
in 1939, according to the report, while 1,800,000 Jews have been saved by
migration into the interior of the Soviet Union and 180,000 have succeeded
in emigrating to other countries.
[…] The survey […] declares that 1,700,000 Jews have been victims of
organized massacres and pogroms, […] that 750,000 Jews perished as a
result of starvation and its consequences, and that 350,000 died in the
process of deportation.
[…] A table showing how the process of extermination has been carried
out […] follows:
Germany 110,000 Belgium 30,000
Poland 1,600,000 Holland 45,000
USSR 650,000 France 56,000
Lithuania 105,000 Czechoslovakia 64,500
Latvia 65,000 Danzig 250
Austria 19,500 Estonia 3,000
Romania 227,500 Norway 800
Yugoslavia 35,000 Greece 18,500
Total 3,030,050”
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
124
“DELIBERATE NAZI MURDER POLICY IS BARED BY ALLIED OFFICIAL BODY
August 27, 1943, p. 7 London, Aug. 26 (UP) – The Inter-Allied Information
Committee […] tonight accused Germany, Italy and their satellites of
[…] a deliberate program of wholesale theft, murder, torture and savagery
unparalleled in world history.
[…] Poland: Exhaustion, torture, illness and executions have created a
life expectancy of only nine months from the time an individual is thrown
into a concentration camp. Conditions are particularly severe at the
Oswiecim camp, where 58,000 persons are believed to have perished.
At least 1,000,000 Jews have been slaughtered, starved or beaten to
death in Poland during the past three years. In Warsaw food rations permit
only 23.4 per cent of the calories necessary to keep a human being alive.”
This was one of the very few pre-1944 specific references to the Auschwitz
concentration camp (although the stories of March 7 and April 27 were
oblique references). The interesting thing about this reference to Auschwitz is
that it is essentially correct, as shall be confirmed in the next chapter, although
one cannot be confident of the accuracy of the 58,000 figure and “torture” and
“executions” should not be included as causes of the high death rate. The important
point is that this story implicitly rejects the post-war extermination
claims which assert that thousands were killed at Auschwitz almost every day,
starting at the latest in the summer of 1942 and continuing to the autumn of
1944.
“ALL-EUROPE PURGE OF JEWS REPORTED
October 8, 1943, p. 5 Stockholm, Sweden, Oct. 7 – Well-informed circles
here said today that a decree had been issued in Berlin ordering the
removal of all Jews from Europe before the end of the war. The source said
that the order was issued by Adolf Hitler himself.
[…] The power behind the Nazi persecution of Danish Jews is the socalled
‘Jew Dictator,’ Storm Trooper Eighman [sic…] who was born in
Palestine of German emigrants and brought up there [and] is known for his
sadistic hatred of Jews. He engineered all the extermination action against
Jews in Germany and the occupied territories. […]”
This seems to be Eichmann’s debut in the propaganda and, probably, the
source of the myth that he was raised in Palestine (he was born in Solingen,
Germany, and raised in Linz, Austria).
“WIFE OF MIKOLAJCZYK HOSTAGE OF GERMANS
November 23, 1943, p. 4 The 43-year-old wife of Premier Stanislaw
Mikolajczyk of Poland is being held by the Germans as a hostage in the
Oswiecim concentration camp and may be facing imminent execution, the
Polish Telegraph Agency reported from London yesterday.
[…] Oswiecim is the most notorious German prison in Poland, where
thousands of helpless victims have been tortured to death. […]
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
125
The names of the Germans chiefly responsible for the massacre of Polish
Jews were given in a Polish statement in London. […]
‘There are ten of them, headed by Ludwig Fischer, the Nazi Governor
of the Warsaw area. […] A member of the Polish National Council said
that most of the Jews in Poland had already been wiped out.’”
“50,000 KIEV JEWS REPORTED KILLED
November 29, 1943, p. 3 By W. H. Lawrence.
Kiev, Russia, Oct. 22 (Delayed) – Kiev authorities asserted today that
the Germans had machine-gunned from 50,000 to 80,000 of Kiev’s Jewish
men, women and children in late September, 1941 and, two years later –
when Kiev’s recapture by the Red Army seemed imminent – had forced
Russian prisoners of war to burn all the bodies completely destroying all
the evidence of the crime.
[…] On the basis of what we saw, it is impossible for this correspondent
to judge the truth or falsity of the story told to us. […]”
“CAPTIVE KILLINGS LAID TO GERMANS
December 6, 1943, p. 10 London, Dec. 5 (UP) – Evidence that Russian
prisoners of war were executed and cremated in German concentration
camps has been offered to the emigre Czech Government by a Czech Army
officer who spent several years in a German prison camp before he escaped
to England.
[…] The officer’s teeth had been kicked out when he was struck on the
mouth, he was deaf in one ear from a blow on the head and on his body
was the scar of a swastika that he said had been carved by Germans to
whom he went for treatment of an infection.
Jews were chosen at random from those in the camp and shot, he said.
[…]”
This completes the survey of relevant New York Times stories for the period
of spring 1942 through 1943. Selectivity on my part was, of course, necessary
but I believe that an adequate picture has been given of the sort of stories
that were in circulation in supposedly intelligent circles.
What cannot be recaptured is the hysterical atmosphere of the time. The
unusually critical reader will have noticed the rather high page number of
many of the stories cited, especially those which report specific instances of
mass killings. In practical politics only page one counts, and these things seldom
appeared on page one. If Roosevelt said something, it was normally
printed on page one, but only because he said it, not because he said anything
interesting or significant. The allegations of exterminations of Jews do not appear
to have had great importance to the public during the war, if one judges
from the lack of any prominence given to such stories. Another way to express
it is to say that if one spends some time examining the newspapers of the time,
a high degree of hostility to the Nazis is obvious, but the specific basis of the
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
126
hostility is virtually impossible to distinguish. Thus, there is something of an
emotional nature missing from our survey, but this is unavoidable.
Two principal observations should be made in regard to the extermination
propaganda. First, the legend has its origin among Zionists and, second,
Auschwitz was not claimed as an extermination camp until very late in the
war.
We have seen that the first extermination claims were not based on one
scrap of intelligence data. Zionists, principally the World Jewish Congress,
merely presented their nonsense to the Allied governments, in particular to the
US government, demanding endorsement of their nonsense. The first reactions
in Washington were to scoff at the claims but, on account of various political
pressures, and only on account of those pressures and not because corroborating
information had been procured from military intelligence, official Washington
eventually cooperated with the extermination propaganda to the extent
of having high officials make vague public declarations in support of it, and of
having propaganda agencies make more specific declarations of an obscure
nature. The early propaganda had features which are retained in the legend to
this day, such as the six million figure, and also features which were quickly
forgotten, such as the soap factories, although both features were authored by
the same Zionist circles.
In regard to our terminology, it should be remarked that the word “Zionist”
is not being employed here as a code word for “Jewish;” the evidence shows
that, while the hoax is certainly a Jewish hoax, in the sense of having been invented
by Jews, it is also a Zionist hoax, in the sense of having been invented
by Jews who were Zionists, on behalf of Zionist ends. The Zionist character of
the propaganda is quite clear; note that, as a rule, the persons who were pressing
for measures to remove Jews from Europe (under the circumstances a routine
and understandable proposal) coupled such proposals with demands that
such Jews be resettled in Palestine, which shows that there was much more in
the minds of the Zionist propagandists than mere assistance to refugees and
victims of persecution.
We have also noted that Auschwitz was absent from the extermination
propaganda in 1942 and 1943 although, if there had been exterminations at
such a prominent site, military intelligence and others would certainly have
learned of it. To be sure, Auschwitz appeared in the propaganda, but the specific
claims, bearing on a high death rate due to more or less normal causes,
were in their essentials true, however amplified their content. There were no
claims of gas chambers or exterminations. Naturally I make the reservation
that this statement is based on the fact that, after a reasonably thorough study,
I have not noted Auschwitz in the 1942-1943 extermination propaganda;
Treblinka, Belzec and Chelmno appeared in the newspaper extermination stories,
but not Auschwitz.
This view is confirmed by the periodicals and books of the period that I
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have examined. Three periodical publications are of particular interest. The issue
of Commonweal for June 4, 1943, carried an article by Jacques Maritain
which summarized what he, evidently after some investigation, believed to be
the chief features of the extermination program.
Auschwitz is not mentioned, although exterminations via “poison gases,
electrocution, mass piling into enclosed spaces where asphyxia takes place by
degrees, suffocation […] in sealed freight cars” are mentioned, and particular
reference is made to Chelmno.
The New Republic for August 30, 1943, was a special issue devoted to the
plight of the Jews in Europe, and made no reference to Auschwitz. A two page
advertisement, placed by the Jewish Labor Committee (New York), mentions
only Treblinka, Belzec and “hermetically sealed cars where Jews are being
poisoned.”
Survey Graphic for April 1943 carries a two page article by William L.
Shirer. The subject is the whole range of alleged German atrocities and thus
Auschwitz (Oswieçim) is mentioned, but only in connection with an alleged
high death rate of 250 Poles per day, due to “executions, inhuman treatment,
hunger and epidemics.” Shirer claims exterminations of Jews at Belzec.
The Shirer story cites a March 7 report from the Polish government in
London as the source for the statements about Auschwitz. This is the earliest
reference that I know of to Auschwitz in the propaganda. The only candidate
for an earlier claim that I know of appears in The Black Book of Polish Jewry,
J. Apenszlak, ed., 1943. Pages 56 and 59 tell of reports in the “East London
Observer” in early 1942 that the ashes of Jews who had been sent to Auschwitz
were being returned to their relatives (contradicting post-war propaganda).
However, as far as I have been able to determine, the East London
Observer did not exist. The Black Book does not claim exterminations at
Auschwitz but speaks of exterminations via gasmobile at Chelmno (pages
115-117, in agreement with later claims); via electrocution in baths at Belzec
followed by burial (page 131, not in agreement); through being left in freight
cars for days near Belzec followed by burning (pages 137-138, not in agreement);
via steam baths at Treblinka followed by burial (page 143,not in
agreement); the Diesel engine whose exhaust gases were used for killing in
later versions of the story is used for digging the graves in The Black Book).
There remains one source which conveys the impression that Auschwitz
appeared in the extermination propaganda early in 1943 or even earlier. This
is the book The Devil’s Chemists by Josiah DuBois, whom we have encountered
as a wartime Treasury official. At the NMT after the war, DuBois was
the chief prosecutor in the Farben trial, and his book is his account of the trial
and such other matters that he considered relevant. According to him, a message
dealing with Auschwitz crossed his desk in November 1942. The message
transmitted the contents of a note, a “crumpled testament of despair,”
which had allegedly been written by a worker-inmate at Auschwitz and then
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
128
passed along underground in hand-to-hand relay to Bern:
“We worked in the huge ‘Buna’ plant. […] There was a chain of sentry
posts overlooking every 10 square meters of workers, and whoever stepped
outside was shot without warning as ‘having attempted to escape.’ But attempts
were made every day, even by some who tried to crawl past the sentries
because they could no longer walk.”
The note also applied to Farben’s Ter Meer “stereotyped images of swastika
and riding crop and fixed sneer (which had not characterized Ter Meer at
any time during his life).” The claimed origin and history of the note make the
whole thing appear rather silly but one should note the strong element of fact
in the note; at approximately this time many workers at Auschwitz were indeed
not in a condition to work or even walk. Thus this message was not
really extermination propaganda, and we cannot be certain that it really existed
but, if it did, all it suggests is that the propagandists were well aware, in
late 1942, of what was happening at Auschwitz.
DuBois then proceeds to misinform his reader that the two messages of
January and April 1943 from Harrison to the State Department, discussed
above, dealt with Auschwitz, i.e. it was at Auschwitz that 6,000 were allegedly
being killed every day. In reporting this, DuBois is simply passing along
misinformation. His motive seems to be that, as the prosecutor in the Farben
case, he was attempting to maximize the significance of Auschwitz in every
respect possible, and has thus read in the record something that simply is
there.149
German Reactions
It is of passing interest to comment on what the Germans were saying
about the Allied propaganda stories. We have seen that von Stumm of the
press section of the German Foreign Office ridiculed the extermination claim
when it was first made by the Allied governments, but that was a rare reference,
on the part of the German government, to any specific Allied propaganda
concoction. The weekly newspaper Das Reich, published by the Goebbels
Ministry, and the Völkischer Beobachter, the daily newspaper of the Nazi
Party, had much comment of a general sort on the “Greuelpropaganda,” but
there were few references to specific propaganda claims. The usual situation
was one of no commentary on the Jewish extermination claim, as well as on
other specific propaganda claims, e.g. starvation and torturing of American
and British POWs and the various gruesome inventions of Hollywood, such as
the draining of the blood of children in occupied countries for the use of the
149 DuBois, 137-138, 186-188.
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Wehrmacht.
The reason for this relative silence on specific propaganda claims was no
doubt that there was no need, from the German point of view, to review its
content. They had seen it all before, during World War I. Thus the German
press treatment of the “Greuelpropaganda” was on a higher level and, rather
than concern itself with the specific contents of the stories, it concerned itself
with such questions as the nature of the political interests that were served by
the propaganda and the extent and means of Jewish influence in the Allied
press (e.g. Das Reich for December 20, 1942).
The War Refugee Board Report: Birth of the Auschwitz
Legend
The high level Washington commitment to the claim that Auschwitz was
an extermination camp came in November 1944, after the claimed termination
of the killing program, in the form of the WRB report (the claim had appeared
many times in the propaganda earlier in 1944; those stories are reviewed in a
later chapter). The issuing of the report was carried by the New York Times on
November 26, 1944, (page 1) and some excerpts were given.
The WRB report is described as two reports, one written by “two young
Slovakian Jews” and the other by “a Polish major,” all of whom had been inmates
at Auschwitz from the spring of 1942 until the spring of 1944, when
they escaped (the two Jews on April 7).
There is an additional short supplement said to be written by two other
young Jews who escaped on May 27, 1944, and made their way to Slovakia
(under German domination until 1945) to make their report, which is said to
have been received in Switzerland on August 6, 1944. The authors are completely
anonymous and this anonymity is duly apologized for “whose names
will not be disclosed for the time being in the interest of their own safety.”
Sections 1, 2 and 3 constitute the first part of the report, and section 4 the
second part. The first section is the major part of the report. It is said to have
been written by a Slovakian Jew who arrived at Auschwitz on April 13, 1942,
and was given a registration number (tattooed onto his left breast) in the
neighborhood of 29,000. He eventually became registrar in the Birkenau infirmary.
The feature of this first section is a detailed record, for the period
April 1942 to April 1944, of the transports which arrived at Auschwitz, together
with the registration numbers assigned. About 55 groups of transports
(sometimes more than one transport are in a group) are reported and the (admittedly
approximate) registration numbers assigned to the people in each
group are given. The numbers start at 27,400 and run to 189,000 in the conArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
130
secutive numbering system in which a number was not used twice. For each
group the nationalities represented, as well as other information (Jewish or
Aryan, political prisoners or other, occasional names of individuals, numbers
“gassed” instead of registered, etc.) is given. The WRB report, if it is approximately
correct in these matters (interpreting the people “gassed” as either
never having existed or having been sent on to another destination), is one of
the two known sources of significant amounts of such information (the other
is the referenced set of Netherlands Red Cross reports, which is the subject of
Appendix C).
Almost all of this information is given by the author of the first section of
the WRB report, but after he escaped the authors of the third, supplemental,
section of the report kept an account of this information for the period April 7
– May 27 and have contributed it to the report.
The second section of the report is said to be written by a Slovakian Jew
who arrived at the Lublin camp around June 4, 1942, but was sent to Auschwitz
around June 30, 1942. According to the first section of the report he then
would have received a registration number around 44,000, which was tattooed
onto his left forearm (the tattooing system had changed). The two authors of
the first two sections of the report are the two young Slovakian Jews who escaped
together on April 7, 1944. The third section of the report is the short
supplement and the fourth section is the contribution of the “Polish major.”
The anonymity of the authors of the report is certainly a vulnerable feature,
but the major implausibility is simply the contents of the WRB report. Examination
shows that the information given in the report which is most likely true
to semi-true is the sort of thing that could have been built up from intelligence
data, not from reports of “two young Slovakian Jews and a Polish major” who
“escaped.” This is exactly as one should expect; Germany’s enemies had certain
means of gathering information about German camps and about events in
Europe and simply used information gathered by such conventional methods,
plus a considerable amount of invention, to compose the WRB report. It is just
not believable that intelligence agencies were in such a primitive position with
respect to, of all things, the industrial center Auschwitz, that they were obliged
to depend for information on miraculous escapes by unusually well informed
prisoners. This point will be amplified below. Of course, such an observation
does not rule out the possible use of reports of former employees or inmates,
escaped or otherwise, as part of the data.
The report presents the following information (or estimates, or guesses, or
claims, or inventions):
1. The number of prisoners at Auschwitz I in the month of April 1942,
the predominant nationalities present and the main causes of internment.
Description of the inmate registration number system and the
“star system” of inmate insignia. A list of various factories in the area
(pt. I, 1-2).
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
131
2. An accurate map of the area, comparable to our Fig. 5 (pt. I, 4).
3. Dimensions related to the Auschwitz I camp size, its fences and its
guard towers. Ditto for Birkenau. Description of barracks (pt. I, 5-7).
4. In the case of a natural death of a prisoner, a death certificate was
made out and sent to Oranienburg central camp administration. If the
inmate was gassed, his name was entered in a special register and
marked “S.B.” (Sonderbehandlung, special treatment) (pt. I, 9).
5. Four buildings, referred to as Crematories I, II, III and IV were in use
in Spring 1944 at Birkenau; use of at least one of them had started in
February 1943. Each building contained: (A) a furnace room of ovens;
(B) a large hall; (C) a gas chamber. The first two buildings each contained
36 ovens and the other two 18 each. Three bodies are put in one
oven at a time and the burning took an hour and a half. Thus one could
dispose of 6,000 bodies per day. This was considered, at the time, an
improvement over burning in trenches (the method previously employed)
(pt. I, 14-15).
6. The specific product used for generating the gas for the gas chamber
was a powder called “Cyklon,” manufactured by a Hamburg concern.
When exposed it released cyanide gas and about three minutes were
required to kill everybody in the gas chamber. The containers for the
Cyklon were marked “for use against vermin” (pt. I, 16).
7. Prominent people from Berlin attended the inauguration of the first
crematory in March 1943. The “program” consisted in the gassing and
burning of 8,000 Cracow Jews. The guests (no names given) were extremely
satisfied with the results (pt. I, 16).
8. A detailed breakdown of the numbers and classifications of the inmates
at Birkenau in April 1944 (pt. I, 23-24).
9. In the camp, each block has a “block eldest” who “has power of life
and death.” Until February 1944 nearly 50 per cent of the block eldests
were Jews, but this was stopped by order of Berlin. Under the block
eldest is the block recorder, who does all the clerical work. If the recorder
has noted down a death by mistake, as often occurs, the discrepancy
is corrected by killing the bearer of the corresponding number.
Corrections are not admitted (pt. I, 25).
10. A passage strikingly similar to the November 1942 “crumpled testament
of despair”:
“We worked in the huge buna plant to which we were herded
every morning about 3 AM. […] As our working place was situated
outside the large chain of sentry posts, it was divided into small
sectors of 10 x 10 meters, each guarded by an SS man. Whoever
stepped outside these squares during working hours was immediately
shot without warning for having ‘attempted to escape.’ […]
Very few could bear the strain and although escape seemed hopeArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
132
less, attempts were made every day.” (pt. I, 30).
11. A “careful estimate of the numbers of Jews gassed in Birkenau between
April 1942 and April 1944,” summarized in a tabular form. The
numbers showed up in the published record of the IMT trial and are
presented here as Fig. 25 (pt. I, 33).
12. Great excitement prevailed as a consequence of the escape of the two
young Slovakian Jews (this is supposedly written by the authors of the
supplementary section 3), and the friends and superiors of the two escapees
were closely questioned. Because the two had held posts as
“block recorders,” all Jews exercising such functions were removed
for punishment and as a precautionary measure. This, of course, contradicts
the implication of the “Foreword” of the WRB report that the
Germans did not know the identity or even registration numbers of the
two escapees, because it withholds such information “in the interest of
their own safety.” (pt. I, 34).
13. Starting May 15, 1944, Hungarian Jews started arriving at Birkenau at
the rate of about 15,000 per day. Ninety per cent were killed immediately
and, because this exceeded the capacity of the ovens, the method
of burning in trenches which had existed earlier was reverted to. The
ten percent who were not killed were also not registered at Birkenau
but sent eventually to camps in Germany: Buchenwald, Mauthausen,
Gross-Rosen, Gusen, Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, etc. (pt. I, 36-37).
14. A new inmate registration number system was also put into effect in
the middle of May 1944. At about the same time, a visit by Himmler,
to nearby Cracow was reported in the Silesian newspapers. These
newspaper reports apparently omitted to mention, however, that on
this trip Himmler had also visited Birkenau, and that his party made a
special visit to Crematory I (pt. I, 37-38).
15. In the late summer of 1943 a commission of four distinguished Dutch
Jews had visited Auschwitz for the purpose of inspecting the condition
of the Dutch Jews (who were then specially prepared by the Germans
with new clothes, better food, etc.). The commission saw only a part of
the Dutch Jews sent to Auschwitz but were told that the others were in
similar camps. The commission was satisfied with this and signed a
declaration that everything had been found in good order at Auschwitz,
but after signing the four Jews “expressed a desire to see the
camp of Birkenau and particularly the crematoria about which they
had heard some stories […] The commission was then taken to Birkenau
[…] and immediately to Crematorium No. 1. Here they were shot
from behind. A telegram was supposedly sent to Holland reporting
that after leaving Auschwitz the four men had been victims of an unfortunate
automobile accident.” (pt. I, 38).
16. The area around Auschwitz, within a radius of 100 kilometers, had
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been evacuated, and the buildings not to be taken over by the camp
were to be demolished (pt. II, 6).
17. Description of the Auschwitz I hospital and its procedures. In the autumn
of 1942 the hospital mortality rate was so high that Berlin requested
an explanation. An investigation uncovered that the “camp
doctor” had been administering lethal injections to weak and sick people,
certain prisoners condemned to death, and some teenagers considered
to be orphans. For “punishment” the camp doctor was simply sent
to the same job at the Buna plant (probably meaning Monowitz […]
the SS continued to provide some services to the camp administered
by Farben) (pt. II, 8-10).
18. As a result of bad treatment a Jew, irrespective of his physical condition,
could not last more than two weeks (pt. II, 12).
19. In the summer of 1942 Jews were being gassed in the birch forest
(Birkenwald, where Birkenau was located) in special sealed buildings
giving the impression of showers. Because the crematories were not
completed, the bodies were buried in mass graves, causing putrefaction.
In the autumn of 1942 the four crematories were completed and
many bodies were exhumed and burned (this is the Polish major’s account,
contradicting that of the two young Slovakian Jews, who said
that part of the new crematories were put into operation in February
1943 and that prior to that date bodies were burned in trenches) (pt. II,
16-17).
20. Details on how it was decided exactly when to execute somebody already
condemned to death (pt. II, 16-17).
The foregoing is effectively illustrative of the contents of the WRB report.
It is a mixture of truth, guess-work, and invention, the factual part of which
could have been, and obviously was, put together on the basis of inside information
available in 1944.
The contradiction in the two accounts of exterminations serves to enhance
the credibility of the claim that these are unsolicited reports of escaped inmates,
but it is not clear that such increased credibility was the motivation for
composing the report thus. The first version, that large crematories were in
operation at Birkenau in early 1943 and that mass cremations took place in
trenches before that date, is the one subsequently put forward (and the correct
one in regard to the date of availability of the crematories) but the second version
of mass graves might have some truth in it also, because there had been a
typhus epidemic in the summer, at a time when inadequate crematory facilities
existed.
Reitlinger uses the WRB report as a source. This is not entirely justified
but, it is not entirely without justification either. One must assume that much
of the material in the report is true. As will be elaborated below, there is no
question of the competence of the authors of the report. However one must be
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
134
careful in this regard, obviously, and accept only that which seems corroborated
by either common sense or independent evidence. Given the protagonistic
and propagandistic role of the report, but recalling that a well organized
hoax necessarily contains much valid fact, this is perfectly reasonable.
One can be rather specific about the routes by which information flowed
out of the camps. In cases where there was significant industrial activity, the
inmates inevitably came into contact with many people who were not camp
inmates (company employees, railroad employees, etc.) and these contacts
were the basis for an extensive system of clandestine channels of communication.
Auschwitz, of course, furnished numerous and excellent opportunities for
such contacts and, on account of the communist organization, there were very
effective channels to outside underground centers, especially in nearby Cracow.
Information about the camp, including, it is claimed, copies of orders received
from Berlin or Oranienburg, flowed constantly out of Auschwitz.
These channels were also used to send such things as money, medicine and
forged papers into the camp. In addition, as discussed in another connection in
the next chapter, the Communists in all of the camps were highly organized
for illegal radio listening. If they had receivers, they no doubt also had transmitters.
There has been witness testimony to possession of radio transmitters
by camp inmates, and Reitlinger believes that Auschwitz inmates had transmitters.
150
In order to grasp completely the nature of the information and propaganda
channels that existed, one should take special note of the War Refugee Board
and the OSS. The WRB maintained constant contact with events in Hungary
even after the German occupation in March 1944. For example, it had its
agent, Raoul Wallenberg, in the Swedish diplomatic corps, and there were
other links through Jewish organizations. Jewish leaders in Budapest were in
constant contact with those in Slovakia, and the Slovakian Jewish leadership
was in contact with Polish Jewry, particularly in Cracow.151
Possibly more important than the WRB, although its role in the hoax is not
nearly as obvious, was the Office of Strategic Services, OSS, the predecessor
of the CIA. The OSS was set up early in World War II under the leadership of
General William Donovan. Its mission was intelligence of a political nature
and related matters (e.g. sabotage, propaganda, guerilla warfare) as distinct
from the more conventional forms of military intelligence, to which its operations
were related somewhat as the operations of the German SD were related
to those of the Abwehr, although high-placed Washington observers complained
that the OSS seemed to enjoy unlimited funds and knew no bounds on
150 NMT, vol. 5, 820; Reitlinger, 466; Borwicz, 66-76.
151 US-WRB (1945), 24-33. For contacts of Slovakian Jews with Poland, especially Cracow,
and with Budapest, see Neumann’s book and also the testimony of Freudiger: Eichmann,
session 51, Ww1-Eee; session 52, A1-Bb1. Wallenberg discussed in Poliakov and Wulf
(1955), 416-420.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
135
its authority.
With only a few exceptions, the OSS was not staffed by military people but
by persons recruited from private life. Thus it included many political types,
ranging from Communists to émigré monarchists. On account of their organization,
the Communists were naturally a significant force in the OSS, irrespective
of their numbers.
The OSS was deeply involved with propaganda. The OWI (Office of War
Information), the most prominent US wartime propaganda agency, had been
the propaganda division of the “Office of the Coordinator of Information”
(Donovan) when it split off from the OSS in 1942, and the remainder of
Donovan’s organization was renamed the OSS. Despite this separation, the
OSS remained active in the propaganda field, and when the Anglo-American
PWB (Psychological Warfare Branch) was set up in Eisenhower’s headquarters,
it drew its American personnel from both the OWI and the OSS.
Another propaganda operation of the OSS, one which employed a large
number of “progressive writers,” was the MO (Morale Operations) Branch.
The mission of MO was “black propaganda,” i.e. MO specialized in manufacturing
propaganda presented in such a way that it would appear to have come
from within the ranks of the enemy. MO thus distributed forged newspapers
and military orders among enemy personnel, operated clandestine transmitters
that purported to be broadcasting from within enemy territory, and started rumors
in the Axis and Axis occupied countries. Its staff included “liberals and
communists alike, all dedicated to the idealist interpretation of the fight
against fascism.”
A particularly relevant facet of the OSS operations was that they had
enlisted the cooperation of the Jewish Agency in Palestine (which was really
the unofficial Israeli government of the time). The Jewish Agency, on account
of extensive and elaborate contacts with Jews in Europe, especially in the Balkans,
was able to undertake many important missions for the OSS. Thus the
channels to Jews in Hungary, Slovakia, and beyond were open.
Finally, it is of interest that the OSS was very significant on the prosecution
staff at the IMT trial, especially in the early stages.152
The point to be made in this discussion of the WRB report is certainly not
that it was invented in the OSS or the WRB. I do not know the identity of the
authors and do not believe that the question is of great significance. The main
point is that two “internationals,” the Communist and the Zionist, played important
roles in the intelligence, propaganda and refugee assistance programs
of the US. The WRB, effectively taking its orders from Harry Dexter White,
Henry Morgenthau Jr., the World Jewish Congress and other Zionists, and the
OSS, with its staff of Communists and its Jewish Agency allies, show that the
situation was perfectly suitable for the manufacture of a Jewish extermination
152 R. H.Smith, 2, 12, 23, 62, 125, 239; Kimche & Kimche, 108.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
136
propaganda lie, built about Auschwitz, which, as a precaution, contained
enough real facts to suggest to the unreflective that the allegations were true.
The interior of the Auschwitz camp was not, by any exercise of the imagination,
isolated from the Allies. The world’s most efficient intelligence organization,
the Communist Party, could transmit any information desired to
any destination whatever, and the situation was such that the ubiquitous Zionist
International was in a position to manufacture and transmit whatever items
seemed appropriate for the occasion. Even if the contents of the WRB report
were entirely true, an escape by inmates would not have been at all necessary
to get the “facts” into the hands of the Allies. Note that we are told that the entire
contents of the WRB report are due to three independent escapes by remarkably
informed inmates. In view of what we know about the channels of
communication that existed, this is silly in the extreme.
The authors of the WRB report remained anonymous for quite a bit more
than “the time being.” The report became a prosecution document at Nuremberg
under the number 022-L. The descriptive material accompanying the
document, dated August 7, 1945 (the “staff evidence analysis”), seems distressed
at the anonymity of the authors. It tells of a certain Dr. Joseph Elias,
“Protestant Pastor of Jewish ancestry, organizer of Jewish resistance in Hungary,
head of Jo’Pasztor Bizottsag, who interrogated the first two Slovak Jews
after their escape.” Then it tells of “Dr. G. Soos – Secretary of Hungarian underground
movement MFM, who brought the first report (of the first two Slovak
Jews) to Italy.” The organization “Jo’Pasztor” was real, but of the activities
of Elias or Soos in connection with these matters nothing, it seems, is
known. Of the origins of the parts of the report attributed to the other three
people we are told nothing. It is said that R. D. McClelland, Bern representative
of the WRB, forwarded the report to Washington in early July 1944 (the
supplemental part was presumably not included).
The WRB report was put into evidence at the IMT, as document 022-L, by
Major Walsh on December 14, 1945.153 There was no defense objection, at the
IMT, to the acceptance of the report into evidence. At the Farben trial the
prosecution submitted the report (Document Book 89) as evidence but the defense
objected and this objection “as to the competence and materiality of
each and every document in the book” was sustained by that court. The result
of the ensuing legal argument was that the court agreed to taking a certain
very ambiguous “judicial notice” of the documents.154
Anonymity was maintained for several more years, because the first edition
(1953) of Reitlinger’s The Final Solution considers the authors anonymous. In
considering the beginnings of the gassings, reference is made to “the very reliable
report of the Birkenau infirmary registrar or Blockschreiber, who escaped
153 IMT, vol. 3, 568.
154 DuBois, 173-175.
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to Hungary in April 1944” (page 110). In connection with information about
Theresienstadt Jews transported to Auschwitz “we are indebted to a Slovak
Jewish doctor, who escaped to Hungary in April, 1944. This man, who was in
charge of the Birkenau infirmary records […] ” (pages 169-170). In discussing
the WRB report, Reitlinger told us that “the most important document is that
of the anonymous Slovak Jewish doctor who escaped to Hungary in April
1944” (page 540). In all three cases Reitlinger was referring to the author of
the first section of the WRB report, who, the report says, was the Slovakian
Jew who arrived on April 13, 1942, and was given a registration number
around 29,000. Reitlinger refers to him as a doctor, but the report actually
does not make it clear what he was; it appears that he was supposed to be an
“intellectual” or a “clerk.”
The next development seems to have been the publication in 1956 in Israel
of the book Im Schatten des Todes, by J. Oskar Neumann. Neumann had been
one of the leaders of the various Jewish councils and resistance organizations
in Slovakia. In his account Rabbi Michael Dov Ber Weissmandel (or Weissmandl),
originally a Hungarian Jew resident in a part of Hungary that was annexed
by Czechoslovakia after World War I, was the leader of Jewish resistance
in Slovakia. In Neumann’s story the two young Slovakian Jews appear
on schedule in Slovakia, as does the Polish major (actually, the WRB report
does not say where the Polish major escaped to). Neumann gives the impression
that he actually met these people: “Yet here sit eye-witnesses, who have
told the whole truth.” His account does not mention the two authors of the
third, supplementary, section of the WRB report, and he does not tell us the
names or tattooed registration numbers of the escapees. Since they were in
great danger of being found by the Gestapo, which was looking for them, they
“were sent to an outlying mountainous area to rest.” Rabbi Weissmandel
communicated the report to Budapest, Switzerland, and other destinations, in
order to warn other Jews, and to bring help.155
Weissmandel emigrated to the United States after the war and set up an orthodox
Talmudic seminary in New York State. He died in November 1957.
However his war memoirs were published posthumously in 1960, unfortunately
in Hebrew, which I am not able to read. The WRB report is a major
subject of his book. I have assumed that his story is essentially similar to
Neumann’s, because the two authors were similarly situated and had the same
connections. However, I could be wrong.156
155 Neumann, 178-183.
156 New York Times (Nov. 30, 1957), 21; Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 16, 418-419.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
138
Rudolf Vrba
It appears that the next event involved Reitlinger. The anonymity of the authors
of the WRB report is a striking and disturbing feature of the first edition
of Reitlinger’s book, as I am sure he realized. This no doubt bothered him, for
it appears that he set out to locate the authors of the report, for he writes in his
second edition, published in 1968, that Rudolf Vrba, the author of the “most
important” part of the WRB report, i.e., the first section, was “in hospital practice
in Cardiff in 1960.” Reitlinger’s contact with Vrba in 1960, thus, would
appear to be the first appearance of an alleged author of the report in any sort
of historical record. Vrba was, apparently, produced as a consequence of
Reitlinger’s investigations. The town of Cardiff in south Wales is, incidentally,
only about 150 miles from Reitlinger’s home in Sussex. Reitlinger does
not mention the name of any of the other authors. He considers a stencil book
by Silberschein, Riegner’s World Jewish Congress colleague in Switzerland,
as including the “complete version” of the report.157
Both authors of the first two sections of the WRB report (the first two
young Slovakian Jews) acquired identities at Eichmann’s trial in 1961. Two
witnesses testified regarding the report, and it was offered in evidence with the
explanation that the first two young Slovakian Jews were Alfred Wetzler (or
Weczler) and Rudolf Vrba (ex Rosenberg or Rosenthal, then resident in England).
The document was rejected on the grounds that certain contradictions in
the figures offered required further explanation. Therefore, late in the trial, the
prosecution produced an affidavit by Vrba. The affidavit explains how Vrba
arrived at the impressively detailed figures regarding the transports to Auschwitz,
which are the main feature of the WRB report. His affidavit gives the
impression that, while he got assistance from various people, he was solely responsible
for drawing up the figures, and he does not give the name of or even
mention his companion who supposedly escaped with him in April 1944. He
mentions a Philip Müller, who helped him somewhat with his figures, because
Müller “is apparently the only survivor alive at present.” Vrba’s affidavit was
rejected by the court on the grounds that there was no excuse for the prosecution
not bringing him to Jerusalem to testify.158
Vrba appeared again at the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt in 1964; his book, I
Cannot Forgive, (with Alan Bestic), also appeared in 1964, shortly before his
Frankfurt appearance. Vrba’s companion in his supposed escape appeared,
too; Alfred Wetzler was said to have been the other young Slovakian Jew.
Wetzler was (in 1964) a 46-year-old civil servant in Czechoslovakia, who had
arrived at Auschwitz on April 13, 1942, and been given registration number
157 Reitlinger, 115n, 182, 590-591.
158 Eichmann, session 52, M1, N1, W1-Aal; session 71, Ff1; session 72, I1-M1; session 109,
J1-L1, R1, S1. The affidavit is reproduced by Vrba & Bestic, 273-276.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
139
29,162. He had been a block registrar at Birkenau. Vrba was identified as a
40-year-old biochemist living in England, who had arrived at Auschwitz on
June 30, 1942, and been given registration number 44,070. He had also been a
block registrar at Birkenau. They had, they said, escaped on April 7, 1944, and
made their way to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, where they made their report to
the Jewish elders and also to the Papal Nuncio. The report was smuggled to
Budapest by Rabbi Weissmandel.159
The 1964 story differs, therefore, from that which was told to the authors
of the IMT staff evidence analysis in 1945. The most serious apparent contradiction,
however, is in the credit for the reporting of the figures related to the
transports to Auschwitz. Vrba, in his 1961 affidavit (which did not mention
Wetzler), and also in his Frankfurt testimony, presented himself as being primarily
responsible for the figures. The WRB report, on the other hand, while
it attributes the figures to both men, present the figures in the first section of
the report, whose author is supposed to be Wetzler.
Vrba does not explain, in his 1964 book, why he waited 16 years to talk
about his escape from Auschwitz, and his delivery of the statistics that were
eventually published by Washington. His book follows, roughly, the story of
the WRB report, with a few contradictions of varying degrees of importance.
For example in the book (page 128) Vrba writes that the girls working in the
“Canada” area were in very good health, but in the WRB report (part I, page
31) these women were “beaten and brutalized and their mortality was much
higher than among the men.” Other oddities in his book are his claim to have
helped build the crematories (page 16, not mentioned in the WRB report), and
his description of an Allied air raid on April 9, 1944, of which there is no record
(page 233; he says that he and Wetzler hid in a woodpile for three days at
Auschwitz after their April 7 escape. The possibility of an Allied air raid in
April in discussed below in Chapter 5). Wetzler just barely manages to get
mentioned in Vrba’s book. Vrba says nothing about the Polish major or the
two Jews who supposedly escaped later on to supplement the Auschwitz
transport figures. In the book the other prisoners refer to him as “Rudi,” although
his original name, and the name by which he was supposedly known at
Auschwitz, is supposed to have been Walter Rosenberg (a point Vrba’s book
does not bring up but is claimed elsewhere, e.g. in They Fought Back, ed. by
Yuri Suhl, and in Fighting Auschwitz, by Jozef Garlinski). Vrba says nothing
about resting in a mountain retreat after escaping.
Just as conclusive, in our evaluation of Vrba’s story, as the various contradictions
of either the WRB report or known fact, is the general tone of the
book and his description of how various people behaved at the camp. Although
the book presents utterly incredible material in this connection from
beginning to end, the best example is Vrba’s description of an alleged visit by
159 Naumann, 290-291; Langbein, vol. 1, 122-125; vol. 2, 968, 971.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
140
Himmler, on July 17, 1942 (pages 9-15, not mentioned in the WRB report).
The prisoners were drawn up for inspection, and the orchestra was in readiness
to play when Himmler, arrived. As they waited, the leader of the orchestra:
“[…] stood, baton raised, motionless, poised to weave music for the
honored guest.
And then it happened. The catastrophe that every actor dreads. The
moment of horror that only great occasions merit. The crisis that seems to
dog every moment of truth.
In the tenth row outside our Block, the Block senior found Yankel
Meisel without his full quota of tunic buttons.
It took some seconds for the enormity of the crime to sink in. Then he
felled him with a blow. […]
Out of sight, […] they beat and kicked the life out of him […]
[…] Himmler’s suite was twenty yards away. The baton moved […] and
the orchestra followed […] with an excerpt from Aida.
It was ‘The Triumph March.’ […]
He lined us up and rapped: ‘I am the Reichsführer. Let’s see how you
behave in front of me.’
Slowly he marched down the ranks, a little killer aping a big killer,
glaring at each of us in turn. If he found dirty finger nails or wooden shoes
not properly blacked, he howled abuse at the offender and thumped him
with his heavy bamboo cane. He even inspected us, nursery fashion, behind
the ears and then went prowling through the barracks, searching for blankets
which had not been folded with precision.”
Vrba mentions a second Himmler, visit (pages 15-19; the visit seems to
correspond to the March 1943 visit of dignitaries from Berlin) in January 1943
to witness the gassing of 3,000 Polish Jews. The event was scheduled for 9
AM, but Himmler took until 11 AM to finish breakfast, so the 3,000 Jews had
to wait two hours in the gas chamber. Himmler finally witnessed the gassing
in a cheerful and relaxed mood, chatting with the commandant and others, occasionally
throwing a glance through the peep-hole to observe the Jews being
gassed.
The book manages to maintain this utterly incredible tone throughout, as
you can verify by reading it, if you can stand it.
Reitlinger does not cite Vrba’s book in any connection in the second edition
of his book. He still writes of Vrba as the author of the “most important”
part of the WRB report, the first section, although the data offered shows that
this role should be attributed to Wetzler. It does not appear important or relevant
to Reitlinger that Vrba was only 18-years-old when, he claims, he started
collecting the numerical and other data concerning the transports to Auschwitz,
with the intention of making this information available to the outside
world.
Chapter 3: Washington and New York
141
There has been no claimed break, so far as I know, in the anonymity of the
Polish major. Erich Kulka, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in an article
in Suhl’s book, offers names for the two authors of the supplementary section
(Czezln Mordowicz who changed his name to Petr Podulka, and Arnost
Rosin who changed his name to Jan Rohác), but I know nothing of these people
other than that they remained quiet about their heroic exploits for an even
greater number of years than Vrba and Wetzler did. Moreover neither Elias,
nor Soos, nor Vrba (as Vrba or as Rosenberg), nor Weissmandel appeared as
witnesses in any of the Nuremberg trials, despite the sometimes contested role
played by Document 011-L at those trials.
The records of the International Tracing Service in Arolsen, West Germany,
report that two Jews named Wetzler and Rosenberg did escape on April
7, 1944, and this agrees with the Kalendarium published by the Polish government
in 1964 as number 7 of Hefte von Auschwitz, which also declares that
two Jews named Mordowicz and Rosin escaped on May 27, 1944. Because
there were many successful escapes from Auschwitz during this period (many,
many more than Vrba seems to think there were – compare page 217 of Vrba
with Garlinski’s remarks about escapes), this data may well be correct, but it
still does not authenticate the authorship of the WRB report, especially because
we are told today that after escaping the four Jews adopted aliases for
concealment purposes and that three of the four retained these different names
after the war rather than reassume their real names.
The details behind the manufacture of the WRB report will probably never
be completely uncovered, but it is entirely possible that its creators went to
great lengths in simulating a report miraculously smuggled to Slovakia and
then to Switzerland. If it was written in Slovakia then it seems clear that Rabbi
Weissmandel should be credited with at least co-authorship. It is also possible
that, as claimed, the report was given to the Papal Charge d’affaires in Slovakia,
Giuseppe Burzio, and that it was forwarded by him to Rome. It is clear
that Burzio was contacted by Jewish propagandists and that he forwarded at
least some of their “information” to Rome. Examples that Burzio transmitted
to the Vatican were March 22 claims that the Germans were taking young
Jewish women from their families to make them prostitutes for German soldiers
on the eastern front (a complete fantasy) and an early 1943 letter from a
Bratislava priest claiming that both Jewish and responsible German sources
had told him of soap factories supplied with the bodies of gassed and machine-
gunned Jews. Whether Burzio forwarded such material purely as routine
procedure or because he gave credence to it is hardly relevant, although the
later appears to be the case. The Vatican received and filed many such reports
during the war, but never gave any credence to them. Its present position is
that, during the war, neither it nor the “Jewish agencies were aware that the
deportations were part of a general mass annihilation operation” (see also ApArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
142
pendix E).160
In any case it is obvious that the WRB report is spurious. The data given in
the report is not the sort of information that escapees would carry out; the
claim that two more Jews escaped later on to supplement this data is more
than doubly ridiculous. Instead of coming forward immediately after the war
with ostensible authors of the report, in order to lend more support to the lie, it
appears that it was assumed that the whole thing was irrelevant until, for some
reason (probably Reitlinger’s curiosity), an author was produced sixteen years
after the event. That person’s story is not credible.
Thus was born the Auschwitz legend.
160 New York Times (Apr. 27, 1974), 7. Actes et documents, vol. 8, 476, 486-489; vol. 9, 40,
178n.
143
Chapter 4:
Auschwitz
Structure of the Legend
We now consider the specific Auschwitz “extermination” story that we are
offered.
The trials that generated the evidence on which the extermination claims
are based took place in a prostrate, starving Germany whose people were in no
position to do anything but that which the occupying powers wished. This was
the political reality of the situation. By the record, the “Zionist International”
organized the specific extermination claims that were made, which were given
no credence by high and knowledgeable Washington officials. The leading
personality in setting up the legal system of the war crimes trials was none
other than the American prosecutor at the IMT trial. At that trial the judges
had previously expressed themselves on the obvious guilt of the defendants,
and the findings of the trial were formal legal constraints on subsequent trials.
The most important of the subsequent trials were those organized by the arch-
Zionist David Marcus, future hero of Israel, and then head of the US War
Crimes Branch, an agency that had engaged in torture of witnesses in connection
with certain trials. The “honor” of the states conducting the trials was
committed to the thesis of extraordinary Nazi brutality. Under such conditions
it is difficult to see how one could fail to expect a frame-up; this and the following
chapter shows that the Auschwitz charges are what one should expect.
It must first be asked: what is the essential attribute, the “trademark” of a
hoax on this scale? No sane author of such a thing would present a story
which is untrue in every or in most details; ninety nine percent valid fact can
be present in a story whose major claim has no truth whatever to it and recognition
of this leads the author of the hoax to the maximally safe approach to
his deed: distort the meaning of valid facts.
This is the basic structure of the Auschwitz extermination legend. It is
shown here that every real fact contained in the story had (not could have had,
but had) a relatively routine significance, having nothing to do with exterminations
of people. Thus those who claim extermination must advance a thesis
involving a dual interpretation of the facts, but by then the impartial reader, in
consideration of what has just been noted, should be on my side; the need for
a dual interpretation of fact, the trademark of the hoax, has emerged.
Another trademark, not so obvious at this point, will be suggested by the
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
144
analysis.
Also, facts which contradict the extermination claims will be noted, and for
those who still believe the claims these facts are “mysteries.” The inconsistencies
and implausibilities and obvious lies will appear and finally the crushing
blow, a fact contradicting the claims, so huge in significance that there can be
no mumbling about “mysteries.”
The Höss ‘Confession’
The commandant of Auschwitz from May 1940 to late 1943 was SS Colonel
Rudolf Höss. During the IMT trial he had signed some affidavits for the
prosecution, the most noted being signed on April 5, 1946.161 In accord with a
common IMT and NMT practice, he was then called by the Kaltenbrunner defense
on April 15, 1946.162 The major content of his testimony was in his assenting,
during cross-examination, to his affidavit of April 5, and also in certain
points of supporting testimony.
Höss is universally considered the star prosecution witness and, despite the
origins of the Auschwitz hoax in the WRB report, the extermination mythologists
essentially treat the Höss affidavit as the Auschwitz extermination story
or, more precisely, the framework for the story. All pleaders of the Auschwitz
extermination legend present a story that is the Höss affidavit, with only numerical
variations, as supplemented by the IMT, NMT and similar evidence.
None of the principal extermination mythologists gives prominence to the
WRB report, and only Reitlinger seems to perceive a problem of some sort of
importance in connection with it.
Thus it is convenient to allow the Höss affidavit to act as framework for
our analysis also. It is presented in full here and then the individual points are
reviewed with due regard for the supplemental and additional evidence. The
fateful duality will emerge as an undeniable feature. The contradictions, inconsistencies,
wild implausibilities and lies will appear. The analysis will reveal
something of the psychological context of the trials.
Due regard is also given to verifiable interpretation of sources, including
instances where it is deemed better to reference Hilberg or Reitlinger rather
than an original document to which the reader is not likely to have convenient
access.
“I, RUDOLF FRANZ FERDINAND HŌSS, being first duly sworn, depose
and say as follows:
1. I am forty-six-years-old, and have been a member of the NSDAP
161 3868-PS
162 IMT, vol. 11, 396-422.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
145
since 1922; a member of the SS since 1934; a member of the Waffen-SS
since 1939. I was a member from 1 December 1934 of the SS Guard Unit,
the so-called Deathshead Formation (Totenkopf Verband).
2. I have been constantly associated with the administration of concentration
camps since 1934, serving at Dachau until 1938; then as adjutant
in Sachsenhausen from 1938 to May 1, 1940, when I was appointed commandant
of Auschwitz. I commanded Auschwitz until December 1, 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% 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
burnt 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 in the summer of 1944.
3. WVHA [Main Economic and Administrative Office], headed by
Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, was responsible for all administrative
matters such as billeting, feeding and medical care, in the concentration
camps. Prior to establishment of the RSHA, Secret State Police Office (Gestapo)
and the Reich Office of Criminal Police were responsible for arrests,
commitments to concentration camps, punishments and executions
therein. After organization of the RSHA, all of these functions were carried
out as before, but pursuant to orders signed by Heydrich as Chief of the
RSHA. While Kaltenbrunner was Chief of RSHA, orders for protective custody,
commitments, punishment, and individual executions were signed by
Kaltenbrunner or by Müller, Chief of the Gestapo, as Kaltenbrunner’s
deputy.
4. Mass executions by gassing commenced during the summer 1941 and
continued until fall 1944. I personally supervised executions at Auschwitz
until the first of December 1943 and know by reason of my continued duties
in the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps WVHA that these mass
executions continued as stated above. All mass executions by gassing took
place under the direct order, supervision and responsibility of RSHA. I received
all orders for carrying out these mass executions directly from
RSHA.
5. On 1 December 1943 I became Chief of AMT I in AMT Group D of
the WVHA and in that office was responsible for coordinating all matters
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
146
arising between RSHA and concentration camps, under the administration
of WVHA. I held this position until the end of the war. Pohl, as Chief of
WVHA, and Kaltenbrunner, as Chief of RSHA, often conferred personally
and frequently communicated orally and in writing concerning concentration
camps. On 5 October 1944 I brought a lengthy report regarding
Mauthausen Concentration Camp to Kaltenbrunner at his office at RSHA,
Berlin. Kaltenbrunner asked me to give him a short oral digest of this in
complete detail. This report dealt with the assignment to labor of several
hundred prisoners who had been condemned to death […] so-called
‘nameless prisoners.’
6. 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, BELZEC, 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 one-half 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 Cyclon B,
which was 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 one-half hour before we opened the doors and removed the
bodies. After the bodies were removed our special commandos took off the
rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses.
7. Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our
gas chambers to accommodate 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 chilChapter
4: Auschwitz
147
dren under their 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 the entire area and all of the
people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations
were going on at Auschwitz.
8. We received from time to time special prisoners from the local Gestapo
office. The SS doctors killed such prisoners by injections of benzine.
Doctors had orders to write ordinary death certificates and could put down
any reason at all for the cause of death.
9. From time to time we conducted medical experiments on women inmates,
including sterilization and experiments relating to cancer. Most of
the people who died under these experiments had been already condemned
to death by the Gestapo.
10. Rudolf Mildner was the chief of the Gestapo at Kattowicz and as
such was head of the political department at Auschwitz which conducted
third degree methods of interrogation from approximately March 1941 until
September 1943. As such, he frequently sent prisoners to Auschwitz for
incarceration or execution. He visited persons accused of various crimes,
such as escaping Prisoners of War, etc., frequently met within Auschwitz,
and Mildner often attended the trial of such persons, who usually were
executed in Auschwitz following their sentence. I showed Mildner throughout
the extermination plant at Auschwitz and he was directly interested in
it since he had to send the Jews from his territory for execution at Auschwitz.
I understand English as it is written above. The above statements are
true; this declaration is made by me voluntarily and without compulsion;
after reading over this statement, I have signed and executed the same at
Nürnberg, Germany on the fifth day of April 1946.
Rudolf Höss”
By “NSDAP” is meant the Nazi Party, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
(National Socialist German Worker’s Party).
Some points of information, which have not been included in the affidavit
although some might consider them relevant, are that Höss, as a nationalist
brawler in the twenties, had committed a political killing for which he served
five years in prison,163 and that he started in the concentration camps at Dachau
as a corporal in 1934. He may seem to have risen unusually quickly because
in 1945, during the final weeks of the war, he was a colonel and was
negotiating concentration camp matters with the Red Cross and representatives
of neutral countries.164 Most probably, his low rank in 1934 was due to
163 Hilberg, 575; Reitlinger, 113.
164 Reitlinger, 113, 502, 516-517; Red Cross (1947), 95, 98, 103-104.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
148
artificial limitations on the size of the SS, imposed for political reasons. His
rapid advance was probably the result of the expansion of the SS after the SARöhm
purge of June 1934 and the greater expansion which took place after the
war began.
We now analyze the significant points of the affidavit. The plan of Birkenau
is shown in Fig. 29; it is based on information gathered at the “Auschwitz
trial” of 1963-1965, but the WRB report presents a similar plan.165
Contradictions at the Outset
Paragraph 2
It would have been helpful in putting things into slightly better focus and
perspective if Höss had briefly indicated what the nature of the “concentration
camp industries” at Auschwitz was, and the enormous importance this industry
had for the Germans. In the entire transcript of IMT testimony there appears
to be only one specific reference to the nature of the industry at Auschwitz.
It is in the testimony of political prisoner Marie Claude Vaillant-
Couturier where she makes passing reference to an “ammunition factory” (no
doubt the Krupp fuse plant) and to a “large Buna factory, but as (she) did not
work there (she did) not know what was made there.”166 There are other references,
especially in the documents, but they are buried quite deeply.
Not even Höss clung to the figure of 2,500,000 victims gassed; in private at
the time of his testimony and also at his own trial in 1947 in Poland (he was
hanged) he used a figure of 1,135,000. The lowest figure to be claimed by
those who claim that gassings took place is 750,000.167 The Russians claimed
4,000,000, including some killed by “injections, ill treatment, etc.,” but the
highest figure claimed seems to be 7,000,000.168
The remark about 400,000 Hungarian Jews was in accord with a strange
emphasis in the legend on the Hungarian Jews. This emphasis existed well before
the Höss affidavit and it has persisted to this day. It was on May 5, 1944,
that Eichmann was supposed to have proposed, through the intermediary Joel
Brand, a “trucks for Hungarian Jews” swap with the Western allies.169 The
continued emphasis on the Hungarian Jews seems to be a result of the focus,
since 1960, on the activities of Eichmann. For the initial emphasis, the only
165 Langbein, vol. 2, 930-931; Naumann, 19 opp; US-WRB (1944), pt. 1, 22.
166 IMT, vol. 6, 211.
167 Reitlinger, 119.
168 008-USSR; Friedman, 14.
169 Reitlinger, 472-478; US-WRB (1945), 39-40.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
149
explanation I can offer is that the problems of the Hungarian Jews started in
March 1944 with the German occupation of Hungary, which was simultaneous
with the beginnings of the functioning of the War Refugee Board, which
had been established in January.
Much of the attention of the WRB was thus directed toward Hungary.170
The problem of the Hungarian Jews is given special attention in the next chapter.
Paragraph 4
Höss places the commencement of the gassings in the summer of 1941. He
gets promoted in December 1943 to the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps
at Oranienburg but knows “by reason of (his) continued duties” there that
“these mass executions continued.” To claim knowledge of significant events
at Auschwitz, while with the Inspectorate, seems very reasonable but in his
testimony he said that in the summer of 1941 he, Höss, had been summoned to
report directly to Himmler, and that during the interview the concentration
camp commandant had received directly from the Reichsführer-SS the order
to begin exterminating the Jews, with the stipulation that he should maintain
the “strictest secrecy,” not allowing even his immediate superior Glücks to
find out what he was doing. “Glücks was, so to speak, the inspector of concentration
camps at that time and he was immediately subordinate to the
Reichsführer.”171
When Did It Start?
Paragraph 6
It will be seen in a subsequent chapter what the “final solution” of the Jewish
question meant. Höss claims that he “was ordered to establish extermination
facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941.” Thus he reaffirms the date given in
paragraph 4 and his testimony in support of the affidavit reaffirmed this date
again; there seems no doubt that Höss was knowingly and deliberately given
the summer of 1941 as the start and that no slip is involved here. Also, Höss
testified that, at the time of the Himmler, order, the Inspectorate (Glücks) was
“immediately subordinate” to Himmler. This could only have been true prior
to March 1942, at which time Oswald Pohl, chief of the WVHA (paragraph
3), took over the Inspectorate and Glücks started reporting to Pohl, who re-
170 US-WRB (1945), 49-50.
171 IMT, vol. 11, 398.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
150
ported to Himmler. Prior to March 1942 the Inspectorate seems to have been
an orphan organization and may have reported to Himmler, although it had
connections with both Heydrich and Jüttner’s Operational Main Office
(Führungshauptamt). Höss, of course, was familiar with these administrative
arrangements because in late April 1942 Pohl had held a meeting of all camp
commanders and all leaders of the Inspectorate for the specific purpose of discussing
them.172
Despite all this Reitlinger insists that Höss meant the summer of 1942, not
1941, for certain reasons that will be seen later and also for other reasons.
First, an obvious implicit claim of Höss‘ affidavit is that the visit to Treblinka
took place after large deportations of Warsaw Jews to that camp. Höss confirmed
this point explicitly in another affidavit. That puts the Treblinka visit in
1942. Second, according to Reitlinger’s sources, the first large transports
(2,000) of Jews to Birkenau date from March 1942, when “the small gassing
installation in Birkenwald had only started to work.”173 Actually, such arguments
only increase the confusion, if we are also told that Höss received the
extermination orders in the summer of 1942.
These are simply the sorts of contradictions that one should expect to
emerge from a pack of lies. However, for the sake of discussion we should accept
that Höss really meant the summer of 1942 and continue on to other matters.
By any interpretation, however, Höss says that there were three other extermination
camps at the time of the Himmler order, that he had visited Treblinka
and that this camp had been exterminating for one half year. That puts
the beginning of the gas chamber exterminations in early 1942 if we accept
Reitlinger’s point.
The Alleged Gassings and Zyklon
One must agree that gassing with carbon monoxide is inefficient. The
source of the carbon monoxide was supposed to have been the exhausts of a
diesel engine at Belzec and of captured Russian tanks and trucks at Treblinka!
174
One must also agree that Cyclon (Zyklon) B was more efficient because it
consisted of crystals which, when exposed to air, sublimated into “Prussic
acid” (hydrogen cyanide gas). There was no deadlier gas and, in fact, Zyklon
was a well-known and widely used insecticide developed by the Deutsche Gesellschaft
für Schädlingsbekämpfung (DEGESCH), German Pest Control Co.
172 Hilberg, 556-560; Reitlinger, 107ff; documents R-129, NO-719 and 1063(F)-PS in NMT,
vol. 5, 298-303.
173 Reitlinger, 109, 115.
174 Reitlinger, 147ff.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
151
It had been marketed world-wide before the war as an insecticide;175 the word
Zyklon means “cyclone,” i.e. the product was a “cyclone” for pests. It was
used throughout the German armed forces and camp system during the war,
and it was thus used as an insecticide at Auschwitz. The ordering and receiving
of Zyklon at Auschwitz was done by the so-called Referat für Schädlingsbekämpfung
(Pest Control Office).176
The constant menace of typhus as carried by lice has been noted, and the
calamitous results of a complete breakdown of disinfection measures at Belsen
have been seen. In view of the particular hospitability of the Auschwitz-
Kattowicz operations to the typhus-bearing louse, in view of the fact of epidemics
at Auschwitz that actually forced work stoppages, and in view of the
tremendous importance of the Auschwitz industry to the German war effort, it
is not surprising that Zyklon was used in liberal quantities at Auschwitz, and
in the surrounding regions, for its intended purpose. It is this chemical product,
known to be an insecticide and known to be used at Auschwitz as an insecticide,
which, in the WRB report but starting even earlier, was claimed, and
continues to this day to be claimed, as the source of the gas used to exterminate
Jews at Auschwitz.
It is not correct to say that the insecticide role of Zyklon has been concealed;
the WRB report mentions the anti-parasite role of Zyklon and a dual
role for Zyklon at Auschwitz is explicitly claimed in the IMT transcript.177 We
must be careful at this point to note the significance of the legend’s Zyklon B
allegation. Here we have, on a major point, the main attribute of a hoax as we
begin to examine the details of the Auschwitz extermination claims: the fact
requiring a dual interpretation. This is not discussed or, apparently, even appreciated
in the “final solution” literature. Hilberg merely utters the completely
irrelevant assertion that “very little was used for fumigation” and then
cites unconvincing authority. Reitlinger does no better.178
The most typical use of Zyklon was in disinfecting rooms and barracks.
Everything was sealed and then the necessary amount of Zyklon, which came
in green cans (Figs. 27, 28), was emptied in. After the proper time interval it
was assumed that all the lice and other insects and pests were dead, and the
enclosure was aired out. Zyklon could be used for disinfecting clothing by
employing an “extermination chamber”; such were marketed by the German
“extermination” industry, although at that time steam baths were also used for
the disinfecting of clothing, especially at permanent installations. The “extermination
chambers” were preferred in connection with highly mobile or special
conditions. The US Army, which also had insect control problems during
175 DuBois, 213. Some of the chemistry of Zyklon (“Cyclon”) is discussed in the article on
CYANIDE in the Encyclopedia Britannica for 1943.
176 Hilberg, 567-571.
177 IMT, vol. 6, 225-332.
178 Hilberg, 570 Reitlinger, 154-156.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
152
the war, had correspondingly similar devices and had devised a “field chamber.”
Because the US came into the war late, it had time to adopt the newly
developed chemical, DDT, for the functions that Zyklon performed for the
Germans.179 Naturally, the Americans employed DDT in their “camps,” concentration
or otherwise. DDT, as a more advanced insecticide, was more versatile
for various reasons, e.g. it was not nearly as lethal for human beings as
Zyklon, which was quite lethal and in its commercial form contained a “warning
stuff,” an irritant which was emitted before the cyanide gas was emitted. It
is common to leave out frills in military versions of products, and thus the irritant
was absent from the Zyklon employed in concentration camps.
The dual role of Zyklon was asserted at the IMT on January 28, 1946, in
the testimony of a witness called by French prosecutor DuBost. On January
30, DuBost submitted as evidence document 1553-PS, consisting of a number
of invoices from DEGESCH, addressed to SS 1st Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein,
for various quantities of Zyklon sent to Oranienburg and to Auschwitz, plus a
lengthy “statement” attributed to Gerstein. After some hesitation over certain
legal technicalities both parts of the document were accepted in evidence, the
claims of Rassinier and Reitlinger that the “statement” was rejected to the
contrary notwithstanding.180 Two invoices are printed in the IMT volumes and
part of the “statement” is printed in one of the NMT volumes.181 The invoice
samples printed in the IMT volumes include one invoice for 195 kg of Zyklon
sent to Oranienburg and one for the same sent to Auschwitz. It is probable that
the Oranienburg Zyklon was ultimately destined for other camps and that the
Zyklon sent to Auschwitz was to be shared with all the smaller camps of the
region and possibly also with the coal mines.
The case of Kurt Gerstein shows that there is no limit to the absurdities that
intelligent people can attain once they have accepted falsehood as truth. This
is the same Gerstein who appears as a major character in Rolf Hochhuth’s
play, The Deputy.
Gerstein’s title in the SS was Chief Disinfection Officer in the Office of the
Hygienic Chief of the Waffen-SS,182 and as such it was his responsibility to
supervise the deliveries of disinfection supplies to all the camps administered
by the SS. Two versions of what happened to him at the end of the war are offered
us. In the one he encountered American interrogators by chance in a hotel
in Rottweil, the Black Forest, related that he had obtained a responsible
post in the Nazi Party while operating as a secret agent for the sometimes anti-
Nazi Reverend Niemöller, that he had been involved in operating gas chambers,
and that he was prepared to act as a witness in any court. He handed
179 Hardenbergh, 252-254, 257-259; Knipling.
180 IMT, vol. 6, 211, 225, 360-364; Rassinier (1962) 80, 224; Rassinier (1964), 105n; Rassinier
(1965), 38-48; Reitlinger, 161n.
181 NMT, vol. 1, 865-870; IMT, vol. 27, 340-342.
182 Hilberg, 570.
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them a seven-page document, typed in French, together with a note in English
and some Zyklon invoices, and then vanished.183 In the other, he somehow
found himself in Cherche-Midi military prison in Paris, composed a document
in his own hand, in French, added the Zyklon invoices, and then hanged himself
in July 1945.184 In either case neither he nor his body has ever been found.
He vanished, allegedly leaving a “statement” and some Zyklon invoices that
became document 1553-PS. The former version of the Gerstein story is the
one claimed in the descriptive material accompanying the document.
Even if we were not presented with such an obviously fishy story concerning
Gerstein, we would doubt the authenticity of the “statement” merely on
the grounds of its contents, for it is ridiculous in the story it presents, e.g. that
Gerstein took his position in the SS in order to attempt to sabotage the exterminations
(“a man who had penetrated hell with the sole intention of bearing
witness before the world and aiding the victims”185). The text of the “statement,”
including the part published by the NMT, is included here as Appendix
A; the “statement” plays no great role in the analysis but the reader should examine
it sometime. It is absolutely insane. It is no marvel that people who can
take this story seriously have remarked on the “ambiguity of good” and feel “a
certain malaise, an inability to arrive at a full explanation of Gerstein as a person.”
186 The Deputy opens with “Gerstein“ forcing his way into the reception
room of the Papal Legation on the Rauchstrasse in Berlin, breathlessly relating
the story of his “statement” to the Papal Nuncio!
It is thoroughly unforgivable that Hilberg and Reitlinger use such an obviously
spurious “statement” as a source, and without apology. Reitlinger, however,
points out that Hitler never visited Lublin, as the “statement” asserts.187
DEGESCH was not the only firm involved in the “extermination” business.
The firm of Tesch and Stabenow supplied customers with Zyklon and also
with equipment for “extermination chambers” that were of typical volume ten
cubic meters and smaller. In Chapter 2 we saw that there apparently existed
such a “gas chamber” at Dachau which was, of course, represented as a murder
chamber in the early phases of the propaganda, although today no attempt
is made to claim it is anything other than a “disinfection room.” Tesch and
Weinbacher, officers of the firm of Tesch and Stabenow, who had sold some
“extermination chamber” equipment to the camp at Gross-Rosen, were hanged
for their role in the extermination business, their plea that they did not know
that their merchandise was to be used for purposes other than disinfection, and
their alternate plea that an order of the SS could not be refused, having been
183 Reitlinger, 161; 1553-PS.
184 Friedlaender, vii-xii.
185 Friedlaender, xi.
186 Friedlaender, x.
187 Reitlinger, 162f. See also Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Apr. 1953), 189n, which is
cited in an article in Nation Europa (May 1963), 50+ (q.v.).
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
154
rejected by the British military court.188
Lines of Authority
Paragraph 7
According to affidavits given by Höss and Friedrich Entress in 1947,189 the
first gas chambers put into operation in the summer of 1942 (now contradicting
the affidavit of 1946), were makeshift affairs consisting of two old peasant
houses made air tight, with windows sealed up. At the “Auschwitz trial” in
1963-1965 it was held that the “bunker” in Fig. 29 was one of these early gas
chambers.190 The nature of later “gas chambers” is examined below.
This is a good point at which to raise objections regarding lines of responsibility
and authority in these operations. Höss says he received his order directly
from Himmler, during, we have agreed to pretend, the summer of 1942.
This means that Himmler not only bypassed Glücks, but also Pohl in giving
this order directly to the camp commandant, specifying that Glücks was not to
learn what was going on. Himmler reached three levels or more down to give
the order and specified that Höss was to maintain an impossible secrecy. Most
irregular.
That is not all. The story we are offered, by the Höss affidavit and testimony
and all other sources is that (except for certain later developments to be
discussed) the German government left the means of killing, and the materials
required, a matter for the judgment and ingenuity of the local camp commandant.
Höss decides to convert two old peasant houses. Höss found the Zyklon
kicking around the camp and decided that it offered a more efficient method
of solving the Jewish problem than that employed at Treblinka, where they
had scrounged up some captured Russian tanks and trucks to use for exterminations.
All of this is idiotic and Reitlinger is obviously uncomfortable with the
“problem” of the responsibility of the Zyklon decision but gets nowhere with
the difficulty except to make it graver by suggesting that Hitler (!) finally decided
on Zyklon “with misgiving.”191
188 Hilberg, 567; Reitlinger, 155-156; documents NO-4344 and NO-4345 in NMT, vol. 5, 362-
364.
189 Hilberg, 565; Reitlinger, 158n.
190 Langbein, vol. 2, 930-931; Naumann, 19 opp.
191 Reitlinger, 155-158.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
155
Transports to Auschwitz
We are told that those Jews not fit for work were gassed immediately upon
arrival (and hence do not appear in any written records, for the most part), but
an account directly in conflict with this claim appears even in the WRB report.
According to that report a transport of four to five thousand Jews from
Theresienstadt, traveling as families, arrive at Birkenau in September 1943.
They kept their baggage and were lodged as families in the camp sector designated
in Fig. 29. They were allowed to correspond freely, a school was set up
for the children, and the men were not obliged to work. They were considered
to be in six months quarantine. It is said that they were gassed on March 7,
1944, and that “the young people went to their deaths singing.” The relatives
of these Jews got mail from them dated March 23 or 25, but it is claimed that
the mail had been written on March 1 and post-dated, in obedience to German
orders.
This procedure was repeated with another group of Jewish families, 5,000
people who arrived from Theresienstadt in December 1943, and whose quarantine
was due for expiration in June 1944. Some men were put to work. According
to what are said to be surviving records, in May 1944 two thousand
were on the employment list, 1,452 were still in quarantine, and 1,575 were
considered “in readiness for transport” (“Vorbereitung zum Transport”),
which Reitlinger considers to mean in reality “waiting for the gas chambers.”
This was repeated a second time with a group of Theresienstadt families
which arrived in May 1944.192 Since these people were put into “quarantine” it
is a certainty that their quarters had been disinfected with Zyklon just prior to
their moving in and perhaps at periods while they were living there. Now we
are asked to believe that the Germans planned to kill them with the same
chemical product later on!
Essentially the same story was repeated in IMT testimony.193 The presence
of such material in the WRB report is no mystery. Whatever was happening to
the Theresienstadt Jews in 1943-1944 was fairly well known in Europe. In October
1943, when 360 Jews were deported from Denmark, they were sent to
Theresienstadt, “where the Danish king could be assured of their safety.”194
We noted in the preceding chapter the Red Cross visit of June 1944; the Red
Cross involvement with Theresienstadt receives further treatment in the next
chapter. In a 1945 visit the Red Cross reported transfers to Auschwitz in 1944,
adding no sinister interpretations.
To describe the Theresienstadt Jews as “in readiness for transport” just before
their quarantine was to expire was perfectly logical, because it is known
192 US-WRB (1944), pt. 1, 19-21, 37-38; Reitlinger, 182-183; Blumental, 105.
193 IMT, vol. 6, 218.
194 Reitlinger, 183.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
156
that many Theresienstadt Jews were being deported East. A source sponsored
by the Israeli government, who had been at Theresienstadt, reports that from
1941 to 1944 the Germans were transporting Jews to such places as Minsk in
Russia and Riga in Latvia. One must have passed by quite a few “extermination
camps” to travel from Theresienstadt to those cities. The source also reports
that young Theresienstadt Jews were eager to volunteer for transports to
Auschwitz as late as August 1944.195 Rabbi Leo Bäck has claimed that somebody
escaped from Auschwitz in August 1943, and made his way back to
Theresienstadt, where he told Bäck of gassings. Bäck has explained why he
told nobody else of this at the time so that, we will no doubt be told, explains
how it was possible that all those people were, in their “ignorance,” so eager
to go to Auschwitz.196
The part of the Auschwitz legend touching on the Theresienstadt Jews is
obvious nonsense even without contrary evidence, however. It is not believable
that the Germans would quarter for six months at Birkenau each of three
distinct groups of people of a category for which there exists an extermination
program at Birkenau. The dual role of Zyklon in this story merely effects passage
from the nonsensical to the incomparably ludicrous.
If we examine the other extant source of what is said to be statistical data
concerning transports to Auschwitz, we meet the same situation. The data offered
in the Netherlands Red Cross reports is more reliable than that offered in
the WRB report, although it is rather limited. Nevertheless, as shown in Appendix
C, the data shows that virtually all of the male Jews who were deported
from the Netherlands to Auschwitz in July and August of 1942 entered Birkenau
and were given registration numbers. It is also known that these Dutch
Jews wrote letters to acquaintances in the Netherlands in which they described
the work at Auschwitz as “hard” but “tolerable,” the food “adequate,” the
sleeping accommodations “good,” the hygienic conditions “satisfactory” and
the general treatment “correct” (this was reported by the Jewish Council in
Amsterdam which claimed, however, that it knew of only 52 such letters). To
Reitlinger, these things are “mysteries” for, he says, “at certain periods, entire
transports were admitted.”197
The term “spot decisions” has not been used subsequent to the Höss affidavit,
so far as we know. The common term is “selections.” The story is that
“selections” were made on incoming transports on a basis of suitability for
work. This, of course, must be essentially true; given the extent and variety of
the industrial operations at Auschwitz, selections were required not only on a
work vs. no work basis but also on, e.g., a light work vs. heavy work basis.
195 Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 7, 109, 110n, 113.
196 Reitlinger, 181-182; Boehm, 292-293.
197 Reitlinger, 118-121. Reitlinger remarks on the “mystery” presented by the data in the Netherlands
Red Cross reports, which is presented and discussed here in Appendix C. The letters
from Auschwitz are considered by de Jong.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
157
Other factors which must have figured in this connection were whether a
given transport was composed of prisoners, volunteer laborers, Jews being resettled
(such as the Theresienstadt Jews) or other. The transports were no
doubt also screened for certain key professionals, such as medical personnel,
engineers, skilled craftsmen, etc. The extermination legend merely claims that
one category sought in these elaborate sortings and selections was all nonemployable
Jews, destined for extermination. This claim has already been seriously
undermined by the evidence.198
A Hospital for the People Being Exterminated?
Selections on incoming transports are not the only mode of gas chamber
selections which have been claimed. A Dutch Jew, Dr. Elie A. Cohen, was arrested
in 1943 for attempting to leave the Netherlands without authority. In
September he and his family were shipped to Auschwitz, and he was separated
from his family, which he never saw again. He later wrote a book, Human Behavior
in the Concentration Camp, based on his experiences as a member of
the hospital staff at Auschwitz I. Because Cohen’s contact with the people
who were being exterminated was of a doctor-patient nature, it was necessary
to produce an extraordinarily descriptive term for his book, and “objective”
was as good a choice as any.
Cohen interprets certain selections in the hospital as selections for the gas
chamber:199
“After the ‘HKB (camp hospital) administrative room’ had given warning
that the camp physician was about to make a selection, the whole block
became a hive of activity, for everything had to be spic-and-span […]
while everybody stood at attention, he made his entry with his retinue:
SDG (medical service orderly), Blockälteste and block clerk. The sick Jews
were already lined up – as a matter of course, naked. Simultaneously with
the presentation of the card with the personal notes concerning each prisoner,
to the camp physician, the block physician, in whose ear the diagnosis
was being whispered by the room physician, introduced the patient in
198 The Kalendarium, published in 1964 in German, says that of 1500 people in a transport that
arrived at Auschwitz on April 16, 1944, from the camp in Drancy, France, a certain number
of the men were registered as inmates and the others gassed. Many years ago Robert Faurisson
pointed out that, according to the deportation lists, “the others” included Simone Veil,
who as Faurisson wrote was President of the European Parliament. Later I noticed that the
English translation of the Kalendarium, published in 1990 (D. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle
1939-1945), engages in a little bit of revisionism on this, and now says some of the women
were registered. A document from the International Tracing Service, Arolsen, Germany, is
cited.
199 Cohen, 38-39.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
158
question to him […] in 90 per cent of the cases the card was handed to the
SDG, which meant death by gassing for the patient, unless the political department
gave orders to the contrary, which frequently occurred in the
case of ‘Schutzhäfltinge’ (people charged with ordinary crime).
Not only emaciated prisoners, but also some who looked well fed were
sometimes consigned to the gas chamber; and occasionally even members
of the HKB staff, who were officially exempt, had to suffer a similar fate.
Therefore, especially when one considered the ‘medical style’ of the camp
physician, it was generally supposed that it was not only people incapable
of work who were scheduled for killing, but that the decisive factory must
be that a certain number of persons had to be gassed.
Officially no one knew what the final object actually was, not even the
staff of the administrative room, for after the names of the gassed the initials
S.B., short for ‘Sonderbehandlung’ (special treatment) were placed.”
Cohen does not report having seen any gas chambers; the only evidence
which he draws on to support a “gassing” interpretation of such scenes (such
interpretation certainly not being evident from the raw facts) consists in the
post-war claim of extermination at Auschwitz and also in that there were rumors
inside the camp of extermination somewhere at Auschwitz. The existence
of such rumors is practically certain because a delegate of the International
Red Cross reported their existence among British POWs at Auschwitz
III in September 1944.200 However nothing much can be inferred from the existence
of rumors, as rumor spreading is an elementary aspect of psychological
warfare, and we have seen that the OSS and, of course, the Communists
engaged in rumor spreading and “black propaganda.” In fact, knowledgeable
officials of the US government have admitted the “information” spreading. At
the Farben trial, prosecuting attorney Minskoff asked defense witness Münch
the following question about gassings at Birkenau:201
“Now, Mr. Witness, isn’t it a fact that, during the time you were at
Auschwitz, Allied planes dropped leaflets over Kattowitz and Auschwitz informing
the population what was going on in Birkenau?”
Münch did not know that. Minskoff was knowledgeable in this area because
he had been a foreign operations oriented lawyer in the Treasury Department
during the war and was presumably well informed on WRB matters;
the WRB had collaborated with the Office of War Information on various
leaflet operations. The head of the prosecution staff at the Farben trial was
DuBois, who had been general counsel of the WRB, who wrote that in his “office
in 1944, [he] knew […] what was going on at Auschwitz,” and who chose
in his book to reproduce with general approval the part of the testimony con-
200 Red Cross (1947), 91-92.
201 NMT. vol. 8, 320.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
159
taining the Minskoff question.202 This is good evidence for an American leaflet
operation over Auschwitz, although the method seems somewhat crude.
My guess is that if the leaflets were indeed dropped, they were dropped at
night, and in moderate quantities.
Actually, a leaflet operation was not necessary to get rumors going in the
camps, for the highly organized Communists were very active in this area.
Their superior organization, which involved systematic illegal listening to radios,
had made the other inmates essentially fully dependent on them for
“news.”203 Let us remember that it was a small world, even in 1939-1945, and
that, on account of the general ease with which information flowed into and
out of the camp (a fact noted in the preceding chapter), the Allied stories about
the camps would have ultimately and necessarily penetrated into those camps
by various routes.
The Red Cross delegate mentioned above had attempted to visit the
Auschwitz camps but apparently got no further than the administrative area of
Auschwitz I and the quarters of the British POWs. The latter were the only
persons the existing conventions entitled him to visit; with regard to other
matters the German officers there were “amiable and reticent.” The delegate
reported without comment that the British POWs had not been able to obtain
confirmation of the rumors by consulting camp inmates. It is claimed that, despite
these rumors, the British POWs who were interrogated by the Russians
after the capture of the camp “knew nothing at all” of the “crimes.”204
Subsequent events have, of course, changed the rumors into “knowledge”
in many cases. Incoming Jews certainly had no suspicions of gassings.205
With the “selections” we are offered another fact for dual interpretation.
There is no doubt that the extensive industrial and other activities required
“selections” of people for various conventional purposes. We are then asked
to add an “extermination” purpose to these activities.
Before leaving Cohen, we should note that there were sick emaciated Jews,
as well as others, in the Auschwitz I hospital. He further informs us:206
“[…] The HKB was housed in five good stone-built blocks. There was
one block for surgery, one for infectious diseases, one for internal diseases,
one for ‘Schonung’ (less serious cases) and Block 28 (X-ray, specialists’
rooms, medical experiments, admissions). The sick lay in three
bunks, one above another, on straw mattresses, and were dressed in a shirt
(with, later, a pair of drawers added), under two cotton blankets and a
sheet. Every week the patients were bathed, and every two weeks they were
given ‘clean’ underwear and a ‘clean’ sheet; there were few fleas and no
202 Dubois, 53, 173, 231; US-WRB (1945), 48-55.
203 Lerner, 152-153.
204 Friedman, 13-14.
205 Cohen, 119.
206 Cohen, 60.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
160
lice. Each berth was seldom occupied by more than two persons. But […]
even patients in a state of high fever had to leave their beds to go to the toilet
or to wash in the cold lavatory in the mornings. Because of ‘organizations’
from the SS, there were always medicines, though not in sufficient
quantities, including even sulfa drugs; these had been brought in by large
transports of Jews from every European country.”
He adds that hospital conditions were much worse in other camps (about
which he has only read).
The Auschwitz I hospital was obviously no luxury establishment but nevertheless
it showed a serious concern, on the part of the Germans, for the recovery
of inmates, including Jews, who had fallen ill. This observation also
opposes the claim that those not fit for work were killed. Cohen reports certain
selections of an incompletely known character, in connection with unknown
destinations. It may be that those considered of no further use as labor were
sent to Birkenau; this would be very reasonable because it has been shown
that the unemployables from the Monowitz hospital were sent to Birkenau.
“Special Treatment”
The term “special treatment,” Sonderbehandlung, is supposed to have been
one of the code words for gassing. When it is said that N Jews in a transport to
Auschwitz were gassed, and that this is according to some German record or
document, it is the case that the word “Sonderbehandlung” is being interpreted
as meaning gassing. The documents in question are two in number, and
are printed (not reproduced from originals) in a 1946 publication of the Polish
government. Both documents are said to be signed by an SS Lieutenant
Schwarz. They state that from several Jewish transports from Breslau and Berlin
to Auschwitz in March 1943, a certain fraction of Jews were selected for
labor, and that the remainder were sonderbehandelt. As far as I know, these
documents are not Nuremberg documents; the originals, if they exist (which I
am not denying), are in Polish archives.207
On account of this relatively well publicized interpretation of the term
Sonderbehandlung, Cohen thinks that he has read “SB” in the notes made in
the Auschwitz I hospital, but it is likely that he misread “NB,” nach Birkenau
(to Birkenau).
There exists a document, apparently genuine, from the Gestapo District
Headquarters, Düsseldorf, which specifies the manner in which executions of
certain offending foreign workers were to be carried out, and which uses the
207 Friedman, 14-15; Reitlinger, 172; Hilberg, 587; Blumental, 109-110. One of the documents
are reproduced in Poliakov & Wulf (1955), 198.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
161
term “Sonderbehandlung” as meaning execution. There is also a document,
put into evidence at Eichmann’s trial, which referred to the execution of three
Jews as Sonderbehandlung.208
Thus it seems correct that, in certain contexts, the term meant execution,
but it is at least equally certain that its meaning was no more univocal in the
SS than the meaning of “special treatment” is in English-speaking countries.
There is completely satisfactory evidence of this. At the IMT trial prosecutor
Amen led Kaltenbrunner, under cross examination, into conceding that the
term might have meant execution as ordered by Himmler. Then, in an attempt
to implicate Kaltenbrunner personally in Sonderbehandlung, Amen triumphantly
produced a document which presents Kaltenbrunner as ordering Sonderbehandlung
for certain people. Amen wanted Kaltenbrunner to comment
on the document without reading it, and there was an angry exchange in this
connection, but Kaltenbrunner was finally allowed to read the document, and
he then quickly pointed out that the Sonderbehandlung referred to in the document
was for people at “Winzerstube” and at “Walzertraum,” that these two
establishments were fashionable hotels which quartered interned notables, and
that Sonderbehandlung in their cases meant such things as permission to correspond
freely and to receive parcels, a bottle of champagne per day, etc.209
Poliakov reproduces some document which show that Sonderbehandlung
had yet another meaning within the SS. The documents deal with procedures
to be followed in the event of the pregnancies caused by illegal sexual intercourse
involving Polish civilian workers and war prisoners. A racial examination
was held to decide between abortion and “germanization” of the baby
(adoption by a German family). The term Sonderbehandlung was a reference
either to the germanization or to the abortion. In addition, at Eichmann’s trial,
some documents were put into evidence which dealt with the treatment of 91
children from Lidice, Bohemia-Moravia. These children had been orphaned
by the reprisals which had been carried out at Lidice after Heydrich’s assassination.
A certain number were picked out for germanization and the remainder
were sent to the Displaced Persons Center in Lodz (Litzmannstadt), operated
by the RuSHA. The commander of the Center, Krumey, regarded the children
as a special case within the Center, to be given Sonderbehandlung while at the
Center. The term or its equivalent (eine gesonderte Behandlung) was also
used in the Foreign Office in connection with special categories of prisoners
of war, such as priests.210
It is only to a person not accustomed to the German language that the term
Sonderbehandlung sounds like it stands for some very special concept. For a
208 NO-4634 in NMT, vol. 4, 1166; Eichmann, sesson 79, W1-Y1.
209 IMT, vol. 11, 336-339.
210 Poliakov & Wulf (1956), 299-302; Eichmann, session 79, Y1-Bb1; session 101, Hhl-Mml;
session 107, U1-V1; session 109, F1-H1, N1, O1; NG-5077.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
162
German, however, the term is as diverse in possible application as “special
treatment” is in English.
Himmler commented somewhat unclearly on Sonderbehandlung when he
examined the “Korherr report,” documents NO-5193 through 5198. Korherr
was the chief SS statistician and thus, in late 1942 and early 1943, he prepared
a report for Himmler on the situation regarding European Jews. In March
1943 he reported that a total of 1,873,594 Jews of various nationalities had
been subjected to a program of “evacuation,” with a parenthetical note “including
Theresienstadt and including Sonderbehandlung.” The report also
gave numbers of Jews in ghettos in Theresienstadt, Lodz and the General
Government, the number in concentration camps, and the number in German
cities on account of a special status conferred for economic reasons. It was
also remarked that, from 1933 to December 31, 1942, 27,347 Jews had died in
German concentration camps.
After Himmler examined the report he informed Korherr, through Brandt,
that the term Sonderbehandlung should not be used in the report, and that
transport to the East should be specified. Nevertheless the document, as it has
come to us, uses the term in the way indicated. The document gives no hint
how the term should be interpreted but, because it occurs in such a way that it
is linked with Theresienstadt, it is obviously fair to interpret it in a favorable
sense, as a reference to some sort of favored treatment.
Shortly later Himmler wrote, in a document said to be initialed by him, that
he regarded the “report as general purpose material for later times, and especially
for camouflage purposes.” What was to be camouflaged is not indicated
in the document but, at his trial, Eichmann testified that after the Stalingrad
disaster (January 1943) the German government quickened the pace of the deportations
“for camouflage reasons,” i.e., to reassure the German people that
everything was OK out there. Himmler specified that the Korherr report was
not to be made public “at the moment,” but the camouflage remark could still
be interpreted in the sense in which Eichmann suggested (Eichmann’s statement
was not in connection with the Korherr report.)211
Other documents are 003-L, a letter by SS General Katzmann, speaking of
434,329 resettled (ausgesiedelt) Jews of southern Poland as having been sonderbehandelt,
and NO-246, a letter from Artur Greiser to Himmler dated May
1, 1942, asking permission to give Sonderbehandlung, specified as getting
them “locked up” (abgeschlossen), to about 100,000 Jews in the Warthegau
(part of annexed Poland). Greiser was sentenced to death by a Polish court on
July 20, 1946, despite the intervention of the Pope on his behalf. There is also
a letter by Lohse, which is discussed in Chapter 6.212
211 Most of the Korherr report is reproduced in Poliakov & Wulf (1955), 240-248. Eichmann,
session 77, Y1, Z1. The crematories
212 Reitlinger, 557. Documents reproduced in Poliakov & Wulf (1955), 197-199.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
163
Summarizing the situation with respect to documents which speak of Sonderbehandlung,
we may say that, while one can certainly raise questions regarding
the authenticity of the relevant documents, it is nevertheless the case
that even if all of the relevant documents are assumed authentic, they do not
require an “extermination” interpretation of those that apply to Auschwitz.
That the term Sonderbehandlung had more than one meaning within one
agency of the German government is not very peculiar. For example, I understand
that, within the Central Intelligence Agency, “termination” can mean
execution or assassination in certain contexts. However, the term obviously
could also be applied to the dismissal of a typist for absenteeism.
The point in paragraph 7 of the Höss affidavit about endeavoring “to fool
the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process” is,
of course, a logical one because anybody on entering a German camp went
through a delousing process such as Höss described in the affidavit and in his
testimony – disrobe, shave, shower.213 Again we are offered a fact for dual interpretation.
The Crematories
The last subject in paragraph 7 is the cremations; it is a big one. According
to Höss and all other accounts of exterminations, Birkenau cremations took
place in trenches or pits prior to the availability of the modern crematory facilities
there.214 It is claimed that the new crematories were intended for extermination
of Jews but we have suggested a more routine purpose in the preceding
chapter. Let us review their history.
The construction was well into the preliminary stages of planning and ordering
early in 1942 and this fact, in itself, makes it difficult, to say the least,
to believe that they were related to any extermination program orders by
Himmler in the summer of 1942. The construction plans for four structures
containing crematory furnaces are dated January 28, 1942.215 On February 27,
1942, the head of the construction department of the WVHA, SS Colonel
(later Lieutenant General) Dr. Ing. Hans Kammler, an engineer who also supervised
the design of the German V-rocket bases and the underground aircraft
factories, visited Auschwitz and held a conference at which it was decided
to install five, rather than two (as previously planned), crematory furnaces,
each having three ovens or doors.216 This matter, therefore, was not left
213 IMT, vol. 11, 400-401.
214 IMT, vol. 11, 420; Central Commission, 87-88.
215 Central Commission, 83-84; Rassinier (1962), 85-86. Rassinier does not cite a source, so he
presumably got it from Central Commission.
216 Reitlinger, 157-158; Hilberg, 565; NO-4472.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
164
to the ingenuity of Höss. In the extermination legend, however, Höss definitely
gets credit for the Zyklon. The fifteen ovens to be installed in each of
the structures or buildings were ordered from Topf and Sons, Erfurt, on August
3, 1942.217 The ovens were of the standard type which Topf (still in business
in Wiesbaden in 1962) sold. Fig. 26 is said to be a photograph of one of
the crematories at Auschwitz. Each oven was designed to take one body at a
time, as are all standard cremation ovens; there is no evidence for the installation
of any non-standard ovens, such as any designed to take more than one
body at a time. Topf had also supplied ovens to camps for which exterminations
are not claimed, such as Buchenwald.218
The plans for the four buildings containing the crematories, numbered II,
III, IV and V (Crematory I seems to have been the ultimately dormant crematory
at Auschwitz I which contained four ovens219), show that a large hall or
room existed in each. For II and III, these were below ground level and were
designated Leichenkeller (mortuary cellar – literally corpse cellar – a German
word for mortuary is Leichenhalle); their dimensions were height 2.4 meters
and area 210 square meters and height 2.3 meters and area 400 square meters,
respectively. The halls in the building containing Crematories IV and V were
at ground level and were designated Badeanstalten (bath establishments); they
were each of height 2.3 meters and area 580 square meters. According to the
information generated at the “Auschwitz trial” of 1963-1965, these four buildings
were located as shown in Fig. 29.
The Auschwitz construction department, in erecting the crematories, was
assisted not only by Topf but also by the SS company DAW (Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke,
German Equipment Factory), which helped with miscellaneous
constructions. The first ovens installed were in Crematory II and numbered,
as we have noted, fifteen: five three-oven units. The construction took
considerable time although, as shown by the documents, it was carried out
with deliberate haste. The NMT volumes offer us the following English translation
of document NO-4473; if the reader thinks he sees something in the
document that is hostile to my thesis he should withhold judgment:220
“January 29, 1943
To the Chief Amtsgruppe C, SS Brigadeführer and Brigadier General of
the Waffen SS.,
Dr. Ing. Kammler
Subject: Crematory II, condition of the building.
The Crematory II has been completed – save for some minor construc-
217 Central Commission, 83; Rassinier (1962), 86; NO-4461.
218 Reitlinger, 159; NO-4353, NO-4400 & NO-4401 in NMT, vol. 5, 353-356; NO-4445; NO-
4448. Photograph also in Schoenberner and in Nyiszli.
219 Friedman, 54.
220 NMT, vol. 5, 619-620.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
165
tional work – by the use of all the forces available, in spite of unspeakable
difficulties, the severe cold, and in 24-hour shifts. The fires were started in
the ovens in the presence of Senior Engineer Prüfer, representative of the
contractors of the firm of Topf and Söhne, Erfurt, and they are working
most satisfactorily. The planks from the concrete ceiling of the cellar used
as a mortuary [Leichenkeller] could not yet be removed on account of the
frost. This is, however, not very important, as the gas chamber can be used
for that purpose.
The firm of Topf and Söhne was not able to start deliveries of the installation
in time for aeration and ventilation as had been requested by the
Central Building Management because of restrictions in the use of railroad
cars. As soon as the installation for aeration and ventilation arrive, the installing
will start so that the complete installation may be expected to be
ready for use February 20, 1943.
We enclose a report [not attached to document] of the testing engineer
of the firm of Topf and Söhne, Erfurt.
The Chief of the Central Construction Management,
Waffen SS and Police Auschwitz,
SS Hauptsturmführer
Distribution: 1 – SS Ustuf. Janisch u. Kirschneck; 1 – Filing office (file
crematory); Certified true copy: [Signature illegible] SS Ustuf. (F)”
I interpret this as meaning that, although all work for Crematory II was not
completed, the ovens could be used in January 1943 for cremations, despite
the impossibility of using the Leichenkeller.
On February 12, 1943, Topf wrote to Auschwitz acknowledging receipt of
an order for five three-oven units for Crematory III, the construction to be
completed April 10. I have not seen any documentation indicating installation
of any ovens in Crematories IV and V, unless a letter of August 21, 1942,
from an SS 2nd Lieutenant at Auschwitz, mentioning a Topf proposal to install
two three-oven units near each of the “baths for special purpose,” should
be interpreted as such.221 There was, however, carpentry work done on Crematories
IV and V.222
This brings us to the problem of the number of ovens at Birkenau; it is a
problem because it is said that the Germans demolished the crematory buildings
before abandoning Auschwitz.223 Obviously, we must assume that there
were at least thirty available, fifteen in both Crematory II and Crematory III,
sometime in 1943. Evidence for ovens installed in IV and V consists mainly in
the appearance of a labor Kommando assigned to these crematories in what is
said to be the Birkenau employment roster for May 11, 1944 (the same docu-
221 008-USSR.
222 NO-4466 in NMT, vol. 5, 624.
223 Friedman, 20, 74, 78; Hilberg, 632.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
166
ment the Theresienstadt Jews appear in), plus some witness testimony. The
Russians and Poles claimed that each of these crematories had eight ovens,
and that the other two had fifteen each: 46 ovens. The WRB report had specified
36 in both II and III and 18 in IV and V: 108 ovens.224
Reitlinger claims 60 ovens by assuming that each crematory had fifteen.
His only authority for this is the writings attributed to one Miklos Nyiszli,
which we should not accept on anything, least of all a number. The Nyiszli
account purports to be a record of personal experiences of a Hungarian Jewish
doctor deported to Auschwitz in May 1944. It appeared in French in 1951 in
the March-April issues of Les Temps Modernes, with a preface by translator
T. Kremer. Rassinier has reported on his strenuous subsequent efforts to contact
Nyiszli and determine whether or not he actually existed; the only person
who seemed unquestionably to exist was translator Kremer.225 An English
translation of Richard Seaver, foreword by Bruno Bettelheim, was published
in New York in 1960 under the title Auschwitz. Nyiszli was obviously dead by
then because it is specified that the copyright is held by “N. Margareta Nyiszli.”
As is the usual practice with deceased authors who held doctor’s degrees,
the title page of a doctoral thesis, by “Nicolaus Nyiszli,” Breslau 1930,
is reproduced in the 1960 NY edition. The book was republished in French
and German editions in 1961.
According to Rassinier, it is difficult enough to reconcile the numbers in
the various editions, but it is not even possible to get internal consistency in
one edition. In the 1960 edition we read (page 55) that the 60 ovens could reduce
“several thousand” corpses per day. Further on (page 87) we are told that
“when the two (burning pits) were operating simultaneously, their output varied
from five to six thousand dead a day, slightly better than the crematoriums,”
but then later on (page 92) we learn that Crematories II and III could
alone dispose of at least 10,500 per day. This is total confusion.
The writings attributed to Nyiszli also commit what I consider the basic
witness-disqualifying act; they claim gratuitous regular beatings of initially
healthy prisoners by the SS (e.g. pp. 25, 27, 44, 57); it is known that this was
not the case. Aside from possible humanitarian objections to such beatings,
the prisoners were a source of income to the SS. Many were the complaints,
on the part of the SS, against various forms of alleged Farben mistreatment.
On the other hand, for security reasons, the SS discouraged fraternization between
guards and prisoners. The SS guard was ordered to maintain “distance”
(Abstand) from the prisoners, not even talking to them unless absolutely necessary.
This regulation was of course difficult to enforce and the regular and
very frequent infringements of it produced memoranda from Pohl to the camp
224 008-USSR; Central Commission, 88; US-WRB (1944), pt. 1, 14-16; Fyfe, 158; Blumental,
100.
225 Rassinier (1962), 245-249.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
167
commanders ordering appropriate and systematic instruction of the guards.226
Despite a certain amount of SS guard brutality as reported by authors of
other books, Cohen does not report such experiences at Auschwitz and remarks
that the “reception ceremony” for his transport “passed without violence.”
However, he mentions a specially constructed wooden table used for
beating prisoners on the buttocks. This was a formerly regulated mode of punishment
of prisoners who committed various offenses in the camps; “intensified”
beating was defined as whacking on the naked buttocks.227
When an Auschwitz witness starts claiming regular gratuitous beating, he
may be telling the truth on some matters, but one must reject his general
credibility.
On the basis of the available evidence, the best assumption is that there
were 30 ovens available at Birkenau in the spring of 1943, and 46 a year later.
Before leaving the subject of the number of ovens, we should remark that
there are certain ambiguities in the documents relating to the crematories. The
most obvious is due to the fact that the WRB report does not seem to be the
only source that mistakenly numbers the Birkenau crematories I-IV rather
than II-V; the Germans sometimes did this themselves, or so it would appear
from, e.g., NO-4466.228
The limit on the rate at which people could have been exterminated in a
program of the type alleged is not determined by the rate at which people
could have been gassed and the gas chambers ventilated, but by the rate at
which the bodies could have been cremated. In estimating the capacity of the
crematories, it is possible for arithmetic to produce some impressive figures.
At that time an hour was a very optimistic time to allow for the reduction of
one body, and the body’s being wasted would not have made much difference.
229 If we allow for one hour of cleaning and miscellaneous operations per
day, one oven could reduce perhaps 23 bodies per day so 30 ovens could reduce
690 and 46 could reduce 1058 per day. This could accommodate exterminations
at the respectable rate of about 240,000 to 360,000 per year, but of
course one must bear in mind that, because the exterminations are supposed to
have been halted in the autumn of 1944, Auschwitz could not have had 46 ovens
for more than about one year of exterminations.
However, the logic leading to such figures as the preceding is rubbish;
things do not work that way. People, especially concentration camp inmates,
who manned the crematories, do not work with such efficiency, such equipment
cannot be used in such a continuous manner, and equipment needs do
not occur with such mathematical regularity in any case. If we allow opera-
226 DuBois, 221. NO-1245.
227 Cohen, 81, 125. See also Fyfe, 159, and Appendix D here.
228 NMT, vol. 5, 624-625. See also Blumental, 100.
229 Polson, 138, 143-145.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
168
tions to relax toward something more realistic, taking into account downtime
for regular and irregular maintenance and allowing for usual engineering margins
of excess capacity we have figures that are generally in line with anticipated
epidemic conditions. It is also possible that, as the WRB report asserts,
there was a backlog of buried bodies to dispose of.
It is obvious that, given a policy of cremating dead inmates, a vast operation
such as Auschwitz would naturally provide relatively elaborate cremation
facilities for the purpose. Thus we again have a fact for dual interpretation if
we are to believe the extermination legend; to the commonplace interpretation
of these ovens, unquestionably valid, it is proposed that we also accept as
valid a second interpretation of exterminations. Below we will examine specific
evidence that the number of ovens was completely compatible with the
rate of “normal” deaths.
That is not the last fact for dual interpretation that we are offered in connection
with the cremations. Höss tells us that “all of the people living in the
surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on” on account
of the “foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies.”
If I were to select just two points in the extermination tale to hold up as
near proof that the whole thing is a hoax, it would be this point and also the alleged
role of Zyklon.
The hydrogenation and other chemical industry that existed at Auschwitz
was notorious for creating stenches. Visit the northern part of the New Jersey
Turnpike by the Standard Oil (NJ) refineries, or any other refineries, to see (or
smell) this. The only significant difference Auschwitz presented, in terms of a
stench, is that the coal the Germans started from is by any relevant measure a
“dirtier” source than crude oil. If we are told that 30 to 46 bodies being reduced
in modern crematories could even compete with, much less overwhelm,
this stench of industrial origin then we know that what is involved here is not
a fact for dual interpretation but an obvious lie. Actually, on account of the furor
of phony objections raised by various fanatics in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, cremation had been developed so that it was a rather
“clean” process.230 Höss cannot be believed.
The analysis has revealed a previously unsuspected but nearly inevitable
attribute of the great hoax: the excess fact. Following the principle that his
story should involve mostly or almost entirely valid fact, the author of the
hoax easily slips into the error of including as much fact as possible and
commits the major blunder we have just seen; the story would obviously have
been much better off without that “fact.” Of course, it is only on account of
the passage of time that it has become a major blunder. At the time it was
completely effective on account of an hysterical emotional atmosphere that it
230 Polson, 138-139.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
169
is impossible to recapture. DuBois wrote in 1952:231
“On the stand Schneider had said that he never heard of any exterminations,
although he recalled going along the main road one day, past a
‘dormant crematorium.’ At that time this ‘dormant’ crematorium was
burning corpses at the rate of a thousand a day. The flames shot fifteen meters
into the air; the stink pervaded the countryside to the north for forty
miles until it joined the stink of the Warsaw crematorium; the fumes would
pucker the nose of anyone within half a mile, and Schneider – a scientist
with a specially acute sense of smell – had passed within a hundred yards
of the place.”
It does not seem possible that, toward the end of a book, which gives (outside
of technical literature) the best available description of the chemical industry
at Auschwitz, DuBois could write thus, but there it is. It is not explicable
in terms of normal errors of judgment; it is explicable only in terms of hysteria.
It would seem that somebody at the trial would have challenged Höss on
this point. There was a challenge, but it was weak and ambiguous. The following
exchange occurred near the end of Höss‘ testimony (Kaufman was counsel
for Kaltenbrunner):232
“THE PRESIDENT: The last sentence of Paragraph 7 is with reference
to the foul and nauseating stench. What is your question about that?
DR. KAUFMAN: Whether the population could gather from these
things that an extermination of Jews was taking place.
THE PRESIDENT: That really is too obvious a question, isn’t it? They
could not possibly know who it was being exterminated.
DR. KAUFMAN: That is enough for me. I have no further questions.”
It is possible that there was a language difficulty at the time of this exchange,
and that a misunderstanding existed, and that Kaufman really meant
“persons” rather than “Jews” in his question. In any case this episode suggests
the utterly irrational atmosphere that must have pervaded the IMT trial; Höss
was not caught in a clumsy and transparent lie. It is not possible for us to
grasp the spirit of these proceedings except to classify then as a form of hysteria.
Speer was there, and he could have seen through this lie easily. Was he
effectively asleep, resigned to the futility of opposition? Was he or his lawyer
merely being careful to avoid becoming entangled in the extermination question?
Only he can tell us; we do not know. All that is certain is that the spirit
of the trial was such that even a simple truth such as the true source of the
stench, exposing with great deftness that the witness was lying, and suggesting
the nature of the factual basis for the charges, could not emerge.
The stench was the basis for quite a bit of witness testimony to knowledge
231 DuBois, 340-341.
232 IMT, vol. 11, 421.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
170
of exterminations,233 and its use at one particular point of the Farben trial, to
be discussed in a later chapter, was not only rather amusing but also revealing
and illustrative of an important point to bear in mind when reading the records
of these trials. This is discussed later.
In his booklet, Christophersen considered the problem of the factual basis,
if any, for references to a pervasive stench at Auschwitz. The only thing he
could recall was a blacksmith establishment at Auschwitz I; when horses were
being shod the burning hoofs created a stench which could be perceived in the
immediate neighborhood. Christophersen recognized that this could not account
for a stench of the extent claimed in connection with the exterminations.
I communicated with Christophersen on this point, inquiring into the possibility
that Christophersen might have forgotten the stench of industrial origin,
in searching his memory for some stench that might have approximated
the stench of burning flesh. Christophersen recalled no stench of industrial
origin. I also communicated with Stäglich, who distinctly recalled only clean
and fresh air near Auschwitz.
The recollections of Christophersen and Stäglich are however consistent
with the theory that the stench of the hoax is none other than the stench associated
with the Farben plant. With reference to Fig. 5, the map of the Auschwitz
area, Christophersen was quartered at Raisko during his year at Auschwitz,
and had occasional business at Auschwitz I and Birkenau. Stäglich was
quartered in the town of Osiek, which is about 6 miles due south of the town
of Oswieçim, and mentions that he visited the “KZ-Lager Auschwitz” (presumably
meaning Auschwitz I) “three or four times.” We do not know exactly
where the Farben plants were, but we know that the camp called “Monowitz”
was either within or immediately next to the town of Monowitz, and that the
camp had been placed there so that it would be close to the Farben plants. In
consideration of the locations of the rail lines, rivers and roads in the area, it is
probable that the Farben plants were either immediately to the east or to the
west of the town Monowitz. If the former, they were four or five miles from
Auschwitz I and, thus, people at that camp, at Birkenau, and a fortiori at
Raisko and Osiek would never have smelled the chemical industry (which was
very modest in size compared to a typical American cracking plant). If the
Farben plants were immediately to the west of the town, it is possible that
people at Auschwitz I might have gotten a whiff now and then when peculiar
wind conditions prevailed, but that could not qualify as a pervasive stench.
Thus, close consideration of the point shows that Christophersen and Stäglich
should not have experienced the stench of industrial origin to any extent that
they would recall thirty years later. Moreover, the trial at which the pervasive
stench was a pervasive feature of witness testimony was the Farben trial, at
which most of the Auschwitz related defense witnesses and almost all of the
233 DuBois, 218, 230, 232.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
171
prosecution witnesses were people who either lived near or worked at the Farben
plant. Thus they did, indeed, experience a stench and testified correctly in
this respect, adding only an erroneous interpretation of the stench.
Back to the ‘Gas Chambers’
The final subject in paragraph 7 is the gas chambers that, except for Höss‘
early sealed up huts, are supposed to have been integrated into the crematory
buildings. Reitlinger and Hilberg take different approaches to making this
claim. Reitlinger interprets NO-4473, whose translation as it appears in the
NMT volume is presented above, as evidence for a gas chamber in Crematory
II. This is a result of mistranslation.
The crematories at Auschwitz are frequently referred to as “gas ovens” but
this is hardly informative since, with the exception of electric crematories
which enjoyed a brief existence during the Thirties, all modern crematories
consist of “gas ovens,” a fuel-air mixture, which may be considered a “gas,” is
introduced into the oven to start, control and finish the burning. The fuel used
may be “gas,” town gas or some sort of liquefied gas is popular. Such a crematory
is termed “gas-fired” on account of the use of gas as a fuel. Other
types are “oil-fired” and “coke- (or coal-)fired,” but all are “gas ovens” because
in all three cases it is a fuel-air mixture which is injected, under pressure,
into the oven.234
The customary German word for the concept in question here is Gaskammer,
but the word in NO-4473 which was translated “gas chamber” is Vergasungskeller,
which Reitlinger also mistranslates as “gassing cellar.”235 Now
the word Vergasung has two meanings. The primary meaning (and the only
one in a technical context) is gasification, carburetion or vaporization, i.e.,
turning something into a gas, not applying a gas to something. A Vergaser is a
carburetor and, while Vergasung always means gasification in a technical context,
it usually means, specifically, carburetion in such a context.
There is also a secondary meaning of Vergasung, established by military
usage in World War I: attacking an enemy with gas. Why the word Vergasung
was used in this sense is not clear; it may be because the gases used in that
war were really dusts and were generated by exploding some chemical into
the atmosphere: Vergasung.
The translation “gassing cellar” is thus not absolutely incorrect; it is just
over-hasty and presumptuous. A “gas oven” requires some sort of gasification
or carburetion. In the case of the gas-fired ovens of Utting and Rogers in
234 Polson, 137-146.
235 Reitlinger, 158-159.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
172
1932:236
“Burners set in the crown and sole of the furnace are fed by a mixture
of air and gas under pressure; the mixture is regulated by fans, housed in a
separate building. Separate control of both air and gas provides better
regulation of the furnace temperature.”
That building is just a big carburetor. Oil-fired crematories are so similar in
design that most gas-fired ovens can be easily adapted for use with oil.
The ovens at Birkenau seem to have been coke or coal-fired,237 and with
this type there is an extra stage of fuel processing due to the initially solid
state of the fuel. The two most common methods of producing fuel gases from
coal or coke are, first, by passing air through a bed of burning coke to produce
“coke oven gas” and second, by passing steam through the coke to produce
“water gas.”238 The first coke cremators employed what amounted to coke
oven gas.239 Processes for generating such gases are termed Vergasung in
German, as well as processes of mixing them with air. The coal-fired crematory
ovens that W. H. Lawrence saw at the Lublin camp after its capture by
the Russians employed equipment, including fans, very similar to that described
in the above quotation. Lawrence, incidentally, termed a “gas chamber”
what was obviously a steam bath.240
In any case it is obvious that the crematories at Auschwitz required equipment
for doing Vergasung in order to inject a fuel-air mixture into the ovens
and that the translation of NO-4473 should be revised, possibly to “gas generation
cellar.” I have confirmed this interpretation of the Vergasungskeller
with the technically competent sources in Germany. The reasons for installing
such equipment in special separate rooms or even buildings are most probably
the considerable noise that must be made by the fans and, in coal-fired ovens,
the heat of the burning coal.
The primary meaning of the word Vergasung is of necessity applicable to
document NO-4473. It is written in a technical context; it is a letter from the
chief of the Auschwitz construction management to the head of the SS engineering
group. It makes reference to a process, Vergasung, which is standard
with all crematories, and the wording of the letter is such that it is implied that
it would normally be peculiar to find bodies in the Vergasungskeller, because
bodies are normally stored in what is correctly translated as the “cellar used as
a mortuary.”
Document NO-4473 tends, in fact, like so many prosecution documents, to
rejection of the prosecution’s claims when it is properly understood. We see
that in Crematory II there were at least two cellars, a Leichenkeller and a Ver-
236 Polson, 142.
237 008-USSR; Central Commission, 89.
238 Johnson & Auth, 259-261.
239 Polson, 141.
240 New York Times (Aug. 30, 1944), 1.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
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gasungskeller, and that neither was a “gas chamber.”
Now NO-4473 is included in the NMT volumes in a selection of prosecution
evidence from Case 4 (trial of concentration camp administration). One
must assume that the prosecution has selected well. Yet this is as close as it
has gotten to offering the documentary evidence that “gas chambers” existed
in the crematory buildings at Birkenau. The three “gas tight Türme” (towers)
ordered from DAW in NO-4465241 are obviously irrelevant.
Hilberg takes a different and even less sound approach. He inexplicably
passes over NO-4473 without dealing with the problem it raises; he even
quotes from the document without quoting the phrase containing the word
“Vergasungskeller.” He simply declares that the Leichenkeller in Crematories
II and III and the Badeanstalten in Crematories IV and V were, in reality, gas
chambers. Absolutely no evidence is offered for this; the documents cited by
Hilberg at this point do not speak of gas chambers.242 The only “evidence” for
interpreting the Leichenkeller and Badeanstalten in this manner is in the affidavits
and testimony (June 27 and 28, 1947) in Case 4 of witness (not a defendant)
Wolfgang Grosch, an engineer and Waffen-SS major, who “baptized”
these as “gas chambers,” the existence of Zyklon at Auschwitz being
obvious justification for such baptisms.243 However, Grosch was a very unsteady
witness since in affidavits of February 20 and March 5, 1947, he
claimed knowledge of the existence of gas chambers, and then on June 26,
1947, the day before he was to testify, he retracted all these statements during
interrogation and denied any knowledge of gas chambers.244 None of Grosch’s
testimony is reproduced in the NMT volumes, and Hilberg does not cite his
testimony or affidavits.
There is no reason to accept, and every reason to reject, the claims regarding
the Leichenkeller and Badeanstalten. As for the Badeanstalten, we have
observed that a shower for incoming inmates was standard procedure at all
German camps, so there must have been showers at Birkenau. Now, according
to Fig. 29, the “baths” or Badeanstalten associated with Crematories IV and V
are near “filtration plants” and also near “Canada,” where the clothes of incoming
inmates was stored.245 The “steam bath” was no doubt for disinfecting
clothes, either prior to storage or after being temporarily taken away from inmates.
246 If it was a sauna for incoming inmates, the inmates would need a
241 NMT, vol. 5, 622-623.
242 Hilberg, 566.
243 Grosch’s testimony is supposed to be in the Case 4 transcript, 3565-3592, but these pages
were missing in the transcript copy I consulted. Presumably he testified in agreement with
his affidavit NO-2154.
244 NO-2154 quoted in Rassinier (1962), 84ff, and also in Poliakov & Wulf (1955), 136.
Grosch’s precourt wavering is reported in the Ortmann memorandum attached to NO-4406.
245 Central Commission, 41, 43; Naumann, 194, 254; German edition of Naumann, 540.
246 IMT, vol. 6, 211.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
174
cold shower afterwards in any case. The people remove their clothing near
“Canada” and then shower. What could be simpler?
No reasonable considerations can make these gas chambers materialize.
The claim that the shower baths, which are said to have been housed in the
same buildings as some of the crematory ovens, were really gas chambers is
just as unfounded as was the identical claim concerning the Dachau shower
bath, which existed in the crematory building at that camp.
There is, incidentally, a small amount of doubt whether the shower baths
were, indeed, in the same buildings as Crematories IV and V, because the
camp plan given in the WRB report has the baths in a separate building. However,
the point is of no importance.
This completes the analysis of the points raised in paragraph 7 of the Höss
affidavit.
Why in English?
Final paragraph
This is a minor point. It seems strange that the Höss affidavit is in English.
We are not aware of any evidence that Höss knew the English language but, in
common with many Germans, he might have known something about it.
However, a prudent German, signing a document of this importance “voluntarily
and without compulsion,” would not be satisfied with an ordinary foreign
language ability; he would either have considered himself expert at English
or he would have insisted upon a German translation to sign (a request
that would necessarily have been honored). Höss was evidently not in a spirit
to insist on anything.
There is no doubt that Höss hoped to buy his life by cooperating with the
IMT prosecution, and it is most probable that a specific offer was made in this
connection. However, Höss’ reward for his services was to be packed off to
Poland about a month after his IMT testimony. In Poland he dutifully wrote
out an “autobiography” for his captors, wherein he explained that he was just
following orders in the exterminations. His reward on this occasion was final;
he was “tried” and killed in April 1947. The “autobiography” was published in
Polish translation in 1951 and in German and English in 1959.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
175
The Role of Birkenau
Birkenau, of course, performed the normal functions of a German concentration
camp; it quartered inmates for the principal or ultimate aim of exploiting
their labor. Thus when we refer to the “role” of Birkenau, we are referring
to a theory that Birkenau was the site of certain very special functions that
bear particularly strongly on the matters we have been considering.
The theory, which I consider beyond dispute, is simply that Birkenau was
designated to accommodate all persons who were in the non-worker category
but were, for whatever reason, the responsibility of the Auschwitz SS administration.
Thus Birkenau was designated to receive the permanently or semipermanently
ill, the dying, the dead, the underage, the overage, those temporarily
unassigned to employment, and those for whom Auschwitz served as a
transit camp. These categories could have been received either from other
camps (including the many small camps in the Kattowitz region) or from other
camps or from incoming transports. This theory is based on the following considerations.
First, as has been noted, Birkenau was clearly the “principal” camp in
terms of inmate accommodating functions. Auschwitz I was the “main” camp
in an administrative sense but it was a converted and expanded military barracks
while Birkenau had been designed from the beginning as a much larger
camp intended for the specific needs of the SS operations in the area.
Second, it has been noted that people discharged from the Monowitz hospital
as unfit for work were sent to Birkenau.
Third, family camps existed at Birkenau (the “gypsy” and “Theresienstadt”
camps in Fig. 29). It has been seen that these people had been designated as
being “in readiness for transport” during their stays of pre-specified limited
duration, so that the obvious interpretation of these family camps is that they
were transit camps, comparable to those that existed at Belsen and Westerbork.
The destination of transport has been suggested and will be discussed
further in a later chapter.
Fourth, it was only at Birkenau that unusually extensive facilities for disposal
of the dead via cremation were constructed.
Fifth, it was quite normal for a very high proportion of Birkenau inmates to
be unemployed. In the two years summer 1942 to summer 1944, as Reitlinger
remarks, “only a fraction of the starved and ailing Birkenau population had
been employed at all.” On April 5, 1944, 15,000 of the 36,000 Birkenau inmates
were considered “unable to work,” while only about 3,000 of the 31,000
other prisoners of the Auschwitz area were considered in this category. A
month later, two-thirds of the 18,000 inmates of the Birkenau male camp were
classed as “immobile,” “unemployable” and “unassigned” and were quartered
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
176
in sick and quarantine blocks.247
This makes it impossible, of course, to accept the assumption, so often expressed,
that to be sick and unemployable and to be sent to Birkenau meant
execution. This has been expressed in particular in connection with sick people
being sent from Monowitz to Birkenau, the assumption being reinforced
by the fact that such inmates’ clothing came back to Monowitz. The return of
the clothing, of course, was due to their being transferred from the Farben to
the SS budget.248
Sixth and last, there was an unusually high death rate at Birkenau, although
there are some difficulties in estimating the numbers except at particular
times. The first major relevant event is the typhus epidemic of the summer of
1942, which resulted in the closing of the Buna factory for two months starting
around August 1. The major evidence of this is the WRB report,249 but
there is confirming evidence. First, there certainly were typhus epidemics at
Auschwitz.250 Second, the data presented by the Dutch Red Cross (Appendix
C) shows that the average death rate at the Birkenau men’s camp from July 16
to August 19, 1942, was about 186 per day, with the rates toward the end of
the period noticeably higher than those toward the beginning. Third, there exists
in Amsterdam a single volume of the Birkenau death book (also discussed
in the Netherlands Red Cross Report). This volume contains death certificates
for the five days September 28 to October 2, 1942. The number of deaths is
1,500, and the causes of death that are given are those typical of typhus epidemic
conditions, although Reitlinger seems to consider such recorded causes
as “weakness of the heart muscles” and others as “invented […] fanciful diagnoses
of internee doctors, who were trying to save their patients from the
‘transport list’ or the phenol syringe.”251 In fact, such causes of death are typical
with typhus; under the “Typhus Fever” listing in the Encyclopedia Britannica
(eleventh edition) we read:
“Typhus fever may, however, prove fatal during any stage of its progress
and in the early convalescence, either from sudden failure of the
heart’s action – a condition which is especially apt to arise – from the supervention
of some nervous symptoms, such as meningitis or of deepening
coma, or from some other complication, such as bronchitis. Further, a fatal
result sometimes takes place before the crisis from sheer exhaustion,
particularly in the case of those whose physical or nervous energies have
been lowered by hard work, inadequate nourishment and sleep, or intemperance.”
247 Reitlinger, 125; NO-021 in NMT, vol. 5, 385. See also Fyfe, 729, or Appendix D herein.
248 DuBois, 192, 220.
249 US-WRB (1944), pt. 1, 30, 32; Reitlinger, 122.
250 DuBois, 209.
251 Reitlinger, 122-123. The death book is at the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, and
is discussed by the Netherlands Red Cross, vol. 1, 8-12.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
177
On account of the policy of sending sick people to Birkenau it appears that
the victims of the typhus epidemic got recorded as Birkenau deaths, regardless
of where they had been working. The WRB report claims that there were fifteen
to twenty thousand deaths at Auschwitz during the two or three months of
the epidemic.252 Despite the unreliability of the source the claim seems consistent,
at least in order of magnitude, with such other information as we have
concerning this period at Auschwitz (although there is probably at least some
exaggeration). It is also the case, as we shall see below, that the summer of
1942 was by far the worst at Auschwitz.
Incidentally, the “phenol syringe” which Reitlinger mentions comes up in
so many places in the literature that it appears to have been real; mortally ill
concentration camp inmates were sometimes killed by phenol injections into
the heart.253
The fact of a very high death rate at Auschwitz during the summer of 1942
is, of course, at best only indirectly material to an “extermination” problem
because these were recorded deaths from normal reasons, not exterminations
carried out in attempted secrecy. They also have nothing to do with Jews as
such, although some of the victims were Jews.
Reitlinger considers the high death rate at Auschwitz and offers an estimate
of 160 to 179 deaths per day as a normal rate. However, the data he employs
is essentially that which applies to the summer of 1942, which was a particularly
catastrophic period. In the connection with these high death rates we
should observe the fact that the extermination mythologists Reitlinger and
Hilberg make much over such happenings at Auschwitz, although they recognize
the distinction between high death rates and exterminations. It is therefore
remarkable, indeed almost incredible, that they do not consider the possibility
that the crematories existed on account of these high death rates. On the
contrary, they both treat the crematories as having been provided primarily to
serve in the extermination program.
In establishments that were supposed to be providing desperately needed
labor these high death rates were naturally intolerable, so in late 1942 a special
campaign got under way to reduce the concentration camp death rate and
on December 28, 1942, Himmler, ordered that the rate “be reduced at all
costs.”254 On January 20, 1943, Glücks, in a circular letter to all concentration
camp commanders, ordered that “every means must be used to lower the death
rate.” On March 15, 1943, Pohl wrote Himmler, that:255
“[…] the state of health […] of the prisoners sent in by the administration
of Justice is catastrophic. In all camps a loss of between at least 25-30
252 US-WRB (1944), pt. 1, 32.
253 E.g. Burney, 108-109.
254 Reitlinger, 127; 2172-PS.
255 NO-1523 and NO-1285 in NMT, vol. 5, 372-376.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
178
per cent is to be reckoned with […] till now there were 10,191 prisoners
[…] of which 7,587 were assigned to […] Mauthausen-Gusen. From these
the deaths totaled 3,853; 3,306 of them died in Mauthausen-Gusen. The
reason […] must presumably be, that the many prisoners […] who have
been in prisons for years are suffering from physical debility owing to the
transfer to a different milieu […] a great number of tuberculosis patients
were also delivered.”
On April 10 Pohl requested Himmler’s approval of the draft of a letter to
the Reich Minister of Justice. The letter, approved and presumably sent, points
out that of 12,658 prisoners transferred to concentration camps, 5,935 had
died by April 1. Pohl complained in the letter that these:
“[…] shockingly high mortality figures are due to the fact that the prisons
transferring them have literally released inmates who were in the
worst possible physical condition [and] that in spite of all medical efforts
the […] death of the prisoners cannot be retarded. […] I do not wish to
support a quarantine station in the concentration camps […]”
What seems involved here is inter-departmental rivalry or, at least, conflict
of interest. The prisons of Germany no doubt had their own economicproductive
aspects and were not only reluctant to part with their more healthy
prisoners but also eager to part with the more sickly ones.
We do not know whether or not Pohl managed to get more cooperation
from the prison system. However, on September 30, 1943, he was able to report
progress, due mainly to hygienic, nutritional, and procedural measures; he
presented the Reichsführer-SS the following two tables with a promise that,
allowing for the onset of the cold weather, the results achieved would be of a
permanent nature.256
Thus after more than a half year of a campaign to reduce the death rate in
the camps, Auschwitz still had about 80 per day on the average. Because, as
had been seen, almost all the “unable to work” were at Birkenau, it is certain
that almost all of these deaths occurred there.
Auschwitz also seems to have received some rather bad selections of in-
256 1469-PS in NMT, vol. 5, 379-382.
Table 6: Death cases in the concentration camps, July 1942 to June 1943
MONTH INMATES DEATHS PERCENT MONTH INMATES DEATHS PERCENT
July 98,000 8,329 8.50 Jan 123,000 9,839 8.00
Aug. 115,000 12,217 10.62 Feb. 143,000 11,650 8.14
Sept. 110,000 11,206 10.19 March 154,200 12,112 7.85
Oct. 85,800 8,856 10.32 April 171,000 8,358 4.71
Nov. 83,500 8,095 9.69 May 203,000 5,700 2.80
Dec. 88,000 8,800 10.00 June 199,500 5,650 2.83
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
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mates from other concentration camps.257
The Netherlands Red Cross report on Auschwitz (vol. 2) also offers some
data on the death rates at Auschwitz for 1942-1943. For the period October
30, 1942, to February 25, 1943, the death rate is specified as about 360 per
week on the average, and about 185 per week for the period February 26 to
July 1, 1943. It is also said that a total of 124 of the Dutch Jews who entered
Birkenau in July-August 1942 (mentioned above) died in the period October
30, 1942, to July 1, 1943. However, their figures for total deaths seem somewhat
low and difficult to reconcile with the data presented above, so there
may be some error or misunderstanding here.
It is perfectly obvious that these deaths, however deplorable and whatever
the nature and location of the responsibility, had nothing to do with extermination
or with Jews as such. From the point of view of the higher SS administra-
257 NO-1935 in NMT, vol. 5, 366-367.
Table 7: Death cases in the concentration camps for the month of
August 1943
CONCENTRATION CAMP INMATES DEATHS PERCENT
AUGUST JULY CHANGE
Dachau 17,300 40 0.23 0.32 -0.09
Sachsenhausen 26,500 194 0.73 0.78 -0.05
Buchenwald 17,600 118 0.67 1.22 -0.55
Mauthausen-Gusen 21,100 290 1.37 1.61 -0.24
Flossenbürg 4,800 155 3.23 3.27 -0.04
Neuengamme 9,800 150 1.53 2.14 -0.61
Auschwitz (men) 48,000 1,442 3.00 2.96 +0.04
Auschwitz (women) 26,000 938 3.61 5.15 -1.54
Gross-Rosen 5,000 76 1.52 2.69 -1.17
Natzweiler 2,200 41 1.87 1.63 +0.24
Bergen-Belsen 3,300 4 0.12 0.39 -0.27
Stutthof (men) 3,800 131 3.45 5.69 -2.24
Stutthof (women) 500 1 0.20 0.00 +0.20
Lublin (men) 11,500 882 7.67 4.62 +3.05
Lublin (women) 3,900 172 4.41 2.01 +2.40
Ravensbrück (men) 3,100 26 0.84 0.76 +0.08
Ravensbrück (women) 14,100 38 0.27 0.24 +0.03
Riga Herzogenbusch 3,000 1 0.03 0.33 -0.30
Total 224,000 4,669
Overall average for August 1943: 2.09
Overall average for July 1943: 2.23
Decrease: -0.14
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
180
tion, they were “catastrophic” and efforts were made to bring them under control.
It is not at all remarkable that with such death rates, cremation and mortuary
facilities anticipating worst period death rates of even hundreds per day
existed at Auschwitz.
The Auschwitz death rate improved but slightly during the course of the
war. During 1944, when the inmate population of the camp had expanded to
100,000 or more (probably on account of territorial losses in the east which
forced evacuations of labor camps), the death rate was 350 to 500 per week at
Birkenau (which as we have seen, accounted for almost the entire Auschwitz
death rate).258
It is a tragic fact that, even in modern times, “camps” established during
wartime have amounted to death traps for many sent to them. The basic causes
for such conditions have been similar: people thrown together chaotically in
hastily organized camps, with inadequate sanitary measures and an uncertain
situation as regards food and other supplies. Thus during the American Civil
War, the POW camps in the North such as Rock Island and Camp Douglas
experienced death rates of 2%-4% per month. These figures were even exceeded
in camps in the south such as Florence, where diarrhea and scurvy
caused 20 to 50 deaths per day, in a prisoner population of about 12,000. Conditions
at Andersonville were even worse, and 13,000 of the 50,000 Union
POWs who were interned there perished.259 During the 1899-1902 Boer War
in South Africa about 120,000 non-combatant white Boers and 75,000 black
Africans were placed in British concentration camps. For about a year, the
Boer mortality rate ranged from 120 to 340 deaths per thousand per year
(1.1% to 3.4% per month) while the Boer infant mortality rate, due chiefly to
epidemics of measles, was as high as 600 per thousand per year (7.35% per
month). About 20,000 Boer women and children died in these camps.260 During
World War I the Germans mixed Russian POWs with those of other nationalities,
resulting in typhus epidemics in their POW camps; conditions were
strikingly similar to those experienced in the World War II concentration
camps.261 We have seen that Russians were used as labor at the concentration
camps, especially at Auschwitz, so they were no doubt one of the principal
sources of typhus. Because they were not considered regular concentration
camp inmates, it is not clear whether or not they were included in the camp
death figures which were reviewed above. However, it is certain that they contributed
to the overall death rates at the camps, and that their bodies were disposed
of in the same crematories, but numbers are not available.
A ridiculous feature of all this, as it strikes the student of the subject, ap-
258 Fyfe, 729, or Appendix D herein. Case 6 transcript, 14326.
259 Hesseltine, 152, 156, 192, 203; Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 1, 960.
260 Amery, vol. 5, 252, 253, 601; vol. 6, 24, 25.
261 Encyclopedia Britannica, 12th ed., vol. 32 (third volume supplementing 11th ed.), 157.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
181
pears in NMT volume 5, which summarizes Case 4, “US vs. Pohl. In section
B, “The Concentration Camp System,” we are presented with documents
which show that the camps experienced remarkably high death rates. These
have just been summarized above. Then in section E, “The Extermination
Program,” we are presented with documents showing that the Germans were
building crematories at these camps at the time of the high death rates. Apparently
it is believed that nobody would actually read one of these volumes, or
maybe the compilers of the volumes did not read them!
Taking into account the different death rates, we can see that the number of
ovens at Auschwitz was completely comparable to those which existed at
camps where there were no exterminations. In 1942 crematories were constructed
at Dachau and at Sachsenhausen; each contained four ovens. At Dachau,
a crematory consisting of two ovens had existed prior to 1942, and the
older crematory continued to be used after 1942. It is most likely that the same
situation with respect to an earlier crematory held at Sachsenhausen. At Buchenwald,
the pre-war cremation facilities were those which existed in the
nearby towns of Weimar and Jena. After the war started, crematories were
constructed at the camp, and by the end of 1941 Buchenwald had a six-oven
crematory. It appears that the Weimar crematory continued to be used until the
end of the war.262 It is also possible that concentration camp crematories,
whether at Auschwitz, Dachau or elsewhere, were used to dispose of the bodies
of people who had nothing to do with the camps (e.g. Russian POWs).
This, then, is our view of the “death camp” aspect of the Nazi concentration
camps. It is a view which does not harmonize with those of Christophersen
and of Stäglich, who saw no high death rates and are not convinced
that there existed extensive cremation facilities at Auschwitz. Our view is
based on the relevant prosecution documents and comparable material, and
their views are based on their observations at Auschwitz in 1944. It may seem
that their observations are more to be trusted than the documentary material,
but I believe that a careful consideration of the matter resolves the point in favor
of our theory, while not denying their observations.
It is true that there exists a possibility of forged documents; indeed, it is
more than a possibility. We shall see that there was considerable forgery of
documents of Nuremberg. However, it does not appear that the documents
dealing with deaths in the camps and with the constructions of crematories
were forged, for the simple reason that there is absolutely nothing about extermination
in them, as the reader can verify by consulting the “selections” of
documents in NMT volume 5. They speak of a very high death rate, at certain
times, in penal institutions (concentration camps), which a relatively small
262 Komitee der Antifaschistischen, 86; M.J. Smith, 95; NO-3863 and NO-3860 in NMT, vol.
5, 613-616; Internationales Buchenwald-Komitee, 206-207 and Fig. 55; Musiol, Figs. 88-
91.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
182
country, fighting against overwhelming odds for its existence, was attempting
to exploit for labor. That high death rates might have been one consequence is
perfectly plausible.
While the documents we have reviewed say nothing of extermination, they
are nevertheless somewhat unsatisfactory in the sense that one does not get a
full picture from them in regard to the causes of the death rates and the specific
victims involved. The unhealthy prisoners contributed by the Ministry of
Justice do not explain everything. The picture must be guessed and inferred,
so here we will offer our impressions.
German concentration camps during the Thirties had only punitive and security
functions, and no economic function. After the war with Russia got
started, the camps underwent rapid expansion and also assumed their economic
roles. Thus in 1942 there were three things happening in the camps (a)
the rapid expansion was accompanied by the general chaos, unanticipated
problems and organizational difficulties which are common when large new
enterprises are put into operation; this is particularly true of Auschwitz, which
was a new camp in the process of rapidly expanding into the largest of all
camps; (b) the continued German victories and advances in Russia resulted in
hordes of Russian POWs, some of whom were absorbed by the camps; (c) unhealthy
prisoners were contributed by the Ministry of Justice. There were
probably other problems but these three factors seem to me sufficient to explain
a high death rate in late 1942 – early 1943.
By late 1943 the death rate, while still deplorably high, was relatively under
control as compared to the previous year, and remained under control until
the collapse at the end of the war. The statement of the Birkenau camp commander
(Appendix D) indicates that at Auschwitz, by 1944, the deaths occurred
primarily among ordinary criminals who had been transferred out of
prisons. I have seen no documents, comparable to those we have reviewed,
which deal with high death rates for late 1943 or any later period.
Now we are in a position to consider the observations of Christophersen
and of Stäglich, which included neither crematories nor a high death rate at
Auschwitz. Very simple considerations support their observations. First,
deaths are naturally not things that the Auschwitz camp administration would
have advertised; both the deaths and the associated cremations would naturally
have been concealed to the extent that such concealment was possible.
Thus in mid-1943 Pohl complained to concentration camp commanders that,
too commonly, crematory buildings were situated in excessively public locations
where “all kinds of people” could “gaze” at them. In response to Pohl’s
complaint, Höss had a belt of trees planted around Crematories II and III.
Moreover, it was the policy to carry corpses to the crematory only in the evening.
263 That Christophersen and Stäglich, who had only slight contacts with
263 Documents NO-1242 and NO-4463, cited by Hilberg, 566; Fyfe, 731 or Appendix D herein.
Chapter 4: Auschwitz
183
Birkenau, were unaware of the existence of a high death rate or of large crematories,
is perfectly understandable.
The role that Birkenau plays in the hoax is very simple. Like any large industrial
operation Auschwitz was organized in a systematic manner thought to
be of the greatest efficiency. The unemployed were quartered at Birkenau.
Thus the transit camps, to be discussed again in a later chapter, were at Birkenau.
This explains the existence of the gypsy and Jewish camps there. Also,
the sick and the very sick and the dying and, perhaps, the dead were sent to
Birkenau and such concentration of the ill naturally meant that Birkenau was a
“death camp,” complete with mortuary and cremation facilities, if one chooses
to describe things thus. Indeed, of the order of one-half of all of the deaths in
the entire German concentration camp system for 1942-1944 occurred at
Birkenau. While the whole thing looks quite foolish when examined closely,
as we have done in these chapters, the propaganda inventors obviously made a
very rational choice in deciding to claim Birkenau as an extermination camp.
The death rate in the concentration camp system was very high; it was near its
highest at Auschwitz, which was the largest German concentration camp, and
the Auschwitz deaths were concentrated at Birkenau.
Summary for Auschwitz
In the introduction to this chapter it was promised that the Auschwitz extermination
legend would be shown to possess the basic trademark of the great
hoax: the need for a dual interpretation of facts. This is true in every significant
respect conceivable:
1. Zyklon was employed for disinfection and also allegedly for exterminations.
2. The “selections” were necessary by the nature of the operations at
Auschwitz and also allegedly for exterminations.
3. It would not have been inaccurate (although perhaps somewhat misleading)
to call Birkenau a “death camp,” especially at certain times (and especially
when the Baruch Committee was in existence and immediately thereafter);
it was also allegedly an “extermination camp.”
4. Disrobing – showering procedures were followed for delousing and also
allegedly for exterminations.
5. Conventional crematories existed for accommodating both the death
camp role and alleged extermination camp role of Birkenau.
6. Some Leichenkeller were mortuaries while it is alleged that others were,
in reality, “gas chambers.” The two types of Leichenkeller were in proximate
locations at Birkenau.
7. Some Badeanstalten were bath establishments while it is alleged that
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
184
others were, in reality, “gas chambers.” The two types of Badeanstalten were
in proximate locations at Birkenau.
8. The stench that the people of the area experienced was due not only to
the hydrogenation and other chemical processes at Auschwitz but also allegedly
to the cremations.
Actually in view of the points made in the analysis it is only charity to say
that there are proposed dual interpretation of fact in connection with these
eight points. The proposed interpretations of extermination are obvious lies
and the last, concerning the stench, is the “excess fact”; the authors of the
hoax should never have used the fact of the stench in their story.
The facts in contradiction to the claims, the inconsistencies and the implausibilities
have been reviewed. Himmler gives his orders directly to Höss, but
leaves the means to the ingenuity of Höss. The interview emphatically took
place in the summer of 1941; on the other hand it must have taken place in the
summer of 1942, so Höss started improvising half a year after the plans for the
four crematories which were used in the exterminations were formulated. The
crematories were not left to the ingenuity of Höss. Or something. Jewish families
with children reside for months at Birkenau, their quarters having been
previously disinfected with the same chemical product they are supposed to
have been killed with on entering, but they will be killed with it later. Or
something.
The analysis of Auschwitz is not complete. Although it may seem that the
promised “crushing blow” has been delivered, the material of this chapter was
not what was being referred to when that expression was used in the introduction
to the chapter. Our analysis has, thus far, focused on happenings at
Auschwitz and has not considered the fate of any specific nationality group of
Jews at Auschwitz. For the sake of thoroughness this must be done, and we
can think of no better case for emphasis than that which the bearers of the legend
have selected themselves: the Hungarian Jews, whose fate or whatever it
should be called will be examined in the next chapter, with special regard for
the Auschwitz claims.
185
Chapter 5:
The Hungarian Jews
The International Red Cross
Because the Germans and their allies allowed the Red Cross, both the International
Committee (ICRC) and the various national societies, a not negligible
liberty to operate in Axis-controlled Europe, it developed that the ICRC
was able to report a great deal concerning the European Jews. The reports of
such a neutrally-situated organization are naturally of great importance in
connection with our problem.
We say “neutrally situated” rather than “neutral” because there is no such
thing as strict political neutrality; every organization is subject to political
pressures. It is a question of degree.
Two ICRC publications are of major interest to us. The first is Documents
sur l’activité du CICR en faveur des civils détenus dans les camps de concentration
en Allemagne (1939-1945), Geneva, 1947. This is a collection of
document reprints, the documents being correspondence between the ICRC
and various governments and Red Cross societies, and also reports of ICRC
delegates to the ICRC itself. Commentary sufficient only to interpret the
documents is provided by the Red Cross. The publication is invaluable and
had been cited several times in this book. Another 1947 publication was Inter
Arma Caritas, but this was primarily a public relations effort.
The second important publication is the three volume Report of the International
Committee of the Red Cross on its Activities During the Second
World War, Geneva, 1948. This has the form of a historical report; quotations
from documents appear only occasionally. Below is reproduced in full an excerpt
from volume 1, namely pages 641-657. I believe that some political
pressures are evident in the excerpt of the Report, but it will not be necessary
for the reader to share my notions regarding the specific manifestations of
these pressures in the excerpt in order to accept the major conclusion that I
draw from the excerpt. However some obvious urgent questions will arise during
the first reading and all that can be said here is that two points should be
kept in mind.
First, this Report was published in 1948, at a time when the authors could
not have failed, especially in view of the politically sensitive nature of the
subject matter, to be thoroughly familiar with the Allied claims, exhaustively
aired at the war crimes trials and in the press, regarding the fate of the EuroArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
186
pean Jews. We expect no careless remarks here. Second, we are not consulting
the ICRC as a general sort of authority. That is to say, we are interested only
in the reports that fall within the ICRC area of competence. It had delegations
in various European countries that were heavily involved in Jewish affairs and
what we want to know is what, insofar as the ICRC was able to observe, happened
to these Jews. Our emphasis, in fact, is on the Jews of Slovakia (Eastern
Czechoslovakia), Croatia (Northern Yugoslavia) and Hungary. In a way our
interest is even more narrow; we are interested in Hungary but the other two
lands are contiguous and, to the extent that the Germans controlled things,
there was no reason for major differences in Jewish policy.
From a numerical point of view, it might seem that Poland should be selected
as the key country in the problem. However the fact remains that Hungary
is the key because the creators of the legend chose to emphasize Hungary
and not Poland in offering evidence for their claims. They offer no evidence
for exterminations of Polish Jews, apart from witness testimony and the general
extermination camp claims which the analysis has already demolished. By
a happy circumstance, it is possible to consult the reports of the ICRC to learn
what happened in Hungary, but this is not the case with Poland. The reason
for this is that the Germans did not permit the ICRC to involve itself in Jewish
affairs in countries in which they considered themselves sovereign. However
the allies of Germany that were considered independent states admitted the
ICRC into Jewish affairs. Thus develops the central importance of Hungary in
the examination of the legend.
There is a second respect in which the Report excerpt is of the greatest importance
in our study, but this point is more effectively made in a following
chapter.
The Report excerpt is reproduced in full here because it is written in such a
way that it is difficult to cite on specific points without risking the possibility
of being accused of distorting meaning. This will be more clear after the reading:
“VI. Special Categories of Civilians
(A). JEWS
Under National Socialism the Jews had become in truth outcasts, condemned
by rigid racial legislation to suffer tyranny, persecution and systematic
extermination. No kind of protection shielded them; being neither
PW nor civilian internees, they formed a separate category, without the
benefit of any Convention. The supervision which the ICRC was empowered
to exercise in favour of prisoners and internees did not apply to them.
In most cases, they were, in fact, nationals of the State which held them in
its power and which, secure in its supreme authority, allowed no intervention
in their behalf. These unfortunate citizens shared the same fate as political
deportees, were deprived of civil rights, were given less favoured
treatment than enemy nationals, who at least had the benefit of a statute.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
187
They were penned into concentration camps and ghettos, recruited for
forced labour, subjected to grave brutalities and sent to death camps,
without anyone being allowed to intervene in those matters which Germany
and her allies considered to be exclusively within the bounds of their
home policy.
It should be recalled, however, that in Italy the measures taken against
the Jews were incomparably less harsh, and that in the countries under the
direct influence of Germany, their situation was usually less tragic than in
Germany itself.
The Committee could not dissociate themselves from these victims, on
whose behalf it received the most insistent appeals, but for whom the
means of action seemed especially limited, since in the absence of any basis
in law, its activities depended to a very great extent upon the good will
of the belligerent States.
The Committee had in fact, through the intermediary of the German
Red Cross, asked for information concerning civilian deportees ‘without
distinction of race or religion,’ which was plainly refused in the following
terms: ‘The responsible authorities decline to give any information concerning
non-Aryan deportees.’ Thus, enquiries as a matter of principle
concerning the Jews led to no result, and continual protests would have
been resented by the authorities concerned and might have been detrimental
both to the Jews themselves and to the whole field of he Committee’s
activities. In consequence, the Committee, while avoiding useless protest,
did its utmost to help the Jews by practical means, and its delegates
abroad were instructed on these lines. This policy was proved by the results
obtained.
Germany. – Even when the German Wehrmacht was winning, the
Committee’s activities in behalf of the Jews met with almost insupportable
difficulties. Towards the end of 1943, however, the German authorities allowed
the Committee to send relief parcels to detainees in concentration
camps, many of them Jews, whose names and addresses might be known to
it. The Committee was able to collect a few dozen names, and by these
slender means the system of individual and then collective relief for political
detainees was started, an account of which is given elsewhere in this
Report. Each receipt returned bore several names, and these were added to
the list of addresses: thus the receipts often gave the first news of missing
persons. By the end of the war, the Committee’s card index for political detainees
(Jewish and non-Jewish) contained over 105,000 names.
During the last year of the War, the Committee’s delegates were able to
visit the camp of Theresienstadt (Terezin), which was exclusively used for
Jews, and was governed by special conditions. From information gathered
by the Committee, this camp had been started as an experiment by certain
leaders of the Reich, who were apparently less hostile to the Jews than
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
188
those responsible for the racial policy of the German government. These
men wished to give to Jews the means of setting up a communal life in a
town under their own administration and possessing almost complete
autonomy. On several occasions, the Committee’s delegates were granted
authority to visit Theresienstadt, but owing to difficulties raised by the local
authorities, the first visit only took place in June 1944. The Jewish
elder in charge informed the delegate, in the presence of a representative
of the German authorities, that thirty-five thousand Jews resided in the
town and that living conditions were bearable. In view of the doubt expressed
by the heads of various Jewish organizations as to the accuracy of
this statement, the Committee requested the German government to allow
its delegates to make a second visit. After laborious negotiations, much delayed
on the German side, two delegates were able to visit the camp on
April 6, 1945. They confirmed the favourable impression gained on the
first visit, but ascertained that the camp strength now amounted only to
20,000 internees, including 1,100 Hungarians, 11,050 Slovaks, 800 Dutch,
290 Danes, 8000 Germans, 8000 Czechs and 760 stateless persons. They
were therefore anxious to know if Theresienstadt was being used as a transit
camp and asked when the last departures for the East had taken place.
The head of the Security Police of the Protectorate stated that the last
transfers to Auschwitz had occurred six months previously, and had comprised
10,000 Jews, to be employed on camp administration and enlargement.
This high official assured the delegates that no Jews would be deported
from Theresienstadt in future.
Whereas other camps exclusively reserved for Jews were not open to
inspections for humanitarian purposes until the end, the Committee’s activities
were at least effective in several concentration camps containing a
minority proportion of Jews. During the final months, the Committee, in
urgent circumstances, took on a task of the greatest importance by visiting
and giving aid to these internees, providing food, preventing last-minute
evacuations as well as summary executions, and even taking charge during
the critical hours, sometimes days, which passed between the retreat of the
German forces and the arrival of the Allies from the West or the East.
A more detailed account of these various activities is given in the chapters
on Political Detainees in this volume and in Vol. III, as well as in special
publication entitled Documents sur l’activité du CICR en faveur des
civils détenus dans les camps de concentration en Allemagne, 1939-1945.
Less is known of the part played by the Committee in countries whose
governments were subject, in varying degrees, to German influence and
where special laws concerning Jews had been enacted, similar to those
under German legislation.
Through its delegates, particularly in Budapest, Bucharest, Bratislava,
Zagreb and Belgrade, the Committee was able to make the best possible
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
189
use of its moral authority and the well disposed attitude shown to it by a
few non-German authorities, who had more or less freedom of action, but
who were not so relentlessly bent on carrying out a racial policy as the
German government. In its capacity as a neutral intermediary, the Committee
was in a position to transfer and distribute in the form of relief supplies
over twenty million Swiss francs collected by Jewish welfare organizations
throughout the world, in particular by the American Joint Distribution
Committee of New York. Without the help of the ICRC, this concerted
effort made by a whole community would have doubtless been vain, as no
Jewish organization was allowed to act in countries under German control.
A detailed account of this important relief scheme will be found in
Vol. III.
The efforts of the Committee were not limited to the activities described
above; as time went on, it eventually became in truth a ‘Protecting Power’
for the Jews, by interceding with governments in their behalf and in some
cases exercising a genuine right of protection, by obtaining the benefit of
extraterritoriality for hospitals, dispensaries and relief organizations, and
even by acting as arbitrators in the settlement of disputes. This was its task,
especially in Rumania and Hungary, for over a year during the last phase
of the war in 1944 and 1945. In countries where the efforts of the Committee
were less considerable, they were none the less of great benefit to the
Jews. These may be described in a brief summary before reverting to the
Committee’s activities in Hungary and Rumania.
France. – In November 1940, the Committee obtained permission from
the authorities for one of its members to visit camps in the South, where a
certain number of Jews were amongst the civilian internees. The camp at
Gurs, in particular, contained six thousand Jews from the Bavarian Palatinate.
The visit gave a clear idea of the situation inside the camp and the
urgent necessity for relief; appropriate steps were taken in the internees’
behalf.
The Jews from Poland who, whilst in France, had obtained entrancepermits
to the United States were held to be American citizens by the German
occupying authorities, who further agreed to recognize the validity of
about three thousand passports issued to Jews by the consulates of South
American countries. The persons concerned were lodged in camps reserved
for Americans at Vittel. In 1942, when Germany and the States in
South America began negotiations for the exchange of internees, it was
found that the majority of the internees at Vittel held accommodation passports
and consequently were in danger of being deported. The ICRC interceded
in their behalf through the Berlin Delegation and succeeded in arranging
for them to remain at Vittel, only a few being deported.
Greece. – Immediately after the German occupation, the Committee
was called upon to deal with the case of 55,000 Jews in Salonica, who
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
190
were the victims of racial legislation. In July 1942, all men between eighteen
and forty-five were registered, and the majority were enrolled in labour
detachments. The delegation furnished them with medical and toilet
supplies. In May 1943, these workers were sent to Germany, and the delegation
in that country insisted on the right to give them food-parcels. This
course led to difficulties with the German authorities, who in their resentment
demanded that one of the delegates should be replaced.
Slovakia. – Many thousands of Jews had been forced to leave the country
and enlist in what was called ‘labour service,’ but which in fact seems
to have led the greater number to the extermination camps. At the same
time, a large proportion of the Jewish minority had permission to stay in
the country, and at certain periods Slovakia was even looked upon as a
comparative haven of refuge for Jews, especially for those coming from
Poland. Those who remained in Slovakia seemed to have been in comparative
safety until the end of August 1944, when a rising against the German
forces took place. While it is true that the law of May 15, 1942, had
brought about the internment of several thousand Jews, these people were
held in camps where the conditions of food and lodging were tolerable,
and where internees were allowed to do paid work on terms almost equal
to those of the free labour market. In 1944, the Jewish community had
managed to secure an almost complete suspension of forced immigration
towards the territories under German control.
At the time of the rising, the interned Jews escaped from the camps;
some returned home, and others took to the hills. The measures of repression
which followed fell on the Jewish population as a whole. The German
military authorities summoned the Slovak government to make wholesale
arrests for the purpose of deporting the Jews to Germany. The order dated
November 16, 1944, laid down that all Jews should be mustered in the
camp of Sered, and to that end, that Jews living in the capital should previously
be assembled, on November 20, in the Town Hall of Bratislava. On
the same day, the delegate went to the Town hall and noted that only about
fifty Jews had obeyed the summons. The rest had gone into hiding, as the
Slovak authorities had foreseen, either by fleeing to the country or concealing
themselves in the town in the so-called ‘bunkers.’ In his concern
over this situation, the President of the ICRC wrote to the Head of the Slovak
government asking him to put an end to the deportations. Monsignor
Tiso received this letter on January 2,1945, and answered at length on
January 10. He recalled the fact that up to that time the Jews had been
spared, adding however that in view of the rising, his government had been
forced to yield to the pressure which had been brought to bear upon them.
He concluded by saying: ‘To sum up, it remains wholly true that in the solution
of the Jewish question, we have endeavoured to remain faithful to
humane principles to the full extent of our powers.’ Official aid to the fugiChapter
5: The Hungarian Jews
191
tives in the ‘bunkers’ was out of the question; the delegation in Bratislava,
however, with the help of the Slovak Red Cross and, in the provinces with
that of the Catholic Church, succeeded in providing them with funds, which
were handed to their spokesmen, and which allowed them to support life
during the last months of the war.
The Committee’s representative was unable to secure permission to
visit the camp of Sered. He was, however, allowed to enter the camp of
Marienka, where Jews of alien nationality were interned.
Croatia. – From May 1943 to the end of 1945, the delegation gave aid
to the Jewish community of Zagreb, to whom on behalf of the Joint Committee
of New York, it paid out an average amount of 20,000 Swiss francs
monthly. It also made available to it considerable quantities of food supplies,
clothing and medical stores.
In October 1944, the German authorities, on the pattern of measures
taken in the neighbouring countries, imprisoned the Jews of Zagreb, and
seized their food stores. The delegation at once made representations to
the Croat government, and secured the return of these stores.
Hungary. – As in Slovakia, the Jews were relatively spared, in so far as
the local government retained a certain freedom of action. But when German
pressure was reasserted, from March 1944 onwards, the position of
the Jews became critical. The replacement in October 1944, of Horthy’s
government by one in bondage to Germany, provoked a violent crisis; executions,
robberies, deportations, forced labour, imprisonments – such was
the lot of the Jewish population, which suffered cruelly and lost many
killed, especially in the provinces. It was at this point that the Committee,
to alleviate these sufferings, took action with vigour and authority. At the
same time the aid prompted by the King of Sweden, was given with considerable
courage and success by the Swedish Legation in Budapest, helped
by some members of the Swedish Red Cross.
Until March 1944, Jews who had the privilege of visas for Palestine
were free to leave Hungary. On March 18, 1944, Hitler summoned the Regent,
Admiral Horthy, to his headquarters. He expressed his indignation
that ‘in Hungary very nearly a million Jews were able to live in freedom
and without restrictions.’ Even before the Regent had returned to Budapest,
German troops had begun the occupation of Hungary in order to prevent
her from abandoning her alliance with Germany. This occupation
forced upon the Head of the Hungarian State a new government that was
far more dependent on German authority than the one preceding it. Emigration
of the Jews was straightway suspended, and the persecutions began.
This was a matter of the gravest concern to the ICRC. The President
appealed to the Regent, Admiral Horthy: ‘The matters brought to our
knowledge seem to us,’ he wrote on July 5, 1944, ‘so utterly contrary to the
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
192
chivalrous traditions of the great Hungarian people that it is difficult for us
to credit even a tithe of the information we are receiving. In the name of
the ICRC, I venture to beg Your Highness to give instructions enabling us
to reply to these rumours and accusations.’ The Regent replied, on August
12: ‘It is unfortunately not within my power to prevent inhuman acts which
no one condemns more severely than my people, whose thoughts and feelings
are chivalrous. I have instructed the Hungarian government to take up
the settlement of the Jewish question in Budapest. It is to be hoped that this
statement will not give rise to serious complications.’
In the spirit of this reply, the Hungarian authorities allowed the delegate
in Budapest to affix shields on the camps and internment buildings for
the Jews, conferring on them the protection of the Red Cross. If the use of
these shields (hardly compatible, moreover, with the precise terms of the
Geneva Convention) was no more extensive, this was due to the fact that
the Jewish Senate of Budapest was of the opinion that the measure would
doubtless lose its effectiveness if generally applied.
The Hungarian government, furthermore, showed themselves willing to
favour a resumption of Jewish emigration. The Committee got in touch
with the British and United States governments as a matter of extreme urgency
and, during August, obtained a joint statement from these two governments
declaring their desire to give support by every means to the emigration
of Jews from Hungary.
To this end, the Committee was requested to transmit the following
message to Budapest from the United States government: ‘The United
States government has been advised by the ICRC of the Hungarian government’s
willingness to permit certain categories of refugees to emigrate
from Hungary […] The Government of the United States, taking into account
the humanitarian considerations involved as regards the Jews in
Hungary, now specifically repeats its assurance that arrangements will be
made by it for the care of all Jews who in the present circumstances are allowed
to leave Hungary and who reach the territory of the United Nations
or neutral countries, and that it will find for such people temporary havens
of refuge where they may live in safety. The governments of neutral countries
have been advised of these assurances and have been requested to
permit the entry into the territory of Jews from Hungary who may reach
their frontiers.’
On October 8, the Hungarian authorities, in conformity with the undertaking
given to the Committee, announced the final suspension of deportations
and made known that the Kistarcea Camp for Jewish intellectuals,
doctors and engineers, had been broken up and the internees released.
The hope raised by this statement was short-lived. A few days later the
full tide of the great tribulations of the Hungarian Jews was to set in. In
view of the setbacks of the German Army, Admiral Horthy had decided to
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
193
sever his country’s connection with Germany. On October 15, he asked the
Allied Powers for an armistice for Hungary. This proclamation had an
immense effect amongst the Jews, who were ardent in their demonstrations
against the occupying Power. Although the German Army was in retreat
both in Eastern and Western Europe, it had still a firm foothold in Hungary.
The Regent failed in his plan and was arrested. Hungarian supporters
of the Germans seized power and set about a repression, increasing in
severity as the fighting zone came nearer, placing Budapest in a state of
siege. It is alleged that shots were fired from Jewish houses on the German
troops; however that may be, repression was centered on the Jews. It was
immediately decided to remove them from Budapest and to confiscate their
property. Sixty thousand Jews fit for work were to be sent to Germany, on
foot, in parties of one thousand, by way of Vienna. Moreover, among the
able-bodied, men between sixteen and sixty, and women between fourteen
and forty were commandeered for forced labour in building fortifications
in Hungary. The rest of the Jewish population, including the disabled and
sick, was confined in four or five ghettos near Budapest. The only Jews to
escape evacuation were those in possession of passports with visas for
Palestine, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal or Spain.
These measures were accompanied, at the outset, by brutalities and
thefts against which the delegate immediately protested. The Ministry of
the Interior, giving heed to this action, issued a decree forbidding pillage
as from October 20. Meanwhile, the delegation was giving refuge to the
members of the Jewish Senate of Budapest. Since their position was apparently
threatened, the delegate renewed his appeals to the German authorities,
as to the Hungarian government and on October 29, the wireless announced
that the ICRC buildings were granted extraterritoriality, similar
to that of the Legations.
His position thus strengthened, the delegate devoted himself with all the
more assurance to the relief work he had courageously undertaken in behalf
of the Jews. ‘It is hard,’ he wrote, ‘to imagine the difficulty I had in
holding out against a gang in whose hands the power lay, and at a time
when disorder, murder and aggression were the order of the day, to compel
it still to show some restraint and to observe the respect due to the Red
Cross emblem […]’
The fate of children whose parents had been deported to the labour
camps was especially tragic. The delegate succeeded, with the help of the
‘Jo Pasztor‘ organization, in setting up some twenty homes in which these
children, accompanied in some cases by their mothers, could be accommodated.
The hospital staff consisted of trained nurses and of Jews, whose
employment in these homes ensured them a certificate of protection similar
to those which the delegate issued to his fellow workers.
The Committee’s representatives also opened soup-kitchens, each able
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
194
to provide about a hundred hot meals a day. Reception and accommodation
centres were set up, as well as hospitals with children’s and maternity
wards, and a first aid station open to the public ‘without distinction of race
or creed.’ Furthermore, the delegate issued thirty thousand letters of protection,
which although without any legal basis, were respected by the authorities
and exempted their holders from compulsory labour.
In November, one hundred thousand Jews poured into Budapest from
the provinces. The government decided to shut them up in a ghetto, and
with them the Jews who had remained in Budapest, in particular the children
sheltered in the Red Cross homes. ‘I considered that my main task,’
wrote the delegate, ‘lay in ensuring that this ghetto life was at least as
bearable as possible. I had incredible difficulty in obtaining from the Hungarian
Nazis, in the course of daily bargaining, conditions and concession
which would ensure to some degree the means to exist for those in the
ghetto. Continual interviews took place with the Jewish Senate on the one
hand, and with the town administration on the other, to ensure at least
minimum food supplies for the ghetto at a time when all traffic had
stopped, owing to the constant bombing, and provisioning was becoming
more and more difficult.’ The delegate secured that the Jews’ rations
should be fixed at 920 calories, i.e. two thirds of the minimum Hungarian
prison fare. Later on it was possible to make a slight increase of this figure,
thanks to the issue of relief supplies.
In spite of the delegate’s efforts, the children transferred to the ghetto
had been put sixty in a room in premises which it had been impossible either
to clean or to disinfect. Pleading the danger of epidemics, he succeeded
in getting the children inspected by a committee who had authority
to make some decision on their situation. This health inspection allowed
500 of the 800 children examined to be sent back to the homes from which
they had been removed, and for 300 to be placed in hospitals. The other
children did not leave the ghetto, but were taken care of there by relatives
or friends. Furthermore, the Delegation sent into the ghetto, with permission
of the government, five persons instructed to furnish regular and detailed
reports on each child’s need of food and clothing. Finally, on the initiative
of the delegate, one thousand orphans selected ‘without distinction
of race or religion’ were assembled in the Abbey of Panonalma, a Benedictine
monastery placed at the delegate’s disposal by the Bishop of Gyor.
This refuge, under the protection of the Red Cross, was respected by the
German and Hungarian troops in retreat, and also by the Soviet Army.
The devotion and generosity of the Bishop of Gyor were a fruitful help
to the delegate in the relief work he had undertaken. His task was to improve
the food and shelter of the convoys of Jews who were being deported
to labour camps in Germany and compelled to do stages of twenty-five to
thirty kilometres a day on foot. The Bishop organized a relief centre en
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
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route, which he financed and which was administered by representatives of
the Committee. It gave shelter from bad weather, for a few hours at least,
to thousands of Jews during their terrible exodus. The ‘transport groups’
of the delegation issued food to them on the road, paid the peasants to
carry the weakest, fifteen to twenty at a time, in their carts, gave medical
attention to the sick and dispensed medical supplies.
On November 12, a new threat hung over the hospitals protected by the
Red Cross emblem, which the police had searched with an order to turn
out the Jews. The delegate, on the strength of the authority he had been
granted, protested to the government. As a result, the police authorities
were instructed not to proceed with the evictions from the hospitals.
It must be apparent what difficulties and dangers were encountered at
every turn by the Committee’s representatives in a town subject to the most
violent bombardments. They were supported in their courageous work by
the untiring devotion to duty of the members of the Jewish Senate, and by
the equally generous activity of the representatives of the two main protecting
Powers, Switzerland and Sweden.
As soon as Budapest was liberated, the delegate and the local Jewish
organizations established, with the funds of the New York Joint Committee
stocks of foodstuffs and of the most necessary medical supplies. The Russian
military authorities had ordered all foreigners to leave Budapest.
When our delegate had to go, a Hungarian minister paid him the tribute of
stating that he had, in a time of historic crisis, succeeded in making the
capital a ‘protectorate of Geneva.’
Rumania. – The delegate’s part was a very important one, owing to the
opportunities there were in that country for the purchase of foodstuffs. Financial
aid and relief in kind could be sent from Bucharest to Poland and
neighbouring countries. The Committee came to an agreement concerning
relief in Rumania itself with the National Red Cross there, to whom our
delegate handed funds for the purchase of goods. It should be emphasized
that wealthy Rumanian Jews contributed in large measure towards assisting
their co-religionists in need. From 1943, the Committee’s work in Rumania
was made easier by the fact that the delegate had been able to inspire
the Rumanian government with trust.
During the period in September 1940, when the ‘Iron Guard,’ supported
by the Gestapo and the German SS, had seized power, the Jews had
been subjected to persecution and deportation to death camps. Later, under
the dictatorship of Marshall Antonescu, they met with less severity.
Special understanding was shown by the Vice-president of the Council, Mr.
Mihai Antonescu, who was entrusted with the settlement of the Jewish
question. ‘The Rumanian government,’ he wrote to the delegate in Bucharest,
‘repudiates any material solution contrary to civilized custom and in
defiance of the Christian spirit which dominate the conscience of the RuArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
196
manian people.’
In December 1943 Mr. Mihai Antonescu had an interview with this
delegate which led to making their activities of the Committee in behalf of
Jews far easier. This talk bore mainly on the case of Jews deported beyond
the Dniester to the Ukraine, who were native of Bessarabia and the
Bukovina. These provinces had been returned to Rumania after the first
World War, and came again under Soviet power by the terms of the Soviet-
German treaty at the beginning of the Second War. After the reshuffle in
1941, Rumania, who had become Germany’s ally against the USSR, reoccupied
these two provinces. The Jews, whom the Rumanians considered
guilty of having welcomed too easily a return to Russian allegiance, were
then deported. The Rumanian government’s plan, drawn up in agreement
with Germany, seems to have been to settle these Jews on lands in the region
of the Sea of Azov. This could not be carried out, however, unless the
USSR were defeated. In the light of the Russian victories, the Rumanian
government decided, towards the close of 1943, to repatriate the survivors
of this deplorable migration, the numbers of which had fallen from 200,000
to 78,000. Mr. Mihai Antonescu welcomed the opportunity of the approaches
made by the delegate in Bucharest, to entrust him with a mission
of enquiry into the means of carrying out this repatriation, and authorized
him to tour Transnistria to distribute clothing and relief to these unfortunate
people. Furthermore, the delegate succeeded in getting an assurance
that the Czernowitz Jews, the only ones still compelled to wear the yellow
star, should be exempted, as this badge exposed them to the brutality of
German troops passing through. Finally, it was agreed that Red Cross
purchases might be freely made at the official rates.
When the delegate saw the Vice-president of the Council again on his
return, he drew his attention specially to the plight of the children who had
lost their parents and were left abandoned in Transnistria. Mr. Mihai Antonescu
promised to allow 150 children to leave each week for Palestine or
elsewhere, if the Committee could arrange their journey. Three months
later, the Rumanian government offered two recently-built first-class
steamers, the Transilvania and the Bessarabia, then held in Turkish waters,
and suggested the Committee should buy them, reserving to Rumania the
option of repurchase, for use as transports for emigrants under the Swiss
flag. Switzerland, as the protecting Power for British interests, could in
fact be considered as the protecting Power for Jews bound for Palestine,
since these Jews were to become on arrival assimilated to British nationals.
Up to that time, the remedy of emigration had been no more than a
meagre palliative for the sufferings of the Jews. Bulgaria had shut her
frontiers to emigrants traveling on a collective passport, and only Jews
under eighteen years of age or over forty-five had been able to reach TurChapter
5: The Hungarian Jews
197
key, under individual permits. Transport by sea from Rumanian ports
would have afforded the best means of emigration. But besides the difficulties
met with by the Jews in leaving, account had to be taken of the political
problem raised for the British authorities by an influx of Jews, considered
as intruders by the majority of the local population of a territory under
British mandate. The first vessel, the Struma, which left Constanza for
Palestine independently of any action by the Committee, at the beginning
of 1942, had been detained at Istanbul owing to engine trouble, and was
subsequently obliged to sail again for Rumania, as it was impossible to obtain
the necessary permits to continue on its route. It was wrecked, and 750
emigrants were drowned. This pioneer expedition, ending so disastrously,
was a lesson in the need of prudence.
The Committee was asked to grant the protection of the Red Cross emblem
to emigrant transports and would have consented to this, on the basis
of a very liberal interpretation of the provisions of the Tenth Hague Convention
of 1907, which govern the use of hospital ships, whilst reckoning
too that cargo-boats sailing under their control and carrying relief supplies
for PW or civilian internees were covered by the Red Cross emblem.
However, it would have wished to do this in agreement with all the Powers
concerned. Therefore, the Committee made its consent conditional on the
following terms. The transport organizations should charter neutral vessels
which would be accompanied by the Committee’s representative, and
would be used exclusively for the transport of emigrants. The ships were
not to sail before obtaining safe-conducts from all the belligerents concerned,
as well as their agreement as to the route to be followed.
These conditions were unfortunately never obtained. The Bellacita,
however, was authorized by Rumania to carry out a daily service for the
transport of Jewish children from Constanza or Mangalia to Istanbul, and
sailed under the protection of the Rumanian Red Cross, the Committee
having notified all belligerents of these voyages.
The delegate in Bucharest was faced with a very grave decision when
the question arose of embarking Jews for Palestine on two Bulgarian vessels,
the Milka and the Maritza, both chartered by Zionist organizations.
There was reason to fear the same fate for them as for those who sailed in
the Struma. Moreover, the heads of Jewish organizations did not agree as
to the names for the list of emigrants, and the Rumanian authorities applied
to the Committee to arbitrate. The delegate confined himself to a
check of the emigration permits and thus aided their departure. They arrived
safely in Istanbul a few days later. In August 1944, the Committee finally
agreed that vessels carrying emigrants might display the Red Cross
emblem, even in the absence of certain of the conditions which had been
laid down.
On August 23, the King of Rumania took advantage of the retreat of the
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
198
German troops to put an end to the dictatorship of Marshal Antonescu, and
to enter into armistice negotiations with the Allies. The racial laws were
thereupon abolished in Rumania.
The Committee continued their relief work in behalf of Jews, however,
until the close of hostilities.
In its report of December 1944, the delegation in Bucharest stated that,
thanks to consignments from the Joint Committee of New York and to collections
made on the spot, it had been able to come to the help of 183,000
Rumanian Jews, comprising: 17,000 deportees repatriated from Transnistria;
30,000 men liberated from forced labour with their families (90,000
persons); 20,000 evacuees from small towns and villages; 10,000 evacuees
from the war zone; 20,000 homeless persons, as a result of bombardments;
20,000 workmen and officials dismissed from their employment; and 6,000
Hungarians who had succeeded in escaping deportation and were found in
Northern Transylvania.
Tribute was paid to this humanitarian work by the President of the
American Union of Rumanian Jews. He wrote, in March 1945, to the
Committee’s delegate in Washington as follows:
‘The work of the International Red Cross in helping the Jewish population
in Rumania, and the Jews transported to Transnistria has been appreciated
at its true worth not only by Dr. Safran, the Chief Rabbi in Rumania
and the Jewish Community of Rumania, but also by the many thousands of
members of our Union whose own relatives benefitted by that help. The International
Red Cross Committee had rendered truly invaluable service to
our people in Rumania.’
Mr. Joseph C. Hyman, Vice-President of the American Joint Distribution
Committee of New York, had already made public the debt of gratitude
due to the International Red Cross. In an article published in the journal
‘News’ on February 16, 1945, under the title ‘The Joint Distribution
Committee Lauds International Red Cross Co-operation,’ he is quoted as
follows: ‘Thousands of Jews in newly liberated lands and in German concentration
camps owe their lives to the sanctuary and the help given them
by the International Red Cross. In those parts of the world where J.D.C. ,
major American agency for the rescue and relief of distressed Jews overseas,
cannot itself work directly, we know we can count on the International
Red Cross […] to act for us in bringing aid to suffering Jewry.”
Volume 3 of the Report, particularly pages 73-84, 335-340, 479-481, 505-
529, contains additional material that can be cited as needed.
Recall that our objective here is to form a reasonably accurate picture of
what happened to the Jews of Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary. However there
are some matters raised in the excerpt which deserve at least a few remarks.
There are enough references to “extermination” here to lead the casual
reader to the impression that the Red Cross accepted the extermination claims.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
199
However, on reflection such an inference is seen as being not so clearly necessary
and, even if made, not very relevant. We are told that “the Jews had become
[…] condemned by rigid racial legislation to […] systematic extermination”
but there was, as is well known, no such legislation if by “extermination”
is meant mass murder. Also “they were […] sent to death camps,” which
was true of those who had been conscripted for labor and sent to the concentration
camps during the camps’ two worst periods (1942 and 1945). It
“seems” that “many thousands” of Slovakian Jews went “to the extermination
camps.” It is anybody’s guess what is meant by the “death camps” to which
some Romanian Jews were sent in 1940; whatever is meant, it was not a German
measure.
In Volume 3 we read (page 479) that “when military operations spread to
Hungarian soil (in early October 1944), the ICRC delegate in Budapest made
the uttermost exertions to prevent the extermination of the Hungarian Jews.”
Further on (pages 513-514) we read that during the war, “threatened with extermination,
the Jews were, in the last resort, generally deported in the most
inhuman manner, shut up in concentration camps, subjected to forced labor or
put to death.” The Germans “aimed more or less openly at their extermination.”
We can see two possible reasons for the presence of such (ambiguous
and/or very general) remarks. The first is that they are there because the authors
of the Report, or most of them, on the basis of news reports, the war
crimes trials, the fact of deportations, the fact of Nazi hostility toward the
Jews, and the fact that the Germans wanted the Jews out of Europe, believed
the wartime and post-war extermination claims (they obviously did not see
any Jews being exterminated). The second possible reason is that the remarks
are there for political-public relations reasons. For example, although the
Germans and Hungarians had allowed the ICRC to operate in Hungary and the
Russians had expelled it, the Report nevertheless finds it expedient to say that
Budapest was “liberated” by the Russian capture.
The critical reader will obviously wish that the first explanation for the appearance
of these remarks be accepted, at least for purposes of discussion. We
should have no objections to this; it makes little difference in the analysis because
all we want to know from the Report is what happened to the Jews of
Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary. The presence of the remarks about “extermination,”
put into the Report at a time when the detailed extermination charges
had received the widest publicity, is actually helpful to our case because,
whatever the explanation for the remarks, the possibility of extermination of
most or many of the Jews of Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary most definitely is
part of the proper subject matter of the Report. An absence of claims bearing
on extermination should not, thus, be interpreted as meaning that the possibility
of extermination is not part of the matters being treated, but that the ICRC
did not observe occurrences consistent with the extermination claims.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
200
With these considerations in mind, what does the Report say happened to
the Jews of Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary? The extent of German influence
had differed prior to 1944, and some number of Slovakian Jews had been deported
to the East, but the Report makes no speculations of extermination
here, and obviously accepts that they had merely been deported. By 1944
German influence in the three countries was about uniform and nothing very
consequential happened until the autumn of 1944 when the Germans interned,
or attempted to intern, many of the Jews for very valid security reasons and
also deported a number of Hungarian Jews to Germany for labor.
On the subject of the Hungarian Jews, a certain amount was going on between
March and October 1944, but whatever it was, the events which began
in October 1944 after the arrest of Horthy were the most severe. The excerpt is
most emphatic on this point in two places and, moreover, to place the critical
date in the autumn of 1944 is fully consistent with the identical claim for the
contiguous countries of Slovakia and Croatia.
It was after October 15 that “the full tide of the great tribulations of the
Hungarian Jews was to set in” on account of the “German pressure (which)
was reasserted, from March 1944 onwards,” which in October 1944 “provoked
a violent crisis; executions, robberies, deportations, forced labor, imprisonments.”
The Jews “suffered cruelly and lost many killed, especially in
the provinces.”
To repeat, there was a certain amount going on prior to October 1944, including
deportations, but the Report asserts unambiguously that the events beginning
October 1944 were the major ones for the Hungarian Jews. The “executions”
and “robberies” probably refer to private actions of Hungarians
taken, perhaps, with the implicit encouragement or at least unconcern of the
new puppet government. The Report is fully precise about the “deportations”
and “forced labor” measures that were instituted in October 1944. Jews were
put to work on fortifications in Hungary and the Germans decided to send
60,000 to Germany for labor (the number actually deported in this action was
between 35,000 and 45,000). There being no rail transport available, the Jews
had to walk, as least as far as Vienna, but the Red Cross organized aid along
the route.264
It is not possible that the ICRC delegation in Hungary could have been unaware
of anti-Jewish measures, occurring significantly earlier in 1944, which
even equaled in severity, much less dwarfed, the events beginning in October
1944. After all, the Jewish Senate of Budapest was being quartered in the Red
Cross legation, and was doubtless fully informed on Hungarian Jewish matters.
In addition, the later extermination claims would have “reminded” the
delegate of far more drastic events earlier in the year, if they had actually occurred,
as we shall see shortly.
264 Red Cross (1948), vol. 3, 523.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
201
Before passing on to consider the specific claims of extermination of Hungarian
Jews, we should touch briefly on a few points made in the excerpt in
connection with Theresienstadt.
We have had occasion in previous chapters to remark on Theresienstadt in
Bohemia-Moravia (Western Czechoslovakia) and our remarks are consistent
with those of the excerpt. What is arresting in the Red Cross account is the report
that “this camp had been started as an experiment by certain leaders of
the Reich, who were apparently less hostile to the Jews than those responsible
for the racial policy of the German government. These men wished to give to
Jews the means of setting up a communal life in a town under their own administration
and possessing almost complete autonomy.”
Jewish policy was administered by Eichmann’s office in the RSHA of the
SS, and it was Karl Adolf Eichmann, “specialist for all Jewish questions,”
who had accompanied the head of the Security Police of Bohemia-Moravia,
Colonel Erwin Weinemann, in showing the Red Cross delegation around
Theresienstadt during the April 6, 1945 visit. During a gathering in the evening
Eichmann had explained to the delegates “that Theresienstadt was a creation
of Reichsführer-SS Himmler,” and had explained the philosophy involved,
accurately passed on to us in the Report excerpt. Eichmann added that
he, “personally, did not entirely approve of these methods but, as a good soldier,
he naturally blindly obeyed the orders of the Reichsführer.”265
It is quite clear, therefore, that Theresienstadt was an operation of the SS,
who were the “certain leaders of the Reich” involved here. In addition, it is
known that it was RSHA chief Heydrich who made the Theresienstadt decision
shortly after he had acquired his secondary role of Deputy Protector of
Bohemia-Moravia in September 1941.266
What the Red Cross saw at Theresienstadt was part of regular SS policy. It
is of some interest that the Report tells us, without comment, that the delegate
had asked about “departures for the East” and that the ICRC makes no speculations
regarding any sinister interpretations to be placed on the “transfers to
Auschwitz,” despite the notorious and universally known charges in this connection.
In critical evaluation of the Red Cross Report, one must obviously be wary
in two senses. First, one should reserve some judgments in relation to a selfserving
aspect of the Report. The typical respects in which a charitable organization’s
publications might be self-serving are in exaggerating the efficacy
of measures taken and, in cases where it is evident that no efficacious
measures have been taken, in hastily blaming the lack of efficacy on the tight
fists of potential contributors (and often there are very solid grounds for such
claims). Thus we should not be crushed if it were found that the Hungarian
265 Reitlinger, 512-513; Red Cross (1947), 99-100.
266 Reitlinger, 176-177; Shirer (1960), 991.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
202
Jewish children or the Jews who walked to Vienna, both of whom were aided
by the Red Cross, actually suffered a little bit more than might seem suggested
by the Report (I am not, of course, making any claim that such was the case).
A second reservation concerns inevitable political bias as a result of external
political pressures; the “liberation” of Budapest by the Russians shows this
at work in the Report. The situation of 1948 clearly implied that when political
bias appeared in the Report it be anti-German bias. We observe that this
exists in the Report but, fortunately, if one reads the Report with well defined
questions in mind, such questions bearing only on matters within the actual
sphere of competence of the ICRC and its delegates, this bias is effectively
non-existent.
Nevertheless, it should again be stressed that my argument in no way depends
upon interpreting the Report as meaning other than what it says, or as
not really meaning what it says, at those points selected by me. I offer no parallel
of the extermination claims, which insist that phrases such as Leichenkeller,
Badeanstalt, special treatment and “readiness for transport” be attributed
meanings consistent with wartime propaganda claims. There is no quarrel with
the person who insists on interpreting the Report as declaring in a very general
way that the Germans were attempting to exterminate the Jews, because all we
want to know is what the ICRC delegates were able to witness in their positions
in Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary.
1944 Propaganda
We have seen roughly what happened in Hungary and now the extermination
claims should be examined. We first review the relevant propaganda during
1944 and then the charges made after the war, constituting the legend of
the extermination of the Hungarian Jews. There are both significant differences
and significant similarities between the 1944 propaganda and the later
claims. Our survey of the former again employs the New York Times as
source.
In 1944, atrocity and extermination propaganda of a general sort continued:
“12 Feb. 1944, p. 6 A young Polish Jew who escaped from a mass execution
in Poland […] repeated a story […that at Belzec] Jews were forced
naked onto a metal platform operated as a hydraulic elevator which lowered
them into a huge vat filled with water. […] They were electrocuted by
current through the water.”
This claim had also been made in London in November 1942,267 and we
encountered it in Chapter 3 in the New York Times story of December 20,
267 Reitlinger, 148.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
203
1942. The emphasis in the propaganda during the spring and summer of 1944
was, however, on the Hungarian Jews. Immediately after the German occupation:
“21 Mar. 1944. p. 4 The fate of 800,000 Jews in Hungary was one immediate
concern of Jewish circles in Stockholm.”
Roosevelt involved himself directly with a speech prepared for him by the
War Refugee Board.268
“25 Mar. 1944, p. 4 In the meantime in most of Europe and in parts of
Asia the systematic torture and murder of civilians – men, women and
children – by the Nazis and Japanese continue unabated. In areas subjugated
by the aggressors innocent Poles, Czechs, Norwegians, Dutch,
Danes, French, Greeks, Russians, Chinese, Filipinos – and many others –
are being starved or frozen to death or murdered in cold blood in a campaign
of savagery.
The slaughters of Warsaw, Lidice, Kharkov and Nanking – the brutal
torture and murder by the Japanese, not only of civilians but of our own
gallant American soldiers and fliers – these are startling examples of what
goes on day by day, year in and year out, wherever the Nazis and the Japs
are in military control – free to follow their barbaric purpose.
In one of the blackest crimes of all history – begun by the Nazis in the
day of peace and multiplied by them a hundred times in time of war – the
wholesale systematic murder of the Jews of Europe goes on unabated every
hour. As a result of the events of the last few days hundreds of thousands of
Jews, who, while living under persecution, have at least found a haven
from death in Hungary and the Balkans, are now threatened with annihilation
as Hitler’s forces descend more heavily upon these lands. That these
innocent people, who have already survived a decade of Hitler’s fury,
should perish on the very eve of triumph over the barbarism which their
persecution symbolized, would be a major tragedy.
[…] All who knowingly take part in the deportation of Jews to their
death in Poland or Norwegians and French to their death in Germany are
equally guilty with the executioner. All who share the guilt shall share the
punishment.
[…] In the meantime, and until the victory that is now assured is won,
the United States will persevere in its efforts to rescue the victims of brutality
of the Nazis and the Japs. In so far as the necessity of military operations
permit this government will use all means at its command to aid the
escape of all intended victims of the Nazi and Jap executioner – regardless
of race or religion or color. We call upon the free peoples of Europe and
Asia temporarily to open their frontiers to all victims of oppression. We
shall find havens of refuge for them, and we shall find the means for their
268 US-WRB (1945), 49.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
204
maintenance and support until the tyrant is driven from their homelands
and they may return.
In the name of justice and humanity let all freedom loving people rally
to this righteous undertaking.”
“HUNGARY ANNOUNCES ANTI-JEWSIH DECREES
April 1, 1944, p. 5. […] based on the Nazi Nuremberg laws […]”
whose nature was further specified as:
“April 16, 1944, p. 17 […] the registration and closing of all Jewish
properties. […]”
“April 28, 1944, p. 5. […] recent reports from Hungary said 300,000
Jews had been moved from the eastern and northeastern parts of the country
to so-called collection camps.”
“May 10, 1944, p. 5 by Joseph M. Levy
[…] it is a fact that Hungary […] is now preparing for the annihilation
of Hungarian Jews by the most fiendish methods. […] Sztojay’s […] government
[…] is about to start the extermination of about 1,000,000 human
beings. […] The government in Budapest had decreed the creation in different
parts of Hungary of ‘special baths’ for Jews. These baths are in reality
huge gas chambers arranged for mass murder, like those inaugurated
in Poland in 1941.”
“May 18, 1944, p. 5 by Joseph M. Levy
80,000 Jews of the Carpathian provinces […] have been sent to murder
camps in Poland.”
“June 9, 1944, p. 5 300,000 Hungarian Jews have been interned in
camps and ghettos [within Hungary…]”
“June 18, 1944, p. 24 […] recent statements made by the Hungarian
Premier, Doeme Sztojay, that Jews were being exterminated to provide
‘room for American Hungarians to return to their native country after the
war.’”
“June 20, 1944, p. 5 Czechoslovak Jews interned in […] Terezin […]
were dragged to gas chambers in the notorious German concentration
camps at Birkenau and Oswiecim. Confirmation of the execution there of
uncounted thousands was brought to London recently by a young Pole who
had been imprisoned in both camps.”
“June 25, 1944, p. 5 [A Polish underground] message said that new
mass murders were taking place at the Oswiecim concentration camp.
They were carried out by gas in the following order: Jews, war prisoners,
whatever their nationality, and invalids. A hundred thousand Jews have alChapter
5: The Hungarian Jews
205
ready been sent to Oswiecim for execution. […]”
“June 27, 1944, p. 6 Hull [called] upon Hungary to halt her mistreatment
of Jews [and warned that] those German officers and men […] who
have […] taken […] part in the […] atrocities, massacres and executions
will be punished.”
“July 2, 1944, p. 12 Hungarian sources in Turkey reported that the
350,000 Jews […] were being rounded up for deportation to death camps
in Poland. By June 17, 400,000 had been sent to Poland; the remaining
350,000 are expected to be put to death by July 24.”
On July 3 (page 3) the “report” that eventually became the WRB report appeared
as a report of two relief committees in Switzerland, specifying that
since April 400,000 Hungarian Jews had been sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The crematories are reported to contain 50 furnaces each taking 8-10 corpses
at a time. On July 6 (page 6) the story was repeated, Eden endorsed the
charges, and the World Jewish
“Congress was notified more than two weeks ago that 100,000 Jews recently
deported from Hungary to Poland had been gassed in the notorious
German death camp at Oswiecim. Between May 15 and 27 sixty two railroad
cars laden with Jewish children […] and six cars laden with Jewish
adults passed daily through the Plaszow station near Cracow. Mass deportations
have also begun from Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, where the
Jews have heretofore been unmolested.”
“July 13, 1944, p. 3 2,500 Jewish men, women and children […] will
arrive in the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps by this week-end, probably
with previous knowledge of their fate.”
On July 15, (page 3) Hull again condemned the alleged killing of Hungarian
Jews, and then from the “Polish underground”:
“August 4, 1944, p. 5 courier […] declared that Hungarian Jews were
still being sent to Oswiecim, twelve trainloads every twenty-four hours. In
their haste […] the Germans […] were killing small children with bludgeons.
Many bodies were being burned in open fires, he said, because the
crematories were over-taxed.”
On August 11 (page 4) is reported a letter by Horthy to the King of Sweden
declaring that deportations of Jews had been stopped and that they were being
allowed to leave Hungary.
There are too many contradictions in the propaganda for it to equal later
charges. However the charges resemble the propaganda somewhat. The present
story is that between the middle of May and sometime in early July 1944,
approximately 400,000 Hungarian Jews, from districts outside of the capital of
Budapest, were deported by rail by the Germans and that almost all of these
were killed at Birkenau, the killings having been the primary purpose of the
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
206
deportations. This operation essentially cleaned out the Hungarian Jews, except
for Budapest, where the Jews were left essentially intact. Even Birkenau
was not designed for such large numbers of killings so many bodies were disposed
of in burning pits, and many were shot rather than gassed. This is the
story, despite Reitlinger’s unfounded attempt to lower the figure to 200,000
killed. The “evidence” for the extermination of large numbers of Hungarian
Jews (reviewed below), if accepted at all, simply does not permit such a wide
departure from the 400,000 figure.269
It is obvious that no such thing could have happened, and received worldwide
publicity during the war and at the later trials, without the ICRC delegation
in Budapest learning of it. After all, we are speaking here of the near entirety
of non-Budapest Jews and such massive and monstrous events could not
have been flippantly forgotten by the person contributing the “Hungary” section
of the excerpt we have examined. The excerpt says emphatically that the
major negative events effecting the Hungarian Jews occurred starting on October
1944 after Horthy’s arrest. Moreover, the Report contains the general
remarks about “extermination” which we have noted, so any extermination of
Hungarian Jews would, if it were a reality, definitely be mentioned in the Report.
There is clearly no truth to the claim of exterminations of Hungarian
Jews.
At this point it is appropriate to provide some remarks on Hungarian Jewish
population in early 1944. The Nazis used a figure of about 700 or 750
thousand.270 Ruppin’s 1940 book reports that the Hungarian Jewish population
rose from 440 to 480 thousand in the autumn of 1938, due to the annexation of
parts of Slovakia. In the spring of 1939 the Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed so
that, in June 1939, there were about 590,000 Jews in Hungary. It is known that
a good number of non-Hungarian Jews, mainly Polish, took refuge in Hungary
after 1939, so Ruppin’s pre-war figure of 590,000 could easily have swelled to
the 700,000 or 750,000 figure that the Nazis used. Ruppin’s figure for Budapest’s
Jewish population is 200,000 in 1930. This figure would not have been
supplemented by the annexations, but it would have been supplemented to
some degree during the Thirties by German and Austrian Jews and to a greater
degree by Polish and other Jews after 1939. It seems reasonable to assume that
there were about 300,000 Jews in Budapest in the spring of 1944. Thus we
seem to have a fairly good idea of Hungarian and Budapest Jewish population
in 1944. Clearly the removal of 400,000 or more non-Budapest Jews in the
spring of 1944 would have entailed the removal of essentially all non-
Budapest Jews. Not only could this not have failed to be noticed by the Red
Cross delegation, it is also difficult to see where the “one hundred thousand
269 Reitlinger, 447-487, 542; Hilberg, 509-554, 599-600.
270 NG-2586-G in NMT, vol. 13, 212; NO-5194, part of the Korherr report, which is reproduced
in Poliakov & Wulf (1955), 240-248; NG-5620, cited by Hilberg, 513.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
207
Jews” who “poured into Budapest from the provinces” in November could
have come from.271
There are other arguments against the extermination claims. First, it will be
seen that the charges specify that special arrangements were made at a conference
in Vienna in early May to provide four trains per day to effect these deportations,
and that the trains were in fact provided on schedule. That is, in the
crucial few weeks before and after D-Day (June 6), at a time of desperate rail
shortages, with both fronts threatening to collapse, the Germans provided an
amount of extra rail transportation that would strain the resources of any rail
system under the best of circumstances. That is just not believable. It is worth
remembering that the rail journey from Budapest to Auschwitz is much more
formidable than the map might suggest, on account of the mountains in eastern
Czechoslovakia.
Where are the pictures?
A second additional argument against the charges relate to the question, often
asked, why did not the Allies attempt to bomb the gas chambers that, by
the time of the alleged killings of Hungarian Jews, the whole world “knew”
about? The question can be considerably broadened.
On June 8, 1944 the US Fifteenth Air Force, based in southern Italy, was
ordered to emphasize oil targets in its bombings, and was given a list of specific
oil targets in eastern and southeastern Europe. The principle target, and
the one that received the major share of attention, was the Ploesti area in Romania.
However Auschwitz was also one of the targets on the list, was first
bombed on August 20, and was subsequently bombed in September and December.
272
Now in the Allied bombing operations in World War II it was customary to
make extensive use of photographic intelligence. One objective was the assessment
of damage done by attacks and another was the planning of attacks:
determining whether or not the target was worth attacking and also determining
the extent and nature of the defenses in the area of the target.273 It is a certainty
that intelligence had photographed Auschwitz and the surrounding area,
rather thoroughly, soon after the June 8 order. In this case the Americans
should have been able to provide actual photographs of all these Hungarian
Jews being moved into Auschwitz and shot and burned out in the open. They
should not even have been obliged to take any special measures to produce for
271 Ruppin, 30-31, 68.
272 Craven, 280-302, 641f; Carter (see Index under “Auschwitz”).
273 C. B. Smith, 167.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
208
us, either at the time of the alleged killings, or at the later trials, photographic
evidence for their claims. Of course, to have been fully convincing, the former
time should have been chosen, because the Russians controlled Auschwitz after
January 1945.
The photograph of Fig. 7 is claimed to have been taken at Auschwitz in
August 1944, but it has already been discussed in proper context. In any case,
the number of bodies evident in the photograph roughly corresponds to the
rate of ordinary deaths at Auschwitz, especially for 1942.
Despite all the attention the Hungarian Jews and Auschwitz were receiving
at the time and despite the Roosevelt promise publicized on March 25, the
Americans did not lift a finger either to interfere with the alleged deportations,
by bombing the specific rail lines involved, or with the alleged killings, by
bombing the “gas chambers.” They not only failed to take the opportunity to
provide us with photographic evidence for their claims, they also do not seem
to have the evidence despite having taken the photographs.
All of these considerations, the Red Cross Report, the wild impracticality
of exterminating Hungarian Jews in the spring and summer of 1944, and the
non-existence of any relevant consequences of the Allied control of the air,
compel the conclusion that nothing resembling or approximating extermination
actually happened to the Hungarian Jews.
Air raids on Auschwitz: Rudolf Vrba overreaches himself
We will shortly review the evidence for the extermination claim, but first
we should provide an aside relative to the problem of the date of the first air
raid at Auschwitz. We remarked on p. 106??? that Rudolf Vrba’s claim that
there was an air raid at Auschwitz on April 9, 1944, undermines his credibility.
We have indicated above that Auschwitz was first bombed in August. This
view is based mainly on the Combat Chronology, edited by Carter and Mueller,
that the US Air Force published in 1973, and on the standard and semiofficial
work by Craven et al, The Army Air Forces in World War II. The latter
also treats the activities of the RAF Bomber Command, especially in connection
with the oil campaign. The corresponding four volume British work
by Webster and Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany
1939-1945, bases its account of the oil campaign on that of Craven et. al.
An attack in early April seems completely out of the question. Auschwitz
was of strategic importance only as an oil target. Craven et al provide an excellent
summary of the air force oil campaign. There had been a spectacular
raid at Ploesti in 1943, but there was no sustained oil campaign until the
spring of 1944, on account of disagreements among Allied leaders regarding
target priorities. By May 1944, only 1.1% of Allied bombs had fallen on oil
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
209
targets. On March 17, 1944, the Fifteenth Air Force was advised to undertake
attacks against Ploesti at the first opportunity, but “surreptitiously under the
general directive which called for bombing transportation targets supporting
German forces that faced the Russians.” The first such attack came on April 5,
and there were also attacks on April 15 and 24, in all three cases directed
mainly against the rail centers near Ploesti, with a hope that there would be
“incidental” damage to oil refineries. Oil-related bombings by England-based
aircraft did not commence until April 19, but these were also carried out under
cover of an objective other than oil. The Fifteenth Air Force carried out several
more raids against Ploesti before the June 8 order, after which the oil
campaign got under way officially and extensively.274
This being the situation, and in consideration of the confirmation provided
by the Combat Chronology, it is impossible to believe that Auschwitz was
bombed in April, when it was difficult to justify, within the allied command,
raids against even choice targets such as Ploesti. That a relatively minor oil
target such as Auschwitz, much smaller than the not distant synthetic oil
plants at Blechhammer, was bombed in April, is most unlikely. Even Blechhammer
is not mentioned as a target until long after April.
Only the US and British air forces are relevant to the problem of possible
air raids at Auschwitz in the period April – September 1944. The Russians did
not engage in industrial-strategic bombing operations of this nature.
Our conclusions, drawn from the official US Air Force war histories, are
confirmed by the recollections of two Germans who were at Auschwitz in
1944. Thies Christophersen, author of the booklet Die Auschwitz Lüge (mentioned
on p. 5???), wrote that the first aid raid was “in the autumn of 1944.”
Christophersen seems to be completely unaware that there is any significance
in the question of the date of the first aid raid at Auschwitz.
Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich, the Hamburg judge whose statement was published
in German journal Nation Europa (also mentioned here in Chapter 1), did not
make any remarks, in his published statement, in connection with air raids but
he did write that he was a member of an anti-aircraft unit that was stationed
near Auschwitz for a very short time starting in mid-July 1944. In reply to a
neutrally worded inquiry by this author, with no reference to the nature of the
underlying issue involved, Stäglich replied that there were no air raids while
he was there and that he believed there had been none earlier, because he had
not been informed of any and had not seen any corresponding destruction.
The August date for the first air raid is confirmed by the Italian Jew Primo
Levi, who wrote in his book Se Questo è un Uomo (early in the chapter entitled
I fatti dell’estate) that the first raid was in August, when he had been there
five months.
Our analysis of the problem of the first air raid at Auschwitz is also essen-
274 Craven, 172-179.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
210
tially confirmed by the extermination mythologists. Reitlinger does not explicitly
take a position on the date of the first raid but remarks (page 383) on “the
failure of the Allies to bomb the passes between Hungary and Auschwitz in
May – July, 1944.” Hilberg (page 632) is well off the mark in placing the first
raid on December 16, 1944, and this date is accepted by Levin (page 701).
Friedman (page 78) is relatively on the mark in reporting a raid on September
13, 1944.
Because all evidence rejects a claim that there was an air raid at Auschwitz
in April 1944, Vrba’s claim that there was such a raid while he was sitting
there peeking out from the woodpile is an important factor, in addition to the
others mentioned in Chapter 3, in demolishing his credibility. Moreover, it
would be difficult for Vrba to claim a faulty memory comparable to
Stäglich’s, because the raid supposedly occurred at a uniquely crucial point in
Vrba’s life.
Documentary evidence?
Returning to the immediate subject, we now review the evidence which is
offered for exterminations of Hungarian Jews. It is mainly documentary.
We will essentially disregard the IMT affidavit (2605-PS) of Kastner,
given September 13, 1945. Kastner was a Hungarian Jew who was in contact
with Eichmann and associates in Budapest in 1944. His affidavit declares that
475,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported by June 27, 1944. It also gives a
general “history” of the entire extermination program, said to be based on
things told Kastner by SS Colonel Kurt Becher and SS Captain Dieter Wisliceny.
That he enjoyed the confidence of these men is entirely possible, however,
because in 1954, as an influential member of Ben-Gurion’s Mapai party
in Israel, he was accused by another Hungarian Jew of having been a collaborator
of Becher, one of Eichmann’s superiors in the SS operations in Hungary.
The resulting libel actions, with verdicts against Kastner, generated a major
political crisis in Israel whose catastrophic consequences were averted by the
assassination of Kastner in 1957.275 Kastner was another victim of the hoax.
Wisliceny, Eichmann’s subordinate in Hungary, also gave an affidavit on
November 29, 1945, and supporting testimony at the IMT on January 3,
1945.276 The affidavit is another English-language job with, e.g., the obscure
(for a German) expression “heads” for people in transports. In Wisliceny’s
story there were written orders, given in early 1942 by Himmler, to extermi-
275 Reitlinger, 421-422; Hilberg, 528; Rassinier (1962), 229-230; Sachar, 463-464; John & Hadawi,
vol. 2, 36n.
276 IMT, vol. 4, 355-373; U.S. Chief of Counsel, vol. 8, 606-621.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
211
nate the Jews. The orders were addressed to, among others, the “Inspector of
Concentration Camps” who, according to the later testimony of Höss, was not
intended by Himmler to know anything about the program.
The major evidence is a collection of reputed German Foreign Office
documents. In March 1944, one Dr. Veesenmayer of the Foreign Office was
sent to Hungary as “plenipotentiary” to act for the German government, supplementing
the activities of special Ambassador Ritter. Veesenmayer communicated
a great deal with the Foreign Office in Berlin via telegram. A document,
NG-2263, shown in Fig. 30, is typical of those which are said to be one
of these telegrams, taken from Foreign Office files. As a telegram received at
the Foreign Office, it naturally does not have Veesenmayer’s signature. The
endorsements consist in the Foreign Office stamps that have been used, and
the handwritten notation on the left which says that the document is to be filed
under “Hungary” (Ungarn) and is initialed by von Thadden and dated: vTh
4/7. It reads:
“I.) Transport of Jews out of Zone III concluded with 50,805 according
to plan. Total number out of Zones I – III 340,162.
II.) Concentration in Zone IV and transport out of that Zone concluded
with 41,499 according to plan. Total number 381,661. Continuation of operations
had been separately reported with teletypes no. 279 of 27 June,
no. 287 of 29 June and no. 289 of 30 June to Fuschl. Concentration in
Zone V (hitherto uncovered region west of the Danube without Budapest)
commenced 29 June. Simultaneously smaller actions in the suburbs of Budapest
commenced as preparatory measures. A few small transports of political,
intellectual and specially skilled Jews, and Jews with many children,
are also under way.”
It is a collection of such documents that constitutes the evidence for the
deportation of over 400,000 Hungarian Jews between May 15 and early July
of 1944. In my determination the relevant documents are as summarized below.
The nature of the endorsements is indicated in each case. Naturally not
all documents dealing with anti-Jewish measures, including deportations during
the relevant time period, are involved; only those which might be claimed
to compel an interpretation consistent with the extermination claims are listed.
NG-2059: Mimeographed copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the
Foreign Office, dated May 8, 1944. A certain number of Jews previously
scheduled for deportation are to be put to work on military projects in Hungary
instead. Application for the 100,000 employable Hungarian Jews requested
by Organization Todt (the Speer ministry) must be made to Glücks of
the WVHA, who is in charge of the deportation of Hungarian Jews. The endorsement
is Thadden’s initials.
NG-2060: In two parts. The second part is a mimeograph copy of a telegram
from Veesenmayer to Ribbentrop via Ritter, dated April 21, 1944. It reports
that 100,038 Hungarian Jews have been confined to camps as a result of
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
212
the “Special Operations.” The endorsements are a Top Secret stamp and
Thadden’s initials. The descriptive material accompanying the document (the
“staff evidence analysis”) indicates that Geiger’s initials also appear, but this
is not confirmed by examination of the rest of the material (in this case the
English translation only).
NG-2061: Mimeographed copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the
Foreign Office, dated May 20, 1944. It reports arrests of people involved with
the anti-Nazi underground, and the interception of “intelligence material concerning
the alleged conditions in the German concentration camps in the Government
General. In particular the happenings in the Auschwitz camp are described
in detail.” The endorsements are a Foreign Office stamp and Thadden’s
initials, although the staff evidence analysis says it is initialed by Geiger.
NG-2190: The first part is a covering note for the second part. Signed by
Thadden and Wissberg and initialed by Wagner, and stamped Top Secret. The
second part is a report from Thadden to the Foreign Office on anti-Jewish
measures in Hungary, dated May 26, 1944. It is reported that the Hungarian
government has agreed to the deportation to the Eastern territories of all Hungarian
Jews, with the exception of 80,000 to be retained for labor on military
projects. The number of Hungarian Jews is estimated at 900,000 to 1,000,000.
Most of the Jews outside Budapest have been concentrated in ghettos. As of
May 24, 116,000 had been deported to the General Government in daily
shipments of 14,000. The Jewish Council in Budapest (same as the Jewish
Senate of the Red Cross Report excerpt) was reassured that these measures
were directed only against unassimilated Jews, and that others were to be
treated differently. However, the SS expects difficulties with future concentration
and deportation measures anyway. Plans for future measures are outlined.
Problems stemming from the differing German and Hungarian definitions of a
Jew are discussed. It is estimated that about one third of the Hungarian Jews
deported to Auschwitz are able to work, and that these are distributed immediately
after arrival to Sauckel, Organization Todt, etc. Stamped Top Secret and
signed by Thadden. The third part is a covering note for the fourth part, initialed
by Wagner and Thadden, with handwritten references to Eichmann. The
fourth part is a summary of Thadden’s report, with no endorsement.
NG-2230: A copy of a two page letter, dated April 24, 1944, from Thadden
to Eichmann relaying the contents of NG-2233 (next to be discussed). Both
pages initialed by Thadden. Date stamp and handwritten notations on bottom
of page one. Note: the second time I consulted document NG-2230, it was an
entirely different document, so there may be some error here.
NG-2233: In two parts. First part is a copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer
to Ritter, dated April 23, 1944. It reports on the work of interning Jews
from the Carpathians in ghettos. 150,000 Jews have already been rounded up.
It is estimated that 300,000 Jews will have been affected when the action is
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
213
completed. The internment of Jews in other areas is then to follow. From May
15 on, 3,000 Jews are to be shipped daily to Auschwitz and in order not to
hold up their transport, the transfer of the 50,000 Jews, demanded for work in
the Reich by Veesenmayer, will temporarily be held up. For reasons of security,
feeding, and footwear, it is not considered practicable to send them on
foot. The endorsement is the stamp of the foreign Office (Classified Material).
The second part of the document is a carbon copy of a letter from Thadden to
Eichmann, dated April 24, repeating the substance of the telegram. Initialed
by Thadden.
NG-2235: A carbon copy of a telegram from Wagner to Veesenmayer,
dated May 21, 1944. It is reported that Thadden is to visit Budapest shortly to
discuss the disposal of the property of German and Hungarian Jews, within the
framework of the general European solution of the Jewish question. Initialed
by Wagner. There also appear to be initials “VM” on the document, but it
does not appear that this is supposed to be Veesenmayer’s initials.
NG-2236: A typed memo from Wagner to Steengracht, dated July 6, 1944.
Wagner states that it is the Reich policy to prevent Jewish emigration. The
War Refugee Board request, through Switzerland, that emigration of Hungarian
Jews to Palestine be permitted, must be denied because that would alienate
the Arabs. Anyway, the Swiss-American intervention will be too late by the
end of the month, for the anti-Jewish action in Hungary will be completed by
that time. Stamped Secret and signed by Wagner. Initialed by Thadden and,
possibly, by Hencke.
NG-2237: A mimeographed copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the
Foreign Office, dated June 10, reporting that the measures for the concentration
of Jews located north of Budapest had started, and that deportation of the
Jews would start June 11. The endorsement is a Foreign Office stamp and
Thadden’s initials.
NG-2238: Typewritten memo by Wagner proposing that negotiations with
the Swiss and Swedes on emigration of Hungarian Jews be treated in a dilatory
manner until the question of the treatment of the Jews remaining in Hungary
had definitely been solved. Dated September 16, 1944. Signed by Wagner,
initialed by Thadden and illegible others.
NG-2262: A mimeographed copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to
Ritter, Dated May 4, reporting that evacuation of 310,000 Jews of the Carpathian
and Transylvanian regions into Germany (“nach Deutschland”) is
scheduled to begin in the middle of May. Four daily transports, each holding
3,000, are contemplated. The necessary rail arrangements will be made at a
conference in Vienna on May 4. Foreign Office stamp and Thadden’s initials.
NG-2263: A mimeographed copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the
Foreign Office, dated June 30, reporting that 381,661 Hungarian Jews had
been deported as of June 30. Round-ups had started west of the Danube, not
including Budapest, and also in the suburbs of Budapest. Foreign Office stamp
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
214
and Thadden’s initials.
NG-2424: In two parts. The first part is a typed letter from Foreign Office
press chief Schmidt to Foreign Office Secretary of State Steengracht, dated
May 27, suggesting a propaganda campaign (“the discovery of explosives in
Jewish clubs and synagogues,” etc.) to precede any actions against the Jews of
Budapest. The endorsement is initialing by Wagner. The second part is a
typed copy of a telegram from Thadden to Budapest, dated June 1, passing on
the suggestion. Initialed by Wagner and Thadden.
NG-2980: In three parts. The first part is a typed copy of a telegram from
Wagner to Budapest, dated May 21, announcing a forthcoming visit to Budapest
by Thadden, for negotiations on the Jewish problem. Stamped and initialed
by Wagner. The second part is an unsigned carbon copy of a letter from
Thadden to Wagner, constituting a covering letter for Thadden’s report on his
activities in Budapest. Stamped Top Secret. The third part is the typed five
page report, dated May 25. It is reported that special referent for Jewish questions
at the German Embassy in Budapest von Adamovic, “has no idea of the
actual intentions (or) of the practical application of the measure against the
Jews.” He also reports a visit to Eichmann’s office, where he learned that
116,000 Jews had been deported to the Reich and that the deportation of another
200,000 was imminent. Concentration of about 250,000 Jews of the
provinces north and northwest of Budapest will begin June 7. More plans are
given. It is estimated that only about 80,000 Jews able to work will remain in
Hungary. The entire operation is to be concluded by the end of July. The report
is five pages long and the only endorsement is a top secret stamp on the
first page.
NG-5510:1 A typed copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, date May 8, stating that Count Bethlen and Dr. Schilling do not approve
of the Jewish action, and that Veesenmayer will therefore request their
dismissal. “Count Bethlen declared that he did not want to become a mass
murderer and would rather resign.” The endorsements consist of a top secret
stamp and a handwritten notation to file under “Hungary.”
NG-5532: A typed copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to Foreign Minister
Ribbentrop, dated July 9, reporting Hungarian Minister of the Interior
Jaross’ intention to concentrate the Budapest Jews outside of Budapest and
then “release them gradually in batches of 30 – 40,000 Jews for transport to
the Reich.” No endorsement.
NG-5533: A typed copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated June 14, asserting that numerous Hungarian Jews had been slipping
into Slovakia “since we pounced upon them” after March 19. Stamped
with “Hungary” and “State Secretary” handwritten on the bottom.
NG-5565: An original typed copy of a telegram from Thadden to the German
Embassy in Pressburg, dated May 2, announcing that a conference will
be held May 4-5 in Vienna for the purpose of organizing rail transport for “a
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
215
large number of Hungarian Jews for work in the Eastern Territories.” Stamped
secret and initialed by Thadden.
NG-5567: A mimeographed copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the
Foreign Office, dated June 17, giving the total number of Hungarian Jews deported
to the Reich as 326,009. Stamped and initialed by Thadden (the staff
evidence analysis states that the document is initialed by Wagner and Reichel,
but this is not confirmed by the documents I examined).
NG-5568: A mimeographed copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the
Foreign Office, dated June 8. “In execution of Jewish measures in Hungary
basic principle to be observed is secrecy regarding dates of deportation and of
zones which will be cleansed one after the other in order to avoid disquieting
of Jewish elements and attempts to emigrate. This applies especially to the
city district of Budapest which is to be the last zone and where difficulties in
this respect are to be expected.” Stamped and blue pencil noted by Thadden.
NG-5569: In several parts. The first and major part is a mimeograph of a
telegram from Ludin in Pressburg (Slovakia) to the Foreign Office, dated June
14. It is reported that guards had entered the trains deporting Jews from Hungary
across Slovakia, and had robbed the Jews of money and jewelry, and had
shot some. They had then used the proceeds to get drunk at a nearby restaurant.
Stamped. Next four parts are notes discussing the incident. Various
stamps; initials of Wagner, Thadden, and Mirbach.
NG-5570: Mimeographed copies of five telegrams. The first is dated October
14, and reports the plans to deport about 50,000 Jews by foot from Hungary
for labor in the Reich. It is added, confidentially, that “Eichmann plans
[…] to request 50,000 additional Jews in order to reach the ultimate goal of
cleaning of Hungarian space […] ” Stamped and handwritten notes. Next four
parts discuss operations with Budapest Jews and also with the Jews being deported
for labor. Stamps and initialings by Wagner and Thadden.
NG-5571: Typewritten telegrams exchanged by Veesenmayer and Altenburg
of the Foreign Office, dated June 25 and 28. In view of the “liquidation
of the Jewish problem” in Hungary, the Hungarian government should reimburse
the Reich with the corresponding amounts of food-stuffs. Stamps.
NG-5573: Typed report by Wagner to Ribbentrop, dated October 27. Of
the 900,000 Jews who had been in Hungary, 437,402 had been sent for “labor
to the East.” A discussion of Hungarian Jews being allowed to emigrate follows.
Stamped and initialed by Mirbach.
NG-5576: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated June 30. Horthy objected to measure against the Budapest
Jews, but agreed to postponed measures. Thus “assembling in last provincial
Zone V (so far not covered space west of Danube, with exclusion of Budapest)
has started. Simultaneously assembling will be carried out within jurisdiction
of first constabulary commando in remoter suburbs of Budapest in order
to facilitate drive in capital.” Stamped.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
216
NG-5594: Anonymous telegram from Budapest to the Foreign Office,
dated April 18. The “Hungarian population urgently desires a swift, radical solution
to the Jewish problem, since fear of Jewish revenge is greater than the
fear of Russian brutality.” Handwritten notations to file.
NG-5595: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the foreign
Office, dated April 28. “Special operations” in Hungary had resulted in
the arrest of 194,000 Jews. Stamped and handwritten notations.
NG-5596: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated April 28. 194,000 Jews arrested by the special operations
and Hungarian plans to distribute the Budapest Jews throughout the city on
account of the Allied bombing raids. Stamped.
NG-5597: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated April 30. 194,000 Jews arrested by the special operations
and discussion of Jews trying to be conscripted for labor in Hungary in order
to avoid concentration camps. Stamped and handwritten notations.
NG-5599: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated May 5. 196,700 Jews arrested by the special operations.
Stamped and handwritten notations.
NG-5600: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated May 6. Jews are being rounded up, and the Jews think that
they are “only going to the special camps temporarily.” Stamped.
NG-5602: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated May 24. 110,556 Hungarian Jews have been deported.
Stamped, handwritten notations and illegible initials.
NG-5603: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated May 19. 51,000 Hungarian Jews deported. Stamped and
handwritten notations.
NG-5604: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated May 20. 62,644 Hungarian Jews deported. Stamped and
handwritten notations.
NG-5605: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated May 20. Same report as NG-2061. Handwritten notations.
NG-5607: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated May 16. The deportation of the 300,000 Jews concentrated
in the Carpathian area and in Transylvania had began on May 14, with four
special trains with 3,000 Jews in each leaving daily. Stamped and handwritten
notations.
NG-5608: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office dated May 25. 138,870 Hungarian Jews had been deported to the
Reich. Stamped and handwritten notations.
NG-5613: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated July 20. The Hungarian Nazis got the Franciscans to schedule
a Thanksgiving mass to celebrate the deportation of the Jews, but the
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
217
bishop objected and certain compromises had to be made. Stamped and handwritten
notations.
NG-5615: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated July 11. 437,402 Hungarian Jews had been deported.
Stamped and handwritten notations.
NG-5616: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated July 8. 422,911 Hungarian Jews had been deported to the
Reich. Stamped.
NG-5617: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated June 17. 340,142 Hungarian Jews had been deported to the
Reich. Stamped and handwritten notations.
NG-5618: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated June 17. 326,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported to the
Reich. Stamped and handwritten notations.
NG-5619: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated June 13. 289,357 Jews had been deported from the Carpathian
and Transylvanian regions. Future plans for deportation are outlined.
Stamped and handwritten notations.
NG-5620: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated June 8. Document, except for staff evidence analysis, was
missing from the collection consulted, but it is apparently similar to those immediately
preceding and immediately following.
NG-5621: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated June 2. 247,856 Hungarian Jews had been deported to the
Reich. Stamped and handwritten notations.
NG-5622: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated June 1. 236,414 Hungarian Jews had been shipped to the
Reich. Stamped.
NG-5623: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated June 1. 217,236 Hungarian Jews had been shipped to the
Reich. Stamped and handwritten notations
NG-5624: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to the Foreign
Office, dated May 31. 204,312 Hungarian Jews had been shipped to the
Reich. Stamped and handwritten notations.
NG-5637: Typed memo from Wagner to Steengracht, dated May 21, 1943.
Wagner reports a visit from the Hungarian Ambassador. Difficulties relating
to solution of the Jewish problem in Hungary were discussed. The deportations
would have to be carried out in stages and, in order not to alarm those
left behind, the ones deported should be allowed “a possibility to earn a living,
at least for a short period.” Stamped and signed by Wagner.
NG-5684: Typewritten copy of a telegram from Veesenmayer to Ribbentrop,
dated July 6. A six page report of a conference with Horthy, who mentioned
that “he received a flood of telegrams every day from all quarters
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
218
abroad and at home, for instance from the Vatican, from the King of Sweden,
from Switzerland, from the Red Cross and other parties,” in regard to the
Hungarian Jews. He advocated keeping Jewish physicians and also the Jewish
labor companies who had been assigned to war related tasks. Veesenmayer
told him that “the solution of the Jewish question […] was carried out by
Hungary [but] could never [have been] completed without [SS and SD] support.”
Initialed by Steengracht.
A few words on the general conditions under which this documents analysis
was carried out are in order before proceeding to interpret this evidence.
Unless one goes to Washington to examine original documents, what one
typically has made available when a specific document is examined may consist
of as many as four parts. First, there may be a photostatic copy of the
original document. This happens only in a minority of cases. The other three
parts are almost always available. First, there is the mimeographed reproduction,
in German, of the original document. Thus instead of any handwritten
material, there is typewritten material that is indicated as having been handwritten.
Second, there is the English translation of this German language
document. Third, there is the accompanying descriptive material, the “staff
evidence analysis.” Among the four parts, quite a few minor contradictions
were noted in the course of the study. In addition, a very few documents were
missing from the collection examined.
It might be said, with good grounds, that certain of these documents should
not be in the list, because they admit of many interpretations other than transport
of the majority of Hungarian Jews to the Reich. NG-2424 is of this nature;
we have seen that the proposed Budapest action finally took place in October.
NG-5533 and NG-5684 admit of many interpretations; with respect to
the latter, there is no doubt that some Hungarian Jews were deported to the
Reich specifically for labor and the document may be interpreted in that respect.
Nevertheless it is obvious that I must declare, at this point, that a quite considerable
amount of forgery was involved in the production of these documents;
they were written after the war. That the events the documents speak
of, involving over 400,000 Hungarian Jews transported to the Reich (or Poland)
in May – July of 1944, did not occur is a certainty, for reasons given.
However there are grounds for a certain uneasiness here because forgery does
not seem to have been practiced with respect to the parts of the Auschwitz extermination
legend which have been examined up to this point. Forgery is a
risky business. Thus, although forgery seems a certainty, we should wish for
some independent evidence for a charge of forgery.
Forgery is less risky if it does not involve the actual forgery of signatures;
if the cooperation of the persons who signed or initialed the forged documents
could have been obtained, then it might have seemed that the risk was removed
or minimized. Thus we should take a close look at the endorsers of
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
219
these documents. If NG-5684 is excepted, we have endorsements consisting of
initials and/or signatures (or alleged initials and signatures) by Geiger, Wissberg,
Hencke, Reichel, Mirbach, Wagner and Thadden, with the great majority
of the endorsements coming from the latter two. These seven people have one
very interesting thing in common; none were defendants in Case 11 or, apparently,
in any other trial. In the cases of the first five, this can be argued to have
been reasonable, either on account of the low rank of the person or on account
of his peripheral involvement with the alleged crimes. Thus the first five people
had only a minor involvement in Case 11; Mirbach appeared as a defense
witness and Hencke was a defense affiant.277
With Wagner and Thadden, however, the immunity from prosecution is
most mysterious if one does not grasp that the apparently safe manufacture of
the incriminating Hungary documents required, basically, only their cooperation.
We should thus examine their roles in the Foreign Office and their experiences
after the war.
Eberhard von Thadden was an official in “Inland II” in the Foreign Office.
This group’s responsibility was liaison with the SS and thus Thadden was, so
to speak, the “Jewish expert” of the Foreign Office. Communication with
Eichmann relative to the carrying out of Jewish policies, whatever those policies
were, was a quite normal part of his duties. NG-2233 and NG-2980 are
quite accurate in at least that respect. Horst Wagner was a member of Foreign
Minister Ribbentrop’s personal staff and, as the head of Inland II, was Thadden’s
superior and, as the documents correctly suggest, he was equally involved
in the Jewish policies of he German government. The Foreign Office
had been accused by the various military tribunals of being implicated in the
extermination of Jews and at the IMT Ribbentrop had been found guilty in this
respect. The main defendants in Case 11 were some officials of the Foreign
Office, most of them ordinary diplomats, and implication in Jewish extermination
was naturally one of the charges. Both ex officio and in consideration of
the documents that have been reviewed, both Thadden and Wagner would
have seemed, at the start of Case 11, to have been in serious trouble. Moreover,
they could not have been considered too obscure in relation to Case 11,
the Ministries, or Wilhelmstrasse, Case. For example, the New York Times
story announcing the opening of Case 11 chose to mention eight prominent
“defendants or witnesses,” and Thadden was one of those in the list.278
It is thus inexplicable, on normal grounds, that they were not even defendants
in the trial; they both appeared as prosecution witnesses.279 Strange occurrences
continued for several years. With respect to Thadden, German tribunals
attempted to correct the glaring omission by prosecuting him. After he
277 NMT, vol. 14, 1023, 1027.
278 New York Times (Feb. 26, 1947), 4; Hilberg, 350f; NMT, vol. 14, 1057f; Steengracht 86.
279 NMT, vol. 14, 1031.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
220
was released from American detention in 1949, a German court in Nuremberg
charged him in December 1950, but he went to Cologne in the British zone
and extradition was denied. Then a Cologne court charged him in May 1952
but the trial never materialized. He signed a prosecution affidavit for
Eichmann’s trial in 1961. In early 1964 he was arrested again but released after
he managed to produce $500,000 bail, but then in November 1964 he was
in an automobile accident and died of the injuries received.
Similarly Horst Wagner was arrested by German authorities in 1949, but
he managed to flee to Spain and then to Italy. Extradition proceedings commenced
in 1953, but failed. In 1958 he returned to Germany to apply for a
pension, was arrested, but soon released on $20,000 bond, despite his previous
flight to escape prosecution. His case seemed to disappear but a trial was finally
scheduled for May 20, 1968, ten years after his return to Germany.
However there were several postponements for various stated reasons and finally,
in late 1972, his trial was postponed indefinitely. In late 1975 he was
living in quiet retirement in a suburb of Düsseldorf.280
So much for the documentary evidence supporting the claims of extermination
of Hungarian Jews. Wagner and Thadden had joined, as had Höss and
others, the “new Meistersinger von Nürnberg” but they evidently did it in an
intelligent manner, because they acquired effective immunity from prosecution.
In this connection, a detailed study of the documents by some expert person
would be, most probably, very worthwhile. One object of analysis should
be the language used. For example, the expression “nach Deutschland” in
NG-2262 sounds as peculiar to me as “to America” would sound in an official
State Department document, but I am not the appropriate judge in this matter.
In any case, Wagner and Thadden held some cards merely by virtue of knowledge
of the existence of false documents, that others did not hold. For example,
Höss was in a position of dependence only on the gratitude of the Allies.
I have not examined all of the documents in the NG series (there are more
than 5,000) and therefore I cannot reject the possibility, or even probability,
that a few more exist. It is also possible that one or two might turn up with
scribbles, said to be initials, for which I have no immediate answer. However
the documents study has been relatively thorough in consideration of the purposes
of our study. It goes far beyond the documents that happen to have been
referenced by Hilberg and by Reitlinger, far enough to satisfy me three times
over on the fundamental dependence of this evidence on the post-war cooperation
of von Thadden and Wagner.
It is well worth noting that Wagner and Thadden were not the only Germans
involved with the Hungarian Jews who were mysteriously excused from
280 Hilberg, 714, 715; Reitlinger, 443, 566, 567; Eichmann, session 85, A1, B1, O1-R1; London
Times (Nov. 20, 1964), 16; New York Times (Nov. 20, 1964), 8. London Daily Telegraph,
(Nov. 7, 1975), magazine section, 17.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
221
prosecution. SS General Otto Winkelmann, Higher SS and Police Leader for
Hungary and in command of all SS operations in Hungary, was also a prosecution
witness in Case 11. SS Colonel Kurt Becher, representative in Hungary
of the SS Führungshauptamt (and thus of Himmler), served the prosecution at
the IMT. In fact none of the principals unquestionably involved in whatever
were the German measures relative to the Hungarian Jews stood trial at Nuremberg
or (with the exception of Eichmann) anywhere else. Eichmann was
missing at the time of the Nuremberg trials, and the others gave evidence for
the prosecution of those whose involvement had been at most peripheral.
The Producers
Nobody should be surprised to find the most sordid practices behind these
trials. We have seen in Chapter 1 that no ethical limitations were respected in
the means sometimes employed to produce “evidence.” We should, therefore,
take a closer look at who was in charge in Case 11. Recall that there was no
substantial “indictment” process involving a grand jury, and that, as one may
confirm by reading DuBois‘ book, it was the prosecution in each case that decided
who was to be put on trial, and with what he was to be charged.
The Wilhelmstrasse Case was not really commensurate with the other
cases tried before the NMT; all of the latter had had special purpose characters,
as Table 4 shows (p. 41). The Ministries or Wilhelmstrasse Case, however,
was somewhat like a “little IMT,” that is, people from an assortment of
German government ministries were put on trial and the trial had a correspondingly
wide scope. Thus it was split into an “economic ministries section”
and a “political ministries section,” each of which had different prosecution
staffs.
The important section from our point of view and, indeed, the most politically
important case to come before the NMT, was the political ministries section
of Case 11, whose chief prosecutor was Robert M. W. Kempner, who has
quite a history. It is very useful to present a short summary here of the “high”
points of his career.
Kempner, a Jew, was born in Germany in 1899, studied law, and joined the
Prussian Ministry of Interior during the Twenties. In the years 1928-1933 he
was a senior counsel for the Prussian State Police (under the Ministry of the
Interior) and specialized in investigating the rising Nazi Party. He became an
anti-Nazi crusader, in his official capacity, and energetically attempted, without
success, to have the party outlawed.
When the Nazis took over the German government in 1933 he was dismissed
from his government position but, although Jewish, he was able to
continue his legal practice for a short while as a counselor in international law
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
222
and Jewish migration problems and also, apparently, as legal counsel for the
German taxi drivers’ organization. Whether or not he spent any time in a
camp or in some other form of detention is not clear. In any case, he moved to
Italy in 1935 to take an administrative and teaching (political science) position
at a small school in Florence. The Mussolini government closed the school in
1938, so the school and Kempner moved to Nice, France. He did not remain
with the school for very long, however and emigrated to the United States in
1939. His mother already had a research job at the University of Pennsylvania,
and this connection seems to have landed him his “research associate” position
at that University.281
He immediately resumed his anti-Nazi crusading. He had somehow managed
to smuggle out of Germany some of the Prussian police papers to which
he had contributed, and these became the basis of a book which he published
privately in 1943. The book, in stencil form, attempted to show, on the basis
of Kempner’s past experiences in Germany, what should be done in Germany
after the war in order to permanently suppress Nazism. It did not achieve wide
circulation but, together with some other books and articles that he wrote, established
him as a sort of expert on fighting Nazis. He had also smuggled out
some phonograph recordings of Nazi meetings; these had been made by the
Prussian police during the years of his service. He contributed them to the
University of Pennsylvania. He also did a certain amount of anti-Nazi letter
writing to the newspapers. As the war was drawing to a close, he wrote that
the Nazi leaders should be tried in the US before regular American courts. In
the meantime, he had acquired US citizenship.282
During the war he worked for both the US Department of Justice and the
OSS. In the latter agency he was charged with drawing up lists of German
anti-Nazis who could be trusted with posts in the coming occupation government
of Germany. He was one of a large group of German Jews in the OSS
(which included, e.g., Herbert Marcuse).
At the end of the war Kempner switched to the War Department and accompanied
the US Army back into Germany “on the payroll of the Judge Advocate
General.” Prior to the opening of the IMT trial, he served in the fairly
significant role of prosecution liaison with defense counsel, and later on was
in charge of the division that prepared the US trial briefs against individual defendants.
During the trial, he was an apparently ordinary member of the
prosecution staff, and specialized in the prosecution of the Nazi Minister of
the Interior, Frick. He does not appear to have been particularly prominent, although
immediately after the trial he contributed a magazine article to the New
281 New York Times (Feb. 22, 1940), 22; (Aug. 26, 1940), 17; (Mar. 30, 1944), 6; (Nov. 14,
1945), 8; (Jan. 17, 1946), 14; Select Committee, 1534-1535; Current Biography (1943),
370; Who’s Who in World Jewry (1965), 498.
282 Kempner, 1-12; New York Times (Sep. 28, 1941), sec. 2, 6; (Jan 20,1945),10.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
223
York Times on the great work the trial had done in educating the Germans.
The killings of the German military and political leaders had not yet been carried
out, so he simultaneously predicted, with great satisfaction, that the
doomed Nazis would be buried in unmarked graves, to “avoid fanatical pilgrimages
by still ardent Nazis.” Actually, the ultimate procedure was even
more hysterical, because the bodies of Göring et. al. were photographed (in
order to be gloated over, shortly later, in the press and in newsreels), disguised
in US Army uniforms, taken secretly to Dachau and cremated there, the ashes
being sifted into a nearby stream.283
As he was taking over his responsibilities in Case 11 in 1947, Kempner
was in the news in a related, but nevertheless highly important connection
from the point of view of our subject. In 1943 and 1944 there had been held,
in the land of the “free press,” some “sedition trials” of Americans whose
views of the US government’s war policies were considered unwelcome. The
US prosecutor was O. John Rogge, an Ohioan who had, in his youth, been expected
by family and friends to enter the ministry. He became a lawyer instead,
and is said to have turned in a brilliant performance at the Harvard Law
School. Attorney General Biddle chose him to prosecute the “sedition” case,
replacing William P. Maloney, whose methods had provoked protests from
several influential members of Congress. The proceedings, involving 30 defendants,
were completely contrary to US constitutional principles, and were
fortuitously aborted when the trial judge passed away in November 1944, and
a mistrial was declared. While the government was planning to resume the
case, the Supreme Court had reversed another sedition conviction, and grave
doubt arose within the Justice Department about the wisdom of continuing the
spectacle. We hope the reader will abide this long digression on the “sedition”
episode, within the present digression on Kempner, for the point to be made is
most important.284
Rogge lost interest in the sedition case, as such, but he did not lose interest
in the general subject of a “Fascist” internal menace in the US. In the spring of
1946 he went to Germany on an 11 week “information” gathering expedition,
and accumulated some alleged facts that he summarized in a report which he
submitted to the Justice Department later in the year. Because there was no
immediate reaction from the Justice Department to the material he had submitted,
it appears that he got impatient and could not restrain himself. He therefore
resorted to going around giving speeches in which he divulged some of
the “information” he had been able to gather by interrogating Germans. In a
speech to B’nai B’rith in New York in October 1946, he reported in very general
language that Fascists are still at large “in the world and in this country
283 R. H. Smith, 217, 222; Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 5, 44; New York Times (Oct. 6, 1946), sec.
6, 8; (Oct. 7, 1946), 2; (Mar. 18, 1947), 4; Select Committee, 1536, 1539.
284 Current Biography (1948), 533-534; New York Times (Feb. 7, 1943), 34.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
224
[…] Now the Fascists can take a more subtle disguise; they can come forward
and simply say ‘I am anti-Communist’.” A few days later he was much more
specific whom he was talking about. John L. Lewis, President of the United
Mine workers, and the late William R. Davis, an oil operator and promoter,
had, he declared in a speech at Swarthmore College, conspired with Göring
and Ribbentrop to defeat President Roosevelt in the elections of 1936, 1940
and 1944. According to the “evidence” that he had obtained in Germany, other
prominent Americans who, in the view of the Nazis, “could be organized
against United States participation in the war” included, he said, Senator Burton
K. Wheeler, former Vice President John N. Garner, former President Herbert
Hoover and Democratic big-wig James A. Farley. Rogge had also given
some of his material to Drew Pearson, and it appeared in Pearson’s column at
about the same time. For such flagrant violation of the rules and standards of
the Justice Department and of the legal profession and also, presumably, for
stepping on some important political toes, Rogge was immediately dismissed
from the Justice Department by Attorney General Clark. Rogge defended his
actions, explaining that, after all, he had merely made “a study of international
Fascism, for the people under investigation were part of an international
movement to destroy democracy both here and abroad.” Again he was specific;
two of the people posing the Fascist threat were Mr. Douglas Mac-
Collum Stewart and Mr. George T. Eggleston, at the time a member of the
staff of the Reader’s Digest. Rogge said that in Germany he had obtained information
about them from former German diplomats who had had official
connections with the US before Pearl Harbor. Pravda described Rogge’s removal
as a “scandal.”285
In the period before Pearl Harbor, Stewart and Eggleston had published the
Scribner’s Commentator, which was dedicated to keeping the US out of
World War II. During 1941 Stewart had received a large sum of money,
$38,000 and could not explain where it came from. He told the “sedition”
grand juries of 1943-1944 that he had found this money in his home. Since,
even to an impartial observer, such a story sounds ludicrous, Stewart was assailed
by the prosecutor and judge for giving such testimony. His refusal to
change it led to his being held in contempt of court and he was sentenced to
serve 90 days in jail (he was paroled after 75 days).
In the course of 1946 the Justice Department, including even Rogge, had
become convinced that no “sedition” charge could succeed in court, so the
case that had been opened in 1943 was finally closed. However there was still
the matter of Stewart’s testimony, which seemed a good basis for a perjury
charge. Thus, in March 1947, Stewart was put on trial for committing perjury
285 Current Biography (1948), 534; New York Times (Oct. 14, 1946), 44; New York Times (Oct.
23, 1946); 8; (Oct. 26, 1946), 1; (Oct. 27, 1946), 16; (Nov. 3, 1946), 13; Newsweek (Nov. 4,
1946), 26.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
225
in testifying before the wartime grand jury.
The prosecution claimed that Stewart had received $15,000 of the $38,000
from the German government, and produced two witnesses to support its contention.
Baron Herbert von Strempel, former First Secretary of the German
Embassy in Washington, testified that he had given Stewart $15,000 in the
Hotel Pennsylvania in New York in the fall of 1941. The money had been obtained,
he said, from Dr. Hans Thomsen, German Chargé d’Affaires. Thomsen
then testified in support of von Strempel’s story. The testimony of Strempel
and Thomsen was, in fact, the direct consequence of Rogge’s information
gathering expedition in Germany in 1946.
Stewart’s defense produced evidence that Stewart had received large sums
of money from American sources in 1941. It claimed that some wealthy
Americans wished to support the, by then, beleaguered cause of staying out of
the war, but anonymously, so they slipped money to Stewart anonymously.
Whether this claim was truthful or the truth was that Stewart had, indeed, lied
before the wartime grand jury on account of feeling himself obliged not to divulge
the identities of his American supporters, is scarcely relevant to our subject.
More relevant was the defense cross examination of the prosecution’s
German witnesses, because the defense was able to discredit the prosecution
case by showing that the testimony had been coerced. Baron von Strempel
said that he had been arrested in Hamburg by two British agents who, when
asked for their warrant, “smiled, drew their guns from their shoulder holsters,
and said that was their warrant.” He then spent four weeks in an American interrogation
center, and then seven months in a detention camp, where he was
again subject to continual questioning. During this period, his health was
“never so bad.” He was questioned by Robert M. W. Kempner, but did not
want to talk about this. Judge Laws was obliged to direct von Strempel to reply
to defense attorney Magee’s questions about this feature of his experiences.
He finally said that Kempner had told him that if he “concealed any
embassy dealings” he would be court martialed and sentenced to death. He
then told the whole story. Incessant, intensive questioning by interrogators
made him feel as if he had been “hypnotized.” O. John Rogge became one of
von Strempel’s interrogators in Germany. During Rogge’s interrogation, he
said, his necktie and shoelaces were removed, he was kept in solitary confinement,
was questioned all day without food, and was “at all times under duress.”
He admitted that he had signed a statement, but said that this was on account
of fear of further solitary confinement. He gave this testimony, so destructive
to the prosecution’s case, despite the fact that the US was paying him
$70 per week, plus hotel expenses, in connection with his appearance as a
witness against Stewart. There was also the possibility of US retaliation via
some sort of “war crimes” charge. Thomsen was likewise cross-examined; he
admitted that von Strempel had told him of the death threat, and said that he
had been “coached” by Rogge in recalling details. The jury found Stewart inArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
226
nocent during the course of a lunch break. Thus had Kempner appeared in the
newspapers even before Case 11 had gotten underway.286
In examining the sedition affair we have, therefore, encountered the Wilhelmstrasse
Case, in the sense that Kempner enters the picture as interrogator
and potential prosecutor of incarcerated former officials of the German Foreign
office. The connection with Case 11 is even more substantial because
Stewart’s attorney in the 1947 trial, Warren E. Magee, was shortly later to become
co-counsel for Baron von Weizsäcker, the principal defendant in Case
11. We therefore have the unusual fact that the two sides involved in Case 11
had, almost simultaneously, clashed in a regular US legal proceeding and that
the testimony that had been the result of the interrogation of the captive Germans
had been successfully challenged by the defense as coerced. This is an
extraordinary and important confirmation of the kind of activity, indicated by
the evidence we have already reviewed, which must have transpired behind
the scenes at the NMT – carrot and stick tactics of various sorts, including
even third degree methods in some cases (but not necessarily in all cases
where the evidence could correctly be said to have been “coerced”). Magee’s
successes along these lines did not, moreover, cease with the Stewart trial. In
another extraordinary choice of a person to use as a prosecution witness rather
than put on trail, Kempner had used Friedrich Gaus, who had a reputation as
“Ribbentrop’s evil spirit,” as the chief prosecution witness against von
Weizsäcker. Magee, evidently by virtue of being an American having access
to documents denied the German lawyers, was able to prove in court that
Kempner had threatened to hand Gaus over to the Russians if Gaus did not
cooperate with the prosecution, a frequent and effective threat that had certain
variations. Häfliger, one of the defendants in Case 11, was a Swiss citizen but,
according to his trial testimony, he was told by interrogator Sachs that if he
stood on his Swiss nationality he would be turned over to the Russians, and
Sachs urged him “to note that there were no diplomatic relations between
Russia and Switzerland.” Much more to the point is the fact that von Thadden,
under cross examination by defense attorney Dr. Schmidt-Leichner, admitted
that Kempner, in connection with an execution that had supposedly been carried
out by German authorities in France:
“had made me understand that there were two possibilities for me, either
to confess or to be transmitted to the French authorities, before a
French tribunal, where the death penalty would be sure for me. A delay of
twenty four hours was accorded me, during which I had to decide.”
A Swiss journalist wrote at the time that Kempner and colleagues were attempting
to misrepresent Nazism as a “concoction of the German upper
286 New York Times (Mar. 12, 1947), 6; (Mar. 13, 1947), 17; (Mar. 14, 1947), 12; (Mar. 15,
1947), 11; (Mar. 18, 1947), 4; (Mar. 19, 1947), 5; (Mar. 26, 1947), 4; Chicago Tribune (Mar.
19, 1947), 20.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
227
classes” in order to destroy the pre-Nazi social structure of Germany.287
Rogge had a long and interesting career but a thorough summary would
carry us too far afield. In fairness to him we should say that his behavior in
connection with the “sedition” cases should not lead one to assume that he
was insensitive in regard to civil liberties because, when the first postwar steps
were being taken to set up an anti-Communist internal security program,
Rogge started yelling about “witch hunts” and, in the following years, became
Chairman of the New York State (Henry) Wallace for President Committee, a
perfectly logical appointment, because Rogge embodied all that was unique in
that movement’s approach to dealing with the Soviet Union. Characterized by
the left wing Nation in 1950 as “the lone independent in various Communistoperated
congresses, committees, and delegations,” he had traveled to Moscow
in March to attend the “World Congress of Partisans for Peace.” He explained
to the Soviets that the cold war was equally the fault of both sides, and
stood up in a formal meeting in the Kremlin and quoted Thomas Jefferson, actions
that were not appreciated by his Soviet hosts. The Nation commented
further that288
“It is easy to put down O. John Rogge as a quixotic busybody, a fuzzyminded
liberal so out of touch with reality that he believes the ills of the
world to be merely the result of unfortunate misunderstanding. […] He has
shown why the Russian rulers regard with suspicion even their own followers
who have had contact with the West.”
Rogge also involved himself in the widely publicized “Trenton Six” murder
case of 1948-1953, as a lawyer for the “Civil Rights Congress.” In December
1949 the judge barred him from the New Jersey trial for :
“[…] violating the lawyers’ canons of ethics by denouncing the conduct
of the trial in public, by showing ‘studied discourtesy and contempt’ in the
court and by ‘deliberately distorting the facts.’ [The judge also charged
that] the Civil Rights Congress […] collected more money from the public
than was needed for the trial.”
Seven months later, a US court held that Rogge’s barring from the trial was
wrong, but did not order his restoration.289 This short discussion of Rogge suffices
for our purposes.
To return to Kempner. When the Bonn government had been newly consti-
287 Utley, 172, 177; Gaus (Case 11 transcript, 5123-6167) denied the coercion but, as Magee
commented in court, “we have the questions and answers that the witness gave” in the relevant
interrogation. The von Thadden and Häfliger declarations were made in the sessions of
March 3 and May 11, 1948, respectively, and the corresponding parts of the trial transcript
are quoted by Bardèche, 120ff, who gives other examples of coercion and intimidation of
witnesses at Nuremberg.
288 New York Times (Nov. 8, 1947), 10; (Apr. 4, 1948), 46; Nation (May 27, 1950), 528; (Dec.
2, 1950), 499.
289 New York Times (Dec. 17, 1949), 1; (Jul 22, 1950), 32.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
228
tuted in 1949, he warned of incipient Nazism there. Such a view did not prevent
him from serving, two years later, as Israel’s representative to Bonn in
negotiations relative to the restitution of Jews who had suffered injury at the
hands of the Nazi government. However, the next month he was attacking the
reprieves and reductions of sentences of “war criminals” that had been granted
by the US.290
Kempner next appeared in connection with the 1952 House investigation
of the Katyn Forest massacre, a well known Russian atrocity whose handling
by the IMT throws full light on the absurdity of that tribunal’s claim to respect.
On April 13, 1943, the Germans announced that, in the Katyn Forest near
the city of Smolensk in Russia (mid-way between Minsk and Moscow), mass
graves of Polish officers who had been captured by the Russians in 1939 had
been uncovered. Four days later the minister of defense of the Polish government
in exile (in London) announced that he was requesting the International
Red Cross to make an inquiry. The Germans supported the proposed inquiry
but the Russians opposed it, referring to the London Poles as “Hitler’s Polish
collaborators,” and on April 26 broke diplomatic relations with that government
over the matter.
On account of the Russian opposition, the Red Cross refused to get involved.
However, the German government exhibited the Katyn mass graves to
various parties of Poles, to a group of foreign newspaper correspondents, to a
group of German journalists, to small parties of British and American POW’s,
to a technical team of the Polish Red Cross and, most importantly, to an international
commission of experts in forensic medicine (specialists in rendering
medical opinions in legal proceedings). The commission concluded with a report
which demonstrated the certainty that these Polish officers had been murdered
by the Russians prior to the outbreak of war between Russia and Germany
in June 1941.
When the graves had first been discovered, the German propaganda service,
not knowing how many bodies were to be found there but knowing the
approximate number of Polish officers who could have been involved as victims,
used the figure of 10,000 and 12,000 as the number of bodies discovered,
and these were the figures which were given the widest publicity during
the war. Consequently, at the IMT, the indictment charged the Germans with
murdering 11,000 Polish officers at Katyn, although it had been established,
later in 1943, that there were only 4,253 bodies to be found. This fact was
published by the German government but naturally, because it contradicted
their earlier claims, the Germans did not give the correct figure great publicity.
What happened at the IMT with respect to this charge illustrates the fool-
290 New York Times (Sep. 30, 1949), 2; (Jan. 12, 1951), 7; (Feb. 2, 1951), 8.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
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ishness of that tribunal’s claim to anything approximating legal jurisdiction.
The testimony of members of the forensic commission was naturally of interest
so the Russians produced Professor Marko Markov, a citizen and resident
of Bulgaria, who had been one of the signers of the commission report. Bulgaria
being, by then, under Soviet control, Markov had changed his mind and
testified in support of the Russian position, i.e., that the Germans had intimidated
him into approving the commission report.291
Göring’s counsel, on the other hand, applied to have Professor F. Naville,
the chairman of the commission, called to testify. On this point one can see
the emptiness of the tribunal’s effectiveness in getting at the truth, even if it
had wished to. Naville was a Swiss citizen, resident in Geneva, and could not
be forced to testify and, in fact, he declined to testify. The motivation is obvious.
The counsel for Field Marshall Keitel also requested that Naville (who
had also been an International Red Cross representative) answer some questions
(relative to a different subject) to be put to him in writing, but it appears
that this interrogation did not materialize. Thus the IMT tribunal, by its very
nature, was prejudiced against the appearance of the most reliable type of witness:
the citizen of a country which had been neutral during the war and independent
after the war (I am only saying that the IMT could not compel testimony
from such people; we have seen that Burckhardt, the President of the
Red Cross, voluntarily answered, for Kaltenbrunner’s defense, written questions
put to him in Switzerland). The defense ended up by calling three German
soldiers to testify (three witnesses were allowed to each side on this matter).
292
The tribunal’s final disposition of the Katyn issue was a disgrace even independent
of the true facts concerning the atrocity: it was quietly dropped and
does not appear in the judgment. The Germans were not “found” either guilty
or not guilty of this Russian atrocity. The IMT ducked the whole matter.
In 1952 the US House of Representatives investigated the Katyn massacre
and naturally made an inquiry into what had happened at the IMT in this respect.
The Select Committee set up for this purpose accordingly held some
hearings in Frankfurt, Germany, in April of that year. The Committee heard,
among others, representatives of both the defense and prosecution legal staffs
of the IMT. To speak for the German side, the Committee logically called Dr.
Otto Stahmer, who had been counsel for the principal defendant Göring, who
had also been the defendant who had pressed this particular matter at the IMT.
To speak for the American prosecution the Committee, surprisingly, chose
Robert M. W. Kempner. Examination of the trial record reveals no reason why
Kempner should have been selected for this role. That Kempner appears to
have been living in Germany at this time, and that the Committee naturally
291 Belgion, 64-78.
292 IMT, vol. 10, 648.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
230
thought it convenient that he testify at the Frankfurt hearings, does not explain
anything. During the course of all of its hearings, the only other member of
the prosecution that the Committee heard was Justice Jackson, but his appearance
in November in Washington was somewhat ceremonial and added nothing
to the record.
According to the record of the public hearing held in Frankfurt, Kempner
explained that the Katyn massacre was, according to the understandings
among the prosecution staffs, “a clear-cut Russian affair and was handled
right from the beginning by the Russians […] We had no right to interfere in
any way.” Nevertheless, after the witnesses had been heard the general view,
according to Kempner, was that Göring had scored a victory on this point.
Thus the failure to mention Katyn in the judgment called into question the integrity
of the Nuremberg trials, and a realization of this was implicit in the
questions asked by the committee members. Kempner was asked about possible
participation by the US prosecution staff in the behind-the-scenes activity
in regard to Katyn, and denied that such had taken place. He also, in response
to questioning, denied that there had been any “conspiracy or attempt to collude
between anybody on the American side and anybody on the Russian
side.”293
The New York Times reported that the tone of the Frankfurt hearing was
such that “the principles governing the trial procedure in Nuremberg were being
questioned. United States officials at the hearing privately expressed concern
over the situation.”294 The Chicago Tribune reported that, at a secret session
the night before the public hearing in Frankfurt, Kempner had admitted
that the US prosecution staff at the IMT had possessed evidence showing that
the Russians had committed the Katyn murders.
The Select Committee on the Katyn Forest massacre concluded that the US
government had suppressed the truth about Katyn both during and immediately
after the war. In particular, a report by Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet, Jr.,
one of the American POW’s who had witnessed the mass graves, “later disappeared
from either Army or State Department files.” It was also found that the
Federal Communications Commission had intimidated radio stations in order
to suppress criticism of the Russians.295
In the years immediately following 1952 there was little for Kempner to do
in relation to Nazis, but with the Eichmann affair he was back in action and
served as a “consultant” to the Israeli government in assembling evidence for
the trial. From that point on, he was very active. He contributed an article to
the Yad Vashem Studies on methods of examining Nazis in trials, and he published
a book in German, rehashing old propaganda myths. In 1971 he ex-
293 Select Committee, 1536-1548.
294 New York Times (Apr. 25, 1952),5; Chicago Tribune (Apr. 24, 1952), pt. 4, 1.
295 New York Times (Nov. 15, 1952), 2; (Dec. 23, 1952), 1.
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
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pressed approval of the conviction of Lt. Calley and in December 1972 he endorsed
the “evidence” that Ladislas Farago had gathered in connection with
Farago’s Martin Bormann-is-in-Argentina fiasco of that month. Evidently
yearning for the old days, Kempner declared that the “United States and its
Allies should reopen the Bormann case within the framework of the International
Military Tribunal.”296 Bormann had been tried in absentia at the IMT
and sentenced to death. He was never found and it is now generally agreed
that he died in Berlin.
In regard to Kempner, three principal conclusions may be drawn from this
short summary (based entirely on material in the public record) of the man’s
career. First, he could accurately be characterized as a fanatical anti-Nazi,
starting in the Twenties, when the Nazis were certainly no more criminal than
several other groups on the violent and chaotic German political scene (the
Communists and Social Democrats also had private armies). Anti-Nazism is
obviously Kempner’s consuming vocation. Second, he was an extremely important
figure in the trials that the US held in Nuremberg. We have seen that
he had critically important responsibilities in connection with the IMT and
was also treated, later on, as a particular authority on what had gone on there.
At the end of the IMT trial the press described him as “Jackson’s expert on
German matters” and “chief of investigation and research for […] Jackson.”297
At the NMT he took over the prosecution of the most important case, the political
section of the Wilhelmstrasse Case, and he may well have been the
most important individual on the Nuremberg staff, although further research
would be required to clarify the real power relationships that existed on the
Nuremberg staff, if such clarification is possible. James M. McHaney headed
the division that prepared Cases, 1, 4, 7, 8, 9 and 12. Other significant persons
at the NMT have been discussed by Taylor.298 The Encyclopedia Judaica describes
Kempner as “chief prosecutor” at the NMT trials.
The third conclusion that may be drawn is that there are excellent grounds,
based on the public record, for believing that Kempner abused the power he
had at the military tribunals, and produced “evidence” by improper methods
involving threats and various forms of coercion. The Stewart case makes this
conclusion inescapable.
This is the man who held the power of life and death over Eberhard von
Thadden and Horst Wagner.
Our digression on Kempner is concluded. We came to the point, in our
analysis of Hungary, where irregularities in the production of evidence in
Case 11 were clearly indicated. Thus it was necessary to examine two subjects:
who was in charge in Case 11 and what was the level of integrity main-
296 Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 10, 904; New York Times (Mar. 31, 1971), 1; (Dec. 5, 1972), 16.
297 New York Times (Oct. 6, 1946), sec. 6, 8; (Oct. 7, 1946), 2.
298 Taylor (Aug. 15, 1949), 38+.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
232
tained in the operations of the trials at Nuremberg. It was found that the truth
in regard to the latter subject was established rather decisively in the course of
examining the former; a study of Kempner’s career reveals all that one needs
to know in order to evaluate the reliability of the evidence generated at the
Nuremberg trials.
Clearly, any person who wished to maintain the authenticity of the Hungary-
related documents that imply extermination must produce some tortured
story whose structure we cannot begin to imagine.
Another person involved in the documents is Veesenmayer, who was a defendant
in the Wilhelmstrasse Case, and who was questioned in connection
with some of these documents. The general position taken in his testimony
was a reasonable one in view of his objective of gaining acquittal or a light
sentence. He had to report everything that went on in Hungary and thus Jewish
measures were in his reports. However these measures did not have the
importance in his mind at that time that they have in our minds at this time. He
testified that he often got twenty assignments a day and in the course of a
month would receive mutually contradictory assignments. His reports, he said,
were naturally prepared by assistants, hastily scanned by him, and then signed.
Shown documents which have him reporting that two transports, each of 2,000
Jews fit for work, were sent to Auschwitz in April 1944, and asked if this were
correct, he remarked that he had no specific memory but that it was “quite
possible,” but that he never knew what Auschwitz was. Shown NG-5567,
which had him reporting that up to June 17, 326,009 Jews had been deported
from Hungary, he also remarked “quite possible.” In other words, he did not
want to involve himself, in any way, in these matters by taking any strong position,
either assenting or dissenting, with respect to the alleged facts. If he
had said that he clearly recollected, in detail, mass deportations of Jews, in the
numbers alleged, in the spring and summer of 1944, then such testimony
would have implicated him in the alleged exterminations. On the other hand,
if he had denied that such mass deportations had taken place then he would, in
effect, have been claiming close involvement in whatever had happened and
he would have also, by such testimony, flung down a challenge to the prosecution
and court which they couldn’t possibly have ignored. Thus the logic of
his testimony. He said that he was concerned with moving the Jews out of Budapest
because of the danger of revolt as the Russians approached. Pressed on
this matter, he explained that:
“In practice the question was, will the front hold or won’t it? If Budapest
revolts, the whole front will be rolled up. […] If I participated in such
conversations, which I won’t deny is possible, then I participated exclusively
from a military point of view. What can I do to hold up the Eastern
front as long as possible? Only from that point of view.”
Veesenmayer was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment, but he was out
Chapter 5: The Hungarian Jews
233
by early 1952.299
This seems to be as good place as any to point out a fact that seems to be
effectively forgotten by many writers on this subject. There was a war going
on during World War II. The Germans were thinking about ways of winning
it, not about exterminating Jews. The claim of NG-2233, that the extermination
program had rail priority over military production, is absolutely ridiculous.
What Happened in Hungary?
On the subject of what actually happened in Hungary, note that the Red
Cross Report says that the basic German policy in 1944 was to intern East
European Jews, on account of their posing a security menace as the front came
nearer. Now, the documents reporting concentration and deportation of large
numbers of Hungarian Jews may be correct in regard to concentration alone;
this was the policy in neighboring countries. However it seems unlikely that
anywhere near 400,000 were concentrated. That would have been quite a huge
operation.
It appears possible to get a fairly accurate picture of what happened in
Hungary by supplementing the story of the Red Cross with an examination of
the documents, rejecting the documents which are obvious forgeries. We are
fortunate in having the two-volume collection of reproductions of selected
original documents, The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry, edited by Randolph
L. Braham; these volumes offer the normally circumstanced reader a handy
substitute for a regular documents collection. Examining the documents included,
and rejecting as forgeries those that pertain to alleged deportations of
400,000 Hungarian Jews, a believable story unfolds. On April 14, 1944, Hungary
agrees to the deportation of 50,000 employable Jews to Germany for labor
(page 134, NG-1815). On April 19, Veesenmayer requests freight cars,
whose procurement is “encountering great difficulties,” for the deportation of
10,000 employable Jews delivered by the Hungarians (page 138, NG-5546).
Finally on April 27 Veesenmayer reports on the imminent shipment of 4,000
employable Jews to Auschwitz (page 361, NG-5535). Also on April 27, Ritter
reports on delays in the deportation of the 50,000 on account of rail shortages
(page 362, NG-2196). Later in the year, July 11, Veesenmayer reports on the
difficulty of carrying out the Jewish policy in Hungary because of the more
lenient policies practiced in Romania and Slovakia (page 194, NG-5586). On
August 25, Veesenmayer reports Himmler’s offer to stop deportations from
Hungary (page 481, no document number), and on October 18, Veesenmayer
299 NMT, vol. 13, 487-508; Reitlinger, 566.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
234
reports on the new Jewish measures in Hungary (page 226, no document
number). A believable story, and one consistent with the Red Cross Report.
One may also remark that, on Hungary, the authors of the hoax have again attempted
to supply a dual interpretation to a perfectly valid fact. There were,
indeed, deportations of Hungarian Jews in the spring of 1944 to, among other
places, Auschwitz. However the deportations, which were for labor purposes
only, were severely limited by the disintegrating European rail system, and do
not appear to have been carried out on the approximate schedule originally
contemplated or aspired to.
A few words regarding the Joel Brand affair, the proposed swap of Hungarian
Jews for trucks and other supplies, are in order.
The pre-war German policy, which was also maintained to some extent
early in the war, was to encourage Jewish emigration by all means. However,
after the war had developed into a great conflict, the policy changed, and emigration
from countries in the German sphere was made very difficult for Jews.
The principal reason for this was, of course, that such Jews were manpower
that could and would be used against them. There were a variety of lesser reasons,
one of the most important being that, in an attempt to drive a wedge between
Britain and the Arabs, the Germans supported the Arab side on the
question of Jewish immigration into Palestine. Thus, the standard German attitude
in the latter half of the war was that Jewish emigration could proceed in
exchange for Germans held abroad, especially if the Jews were not to go to
Palestine. We have seen that Belsen served as a transit camp for Jews who
were to be exchanged. What was involved in the Brand Affair was the same
sort of thinking on the German side, with a variation regarding the form of the
quid pro quo. The Germans were willing to let the Jews emigrate in exchange
for the trucks and other supplies. Thus there is nothing implausible in the
Brand affair, provided one understands that it was not the lives of the Hungarian
Jews that were at stake in the matter.
Although the Brand deal was not consummated, there was a trickle of
German and Hungarian authorized emigration of Jews from Hungary to, e.g.,
Sweden, Switzerland and the US. A rather larger number slipped into Romania
and Slovakia illegally in 1944 (reversing the earlier direction of movement,
which had been into Hungary). The defense documents Steengracht 75,
76, 77 and 87 give a picture of the situation.
The survey of 1944 propaganda that was presented in this chapter shows
that Auschwitz (referred to as Oswieçim) finally emerged in the propaganda
as an extermination camp in the period immediately after D-Day, when nobody
was paying any attention to such stories. Later in the summer of 1944
the emphasis switched to the camp at Lublin, which was captured by the Russians
in late July. The expected propaganda nonsense was generated in respect
to the cremation ovens (five in number) that were found there, the Zyklon,
some bones (presumably human), etc. Lublin remained the propaganda’s leadChapter
5: The Hungarian Jews
235
ing extermination camp well into the autumn of 1944.300
Can Anybody Believe Such a Story?
This concludes our analysis of the Auschwitz charges. It is impossible to
believe them; the allegations are so breathtakingly absurd that they are even
difficult to summarize. We are told that the Nazis were carrying out mass exterminations
of Jews at the industrial center Auschwitz, employing the widely
used insecticide Zyklon B for the killing. The 30 or 46 cremation ovens at
Auschwitz, used for disposing of the bodies of the very large numbers of people
who died ordinary deaths there, were also used for making the bodies of
these exterminated Jews vanish without a trace. As an extermination center,
Auschwitz was naturally the place that the Hungarian Jews were shipped to
for execution. Shipments of Jews conscripted specifically for desperately
needed labor in military production were delayed in order to transport the
Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz for execution. The 46 cremation ovens which
existed at Auschwitz turned out to be inadequate to dispose of people arriving
at the rate of about 10,000 per day, so the bodies were burned out-of-doors in
pits. This cleaning out of the Hungarian Jews escaped the notice of the International
Red Cross delegation in Budapest, which was deeply involved in
Jewish affairs. The evidence for all of this, presented to us by the US government,
consist of documents whose authenticity is proved by the endorsements
of Jewish policy specialists Wagner and von Thadden, who are also incriminated
by the documents. However, the US government did not prosecute
Wagner and von Thadden in the Wilhelmstrasse Case, where the indictments
were in the hands of a lifelong Nazi-hater (Kempner), and where an American
lawyer had exposed the evidence as coerced, just as he did in a regular US legal
proceeding in Washington where Kempner was involved.
The US government also failed, despite all of its talk in 1944, to interfere
in any way with, or even make photographs of, these alleged events at
Auschwitz.
Can anybody believe such a story?
300 Lublin (Majdanek) propaganda appeared in Life (Aug. 28, 1944), 34; (Sep. 18, 1944), 17;
Newsweek (Sep. 11, 1944), 64; Reader’s Digest (Nov. 1944), 32; Time (Aug. 21, 1944), 36;
(Sep. 11, 1944), 36; Saturday Review Lit. (Sep. 16, 1944), 44.

237
Chapter 6:
Et Cetera
The extermination claims have been so concentrated on Auschwitz that this
book could justifiably end right here; because the central part of the extermination
legend is false, there is no reason why the reader should believe any
other part of it, even if the evidence might appear relatively decent at first
glance. Hundreds of trained staff members were dispatched to Europe and
employed there to gather the “evidence” for exterminations and related
crimes, and we have seen what kind of story they have presented with respect
to Auschwitz; a fabrication constructed of perjury, forgery, distortion of fact
and misrepresentation of documents. There is no reason to expect a better case
for the less publicized features of the extermination legend. Nevertheless the
remainder of the story should be examined, partly for the sake of completeness,
partly because the examination can be accomplished rather quickly, and
partly because there is a respect in which one feature of the legend may be
partially true. It is also convenient to review here a few odd matters that might
strike some readers as evidence in support of the extermination claims.
More ‘Extermination’ Camps
The evidence for exterminations at Belzec, Chelmno, Lublin, Sobibor, and
Treblinka is fairly close to zero. There is the Höss affidavit and testimony and
the “Gerstein statement.” There is a draft of a letter by Dr. Wetzel, another
Nazi who became immune from prosecution, speaking of there being “no objections
to doing away with those Jews who are unable to work, by means of
the Brack remedy” (NO-0365). The draft is typewritten and apparently initialed
by Wetzel, who had been head of the Race-Political Office of the
NSDAP, but was transferred in 1941 to Rosenberg’s Ministry for the East,
where he served as the expert for Jewish affairs. There is no evidence that the
letter, which is addressed to Heinrich Lohse, Reichskommissar for the Ostland
(map, Fig. 1), was ever sent. A similar document, bearing a typewritten Wetzel
signature, is NG-2325. Wetzel was not called as a witness at any of the
Nuremberg trials, and was not threatened with prosecution until 1961, when
he was arrested by German authorities in Hannover, but his case seems to
have immediately disappeared from the public record, and nothing more was
heard of him, except that he is said to have been finally charged in 1966; if
such is the case it is odd that he is not listed in the 1965 East German Brown
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
238
Book. However, no trial ever materialized.301 We will have occasion to comment
on Lohse below.
The Viktor Brack of Wetzel’s letter was an official of the Führer-
Chancellery, involved in the Nazi euthanasia program. The present claim is
that the gas chambers in Poland, exclusive of those allegedly used at Auschwitz,
“evolved” from the euthanasia program which, it is claimed, employed
gas chambers. Despite Brack’s testimony, it is difficult to believe that euthanasia
was practiced in German hospitals by a method of gassing 20 or 30 persons
at a time with carbon monoxide.302 Auschwitz, of course, must be excluded
from this “evolution” from the euthanasia program on account, among
other reasons, of the Höss testimony. Reitlinger and Hilberg do not seem worried
over the confusion thus created in the structure of the legend.
The euthanasia program came into existence via a Hitler decree of September
1, 1939, authorizing the mercy killing of mortally ill patients. Later the severely
insane were included. The program encountered deep hostility in the
German population, especially because rumors, of unknown origin, immediately
started circulating; the rumors claimed, inter alia, mass gassings of the
sick and elderly. On November 6, 1940, Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich wrote
to the Ministry of Justice, setting forth the Catholic Church’s objections, and
pointing out303
“[…] that a great disturbance has arisen in our people today because
the mass dying of mentally ill persons is discussed everywhere and unfortunately
the most absurd rumors are emerging about the number of deaths,
the manner of death, etc.”
It did not take long for the euthanasia program to appear in propaganda,
and in December 1941 the BBC broadcast an address by author Thomas
Mann, in which Mann urged the German people to break with the Nazis. In
listing the Nazi crimes, Mann said304
“In German hospitals the severely wounded, the old and feeble are
killed with poison gas – in one single institution, two to three thousand,
a German doctor said.”
This seems to be the first appearance of gas chambers in the propaganda
but, as far as we can see, this claim was not related to the extermination
propaganda which started half a year later, and in the course of which no reference,
apparently, was made to the euthanasia program. The relating of the
euthanasia program to exterminations came much later.
At the IMT, the prosecution did not attempt to relate euthanasia to exterminations.
It remained for a defense witness to do this. In the closing days of
301 Hilberg, 562; Reitlinger, 137, 567; Rassinier (1962), 80n.
302 NMT, vol. 1, 876.
303 NO-824 (Hitler order), NO-846 (Faulhaber letter), NO-844 (report on rumors).
304 New York Times (Dec. 7, 1941), 45.
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
239
the IMT, Konrad Morgen appeared as a defense witness for the SS. We have
seen that it was Morgen who had exposed the ring of murder and corruption
centered around commandant Koch of Buchenwald. Morgen was thus considered
a “good” SS man, in contrast to the bloodthirsty scoundrels who had been
his colleagues and comrades (he continues to be considered a good guy, although
not as good as Gerstein, who has by now achieved beatification in the
“holocaust” litany). As a defense witness for the SS under seemingly hopeless
circumstances, Morgen presented a story that had an inevitable logic to it and,
indeed, the logic of Morgen’s testimony has an importance in our analysis
which transcends the immediate point we are discussing.
Morgen testified that in the course of his investigations of the camps, carried
out in pursuance of his duty as an SS official, he unexpectedly encountered
extermination programs at Auschwitz and at Lublin, but that SS involvement
was nonexistent or minimal. At Lublin the exterminations were being
conducted by Wirth of the ordinary criminal police, with the assistance of
Jewish labor detachments (who were promised part of the loot). Wirth supervised
three additional extermination camps in Poland, according to Morgen.
Although the criminal police, the Kripo, was administratively under the
RSHA, Morgen was careful to point out that Kriminalkommissar Wirth was
not a member of the SS. Morgen claimed that Wirth had been attached to the
Führer Chancellery, had been involved in the euthanasia program (which is
possibly true), and had later received orders from the Führer Chancellery to
extend his exterminating activities to the Jews. Although the only real point of
Morgen’s testimony was the futile attempt to absolve the SS, the testimony is
considered “evidence” by Reitlinger and by Hilberg, who avoid considering
the fact that Morgen, in his attempt at excusing the SS, also testified that at
Auschwitz the extermination camp was Monowitz, the one of the complex of
camps that was administered by Farben. Morgen did not go so far as to claim
that Farben had its own company extermination program, but he declared that
the only SS involvement consisted of a few Baltic and Ukrainian recruits used
as guards, and that the “entire technical arrangement was almost exclusively
in the hands of the prisoners.”305
Morgen’s ploy obviously inspired the prosecution anew, because it had not
occurred to relate exterminations to euthanasia. It was too late to develop the
point at the IMT, so it was developed in Case 1 at the NMT (actually the
euthanasia program is loosely linked with exterminations in the “Gerstein
statement,” reproduced here in Appendix A – the Gerstein statement was put
into evidence at the IMT long before Morgen’s testimony, but nobody paid
any attention to its text). To us, this relating of exterminations to euthanasia is
just another example of the “excess fact”; the inventors were so concerned
with getting some real fact into their story that it did not occur to them that
305 IMT, vol. 20, 487-515.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
240
there are some real facts that a good hoax it better off without.
This seems to cover the evidence for gassings at the camps in Poland exclusive
of Auschwitz.
We again remark that the logic of Morgen’s testimony, as courtroom defense
strategy, is of some importance to our study. His side obviously calculated
that the court was immovable on the question of the existence of the exterminations
and thus Morgen’s testimony invited the court to embrace the
theory that somebody other than the SS was guilty.
Logic of Defense Testimonies
Before passing to consideration of the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in
Russia, it is convenient to review various statements made or allegedly made
by various Nazis, mostly after the war, which explicitly or implicitly claim exterminations.
An important category consist of statements made by German witnesses
and defendants at the war crimes trials. In evaluating such statements, one
must bear in mind the simple fact that the powers which conducted these trials
were committed, as an immovable political fact, to the legend of Jewish extermination,
especially in regard to Auschwitz. Their leaders had made the
relevant charges long before they possessed a scrap of what is today called
“evidence.” Thus the courts were committed a priori to the extermination legend.
A finding that exterminations had not occurred was simply not in the
realm of political possibility at these trials, in any practical sense. This is an
undeniable fact.
On the other hand, with only a tiny handful of exceptions, the courts were
not a priori committed on questions of personal responsibility of individuals.
With respect to individuals the courts were not as greatly constrained, politically
speaking. In most cases judgments of absence of personal responsibility
were well within the realm of political possibility (as distinct from probability).
All defense cases were organized in relation to these undeniably valid observations,
and even with those individuals whose cases were hopeless, the
lawyers had no choice but to proceed on the assumption that a favorable verdict
was within the realm of the possible. In considering the trials from this
point of view, it is very helpful to consider them chronologically.
Josef Kramer, ‘Beast of Belsen’
The first relevant trial was not the IMT but the “Belsen trial,” conducted by
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a British military court, of Germans who had been on the staff of the Belsen
camp when it was captured. The commandant, SS Captain Josef Kramer (the
“Beast of Belsen”), was naturally the principal defendant. The importance of
the Belsen trial derives, however, from the fact that Kramer has previously
been (during 1944) the Birkenau camp commander. Kramer’s trial was conducted
in the autumn of 1945, and was concluded in November, just as the
IMT trial was beginning. Kramer was hanged in December 1945.
We are fortunate in having the lengthy first statement that Kramer made in
reply to British interrogation. The importance of this statement lies in the fact
that it was made before any general realization developed among Germans
that the Allied courts were completely serious, and immovable, on the question
of the reality of the exterminations (it might have been made within about
a month after the capture of Belsen, but this is not certain). There is little
courtroom logic playing a role in Kramer’s first statement, and for this reason
it is reproduced here in Appendix D. Kramer’s story was completely in accord
with what we have presented here, i.e., there were crematories in all of the
concentration camps, some had rather high death rates, especially Auschwitz
which, because it was also a huge camp, required relatively extensive cremation
facilities. His statement is quite frank regarding the more unhappy features
of the camps, and is as accurate a description of the camps as we are
likely to get. In regard to atrocities, he firmly asserted:
“I have heard of the allegations of former prisoners in Auschwitz referring
to a gas chamber there, the mass executions and whippings, the cruelty
of the guards employed, and that all this took place either in my presence
or with my knowledge. All I can say to all this is that it is untrue from
beginning to end.”
Kramer later retreated from this firm stand and made a second statement,
also reproduced in Appendix D, in which he testified to the existence of a gas
chamber at Auschwitz, adding that he had no responsibility in this connection,
and that the exterminations were under the direct control of the central camp
administration at Auschwitz I. At his trial, Kramer offered two reasons for the
discrepancy between his two statements:306
“The first is that in the first statement I was told that the prisoners alleged
that these gas chambers were under my command, and the second
and main reason was that Pohl, who spoke to me, took my word of honor
that I should be silent and should not tell anybody at all about the existence
of the gas chambers. When I made my first statement I felt still bound
by this word of honor which I had given. When I made the second statement
in prison, in Celle, these persons to whom I felt bound in honor –
Adolf Hitler and Reichsführer Himmler, – were no longer alive and I
thought then that I was no longer bound.”
306 Fyfe, 157.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
242
The absurdity of this explanation, that in the early stages of his interrogations,
Kramer was attempting to maintain the secrecy of things that his interrogators
were repeating to him endlessly, and which by then filled the Allied
press, did not deter Kramer and his lawyer from offering it in court. The logic
of Kramer’s defense was at base identical to that of Morgen’s testimony.
Kramer was in the position of attempting to present some story absolving
himself from implication in mass murder at Birkenau. The truth, that Birkenau
was not an extermination camp, had no chance of being accepted by the court.
That was a political impossibility. To have taken the truth as his position
would have been heroic for Kramer, but also suicidal, because it would have
amounted to making no defense at all in connection with his role at the Birkenau
camp. Even if he had felt personally heroic, there were powerful arguments
against such heroism. His family, like all German families of the time,
was desperate and needed him. If, despite all this, he persisted in his heroism,
his lawyer would not have cooperated. No lawyer will consciously choose a
suicidal strategy when one having some possibility of success is evident.
Kramer’s defense, therefore, was that he had no personal involvement in the
exterminations at Birkenau. Höss and the RSHA did it. Remember that these
proceedings were organized by lawyers seeking favorable verdicts, not by historians
seeking the truth about events.
An incidental matter is the claim that Kramer, as commandant at Natzweiler,
had had eighty people gassed there for purposes of medical experiments.
These people had supposedly been selected at Auschwitz by unknown
criteria and then transported to Natzweiler to be killed, because the bodies
were needed fresh in nearby Strassburg. Kramer affirmed this story in his second
statement but, because it is (implicitly, but unambiguously) denied in his
first statement, I am inclined to believe that it is untrue. However, it is quite
possible that some people were executed at Natzweiler when somebody else
was commandant, and that the bodies were then used at the anatomical institute
in Strassburg (which certainly possessed bodies for its research purposes).
In any case, the matter is not relevant to an extermination program.
Hermann Göring, et. al. at the IMT
The IMT trial is somewhat more complicated to consider, because of the
great number of defendants, each one having his own possibilities in regard to
excusing himself from any real or imaginary crimes. The trial transcript is not
really adequate to study the behavior of the IMT defendants, but the record
kept by the Nuremberg prison psychologist, Dr. G. M. Gilbert, and published
by him as Nuremberg Diary, supplements the transcript to an extent that is
adequate for our purposes. Gilbert’s book gives an account of the attitudes and
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reactions of the IMT defendants, not only at the trial but also in the Nuremberg
prison. One cannot be absolutely confident in regard to the accuracy of
Gilbert’s account. Most of the material consists of summaries of conversations
the defendants had in the prison, either with each other or with Gilbert. However,
Gilbert took no notes on the spot and wrote everything down each day
from memory. His manuscript was critically examined by a former employee
of the Office of War Information and by the prosecutors Jackson and Taylor.
Even with the best will and most impartial disposition, Gilbert could not have
captured everything with complete accuracy. His book has a general accuracy,
but one must be reserved about its details.
The IMT defendants were arrested shortly after the German capitulation in
May 1945, imprisoned separately, and interrogated and propagandized for six
months prior to the opening of the IMT trial in November, when they met
each other for the first time since the surrender (in some cases, for the first
time ever). There are four particularly important observations to make. First,
not surprisingly, all except Kaltenbrunner had developed essentially the same
defense regarding concentration camp atrocities and exterminations of Jews,
whatever the extent to which they might have actually believed such allegations;
it was all the fault of Hitler and Himmler’s SS. Kaltenbrunner, sitting as
a defendant as a substitute for the dead Himmler, was ill when the trial
opened, and did not join the other defendants until the trial was a few weeks
old. When he appeared the other defendants shunned him, and he said very little
to the others during the course of the next ten months.
The second observation is not quite so expected. Indeed, it may be mildly
startling; with the exception of Kaltenbrunner and perhaps one or two others,
these high ranking German officials did not understand the catastrophic conditions
in the camps that accompanied the German collapse, and which were the
cause of the scenes that were exploited by the Allied propaganda as “proof” of
exterminations. This may appear at first a peculiar claim, but consultation of
Gilbert’s book shows it to be unquestionably a valid one (the only other possibility
is that some merely pretended to misunderstand the situation). The administration
of the camps was far removed from the official domains of almost
all of the defendants and they had been subjected to the familiar propaganda
since the German surrender. To the extent that they accepted, or pretended
to accept, that there had been mass murders, for which Hitler and
Himmler were responsible, they were basing their view precisely on the
scenes found in the German camps at the end of the war, and which they evidently
misunderstood or pretended to misunderstand. This is well illustrated
by Gilbert’s account of an exchange he had with Göring:307
“‘Those atrocity films!’ Göring continued. ‘Anybody can make an
307 G.M. Gilbert’s book should be read in its entirety, but pp. 15, 39, 46, 47, 64, 78, 152, 175,
242, 273-275, 291 are of particular interest.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
244
atrocity film if they take corpses out of their graves and then show a tractor
shoving them back in again.’
‘You can’t brush it off that easily,’ I replied. ‘We did find your concentration
camps fairly littered with corpses and mass graves – I saw them
myself in Dachau! – and Hadamar!’
‘Oh, but not piled up by the thousands like that –’
‘Don’t tell me what I didn’t see! I saw corpses literally by the carload –’
‘Oh, that one train – ‘
‘ – And piled up like cordwood in the crematorium – and half starved
and mutilated prisoners, who told me how the butchery had been going on
for years – and Dachau was not the worst by far! You can’t shrug off
6,000,000 murders!’
‘Well, I doubt if it was 6,000,000,’ he said despondently, apparently
sorry he had started the argument,’ – but as I’ve always said, it is sufficient
if only 5 per cent of it is true – .’ A glum silence followed.”
This is only one example; it is clear from Gilbert’s book that, when the
subject of concentration camp atrocities came up, the defendants were thinking
of the scenes found in the German camps at the end of the war. It is
probably not possible to decide which defendants genuinely misunderstood
the situation (as Göring did) and which merely pretended to misunderstand, on
the calculation that, if one was not involved with concentration camps anyway,
it was a far safer course to accept the Allied claims than to automatically
involve oneself by contesting the Allied claims.
Our third observation is in regard to a calculation that must have figured in
the minds of most of the defendants during the trial. It seemed probable, or at
least quite possible, to them that the Allies were not completely serious about
carrying out executions and long prison sentences. The trial was certainly a
novelty, and the defendants were well aware that there was considerable hostility
to the war crimes trials in the public opinion of the Allied countries, especially
in the US and England. Many must have calculated that their immediate
objective should be to say or do whatever seemed necessary to survive the
transient wave of post-war hysteria, deferring the setting straight of the record
to a not distant future when a non-hysterical examination of the facts would
become possible.
Fourth, extermination of Jews was only one of the many accusations involved
at Nuremberg. In retrospect it may appear to have been the main
charge but, at the time, the principal accusations in the minds of almost everybody
concerned responsibilities for “planning, preparation, initiation, or waging
of a war of aggression” – so-called “Crimes Against Peace.”
With the preceding four observations in mind, we can see that the behavior
of the defendants during the trial was about what one would expect from a diverse
collection of dedicated Nazis, technocrats, conservative Prussian officers,
and ordinary politicians. In “private,” i.e. in prison when court was not in
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session, the prisoners were just as guarded in their remarks as they were in
public and there was an abundance of mutual recrimination, buck passing, and
back biting. Frank made the worst ass of himself in this respect, but the practice
was rather general. The Nazis were not one big happy family. In regard to
trial defense strategy, it will suffice to discuss Speer, Göring and Kaltenbrunner.
Speer’s trial strategy was simple, and so relatively successful, because he
did not hang. He claimed that his position did not situate him so as to be able
to learn of the various alleged atrocities. Even today he is permitted to get
away with this nonsense. In fact Speer and his assistants were deeply involved
in, e.g., the deportations of employable Hungarian Jews in the spring of 1944,
for work in underground aircraft factories at Buchenwald.308 Any rail transport
priority given to Hungarian Jews to be exterminated, as opposed to employable
Hungarian Jews, would have become known to them if such had actually
happened. If Speer had testified truthfully, he would have declared that he had
been so situated that, if an extermination program of the type charged had existed,
he would have known of it and that, to his knowledge, no such program
had existed. However if Speer had testified truthfully, he would have joined
his colleagues on the gallows.
In his book, Speer gives only one ridiculous piece of “evidence” that he
encountered during the war that he now says he should have interpreted as
suggesting the existence of an extermination program, and that was the suggestion
of his friend Karl Hanke (who was appointed Himmler’s successor as
Reichsführer-SS by Hitler in the last days of the war), in the summer of 1944,
that Speer never “accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp in Upper
Silesia.” Speer also passes along Göring’s private remark just before the
IMT trial about Jewish “survivors” in Hungary: “So, there are still some
there? I thought we had knocked off all of them. Somebody slipped up
again.”309 Such a sarcastic crack was understandable under the circumstances
because Göring never conceded the reality of any extermination program, and
insisted that he had known only of a program of emigration and evacuation of
Jews from the German sphere in Europe.
The introduction to Speer’s book, by Eugene Davidson, mentions the fact
(noted here in Chapter 4) that many Dutch Jews sent to Birkenau, “within
sight of the gas chambers,” were unaware of any extermination program. They
wrote cheerful letters back to the Netherlands.310 The remarks about Jewish
extermination were not in the original version of Speer’s manuscript; they
were added at the insistence of the publisher.311
308 Hilberg, 599; Reitlinger, 460-463; IMT vol. 16, 445, 520.
309 Speer, 375-376, 512.
310 Speer, xvii; de Jong.
311 New York Times Book Review (Aug. 23, 1970), 2, 16.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
246
Unlike the other defendants, Göring assumed throughout the trial that he
was to be sentenced to death, and his testimony appears to be the approximate
truth as he saw it. Although he never conceded the existence of a program of
extermination of Jews, we have seen that he misunderstood what had happened
in the German camps at the end of the war, and assumed that Himmler
had, indeed, engaged in mass murder in this connection. However, he never
conceded any number of murders approaching six millions.312
An incidental remark that should be made in connection with Göring is that
he was not, as legend asserts (and as Speer claimed in private on several occasions
during the IMT), a drug addict. The Nuremberg prison psychiatrist,
Douglas Kelley, has attempted to set the record straight in this regard. Göring
was a military man, had been an air ace in World War I, and had been the last
commander of the “Flying Circus” of von Richthofen (the “Red Baron”). Refusing
to surrender his unit to the Allies at the end of the war, he returned to
Germany and found himself a hero without a profession. Eventually joining
the Nazi Party, he naturally, as a holder of the Pour-le-mérite (Germany’s
highest military decoration), soon became a leader of the small party. As such,
he was a leader of the putsch of 1923, in which he was wounded in the right
thigh. The wound developed an infection which caused him to be hospitalized
for a long while, during which time he was injected with considerable
amounts of morphine. He developed a mild addiction but cured it shortly after
being released from the hospital in 1924. Much later, in 1937, Göring developed
a condition of aching teeth, and began taking tablets of paracodeine, a
very mild morphine derivative that was a common prescription for his condition,
and he continued to take the paracodeine throughout the war. His addiction
for (or, more exactly, habit of taking) these paracodeine tablets was not
severe, because he was taken off them before the IMT by Dr. Kelley, who
employed a simple withdrawal method involving daily reductions of the dosage.
313
To return to the IMT defendants, Kaltenbrunner’s position seems to us today
to have been somewhat hopeless, and it is probable that his lawyer felt the
same way, but he nevertheless had to present some sort of defense, and his defense
on the matters that we are interested in rested on two main points.
The first point was that he was head of the RSHA, which was charged with
security, and not the head of the WVHA, which administered the concentration
camps. He thus claimed that he had had almost nothing to do with the
camps. The only known instance of Kaltenbrunner’s involvement with the internal
operation of the camps was in his order of March 1945, concerning
permission for the Red Cross to establish itself in the camps (how he assumed
authority for giving this order we do not know). He made a great deal of this
312 In Göring’s testimony, see especially IMT, vol. 9, 515-521, 609-619.
313 Kelley, 54-58.
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matter in his defense and, rather than setting the record straight in regard to
the catastrophic conditions in the camps at the end of the war, he inflated his
action in connection with the Red Cross to make it appear to be an act against
concentration camps as such, which, of course, he had always deplored anyway,
he said.
Kaltenbrunner’s second point was that, as everybody would agree, it was
his predecessor Heydrich, and not he, who had organized the details of the
Jewish policy, whatever that policy was. He took over the RSHA in 1943 with
a directive from Himmler, to build up the intelligence service of the SD, a fact
which he distorted in claiming that, under the new arrangement in which
Himmler was not going to allow anybody to grow to the stature that Heydrich
had attained, Kaltenbrunner was to concern himself only with intelligence,
and not to have any control over the police and security functions of the
RSHA, in particular, the Gestapo, which sent political prisoners to the camps
and also, through Eichmann’s office, administered the Jewish deportations.
Thus, according to Kaltenbrunner, there was no respect in which he could be
held responsible for exterminations of Jews that, he conceded, had taken place
just as the Allies charged (except that they had started, according to Kaltenbrunner,
in 1940). Indeed, according to him, it was not until the summer of
1943 that he learned of the extermination program that Eichmann of his department
was conducting. He learned from the foreign press and the enemy
radio. He got Himmler to admit it early in 1944 and then protested, first to
Hitler, then to Himmler. The extermination program was stopped in October
1944, “chiefly due to (his) intervention.”314 The manner in which Kaltenbrunner
claimed to have learned of the exterminations, while nonsense, is nevertheless
consistent with the extreme secrecy that is always said to have been
maintained in connection with the extermination program.
Kaltenbrunner’s story was complete rubbish, but this fact should not blind
us to the serious character of this testimony as defense strategy. Suppose that
Kaltenbrunner had testified that no extermination program had existed. In
such a case, any leniency shown by the court in the judgment would have been
tantamount to that court’s conceding the untruth, or possible untruth, of the
extermination claim, a political impossibility. By claiming that, while the extermination
program had existed, Kaltenbrunner had had no responsibility,
and had even opposed it, the defense was making it politically possible for the
court to be lenient in some sense, or was at least making a serious attempt
along this line. A few seconds’ reflection reveals that this was the only possible
strategy for Kaltenbrunner on the extermination charge. Obviously the trial
was going to end with some death sentences, some acquittals, and some in between
dispositions of cases; this was necessary in order to give it the semblance
of a real trial. Thus, on analysis, we see that there was perfectly sound
314 IMT, vol. 11, 273-276, 335.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
248
lawyer’s logic operating in Kaltenbrunner’s defense. That the specific story
presented was unbelievable was not very important from this point of view;
the manner in which facts have been treated in connection with these matters
has been endless nonsense anyway. The case of Speer shows that a nonsensical
story not only had a chance of being accepted by the IMT, but also by general
opinion much later, when there should have been adequate opportunity to
see matters clearly.
The ordinary person, and even the informed critic, can easily fail to understand
the significance of such things as the Kaltenbrunner testimony, because
he fails to grasp the perspective of the defendants, who did not have the historical
interests in these trials that we have. Their necks were at stake, and
they regarded the trials, quite correctly, as a manifestation of hysteria. Attempting
to save their necks meant devising trial strategies to suit the prevailing
conditions, and no optimum trial strategy seeks to move the court on matters
on which the court is immovable. This also happens in ordinary legal proceedings.
Once something had been decided, it had been decided, and the
lawyers organize their cases accordingly.
Of course it is deplorable that Nazis or anyone else should lie in order to
promote their personal interests. I have seen scholars tell lies almost as big
just to pick up an extra bit of summer salary, and that too is deplorable.
Oswald Pohl at Nuremberg
At Kramer’s trial and at the IMT the courts were effectively committed a
priori to the conclusion that Nazi Germany had had a program of exterminating
Jews. At the later NMT trials the courts were committed a priori as a formal
matter, on account of the legal constraint previously noted (Chapter 1),
that statements made in the IMT judgment constituted “proof of the facts
stated.” The IMT judgment said that millions had been exterminated in German
concentration camps, particularly at Auschwitz, which was “set aside for
this main purpose”; specifically, 400,000 Hungarian Jews were said to have
been murdered there.315 Thus defendants and witnesses at the NMT faced a
situation similar to that faced by earlier defendants and witnesses, except that
it was formalized. Prosecutors were known to redirect the attentions of judges
to this legal constraint, when there seemed a chance of its being overlooked.316
Here we will take special note of only two cases. Defendant Pohl, of
course, did not deny the extermination program; in denying personal involvement
in the exterminations, he took advantage of the fact that the Allied
315 IMT, vol. 22, 494-496.
316 Case 6 transcript, 197.
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charges had naturally been directed at the Gestapo and the SD functions of the
SS, which were not in Pohl’s domain as head of the WVHA.317 Even the Höss
affidavit and testimony explicitly support him in this position. After all, who
ever heard of the Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt? Nevertheless, Pohl was
hanged.
The testimony of Münch, a doctor at Auschwitz, is of some interest. He
appeared as a defense witness at the Farben trial, having previously been acquitted
by a Polish court. This is the witness whom prosecution lawyer Minskoff
asked about the leaflets dropped at Auschwitz by Allied planes (Chapter
4). Münch testified that while he had known about the exterminations while he
was at Auschwitz, and had even witnessed a gassing, people outside the
Auschwitz area, that is those in Germany, did not know. Also, the whole thing
was arranged “masterfully” so that “someone who visited a plant in Auschwitz
twice or three times a year for a period of one or two days” would not learn of
the exterminations. Almost all of the defendants, of course, were in the category
of those who could not have known, according to Münch, but he did not
stop there. He also asserted that, while all of the SS men and prisoners knew
of the exterminations, they did not talk to civilians about them, for fear of
punishment. For example, Farben engineer Faust, whom Münch knew very
well at Auschwitz, did not know about the exterminations. Münch also remarked
several times that all one could perceive of the exterminations was the
odor, “perceptible everywhere,” of the cremations. Nobody at this trial of
chemical engineering experts bothered to point out that the chemical industry
of the area also created a bit of an odor. An odd feature of Münch’s testimony
is his placing of the crematories and the gas chambers “one or one and half
kilometers southwest of the Birkenau camp camouflaged in a small woods.”318
The Münch testimony is merely another illustration of the manner in which
defense cases were formulated. The strategy was to avoid contesting things
that the courts were already decided on but to present stories exonerating defendants
of personal responsibility. Thus it was invariably claimed that the extermination
program had features that happened to excuse the relevant defendants
but, obviously, to claim that the features of the program existed it was
necessary to claim also that the program itself existed.
Adolf Eichmann
The next trial that is worth examination is the Eichmann trial. It will be recalled
that Adolf Eichmann was illegally abducted from Buenos Aires in May
317 NMT, vol. 5, 664-676.
318 DuBois, 230-231; NMT, vol. 8, 313-321; Case 6 transcript, 14321-14345.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
250
1960 by Israeli agents, who sent him to Israel to become the victim of a “trial”
that was to break all records for illegality, because the state conducting the
trial had not even existed at the time of the alleged crimes. The illegal courtroom
proceedings opened in Jerusalem on April 11, 1961, the Jewish court
pronounced the death sentence on December 15, 1961, and the murder was
carried out on May 31, 1962.
In order to understand Eichmann’s defense strategy, consider his situation
prior to the trial as a lawyer would have seen it. It was basically a political
situation involving an Israeli determination to stage a show trial. In capturing
Eichmann Israel had spat on Argentine sovereignty and, from a lawyer’s point
of view the only hope of securing a favorable verdict (a prison sentence to be
later commuted) depended upon world opinion developing so as to encourage
Israel to temper its arrogance somewhat with a magnanimous gesture. However
the possibility of such an outcome depended upon presenting a defense
whose fundamental acceptance by the Jerusalem court would have been
within the realm of political possibility. Thus, just as with the Nuremberg defendants,
Eichmann’s only possible defense under the circumstances was to
deny personal responsibility.
Eichmann conceded the existence of an extermination program, and the
first edition of Reitlinger’s book was accepted by both sides as approximately
descriptive of what had happened. Eichmann’s fundamental defense, thus, was
that he had merely organized the transports of Jews, in obedience to orders
that could not be disobeyed. In one respect, his defense was partially successful,
for his (accurate) picture of himself as a mere “cog in a machine” has been
more or less universally accepted by those who have studied and written about
this trial (e.g. Hannah Arendt’s book).
Actually, Eichmann inflated himself a bit beyond “cog” status, for a secondary
feature of his testimony is that he claimed that he, Eichmann, had done
whatever a person as lowly as he could do in order to sabotage the extermination
program, and his interpretations of the meanings of many of the documents
used in the trial were obviously strained in this respect. A good example
was Eichmann’s commentary on two particular documents. The first
document was a complaint by the commander of the Lodz resettlement camp,
dated September 24, 1941, complaining of overcrowding at the camp due to
tremendous transports of Jews that were pouring in – “And now they face me
with a fait accompli, as it were, that I have to absorb 20,000 Jews into the
ghetto within the shortest possible period of time, but further that I have to absorb
5,000 gypsies.” The letter is addressed to the local head of government.
The second document is a letter by that local head, dated October 9, 1941,
passing on the complaint to Berlin, and adding that Eichmann had acted like a
“horse dealer” in sending the Jewish transport to Lodz for, contrary to
Eichmann’s claim, the transport had not been approved. Eichmann’s Jerusalem
testimony in regard to these documents was that there were only two
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places he could have shipped the Jews to, the East (where he was supposed to
send them, he said) or Lodz. However, according to him, there were exterminations
in the East at that time, but none at Lodz. Being in strong disapproval
of the exterminations, and doing everything that his low office permitted to
thwart them, he shipped the Jews to Lodz despite the inadequate preparations
there.319
This feature of Eichmann’s defense strategy is also illustrated by his testimony
regarding the “trucks for Hungarian Jews” proposals of 1944. He naturally
attempted to represent efforts on the German side to conclude the deal as
being due in no small measure to the force of his initiative, motivated, again,
by Eichmann’s desire to save Jews.320
It is worth mentioning that the major thrust of the prosecution’s crossexamination
of Eichmann did not treat wartime events directly. The prosecution’s
chief effort was to hold Eichmann, in court, to whatever he was supposed
to have said to Israeli interrogators during his year of imprisonment
prior to the trial, and also to what he was supposed to have said to one Sassen
in Argentina in 1957. According to Eichmann’s testimony, he encountered
Sassen, an ex-SS man, in Buenos Aires in 1955. At this time Eichmann was,
except within tiny circles, a very much forgotten man. The Eichmann-Sassen
relationship eventually led to a project to write a book on the persecutions of
the Jews during the war. The book, to be completed and promoted by Sassen,
was to be based on tape recorded question-and-answer sessions with
Eichmann, but according to Eichmann’s testimony the original form of these
sessions could not be retained:
“[…] when these questions were put to me, I had to reply from time to
time, that I did not remember and did not know; but, obviously, this was
not the way to write a book […] and then it was agreed that it did not
really matter what I remembered – the main thing was to describe the
events as they had happened; then we spoke about poetic license, about license
for journalists and authors, which would entitle us to describe the
events – even if I did not remember certain details, the essence which
would remain would be a description of the events as they had taken place
and this is really what was eventually taken down.
[Sassen] told me to say something about every point, so that the necessary
quantity be obtained.
[…] it was also agreed that he, Sassen, would then formulate everything
in the form of a book and we would be co-authors in this book.”
Sassen’s material eventually appeared, in the autumn of 1960, in Life
magazine, so it is clear that Sassen’s sessions with Eichmann were designed
for the primary purpose of producing a marketable, as distinct from historical,
319 Eichmann, session 78, N1-O1; session 98, T1-W1.
320 Eichmann, session 103, Jj1; session 106, V1.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
252
book. Eichmann, obviously, planned to acquire a share of the profits, but this
testimony does not shed any light onto the specific financial expectations that
Eichmann and Sassen had.
Sassen transcribed some of the tape recorded material into typewritten
form, and Eichmann added comments and corrections in the margins of some
of the pages in his own hand. He also composed 83 full pages of handwritten
comments. After the appearance of the Life articles, the prosecution obtained
material from Sassen, namely, a photostat of a 300-page typewritten document
with marginal comments, apparently in Eichmann’s hand, purporting to be a
transcript of 62 of 67 tape recorded sessions, and also a photostat of what was
said to be the 83 page document in Eichmann’s hand. Original documents
were evidently not procured, thus raising the possibility of tampering and editing,
especially in the case of the 300 page document. In regard to the original
tapes, the prosecution commented
“We do not know about the tapes themselves – I don’t know
whether the people who took part in this conversation kept the tape or
whether the tape was erased and re-used for other recordings.”
The defense challenged the accuracy of the documents, claimed that the
majority of marginal corrections were not included in the document, and further
claimed that if Sassen himself could be brought to court to testify, it could
be proved that:
“[…] he changed and distorted what was said by the accused, to suit
his own aims. He wanted to produce a propaganda book; this can be
proved, how the words were distorted.”
However, the prosecution assured the court that if Sassen were to come to
Israel, he would be put on trial for his SS membership.
The court decided to admit the photostats of the 83 pages in Eichmann’s
hand, but the prosecution, finding during the course of the rest of the trial that
there was virtually nothing in the 83 pages that it could use, made another bid
very late in the trial, and finally managed to get accepted into evidence the excerpts
of the typewritten document which carried handwritten corrections. Life
magazine, which apparently received the same material from Sassen, treated
all of it as unquestionably authentic.321
We close this short discussion of the Eichmann trial by reporting
Eichmann’s reaction to the allegation, widely publicized, that at the end of the
war he had declared that he would “jump gladly into the grave” with the
knowledge that five or six million Jews had been killed. Eichmann testified
that he had, indeed, made a bitter remark such as this to his staff at the end of
the war, but that the five million killed were not “Jews” but “enemies of the
321 Eichmann, session 72, Aal-Kk11; session 73, A1-R1; session 74, Hh1-Iil; session 88, L1-P2
and appendices; session 104, T1-V1; session 105, W1-Z1; Life (Nov. 28, 1960), 19+; (Dec.
5, 1960), 146+.
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
253
Reich,” i.e. enemy soldiers, principally Russians. While his defense strategy
entailed not contesting the general reality of the extermination program, he insisted
that he was in no position to know even the approximate number of
Jews killed, and that all remarks attributed to him in this connection (e.g.
Höttl’s affidavit) are falsely attributed.322
West German Trials
The trials held in West Germany during the Sixties are barely worth mentioning
and, moreover, rather difficult to study, on account of the obscurity of
the defendants involved. The most publicized, of course, was the “Auschwitz
trial” of 1963-1965, and a few words are perhaps in order.
This group of war crimes trials, of which the Auschwitz trial was the most
prominent, was held for political reasons in the aftermath of the hysterical
publicity surrounding the capture of Adolf Eichmann. One of the first victims
was Richard Baer, successor to Höss and last commandant of Auschwitz, who
was arrested on December 20, 1960, near Hamburg, where he was working as
a lumberjack. He was imprisoned and interrogated in prison, and insisted that
the Auschwitz gas chambers were a myth. Unfortunately he did not live to
take this position in court, because he died in prison on June 17, 1963, at the
age of 51, apparently from a circulatory ailment, although his wife considered
his death rather mysterious.323
When the trial finally opened in Frankfurt in December 1963, the principal
defendant was one Robert K. L. Mulka, an ex-SS Captain who had served
briefly as adjutant to Höss at Auschwitz. Mulka had been tried and sentenced,
by a German chamber, immediately after the war, in connection with his role
at Auschwitz, and quite a few of the other 21 defendants at the Auschwitz trial
were standing trial for the second time on basically the same charges.
The court, of course, did not ignore legal matters entirely, and it took the
trouble to explain that the Bonn Government considers itself the legal successor
to the Third Reich, and thus it was competent to try persons for infringing
laws that were in force in Germany during the war. Killing Jews, of course,
had been illegal in Nazi Germany, and thus the majority of the defendants
were charged in that respect. In regard to the reasonableness of such a trial,
one can do not better than to quote from the opinion of the Frankfurt court itself:
324
“This determination of guilt has however confronted the court with ex-
322 Eichmann, session 85, J1-K1, T1-U1; session 87, M1-O1, Y1; session 88, G1-H1.
323 Aretz, 58; Naumann, 8.
324 Naumann, 8-26, 416-417.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
254
traordinarily difficult problems.
Except for a few not very valuable documents, almost exclusively only
witness testimonies were available to the court for the reconstruction of the
deeds of the defendants. It is an experience of criminology that witness testimony
is not among the best of evidence. This is even more the case if the
testimony of the witness refers to an incident which had been observed
twenty years or more ago under conditions of unspeakable grief and anguish.
Even the ideal witness, who only wishes to tell the truth and takes
pains to explore his memory, is prone to have many memory gaps after
twenty years. He risks the danger of projecting onto other persons things
which he actually has experienced himself and of assuming as his own experiences
things which were related to him by others in this terrible milieu.
In this way he risks the danger of confusing the times and places of his experiences.
It has certainly been for the witnesses an unreasonable demand for us
to question them today concerning all details of their experiences. It is asking
too much of the witnesses if we today, after twenty years, still wish to
know when, where and how, in detail, who did what. On this basis astonishment
was repeatedly expressed by the witnesses, that we asked them for
such a precise reconstruction of the past occurrences. It was obviously the
duty of the defense to ask about those details. And it is unjust to impute to
the defense that it wished to make these witnesses appear ridiculous. On
the contrary, we must call to mind only once what endless detail work is
performed in a murder trial in our days – how, out of small mosaic-like
pieces, the picture of the true occurrences at the moment of the murder is
put together. There is available for the court’s deliberations above all the
corpse, the record of the post-mortem examination, the expert opinions of
specialists on the causes of death and the day on which the deed must have
occurred, and the manner in which the death occurred. There is available
the murder weapon and fingerprints to identify the perpetrator; there are
footprints he left behind as he entered the house of the slain, and many
more details at hand which provide absolute proof to the court that this
person was done to death by a definite perpetrator of the deed.
All this was missing in this trial. We have no absolute evidence for the
individual killings; we have only the witness testimonies. However sometimes
these testimonies were not as exact and precise as is necessary in a
murder trial. If therefore the witnesses were asked, in which year or month
an event happened, it was entirely necessary for the determination of the
truth. And these dates sometimes presented to the court the only evidence
for the purpose of determining whether the event related by the witness did
in fact happen as the witness related it, or whether the witness had committed
an error or confused victims. The court was naturally aware that it was
an extraordinary burden for the witnesses, in view of the camp conditions,
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
255
where no calendars, clocks or even primitive means of keeping records
were available, to be asked to relate in all details what they experienced at
the time. Nevertheless the court had to be able to determine whether an individual
defendant did in fact commit a real murder, and when and where.
That is required by the penal code.
This was an ordinary criminal trial, whatever its background. The court
could only judge according to the laws it is sworn to uphold, and these
laws require the precise determination of the concrete guilt of an accused
on both the objective and subjective side. The overburdening of the witnesses
shows how endlessly difficult it is to ascertain and portray concrete
events after twenty years. We have heard witnesses who at first appeared
so reliable to the court that we even issued arrest warrants on their declarations.
However in exhaustive examination of the witness declarations in
hours long deliberations it was found that these declarations were not absolutely
sound and did not absolutely correspond to objective truth. For
this purpose certain times had to be ascertained and documents reexamined
– whether the accused, who was charged by a witness, was at the
camp Auschwitz at all at the time in question, whether he could have committed
the deed there, or whether the witness perhaps projected the deed
onto the wrong person.
In view of this weakness of witness testimony – and I speak now only of
the sworn witnesses whose desire for the truth, the subjective and objective
truth, the court was thoroughly confident of – the court especially had to
examine the witness testimonies. Only a few weeks ago we read in the
newspapers that a member of the Buchenwald concentration camp staff
had been convicted of murdering an inmate who, it is clear today, is alive
and was certainly not murdered. Such examples should make us think.
These cases of miscarriages of justice do not serve to strengthen the respect
for the law. On these grounds also the court has avoided whatever
could even in the most remote sense suggest a summary verdict. The court
had examined every single declaration of each of the witnesses with great
care and all earnestness and consequently is unable to arrive at verdicts of
guilty on a whole list of charges, since secure grounds could not be found
for such verdicts. The possibilities of verifying the witness declarations
were very limited. All traces of deeds were destroyed. Documents which
could have given the court important assistance had been burned. […]
Although these admissions on the part of the Frankfurt court should be
conclusive in forming one’s opinion of such trials, we must add that the
court understated the facts of the situation. The great majority of the witnesses
were citizens of Soviet bloc countries, with all that such a fact implies
regarding their testimonies. The court complained that ‘this witness
testimony was not so accurate and precise as is desirable,’ but one should
observe that it was certainly attempted to organize the memories of the witArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
256
nesses suitably, for the ‘Comité International d’Auschwitz’ had set up its
headquarters in Frankfurt and from there had issued ‘information sheets’
on the terrible things that had happened at Auschwitz. These ‘information
sheets’ had been made available to, and had been read by, the witnesses
before they testified. There was also a ‘Comité des Camps’ in circulation,
and other persons, e.g. the mayor of Frankfurt, made suggestions to the
witnesses of varying degrees of directness and subtlety.”325
The farce extended also into the matters that the court considered in the
course of the long trial, and the sentences that were imposed. Mulka, found
guilty of being second man in the administration of the great extermination
camp, of having ordered the Zyklon B on at least one occasion, of having been
in charge of the motor pool, which transported the condemned, of having handled
some of the paperwork dealing with transports, and of having been involved
in the construction of the crematories, was sentenced to 14 years at
hard labor, but was released less than four months later on grounds of ill
health. Defendant Franz Hofmann, ex-SS Captain who had been in charge of
Auschwitz I, received a life sentence for the simple reason that, although
found guilty in connection with exterminations, he had really been tried on a
charge of having thrown a bottle at a prisoner, who later died from the head
injury received. This incident evidently had a greater impact on the court than
mass exterminations, which is not surprising, because the bottle episode could
clearly be recognized as the sort of thing that happens in penal institutions.
Hofmann was sentenced to life imprisonment, but shortly later released anyway
on the grounds of his previous detention.326
Precedents for the Trials?
In searching the history books for proceedings comparable to the “war
crimes trials,” it is not suitable to fasten on prior politically-motivated trials
for precedents. Such trials, e.g. the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, lack the hysterical
atmosphere of the war crimes trials. Another feature of the usual political
trial is that there is generally only one, or at any rate only a few, victims,
and the proceedings are not spread over more than two decades. Even the trial
of Joan of Arc, which had aspects of hysteria, is not really comparable to the
war crimes trials because only a single person, and not an entire state, was on
trial.
In determining precedents for the war crimes trials, only the witchcraft trials
of Europe’s younger days offer satisfactory comparisons. A most impor-
325 Laternser, 85-94.
326 Naumann, 412-413, 418-419, 422-423. Reitlinger, 551, 561.
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
257
tant similarity lies in the fact that the accused in witchcraft trials frequently
found it expedient, in the contexts in which they found themselves, to go
along with the charges to some extent. In fact in many cases a partial confession
offered the only possible trial strategy. One could not deny the very existence
of the sorts of Sabbaths that the popular imagination had decided must
have existed. When the sentences of the condemned were carried out, one had
scenes:327
“On one scaffold stood the condemned Sorceresses, a scanty band, and
on another the crowd of the reprieved. The repentant heroine, whose confession
was read out, stuck at nothing, however wild and improbable. At
the Sabbaths they ate children, hashed; and as a second course dead wizards
dug up from their graves. Toads dance, talk, complain amorously of
their mistresses’ unkindness, and get the Devil to scold them. This latter
sees the witches home with great politeness, lighting the way with the blazing
arm of an unbaptized infant, etc., etc.”
The situation was such that one had to feed the fantasies and passions of
the judges and the population, and there were even ways of getting ahead by
claiming to be a witch, and thus informed on the activities of certain other
witches, knowledgeable on ways of exposing them, etc.
The comparison of the war crimes trials with the witchcraft trials is almost
perfect. Both involve large numbers of potential victims, and the possibilities
for mutual recrimination are boundless. Most important, both take place in an
atmosphere of unreality and hysteria. The person who will not disbelieve
those who claim that a modern state was exterminating masses of human beings
at a center of chemical industry, employing an insecticide, and that the
pervasive stench at that site was due to the associated cremations, is the complete
twentieth century equivalent of the person who, in earlier centuries, believe
those who claimed that misfortunes were caused by people who conversed
with toads, had intercourse with the Devil, etc.
Torture?
Another important relationship between witchcraft trials and the war
crimes trials is that torture of witnesses and defendants played roles in both.
Invented testimony at witchcraft trials is usually explained in terms of torture
(although our reference employed above points out that mass hysteria also
provides a completely effective motivation). We know that some people were
tortured in connection with the war crimes trials, and we should therefore consider
the problem of the extent to which torture might have accounted for tes-
327 Michelet, 151-157, 313-314.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
258
timony, especially defendant testimony, in support of exterminations.
Available evidence indicates that torture was frequently employed in the
war crimes trials. We have noted at length, on p. 18???, the tortures inflicted
on German defendants in the Dachau trials. Very similar scenes took place,
under British sponsorship, in connection with the Belsen trial, and Josef
Kramer and other defendants were tortured, sometimes to the point where they
pleaded to be put to death.328 On the other hand, it appears that defendants at
the IMT were too prominent to torture, although Julius Streicher was an exception,
and it is even said that he was forced to eat excrement. (Streicher
complained at the IMT that he had been beaten up by Negro soldiers after his
arrest. On the motion of prosecutor Jackson, this testimony was stricken from
the record because otherwise “the court would have had to conduct an investigation.”
Streicher was the editor and publisher of a disreputable and quasipornographic
magazine Der Stürmer, which attacked not only Jews, Freemasons
and clerics but on occasion even top Nazis. Streicher once claimed in
Der Stürmer that Göring’s daughter had not been fathered by Göring but by
artificial insemination. Der Stürmer was considered offensive by nearly all political
leaders in Germany but Streicher had the protection of Hitler, out of
gratitude for Streicher’s having delivered Nuremberg to the Nazi Party. In
1940, Göring arranged for Streicher to be put partially out of action; although
Der Stürmer was not suppressed, Streicher was deprived of his Party position
of Gauleiter of Nuremberg. Streicher never held a position in the German
Government, before or during the war, and his inclusion in the first row of
“defendants” at the IMT was ludicrous.)329
There was never any general or massive exposé of torture of witnesses and
defendants at the NMT trials, but we believe that the fact, noted in the previous
chapter, that the Nuremberg prosecution did not hesitate to torture witnesses
even in connection with a regular US legal proceeding, is strong support
for our assumption that torture was employed rather commonly at Nuremberg
or, more precisely, employed on witnesses and defendants who played
roles in the trials at Nuremberg.
We are inclined to believe that Adolf Eichmann was not tortured by his Israeli
captors, at least not for the purpose of forcing him to give specific trial
testimony. This view is based on the simple fact that he did not complain, in
his trial testimony, that he had been tortured thus, although he did complain,
early in his trial testimony, that he had suffered rather rough treatment during
the few days immediately after his capture, particularly when his captors
forced him to sign a declaration that he had come to Israel voluntarily (and
which the prosecution had the audacity to put into evidence at the trial). However
the extreme secrecy that surrounded Eichmann’s imprisonment in Israel
328 Belgion, 80-81.
329 Bardèche, 12, 73; Davidson, 44-47, 51.
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
259
allows the possibility that he was tortured in some sense, but that he had tactical
or other reasons for not charging torture in his testimony.330
In considering the problem of torture, it is important to observe that the efficacy
of torture in producing testimony having a desired content is rather
questionable. We cannot believe that the prosecuting authorities at Nuremberg
had any moral compunctions about using torture, but they most probably
made the rather obvious observation that, no matter how much you torture a
man, you still cannot be absolutely sure what he will say on the witness stand.
Exceptions to this statement are provided by the “Moscow trials” of the Thirties,
and other trials staged by Communists, but the defendants in such cases
are always “brainwashed” to the extent that they utterly prostrate themselves
before the court when on trial, and denounce themselves as the foulest beings
on earth.331 No such attitude is perceptible in the Nuremberg defendants who,
despite much untruthful testimony damaging to the Nazi regime in general,
always argued their personal innocence.
In examining the torture problem, we must be careful regarding what questions
one might ask, and what inferences may be drawn from the answers.
Obviously, there is the question of whether or not a man was tortured. Second,
there is the question of whether or not he testified to the reality of exterminations.
Assuming that affirmative answers apply to both questions, it is a non
sequitur to infer that the former accounts for the latter. This is illustrated by
the case of Kramer who, despite torture, spoke the truth in his first statement,
and evidently only changed his story when his lawyer explained to him the
logical implications of insisting on a story that the court could not possibly accept.
On the other hand, if a witness had been tortured, we may infer that the
authorities in charge are not to be trusted.
Moreover, one must not make assumptions too quickly in regard to the
probable motivations that the Nuremberg jailers might have had for employing
torture; the motivation need not have been to produce specific testimony,
and may have been either more or less thoughtfully conceived. First, torture
might have been employed purely to produce pleasure; the Jews in charge
hated their German victims. Second, torture may have been employed merely
on the basis of the passing observation that, while it was not guaranteed to be
helpful, it also could not hurt matters as long as the proceedings were kept
suitably confidential.
A third possible motivation, a far more intelligent one, could have been
that torture, while not of much use in producing specific pieces of testimony,
could be of assistance in a less specific and more general sense. If my interro-
330 Eichmann, session 75, U1. For the fanatical measures taken to isolate Eichmann from the
outside world during his imprisonment in Israel see, e.g., the London Jewish Chronicle
(Sep. 2, 1960), 15.
331 Solzhenitsyn has given the definitive account of the historical development of the Communist
political “trial.”. See also Conquest, 82-147.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
260
gator threatens that he will take steps against my family if I do not cooperate, I
may doubt him on the basis that I see no evidence that he either has the necessary
power, or the necessary cruelty, or both. However, if he imprisons me for
a year or more, torturing at will, I will eventually believe that he is both powerful
and cruel. Thus we see that torture, while indeed inadequate in itself to
produce the sort of testimony that was produced at Nuremberg, might very
well have been employed to achieve a general “softening up” of witnesses and
defendants that would help the process of coercion and intimidation at other
points.
A few complications are also worth mentioning. First, physical torture is
not such a very well defined thing. One could argue that extended imprisonment
under unhealthy, or even merely uncomfortable, conditions, with daily
interrogation, is a form of torture. Another complication is that there are
modes of torture, mainly sexual in nature or related to sex, that one could
never learn about because the victims simply will not talk about them. Finally
we should observe that almost none of us, certainly not this author, has ever
experienced torture at the hands of professionals bent on a specific goal, and
thus we might suspect, to put it quite directly, that we simply do not know
what we are talking about when we discuss the possibilities of torture.
Our basic conclusion in respect to the torture problem is that there is something
of an imponderable involved. We believe it likely that torture was employed
to achieve a general softening up of the victims, so that their testimonies
would more predictably take courses that were motivated by considerations
other than torture, and we have analyzed witness and defendant testimony,
in preceding pages of this chapter, on this basis; the effects of and fear
of torture do not, in themselves, explain testimony in support of exterminations.
We thus tend to disagree with much of the existing literature in this area
which, it seems, places too much weight on the singular efficacy of torture at
Nuremberg, although we concede that our analysis of this hard subject is not
conclusive. We have similar suspicions that writers on witchcraft trials have
also leaped to invalid conclusions on the basis of the two indisputably valid
facts that, first, victims in witchcraft trials were tortured and, second, many of
these people later testified to impossible happenings. The former does not
really account for the latter, but it can be a contributing factor when its effects
are added to the more weighty motivations for delivering certain kinds of false
testimony.
Adolf Hitler
We will return to some statements made at trials in due course. There are a
few remarks, allegedly made by top Nazis, that should be mentioned. On April
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
261
17, 1943, Hitler met Admiral Horthy at Klessheim Castle. Hitler was critical
of Horthy’s lenient Jewish policy and, it is said, explained to Horthy that
things were different in Poland:
“If the Jews there did not want to work, they were shot. If they could
not work, they had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, with which a
healthy body may become infected. This was not cruel if one remembers
that even innocent creatures of nature, such as hares and deer, which are
infected, have to be killed so that no harm is caused by them.”
The evidence that Hitler said this is the alleged minutes of the meeting and
the supporting IMT testimony of Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt, Hitler’s interpreter,
who normally sat in on such conferences and prepared the minutes. Schmidt
testified that he was present at the meeting, and that the minutes were genuine
and prepared by him. However, in his later book he wrote that he was not present,
because Horthy had insisted on his leaving the room!332
There is also a statement in Hitler’s political testament :
“I also made it quite plain that, if the peoples of Europe were again to
be regarded merely as pawns in a game played by the international conspiracy
of money and finance, they, the Jews, the race that is the real guilty
party in this murderous struggle, would be saddled with the responsibility
for it.
I left no one in doubt that this time not only would millions of grown
men meet their death and not only would hundreds of thousands of women
and children be burned and bombed to death in cities, but this time the real
culprits would have to pay for their guilt even though by more humane
means than war.”
This statement is frequently interpreted as an admission of exterminations,
but its meaning is at least ambiguous. After all, the payment spoken of was by
“more humane means than war.” The Jews who had been in Hitler’s domain
had lost property and position in Europe, and that fact may offer the correct
interpretation. Loss of property and position might seem a woefully inadequate
payment for the events charged to the Jews, but it is well known that all
politicians, before leaving the public scene, like to exaggerate the significance
of their works.
There also exists a possibility that the text of the testament was tampered
with, because its discovery by British and American authorities was not announced
until December 29, 1945, and because only the last page is signed.
Only the typewriter and stationery Hitler’s secretary used would have been required
to make an undetectable alteration.333
332 Reitlinger, 450-452; Hilberg, 524; Schmidt, 248.
333 Last page of testament reproduced by Trevor-Roper, 180. Discovery and text of testament
reported in New York Times (Dec. 30, 1945), 1; (Dec. 31, 1945), 1, 6. Text also given by
Shirer (1947), 180-181.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
262
Heinrich Himmler,
There is a speech allegedly given by Himmler, in Posen in October 1943.
The translation of the relevant part, as it appears in the NMT volumes, is as
follows, with the original German given in some cases:334
“I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter.
Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will
never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30, 1934, to
do the duty we were bidden and stand comrades who had lapsed up against
the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it and will never
speak of it. […]
I mean the evacuation of the Jews (die Judenevakuierung), the extermination
(Ausrottung) of the Jewish race. It’s one of those things it is easy to
talk about, ‘The Jewish race is being exterminated [ausgerottet],’ says one
Party Member, ‘that’s quite clear, it’s in our program – elimination [Ausschaltung]
of the Jews and we’re doing it, extermination [Ausrottung] is
what we’re doing.’ And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and
each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one
is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has watched it, not
one of them has gone through it. Most of you must know what it means
when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500, or 1,000. To have stuck it
out and at the same time – apart from exceptions caused by human weakness
– to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard.
This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is
never to be written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for
ourselves, if with the bombing raids, the burdens and the depravations of
war we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators,
and trouble-mongers. We would now probably have reached the 1916-
1917 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.
We have taken from them what wealth they had. I have issued a strict
order, which SS Obergruppenführer Pohl has carried out, that this wealth
should, as a matter of course, be handed over to the Reich without reserve.
We have taken none of it for ourselves. […] We had the moral right, we
had the duty to our people, to destroy this people (dieses Volk umzubringen)
which wanted to destroy us. But we have not the right to enrich ourselves
with so much as a fur, a watch, a mark, or a cigarette, or anything
else. Because we exterminated (ausrotteten) a germ, we do not want in the
end to be infected by the germ and die of it […] Wherever it may form, we
will cauterize it.”
The evidence that Himmler actually made these remarks is very weak. The
334 1919-PS in IMT, vol. 29, 110-173 (in German). Excerpts in English translation in NMT,
vol. 13, 318-327.
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
263
alleged text of the Posen speech is part of document 1919-PS and covers 63
pages in the IMT volumes. The quoted portion occurs in a section of 1-1/2
pages length which stands about mid-way in the text under the heading “Jewish
evacuation.” The manuscript of the speech, which bears no signature or
other endorsement, is said (in the descriptive material accompanying the trial
document) to have been found in Rosenberg’s files. It was put into evidence at
the IMT as part of document 1919-PS but it was not stated, during the IMT
proceedings, where the document was supposed to have been found, and nobody
questioned Rosenberg in connection with it. On the other hand Rosenberg
was questioned in regard to 3428-PS, another document said to have
been found in his files (which is discussed briefly below), and he denied that it
could have been part of his files.335 It is further claimed that during Case 11
“the Rosenberg files were rescreened and 44 records were discovered to be a
phonographic recording of Himmler’s Poznan speech of October 4, 1943.”336
The records are supposed to be document NO-5909, and were put into evidence
during the testimony of defendant Gottlob Berger, SS General, former
head of the SS administrative department, Himmler’s personal liaison with
Rosenberg’s Ministry for the Occupied East, and chief of POW affairs toward
the end of the war. In his direct examination Berger had testified that he had
known nothing of any extermination program and also that Himmler, had, indeed,
delivered an “interminable” speech at Posen in 1943, to an audience of
higher SS leaders which included himself. However he denied that document
1919-PS was an accurate transcript of the speech because he recalled that part
of the speech had dealt with certain Belgian and Dutch SS leaders who were
present at the meeting, and337
“[…] that is not contained in the transcript. I can say with certainty
that he did not speak about the Ausrottung of the Jews, because the reason
for this meeting was to equalize and adjust these tremendous tensions between
the Waffen SS and the Police.”
In the cross examination prosecutor Petersen played a phonograph recording
of somebody speaking the first lines of the alleged speech, but Berger
at first denied that the voice was Himmler’s and then, after a second playing
of the same lines, he said that it “might be Heinrich Himmler’s voice.” The
records were then offered in evidence and more excerpts, including the one
dealing with Jewish evacuation which is quoted above, were played in court.
Berger was not questioned further, however, on the authenticity of the voice,
and was excused immediately after the playing of the records. It was only with
some reluctance that the court accepted these records in evidence:
“Judge Powers, Presiding: Well, I think that there is enough evidence
335 IMT, vol. 11, 561.
336 NMT, vol. 13, 318.
337 NMT, vol. 13, 457-487.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
264
here, prima facie, that the voice is the voice of Himmler to justify receiving
the document in evidence. There is no evidence, however, that it was delivered
at Poznan or any other particular place. The discs will be received in
evidence as an indication of Himmler’s general attitude.”
The only “prima facie” evidence for the authenticity of the voice (at only
one point in the speech), as far as I can see, was the Berger statement at one
point that the voice “might be Heinrich Himmler’s.”
In our judgment the prosecution did not submit one bit of evidence that the
voice was that of Himmler or even that the Posen speech, which everyone
would agree dwelled on sensitive subjects, was recorded phonographically.
Thus the authenticity of these phonograph recordings has not even been argued,
much less demonstrated.
It may be that no recording purporting to be Himmler’s remarks on “Jewish
evacuation” still exists. No such recording, so far as I know, surfaced in
public during the avalanche of propaganda that accompanied the Eichmann affair.
Reitlinger remarks that a “partial gramophone recording” of the Posen
speech exists, but he does not say what part still exists.338 I have not pursued
the question any further, because I would not be qualified to evaluate such recordings
if they were produced.
Note that these recordings, claimed to have been belatedly discovered in a
dead man’s files, were put into evidence at the same “trial,” Kempner’s circus,
which the analysis had already conclusively discredited on independent
grounds. In addition, it seems quite peculiar that Himmler would have allowed
the recording of a speech containing material that he “will never speak of […]
publicly,” and then, despite his control of the Gestapo, have seen these recordings
fall into the hands of his political rival Rosenberg. On the basis of
these considerations, and also on account of the fact that it is very difficult to
believe that Himmler would have wasted the time of so many high SS leaders
by delivering the supposed text in document 1919-PS (a most general discussion
of the war), one can be sure that we have another forgery here. However,
parts of the alleged speech may be authentic, and some parts may have been
delivered during the Posen speech or on other occasions.
It is true that Pohl testified in Case 4 that he was present at the Posen
speech (probably true) and that Himmler did deliver the remarks concerning
extermination of the Jews.
However, Pohl’s real point was a ludicrous one. We have noted that Pohl’s
basic trial strategy was to attempt to exploit the fact that the extermination
charges had been thrown specifically at the Gestapo and the RSHA, and he
was quick to pounce on such things as the Höss affidavit as absolving him in
regard to exterminations. His defense strategy had the same basic logic as the
strategies of all defendants we have examined, except for Göring. Thus Pohl’s
338 Reitlinger, 317.
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
265
testimony concerning the Posen speech came in the context of his declaration
that the speech was his first information about the exterminations! In other
words, the exterminations were allegedly so far removed from his official responsibilities
that it required a declaration by Himmler for him to learn of
them. He naturally further testified that he shortly later protested to Himmler,
but was told that it was “none of your business.” Thus was expressed merely
Pohl’s defense strategy of putting self-serving interpretations on that which
was passing as fact in court.339
A lesser point should be made before we leave the subject of the Posen
speech. It is possible to argue that the text may be genuine at his point but that
by “Ausrottung” Himmler merely meant “uprooting” or some form of elimination
less drastic than killing. The principal basis for such an argument would
be that Ausrottung is indeed explicitly equated in the text with Judenevakuierung
and with Ausschaltung. The corpses referred to could easily be interpreted
as German corpses produced by the Allied air raids, for which the Nazis
often claimed the Jews were ultimately responsible. On the other hand it
can be noted that if the remarks are authentic then Himmler regarded it as a
right and a duty dieses Volk umzubringen, and the comparison with the bloody
purge of 1934 at the outset of the remarks seems to justify taking “Ausrottung”
in its primary sense of extermination. Thus, while such an argument
could be made, it would not be very solid.
The conclusive point is that in being asked to believe that the text is genuine
we are, in effect, being asked to believe Kempner.
Joseph Goebbels
Finally, there are a number of remarks in The Goebbels Diaries but, as the
“Publisher’s Note” explains, the “diaries were typed on fine water-marked paper”
and then “passed through several hands, and eventually came into the
possession of Mr. Frank E. Mason.” Thus the authenticity of the complete
manuscript is very much open to question, even if the authenticity of much of
the material can be demonstrated somehow. Interpolation with a typewriter is
simple. The original clothbound edition of the “Diaries” even contains a US
government statement that it “neither warrants nor disclaims the authenticity
of the manuscript.”
Wilfred von Oven, who was an official in the Goebbels Ministry and became,
after the war, the editor of the right wing German language Buenos Aires
journal La Plata, had come forward with a curiously eager endorsement of
the authenticity of The Goebbels Diaries. However the net effect of his com-
339 NMT, vol. 5, 666, 675.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
266
ments is in the reverse direction for he tells us that (a) the diaries were dictated
from handwritten notes (which were subsequently destroyed) by Goebbels to
Regierungsrat Otte, who typed them using the special typewriter, having
characters of almost 1 cm height, that was used for typing the texts that Goebbels
used when he gave speeches (!) and (b) Oven “often observed” Otte, at
Goebbels order, “carefully and precisely as ever” burning these pages toward
the end of the war after having made microfilms of them. The point of the latter
operation, as Goebbels is said to have explained to Oven in the April 18,
1945, entry in the latter’s diary (which was published in 1948/1949 in Buenos
Aires), was that Goebbels “had for months taken care that his treasure, his
great secret, result and accumulation of a more than twenty year political career,
his diary, will remain preserved for posterity but not fall into unauthorized
hands.”
This strange story of Oven’s at least throws some light on the reference to
an unusual typewriter in Louis P. Lochner’s Introduction to the Diaries. If
Oven’s account is true, then it is possible that persons unknown obtained the
special typewriter or a facsimile and a set of the microfilms, and manufactured
an edited and interpolated text. However it is next to impossible to believe that
Goebbels’ diaries were indeed transcribed as Oven has described.340
The Einsatzgruppen
The remaining part of the extermination legend is that the Einsatzgruppen
exterminated Russian Jews in gasmobiles and by mass shootings. This is the
only part of the legend which contains a particle of truth.
At the time of the German invasion of Russia in June 1941, there was a
Führer order declaring, in anticipation of an identical Soviet policy, that the
war with Russia was not to be fought on the basis of the traditional “rules of
warfare.” Necessary measures were to be taken to counter partisan activity,
and Himmler was given the power to “act independently upon his own responsibility.”
Everybody knew that meant executions of partisans and persons
collaborating with partisans. The dirty task was assigned to four Einsatzgruppen
of the SD, which had a total strength of about 3,000 men (i.e. of the order
of 500 to 1,000 men per group). Knowledgeable authorities, incidentally, have
accepted that such anti-partisan operations were necessary in the Russian theater,
where the enemy had no regard for the “rules.”341
We have had occasion to note in several instances that Jews did, in fact,
pose a security menace to the German rear in the war. The Red Cross excerpt
340 Lochner, 126, 138, 147f, 241, viii. Oven’s remarks are in Nation Europa (Apr. 75), 53-56.
341 Veale, 220-224; Reitlinger, 83, 198; Dawidowicz, 125.
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
267
makes this quite clear. The task of the Einsatzgruppen was to deal with such
dangers by all necessary means, so we need not be told much more to surmise
that the Einsatzgruppen must have shot many Jews, although we do not know
whether “many” means 5,000, 25,000 or 100,000. Naturally, many non-Jews
were also executed.
However the claim goes beyond this, and asserts a dual role for the Einsatzgruppen;
they were charged not only with keeping the partisan problem
under control but also with exterminating all Jews (and gypsies). Common
sense alone should reject the notion that the Einsatzgruppen, which had a total
strength of about 3,000 men, as a matter of general policy, spent their time and
effort pursuing objectives unrelated to military considerations. We are again
offered a fact for dual interpretation.
The story is that there was no written order to exterminate the Jews, but
that the Einsatzgruppen commanders got their orders orally, and at different
times. Ohlendorf commanded Group D in southern Russia and he got his orders
orally from Streckenbach in June 1941. Rasch of Group C, operating to
the immediate north of Ohlendorf, did not get his orders until August. Groups
A and B operated around the Baltic states and to the south-east of the Baltic
States, respectively, and were commanded by Stahlecker and Nebe, respectively.
342
The main evidence for exterminations is a huge amount of documentary
evidence which is simply funny. There is the celebrated document 501-PS,
which the Russians possessed at a show ‘trial’ that they staged in December
1943 (sic).343 One part is said to be a letter to Rauff in Berlin, written by an SS
2nd Lieutenant Becker. This is apparently the only document claimed to be
signed by Becker, who is said to have been dead at the time of the IMT trial. It
reads:344
“The overhauling of the Wagen by groups D and C is finished. While
the Wagen in the first series can also be put into action if the weather is
not too bad, the Wagen of the second series (Saurer) stop completely in
rainy weather. […] I ordered the Wagen of group D to be camouflaged as
house trailers. […] the driver presses the accelerator to the fullest extent.
By doing that the persons to be executed suffer death from suffocation and
not death by dozing off as was planned.”
The text of the document is as spurious sounding as one should expect the
text of such a document to be; it was allegedly written by an obscure 2nd
Lieutenant and fortuitously fell into the hands of the Russians in 1943! Aleksandr
I. Solzhenitsyn, in The Gulag Archipelago, mentions the case of the Bavarian
Jupp Aschenbrenner, whom the Russians persuaded to sign a similar
342 Reitlinger, 82-84, 199-201; Hilberg, 187-188, 194-195.
343 Reitlinger, 213.
344 IMT, vol. 3, 560; vol. 26, 102-105. Poliakov & Wulf (1955), 140ff.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
268
declaration that he had worked on wartime gas vans, but Aschenbrenner was
later able to prove that, at the time he had supposedly been working on the
vans, he was actually in Munich studying to become an electric welder.345
The most frequently cited evidence is a collection of documents purporting
to be daily and other reports of the Einsatzgruppen to Himmler and Heydrich
for the period June 1941 to May 1942., Document numbers are 180-L (said to
be a report of Stahlecker found in Himmler’s files),346 2273-PS (said to be another
Stahlecker report on actions up to January 31, 1942, “captured by Russians
in Riga”; Stahlecker was killed in March 1942,347 119-USSR and many
others, too numerous to list, most having numbers around NO-3000. Beside
telling of regular anti-partisan activities, the reports tell of individual actions
of mass executions of Jews, with numbers of victims usually running in the
thousands. It is indicated, in most cases, that many copies, sometimes as many
as a hundred, were distributed. They were mimeographed and signatures are
most rare and, when they occur, appear on non-incriminating pages. Document
NO-3159, for example, has a signature, R. R. Strauch, but only on a
covering page giving the locations of various units of the Einsatzgruppen.
There is also NO-1128, allegedly from Himmler to Hitler reporting, among
other things, the execution of 363,211 Russian Jews in August-November
1942. This claim occurs on page 4 of NO-1128, while initials said to be
Himmler’s occur on the irrelevant page 1. Moreover, Himmler’s initials were
easy to forge: three vertical lines with a horizontal line drawn through them.348
In connection with these matters, the reader should be informed that when
examining printed reproductions of documents in the IMT and NMT volumes
a handwritten signature not be assumed unless it is specifically stated that the
signature is handwritten; “signed” generally means only a typewritten signature.
Document 180-L, for example, is reproduced in German in the IMT volumes
and excerpts in English are reproduced in the NMT volumes. In both
cases signatures are indicated but the actual document merely has “gez. Dr.
Stahlecker” (signed Dr. Stahlecker) typewritten in two places.349
There are two documents said to have been authored by Heinrich Lohse,
Reichskommissar for the Ostland, who was also the person to whom Wetzel’s
“Brack remedy” letter was addressed (see above). One of the documents deals
with Sonderbehandlung and was alluded to in Chapter 4. Like Wetzel, Lohse
was never called as a witness at Nuremberg. Unlike Wetzel, however, Lohse
stood trial before a German court and was sentenced in 1948 to ten years imprisonment.
However, he was released in 1951 on grounds of ill health and
awarded a pension which was shortly later disallowed on account of public
345 Solzhenitsyn, 112n.
346 IMT, vol. 3, 559.
347 Reitlinger, 201, note 70 on page 611.
348 NMT, vol. 13, 269-272 (excerpts only).
349 IMT, vol. 37, 670-717; NMT, vol. 4, 154.
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
269
protest. As for the comments attributed to him, Reitlinger remarks that they
“saved him from the Allied Military Courts and perhaps the gallows” for,
while they speak of atrocities, they are so worded as to put the author of the
documents in opposition to the crimes. The document dealing with Sonderbehandlung
is a letter from Lohse to Rosenberg dated June 18, 1943. The actual
document, 135-R, seems to be claimed to be an unsigned carbon copy of the
correspondence, found in SS files. The relevant passage reads:350
“That Jews are sonderbehandelt requires no further discussion. But
that things proceed as is explained in the report of the Generalkommissar
of 1 June 1943 seems scarcely believable. What is Katyn compared to
that?”
Three unsigned reports supposedly received from the Generalkommissar
(Wilhelm Kube, Generalkommissar for White Russia) are attached to the
document.
The second Lohse document is 3663-PS, and is one of several documents
bearing the major irregularity of having been processed by the Yivo (Yiddish
Scientific Institute) of New York before being submitted as Nuremberg trial
documents. There are about 70 such documents said to have been found in the
Rosenberg Ministry in September 1945 by Sergeant Szajko Frydman of the
US 82nd Airborne Division. Frydman, however, was a staff member of the
Yivo both before and after his service in the Army (indeed the Yivo was so
active in producing documents supposedly found in the Rosenberg Ministry
that it may very well have some enlightening information on the origins of
their supposed text of Himmler’s Posen speech). The first part of the document
is written on the stationery of the Ministry. It is a letter to Lohse, dated
October 31, 1941, with a typewritten signature by Dr. Leibbrandt and an illegible
handwritten endorsement by somebody else. It reads:
“The RSHA has complained that the Reichskommissar for the Ostland
has forbidden executions of Jews in Libau. I request a report in regard to
this matter by return mail.”
The second part of the document is the reply, handwritten on the he reverse
side of the first part, supposedly in the hand of Trampedach, and initialed by
Lohse (with a letter “L” about 1-1/2 inches high). It reads:
“I have forbidden the wild executions of Jews in Libau because they
were not justifiable in the manner in which they were carried out.
I should like to be informed whether your inquiry of 31 October is to be
regarded as a directive to liquidate all Jews in the East? Shall this take
place without regard to age and sex and economic interests (of the
Wehrmacht, for instance, in specialists in the armament industry)? Of
course, the cleansing of the East of Jews is a necessary task; its solution,
350 Hilberg, 252n; Reitlinger, 232-233. documents 135-R and 3633-PS reproduced in Poliakov
& Wulf (1955), 190ff.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
270
however, must be harmonized with the necessities of war production.
So far I have not been able to find such a directive either in the regulations
regarding the Jewish question in the ‘Brown Portfolio’ or in other
decrees.”
Obviously, Lohse could not have any conceivable reason to contest the authenticity
of these documents because, though they suggest exterminations,
they emphatically excuse him.
Another document from the Yivo is 3428-PS, supposedly a letter from
Kube to Lohse, reporting shipments of German, Polish and other Jews to the
Minsk area and the liquidation of some of them. From the mimeographed
summary examined, it is not clear whether or not the document is supposed to
have a handwritten signature. Wilhelm Kube was assassinated in September
1943.351
Other documents that are relevant are numbered 3660-PS through 3669-PS
(excepting 3663-PS). The documents are attributed to various people, e.g.
Kube and Gewecke, and in every case the descriptive material accompanying
the document specifies that the location of the original is unknown, and that
only a photostat is available. With only a couple of exceptions, there are no
handwritten signatures.
Even Reitlinger seems puzzled by the existence of these reports and other
documents because he remarks:352
“It is not easy to see why the murderers left such an abundant testimony
behind them, for in spite of their wide circulation list, Knobloch’s [the Gestapo
official who edited the reports] reports seem to have been designed
primarily to appeal to Himmler and Heydrich. Thus, in addition to much
juggling with the daily death bills in order to produce an impressive total,
there are some rather amateur essays in political intelligence work.”
It is the “amateur essays” that convince one of forgery here; the contents of
these reports are ridiculous in the selection of things reported. To give a few
examples from excerpts reproduced in NMT volume 4:353
“The tactics, to put terror against terror, succeeded marvelously. From
fear of reprisals, the peasants came a distance of 20 kilometers and more
to the headquarters of the Teilkommando of Einsatzgruppe A on foot or on
horseback in order to bring news about partisans, news which was accurate
in most of the cases. […]
In this connection a single case may be mentioned, which proves the
correctness of the principle ‘terror against terror.’ In the village of Yachnova
it was ascertained on the basis of a report made by the peasant
Yemelyanov and after further interrogations and other searches that parti-
351 Hilberg, 709; Reitlinger, 560; 3428-PS in NMT, vol. 4, 191-193.
352 Reitlinger, 213-214.
353 NMT, vol. 4, 168-169, 187, 190.
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
271
sans had been fed in the house of Anna Prokovieva. The house was burned
down on 8 August 1941 at about 21 hours, and its inhabitants arrested.
Shortly after midnight partisans set light to the house of the informer
Yemelyanov. A detachment sent to Jachnowa on the following day ascertained
that the peasant woman Ossipova had told the partisans that Yemelyanov
had made the report which had caused our action.
Ossipova was shot and her house burned down. Further, two 16-yearold
youths from the village were shot because, according to their own confession,
they had rendered information and courier service to the partisans.
[…]
[…] Several Jews who had not been searched thoroughly enough by the
Lithuanian guards drew knives and pistols and uttering cries like ‘Long
live Stalin!’ and ‘Down with Hitler!’ they rushed upon the police force of
whom 7 were wounded. Resistance was broken at once. After 150 Jews had
been shot on the spot, the transport of the remaining Jews to the place of
execution was carried through without further incident.
In the course of the greater action against Jews, 3,412 Jews were shot
in Minsk, 302 in Vileika, and 2,007 in Baranovichi.
The population welcomed these actions, when they found out, while inspecting
the apartments, that the Jews still had great stocks of food at their
disposal, whereas their own supplies were extremely low.
Jews appear again and again, especially in the sphere of the black
market. In the Minsk canteen which serves the population with food and is
operated by the city administration, 2 Jews had committed large-scale embezzlements
and briberies. The food which was obtained in this way was
sold on the black market.”
It is not difficult to see why these documents exist; without them the authors
of the lie would have no evidence for their claims except testimony. We
have seen that with Auschwitz there was an abundance of material facts to
work with and whose meanings could be distorted: shipments of Jews to
Auschwitz, many of whom did not return to their original homes, large shipments
of a source of hydrogen cyanide gas, elaborate cremation facilities, selections,
the stench. The situation with the Einsatzgruppen was different; there
was only one fact, the executions. Standing alone, this fact does not appear
impressive as evidence, and this consideration was no doubt the motivation
for manufacturing these documents on such a large scale. This is in contrast to
the Auschwitz hoax, for which forgery of documents is not nearly so prominent,
and where the forgeries were accomplished with more care. With
Auschwitz we are dealing with a lie manufactured by Washington, but with
the Einsatzgruppen we are dealing with one manufactured by Moscow, and
the hand is correspondingly heavier.
It is worth mentioning that the “gasmobiles“ were not charged in Soviet
propaganda until the middle of the war. Massacres of Jews were claimed, of
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
272
course, early in the development of the propaganda, and the New York Times
story of April 6, 1942 (Chapter 3) is an example. The massacres are not
claimed to have taken place via gasmobiles. A contemporary Soviet propaganda
production was a book, We Shall Not Forgive! (Foreign Languages
Publishing House, Moscow, 1942). The book opens with a summary, presented
by Molotov on April 27, 1942, of the crimes that the Germans had supposedly
committed in their invasion of Russia. The remainder of the book
elaborates the charges with commentaries and photographs, with quite a few
obvious phonies in the collection. Since the Germans are charged with virtually
every crime imaginable, they are naturally charged with pogroms and
massacres of Jews, but gasmobiles do not appear in the charges. As far as we
can see, the first claims of gasmobile exterminations on Russian territory (as
distinct from claims of gasmobiles at Chelmno in Poland) came in July 1943,
during a Soviet trial of 11 Russians accused of having collaborated with the
Germans at Krasnodar. This suggests that the Russian claims may have been
inspired by the gas chamber propaganda that had started in the West late in
1942. In any case, the late appearance of the gasmobile charges, just as in the
case of the Auschwitz propaganda, is further proof that the charges are inventions.
354
There is also a certain amount of testimony that should be mentioned. At
the risk of belaboring a perfectly simple point, let us again observe what had
been pointed out here from many different angles; that a witness testifies in
court to the truth of X, under conditions where the court is already committed
to the truth of X, is historical evidence of absolutely nothing.
The most frequently referred to testimony is that of Ohlendorf, an SS Lieutenant
General and an economist who had had some differences with
Himmler, and consequently found himself assigned to command group D for
one year, summer 1941 to summer 1942, in southern Russia. Ohlendorf was
the most literate of the people involved in this matter.
At the IMT, when other people were on trial, Ohlendorf had appeared as a
prosecution witness and had testified in agreement with the extermination
claims.355 He testified that he had received oral orders to add extermination of
Jews to his activities, that gasmobiles were used to exterminate women and
children, that document 501-PS was authentic (Becker’s letter), and that the
Wehrmacht was implicated in these things. Thus this charge regarding the
Einsatzgruppen was part of the IMT judgment, which even stated that Ohlendorf
exterminated Jews with group D.356 As we have seen, these statements in
the judgment constituted “proof of the facts stated” when Ohlendorf, no doubt
contrary to his expectations, was put on trial as the principal defendant in Case
354 New York Times (Jul. 16, 1943), 7.
355 IMT, vol. 4, 311-355.
356 IMT, vol. 22, 478-480, 491-494, 509-510, 538.
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
273
9. In view of the legal constraints involved here, nobody’s position could have
been more hopeless than Ohlendorf’s at his own trial.
Ohlendorf’s NMT testimony was simply contradictory; he was stuck with
his IMT testimony, which the prosecution was mindful of holding him to, but
he tried to squirm out anyway and the result was a story having no coherency
whatever.357 He retracted his earlier statement that there had been specific extermination
offers, but under cross examination he said that he was killing all
Jews and gypsies anyway, but that this was just an anti-partisan operation, not
part of a program to exterminate all Jews and gypsies on racial or religious
grounds.” However, the total number of persons of all categories executed by
group D during his year in Russia was only 40,000, and not the 90,000 that he
had testified to at the IMT and which the NMT prosecutor attempted to hold
him to. Either figure, of course, especially the former, makes some sense if the
executions were only in connection with anti-partisan measure, but make no
sense at all if one is supposed to be executing all Jews and gypsies, including
women and children, at the same time.
Ohlendorf’s NMT testimony is thus hopelessly contradictory, as it was
bound to be in the circumstances in which he found himself. One should note,
however, that Ohlendorf did not testify to the reality of any executions which
his court was not formally committed, a priori, to accepting as factual anyway.
The only part of Ohlendorf’s testimony that may be of value is his attack
on the Einsatzgruppen reports as “edited.”
Ohlendorf’s testimony contrasts with that of Haensch, an SS Lieutenant
Colonel who was in command of a Sonderkommando in group C for about
seven weeks. The fact that Haensch had not testified previously, when others
were on trial, and the fact that his lower rank made the a priori constraints on
Case 9 of lesser effect in his case, gave him a freedom that Ohlendorf did not
enjoy. He testified that absolutely nobody, in giving him his orders, had ever
mentioned Jews, as such, in connection with executive activities of the Einsatzgruppen,
and that his Sonderkommando had not, as a matter of fact, had a
policy of executing Jews as such. He estimated that his Sonderkommando
executed about sixty people during his period of service. All of these claims
were completely in conflict with what are said to be the reports of the Einsatzgruppen,
as the court pointed out in detail in the judgment, concluding that
in connection with Haensch:358
“[…] one can only dismiss as fantastic the declaration of the defendant
that his predecessor who had admittedly executed thousands of Jews under
the Führer Order, and whose program Haensch was to continue, said
nothing to Haensch about that program. And when Haensch boldly uttered
that the first time he ever had any inkling of the Führer Order was when he
357 NMT, vol. 4, 223-312.
358 NMT, vol. 4, 313-323,547-555.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
274
arrived in Nuremberg six years later, he entered into the category of incredulousness
which defies characterization.”
Ohlendorf and Haensch were both sentenced to hang. Ohlendorf’s sentence
was carried out in 1951, but Haensch’s sentence was commuted to fifteen
years. Presumably, he was out sometime during the Fifties.
Of course, the basic plea of all defendants in Case 9, as well as in almost
all other cases, was that whatever they did was done in obedience to orders
that could be disobeyed only under circumstances that would have resulted in
the execution of the disobedient person. Incidentally, in my opinion this is a
perfectly valid defense, and it may have been this consideration that played a
role in whatever inducements were offered to Germans to become prosecution
witnesses at the IMT trial; it did not imply his guilt or, at least, it logically did
not, if it was done in obedience to orders. In fact, this was the case in the
German military law that the German witnesses were familiar with. Disobedience
of even an illegal order was a serious and punishable offense. People
such as Höss and Ohlendorf had, no doubt, reasoned that their testimony at the
IMT had incriminated them only in the sense of perjury, an offense that they
knew the Allied tribunals would never charge them with. Ohlendorf’s attempts
to ingratiate himself with the US prosecutors did not, moreover, end with the
IMT for he was also used, after his own trial and while he was under sentence
of death, as a prosecution witness against Wehrmacht generals in Case 12.
Personal guilt, obviously, is not involved if the actions demanded or suggested
by the accusers would have led to the clearly inevitable death of the accused.
I suspect that every accuser of the Einsatzgruppen would have obeyed
orders to participate in the air raids on Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki
(none of which, incidentally, had credible military motivations).
However I do not want to create an impression that I am denying that the
Einsatzgruppen executed apparent civilians, including women and children, in
connection with their activities in Russia. All experience with anti-partisan
warfare, whether conducted by the British, the French or the Americans suggests,
quite independently of the tainted (to put it mildly) evidence of the trials
at Nuremberg, that such things happened. In the Vietnam war, Americans did
much of this with napalm, and then made a big fuss over the fact that one obscure
Lieutenant had been caught doing it with bullets.
Neither am I trying to create an impression that, actually, everybody is
very brutal, but a thorough discussion of the problems involved would carry
us far afield, so it will not be attempted; only the essentials can be outlined
here.
It is an unhappy fact that partisan, irregular or guerilla warfare, together
with the measures taken to suppress such operations, is not only the dirtiest
business in existence but has also been a regular feature of twentieth century
history. It is dirty business even when the two sides are highly civilized and
culturally similar. A good example is the British campaign against the Irish
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
275
rebellion of 1916-1921, where both sides acted with remarkable brutality.
If, to the fact of guerilla warfare, one adds that at least one side is drawn
from a primitive population, uncivilized or semi-civilized, then one has a
situation that it is most difficult for an ordinary civilized person to grasp if he
has no direct experience of it. It is too easy for us, sitting in the warmth of our
living rooms, to generate moral indignation over operations which involve the
killing of “apparent civilians, including women and children.” The typical
West European or American has lived in a culture in which certain standards
of charity, kindness and honor have been taken for granted, and it is difficult
for him to understand that certain fundamental assumptions about other people
would not hold in a context such as guerilla warfare in Asia or Russia; the viciousness
involved exceeds the imagination. To give just one example drawn
from our Vietnam experience: what do you do if a child, despite signaled
warnings to stay away, is obstinately approaching you asking for food or
candy and it is known that there is a good chance that there is a grenade attached
to him?
Of course, many needless brutalities always occur in such circumstances,
but one should attempt to understand the situation.
What I am denying with respect to the Einsatzgruppen is that one can give
any credence to the story told by the trials evidence which, while it is somewhat
variable on some points, has the basic feature of asserting that the Einsatzgruppen,
which had a total strength of about 3,000 for the anti-partisan
operations for all of occupied Russia, regularly and as a matter of policy pursued
a second set of objectives not related to military considerations, those objectives
(exterminations) requiring substantial means for their attainment. We
can, especially in view of the obvious forgery and perjury which has been
practiced in connection with making this claim, dismiss all of that as propaganda.
What did in fact happen can only, most probably, be approximately
grasped, on account of the scantiness of reliable evidence. Unfortunately, it
would appear that the events in Russia will never be established with exactitude,
and that these episodes will remain partially in darkness.

277
Chapter 7:
The Final Solution
The German Policy and the Wannsee Conference
We have shown that the exterminations are a propaganda hoax, i.e., we
have shown what did not happen to the Jews. To complete our study, we
should show what did, in fact, happen to the Jews.
The problem of what happened to European Jews is a fairly easy one if one
wishes only a general answer, and a very difficult, indeed probably impossible,
problem if one demands statistical accuracy. To answer the question in
general, all one need do is consult the relevant German documents. What the
German leaders were saying to each other about their policy is obviously the
first authority one should consult.
The general nature of German Jewish policy is very simple to discover; it
is all set out in NMT volume 13. The US Prosecution in the Wilhelmstrasse
Case presented a document, NG-2586, which consists of several parts, each
part being some document important in the development of German Jewish
policy. One part, NG-2586-J, in fact, is a summary of the other parts and, thus,
a handy summary of the policy. One can do no better than simply reproduce
the text, a memo by Martin Luther (Horst Wagner’s predecessor), dated August
21, 1942:359
“1. The principle of the German Jewish policy after the seizure of
power consisted in promoting with all means the Jewish emigration. For
this purpose in 1939 Field Marshall Göring in his capacity as Plenipotentiary
for the Four Year Plan established a Reich Central Office for Jewish
Emigration and the direction was given to SS Lieutenant General Heydrich
in his capacity as chief of the Security Police. The Foreign Office is represented
in the committee of the Reich Central Office. The draft of a letter to
this effect to the Chief of the Security Police was approved by the Reich
Foreign Minister as 83/24 B in February 1939.
2. The present war gives Germany the opportunity and also the duty of
solving the Jewish problem in Europe. In consideration of the favorable
course of the war against France, D III [department Germany III] proposed
in July 1940 as a solution – the removal of all Jews from Europe and
the demanding of the Island of Madagascar from France as a territory for
359 NMT. vol. 13, 243-249.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
278
the reception of the Jews. The Reich Foreign Minister has basically agreed
to the beginning of the preliminary work for the deportation of the Jews
from Europe. This should be done in close cooperation with the offices of
the Reichsführer-SS (compare D III 200/40).
The Madagascar plan was enthusiastically accepted by the RSHA
which in the opinion of the Foreign Office is the agency which alone is in
the position technically and by experience to carry out a Jewish evacuation
on a large scale and to guarantee the supervision of the people evacuated,
the competent agency of the RSHA thereupon worked out a plan going into
detail for the evacuation of the Jews to Madagascar and for their settlement
there. This plan was approved by the Reichsführer-SS. SS Lieutenant
General Heydrich submitted this plan directly to the Reich Foreign Minister
in August 1940 (compare D III 2171). The Madagascar plan in fact had
been outdated as the result of the political development.
The fact that the Führer intends to evacuate all Jews from Europe was
communicated to me as early as August 1940 by Ambassador Abetz after
an interview with the Führer (compare D III 2298).
Hence the basic instruction of the Reich Foreign Minister, to promote
the evacuation of the Jews in closest cooperation with the agencies of the
Reichsführer-SS, is still in force and will therefore be observed by D III.
3. The administration of the occupied territories brought with it the
problem of the treatment of Jews living in these territories. First, the military
commander in France saw himself compelled as the first one to issue
on September 27, 1940, a decree on the treatment of the Jews in occupied
France. The decree was issued with the agreement of the German Embassy
in Paris. The pertinent instruction was issued directly by the Reich Foreign
Minister to Ambassador Abetz on the occasion of a verbal report.
After the pattern of the Paris decree similar decrees have been issued in
the Netherlands and Belgium. As these decrees, in the same way as German
laws concerning Jews, formally embrace all Jews independent of their
citizenship, objections were made by foreign powers, among others protest
notes by the Embassy of the United States of America, although the military
commander in France through internal regulation had ordered that
the Jewish measures should not be applied to the citizens of neutral countries.
The Reich Foreign Minister has decided in the case of the American
protests that he does not consider it right to have military regulations issued
for making an exception of the American Jews. It would be a mistake
to reject objections of friendly states (Spain and Hungary) and on the other
hand to show weakness toward the Americans. The Reich Foreign Minister
considers it necessary to make these instructions to the field commanders
retroactive (compare D III 5449).
In accordance with this direction the Jewish measures have been given
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
279
general application.
4. In his letter of June 24, 1940 – Pol XII 136 – SS Lieutenant General
Heydrich informed the Reich Foreign Minister that the whole problem of
the approximately three and a quarter million Jews in the areas under
German control can no longer be solved by emigration – a territorial final
solution would be necessary.
In recognition of this Reich Marshall Göring on July 31, 1941, commissioned
SS Lieutenant General Heydrich to make, in conjunction with the
interested German Control agencies, all necessary preparations for a total
solution of the Jewish problem in the German sphere of influence in
Europe (compare D III 709 secret). On the basis of this instruction, SS
Lieutenant General Heydrich arranged a conference of all the interested
German agencies for January 20, 1942, at which the State Secretaries
were present from the other ministries and I myself from the Foreign Office.
In the conference General Heydrich explained that Reich Marshall
Göring’s assignment to him had been made on the Führer’s instruction
and that the Führer instead of the emigration had now authorized the
evacuation of the Jews to the East as the solution (compare page 5 of the
enclosure to D III 29/42 Secret). State Secretary Weizsäcker had been informed
on the conference; for the time being the Reich Foreign Minister
had not been informed on the conference, because SS Lieutenant General
Heydrich agreed to holding a new conference in the near future in which
more details of the total solution should be discussed. This conference has
never taken place due to Lieutenant General Heydrich’s appointment as
acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia and due to his death.
In the conference on January 20, 1942, I demanded that all questions
concerned with countries outside Germany must first have the agreement
of the Foreign Office, a demand to which SS Lieutenant General Heydrich
agreed and also has faithfully complied with, as in fact, the office of the
RSHA handling Jewish matters had, from the beginning, carried out all
measures in frictionless cooperation with the Foreign Office. The RSHA
has in this matter proceeded indeed almost over-cautiously.
5. On the basis of the Führer’s instruction mentioned under ‘4’ (above),
the evacuation of the Jews from Germany was begun. It was urged that at
the same time these Jews should also be taken who were nationals of the
countries which had also undertaken Jewish measures. The RSHA accordingly
made an inquiry of the Foreign Office. For reasons of courtesy, inquiry
was made by way of the German legations in Bratislava [Slovakia],
Zagreb [Croatia], and Bucharest [Romania] to the Governments there as to
whether they wanted to recall their Jews from Germany in due time or to
agree to their deportation to the ghettos in the East. To the issuance of this
instruction agreement was given before dispatch by the State Secretary, the
Under State Secretary in Charge of the Political Division, the Director of
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
280
the Division for Economic Policy and the Director of the Legal Division
(compare D III 336 Secret).
The German Legation in Bucharest reports with reference to D III 602
Secret, that the Romanian government would leave it to the Reich Government
to deport their Jews along with the German Jews to the ghettos in the
East. They are not interested in having the Romanian Jews return to Romania.
The Legation in Zagreb has informed us that the Croat Government expresses
gratitude for the gesture of the German Government; but it would
appreciate the deportation of its Jews to the East (compare D III 624 Secret).
The Legation in Bratislava reported with reference to D III 661 Secret
that the Slovak Government is fundamentally in agreement with the deportation
to the eastern ghettos. But the Slovak claims to the property of the
Jews should not be endangered.
The wire reports have also been submitted, as customary, to the Reich
Foreign Minister’s Bureau.
On the basis of the reports of the Ministers I have informed the RSHA
with reference to D III 661 Secret that the Jews of Romanian, Croat, and
Slovak nationality could also be deported; their property should be
blocked. The Director of the Political Division, Section IV of the Political
Division, Section IX of the Legal Division and Section IV of the Division
for the Economic Policy have cosigned the document. Accordingly, the deportations
of the Jews from the occupied territories was undertaken.
6. The number of Jews deported in this way to the East did not suffice to
cover the labor needs there. The RSHA therefore, acting on the instruction
of the Reichsführer-SS, approached the Foreign Office to ask the Slovak
Government to make 20,000 young, strong Slovak Jews from Slovakia
available for deportation to the East. The German Legation in Bratislava
was provided, by D III 874, with proper instruction. The instruction was
signed by the State Secretary, the Under State Secretary in charge of the
Political Division, and Section IV of the Political Division.
The Legation in Bratislava reported re D III 1002 that the Slovak Government
has taken up the suggestion eagerly; the preparatory work could
be begun.
Following up this pleased concurrence of the Slovak Government, the
Reichsführer-SS proposed that the rest of the Slovak Jews also be deported
to the East and Slovakia thereby be made free of Jews. The Legation was,
re D III 1559 Ang. II, provided with proper instruction. The draft of the instruction
was signed by the State Secretary; after its dispatch it was submitted
for their information to the bureau of the Reich Foreign Minister
and the Under State Secretary in charge of the Political Division.
As the Slovak Episcopacy meanwhile raised objections to the deportaChapter
7: The Final Solution
281
tion of the Jews before the Slovak Government, the instruction carries the
express statement that in no case must there develop internal political difficulties
on account of the evacuation of the Jews in Slovakia. By the telegraphic
report, re D III 2006, the Legation reported that the Slovak Government,
without any German pressure, has declared itself agreeable to
the deportation of all Jews and that the State President agreed personally
to the deportation. The telegraphic report was submitted to the bureau of
the Reich Foreign Minister. The Slovak Government had furthermore
agreed that it will pay as a contribution to the cost entailed RM 500 for
every evacuated Jew.
In the meantime 52,000 Jews have been removed from Slovakia. Due to
church influences and the corruption of individual officials 35,000 Jews
have received a special legitimation. However, Minister President Tuka
wants the Jewish removal continued and therefore has asked for support
through diplomatic pressure by the Reich (compare D III 3865). The Ambassador
is authorized to give this diplomatic help in that he may state to
State President Dr. Tiso that the exclusion of the 35,000 Jews is a surprise
in Germany, the more so since the cooperation of Slovakia up to now in the
Jewish problem has been highly appreciated here. This instruction has
been cosigned by the Under State Secretary in charge of the Political Division,
and the State Secretary.
7. The Croat Government is likewise fundamentally agreeable to the
removal of the Jews from Croatia. It especially considers the deportation
of the four to five thousand Jews from the Italian occupied Second zone
(centered around Dubrovnik and Mostar) to be important, as they represent
a political burden and their elimination would serve the general pacification.
The removal can of course take place only with German aid, as
difficulties are to be expected from the Italian side. There have been practical
examples of resistance to the Croat measures by Italian officials on
behalf of well-to-do Jews. Furthermore, the Italian Chief of Staff in Mostar
has said that he cannot approve the removal since all the people living in
Mostar have been assured of the same treatment.
Since meanwhile according to a telephone communication from Zagreb,
the Croat Government has given its written approval of the proposed
measure, Minister Kasche thinks it right to begin with the removal, and in
fact to begin for the whole country. One could therefore take the risk of
having difficulties develop in the course of the action, so far as concerns
the zone occupied by Italians.
A report for the Reich Foreign Minister to this effect (D III 562 Secret)
has been held up by State Secretary von Weizsäcker since he considered an
inquiry should first be made at the Embassy in Rome. The answer has not
been received.
The problem of the Italian Jews has come up in the same way in conArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
282
nection with the evacuation of the Jews in France.
Ambassador Abetz points out in connection with the deportation in
preparation from the Occupied French Territory that there was an urgent
political interest to take the foreign Jews first in the evacuation measures.
Since these Jews were regarded as foreign bodies they were already especially
hated and passing them over and giving them thereby a quasi privileging
would cause bad feeling, the more so since among them were to be
found responsible instigators of Jewish terror and sabotage acts. It was
regrettable that the Axis appeared exactly in this point to pursue no uniform
policy.
If the evacuation of the foreign Jews were not immediately possible, the
Italian Government should be for the time being asked to repatriate their
Jews from France.
On the Italian side economic interests appear to play a decisive role.
The safeguarding of these interests however is entirely possible, so that on
this point there needs to be no obstacle to the planned solution.
On this question of the Italian Jews in France a conference record of
July 24, re D III 562 Secret, has been submitted to the Reich Foreign Minister.
8. On the occasion of a reception by the Reich Foreign Minister on November
26, 1941, the Bulgarian Foreign Minister Popoff touched on the
problem of according like treatment to the Jews of European nationalities
and pointed out the difficulties that the Bulgarians had in the application
of their Jewish laws to Jews of foreign nationality.
The Reich Foreign Minister answered that he thought this question
brought up by Mr. Popoff not uninteresting. Even now he could say one
thing to him, that at the end of this war all Jews would have to leave
Europe. This was an unalterable decision of the Führer and also the only
way to master this problem, as only a global and comprehensive solution
could be applied and individual measures would not help very much. Furthermore,
one should not attribute too much worth to the protests on behalf
of the Jews of foreign nationality. At any rate, we would not let ourselves
be taken in any further by such protests from the American side. He – the
Reich Foreign Minister – would have the problem described by Mr. Popoff
investigated by the Foreign Office.
The Reich Foreign Minister commissioned me to undertake the investigation
promised (compare D III 660g) [document NG-4669].
I should like to make reference to my basic conference memorandum of
December 4, 1941, re D III 660 Secret, which I am dispatching, together
with the proper files. This conference memorandum was held up by the
State Secretary, because he considered a further examination by the Legal
Division first necessary. In their opinion the German-Bulgarian trade and
shipping pact was not in agreement with the German-Bulgarian arrangeChapter
7: The Final Solution
283
ments proposed by me. I therefore notified the German Legation in Sofia,
re D III 497 Secret, under the date of June 19, in reference to the suggestion
of the Bulgarian Foreign Minister Popoff at his reception to contact
the Bulgarian Government and find out whether it was prepared to come to
an agreement in the Jewish problem that there should be no rights from the
trade and shipping pact given effect in favor of the Jews in the promise of
reciprocality.
If the question is put from the Bulgarian side as to whether Germany is
ready to deport Jews from Bulgaria to the East, the question should be answered
in the affirmative, but in respect to the time of the departing should
be answered evasively. This decree was cosigned by the State Secretary,
the Under State Secretary, the Director of the Political Division, the Director
of the Division for Economic Policy, Section IV of the Political Division,
Section IV of the Division for Economic Policy, and also by Ribbentrop.
The Legation exchanged notes with the Bulgarian Government and
reported that the Bulgarian Government is fundamentally prepared in the
problem of the evacuation to sign an agreement with us. Thereby the basis
is given to include the Bulgarian Jews in the Jewish measures. (D III 559
Secret and 569 Secret).
9. The Hungarian Government has not yet been approached with respect
to the Jewish removal, because the status of the Hungarian legislation
up to the present does not promise a sufficient success.
10. In accordance with the agreement of the Romanian Government
mentioned under ‘8’ the evacuation of the Romanian Jews from Germany
and the occupied territories was begun, whereupon various Romanian
consulates and the Romanian Minister in Berlin, who had no instructions
from their Government, intervened. Ambassador von Killinger was therefore
asked for clarification. The Legation seems to have made use of the
Jewish advisor assigned to it, Richter, for this purpose. He is a person to
whom the Romanian Government confirmed its earlier agreement to the
inclusion of the Romanian Jews in the German measures and to whom the
Deputy Ministry President Mihai Antonescu informed of the request of the
Marshall that the German agencies should also carry out the removal from
Romania itself and should be then immediately with the transport of the
Jews from the areas Arad, Timisoara and Turda.
For details may I refer to my conference memorandum of August 17 as
D III 649.
11. At the request of the governments concerned, the legations in Bratislava,
Zagreb and Bucharest have been assigned advisors for Jewish affairs.
They have been made available at the request of the Foreign Office
by the RSHA. Their assignment is for a limited time. It ends as soon as the
Jewish problem in the country concerned can be regarded as solved in the
German sense. Originally it was regarded as solved as soon as the country
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
284
concerned has issued Jewish laws similar to the German ones.
Accordingly Richter was recalled from Romania last year by the RSHA.
At the urgent request of the legation in Bucharest, Richter was again
assigned to the legation despite the objection of the RSHA. This was done
with the express intention of having him remain there until the actual final
solution in Romania (D III 1703 Secret and 1893 Secret).
Since all negotiations with the Romanian Government went through the
Foreign Office, the report of SS First Lieutenant Richter submitted by the
Reichsführer-SS should be considered only as an internal work report to
the RSHA. The unusual procedure of having the confirmation of a final
conference in the handwriting of the Deputy Minister President was
sharply objected to immediately through the directive of the 17th of this
month; the official handling of the affair must be carried out immediately.
The files have been submitted there already under D III 659 Secret.
The intended deportations are a further step forward on the way of the
total solution and are in respect to other countries (Hungary) very important.
The deportation to the Government General is a temporary measure.
The Jews will be moved on further to the occupied Eastern Territories as
soon as the technical conditions for it are given.
I therefore request approval for the continuation of the negotiations and
measures under these terms and according to the arrangement made.
Signed: LUTHER”
The material starting with the words “If the question is put from the Bulgarian
side […] ” and ending with the words “The files have been submitted
there already under D III 659 Secret,” is deleted in NMT volume 13. In section
4 the date of June 24, 1940, for document Pol XII 136 appears, from the
context, to be in error; it should be 1941.
This is not a solitary document; not only is it a summary of a certain number
of documents spelling out the Jewish policies of the German Government,
but all documents bearing on Jewish policies, except for those we have identified
as forgeries, fall within the scheme implied by it. The “final solution”
meant the expulsion of all Jews from the German sphere of influence in
Europe. After the invasion of Russia, its specific meaning was the resettlement
of these Jews in the East. The German documents at every level (among those
that have survived) express this unambiguously, a fact which is conceded even
by the bearers of the extermination legend, who are forced to declare that this
must just be code terminology for extermination.360
Actually, in the discussions prior to this chapter we have had several occasions
to refer to this program of resettlement to the East. Its most important
expression has been in the Red Cross excerpt which, despite its ambiguous
remarks about “extermination,” presents a picture in rather close accord with
360 Hilberg, 619 or 621.
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
285
the story told by NG-2586-J. At Theresienstadt the Red Cross wondered if the
place “was being used as a transit camp and asked when the last departures for
the East had taken place.” In Slovakia the Jews had been subject to “forced
immigration towards the territories under German control.” A large number of
Romanian Jews had been resettled in the East, but things did not work out and
many returned, although there had been adequate opportunity to exterminate
them if such had been the policy. Despite the several vague and ambiguous
remarks about “extermination” which we noted in Chapter 5, the undeniable
effect of the Red Cross Report is to confirm that the Germans were doing
what their documents say they were doing.
The German documents are not only confirmed by neutral authority; we
have seen that they are even confirmed by hostile sources. In Chapter 4 we
discussed the Theresienstadt Jews sent to Auschwitz, as related by the WRB
report. The manner of their treatment makes sense only if Birkenau was serving
as a transit camp for them. Moreover, the Israeli source cited in Chapter 4
reported that Theresienstadt Jews were, indeed, being sent to the East. Thus
even hostile sources report that the Germans were doing what their documents
say they were doing.
What is described in NG-2586-J is the program as it existed starting in
early 1939. Actually, on account of the pressures against the Jews between
1933 and 1939 the great majority of German-Austrian Jews had emigrated before
the outbreak of the war. The Germans had not cared very much where the
Jews emigrated to. Palestine seemed a good possibility on account of the British
Balfour Declaration of 1917, but negotiations with the British on this did
not go very well because the British wished to maintain good relations with
the Arabs who, at that time, constituted the bulk of the population of Palestine.
Nevertheless there was some steady Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine,
but this was finally cut to a trickle by the policy announced by the British
White Paper of May 1939.361
The Madagascar project, fantastic as it seems today, was taken quite seriously
by the Germans, although nothing ever came of it. The war with Russia
which started in June 1941 opened up obvious new resettlement possibilities,
and this resulted in Göring’s famous letter to Heydrich regarding the “final solution
of the Jewish question,” dated July 31, 1941:362
“As supplement to the task that was entrusted to you in the decree dated
January 24, 1939, namely to solve the Jewish question by emigration and
evacuation in a way which is the most favorable in connection with the
conditions prevailing at the time, I herewith commission you to carry out
all preparations with regard to organizational, factual, and financial viewpoints
for a total solution of the Jewish question in those territories in
361 Sachar, 365-368, 412-417; John & Hadawi, vol. 1, 295-326.
362 NMT, vol. 13, 169-170.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
286
Europe under German influence.
If the competency of other central organizations is touched in this connection,
these organizations are to participate.
I further commission you to submit to me as soon as possible a draft
showing the organizational, factual, and financial measures already taken
for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question.”
It is customary to quote this letter with deletion of the reference to “emigration
and evacuation.”363 The planned Jewish emigration to the eastern territories
of not only the German Jews, but also the Jews in the “territories in
Europe under German influence” was a relatively extensive project and so, in
accord with Göring’s reference to the “competency of other central organizations,”
Heydrich called a special conference, the “Wannsee Conference”,
which was finally held on January 20, 1942. Representatives of several
branches of the German Government attended the conference. Eichmann was
the next to lowest ranked person at the conference. The minutes of the conference,
NG-2586-G, are lengthy but the heart of the project was expressed as
follows:364
“Meanwhile, in view of the dangers of an emigration during the war
and in view of the possibilities in the East, the Reichsführer-SS and the
Chief of the German Police had forbidden the emigrating of the Jews.
The emigration program has now been replaced by the evacuation of
the Jews to the East as a further solution possibility, in accordance with
previous authorization by the Führer.
These actions are of course to be regarded only as a temporary substitute;
nonetheless here already the solution of the Jewish problem is of
great importance.
[…]
Under proper direction the Jews should now in the course of the final
solution, be brought to the East in a suitable way for use as labor. In big
labor gangs, with separation of the sexes, the Jews capable of work are
brought to these areas and employed in road-building, in which task undoubtedly
a great part will fall out through natural diminution.
The remnant that finally is able to survive all this – since this is undoubtedly
the part with the strongest resistance – must be given treatment
accordingly, since these people, representing a natural selection, are to be
regarded as the germ cell of a new Jewish development, if they are allowed
to go free. (See the experience of history.)
In the program of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe is
combed through from the West to the East. The Reich area, including the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be taken in advance,
363 E.g. Shirer (1960), 964.
364 NMT, vol. 13, 212-213. Poliakov & Wulf (1955), 119-126.
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
287
alone for reasons of the housing problem and other social-political necessities.
The evacuated Jews are brought first group by group into the so-called
transit ghettos, in order from there out to be transported farther to the
East.
An important provision for the whole execution of the evacuation, so SS
General Heydrich explained further, is the exact establishment of the category
of persons who are to be included.
It is intended not to evacuate Jews over 65 years of age, but to remove
them to a ghetto for the aged – Theresienstadt is under consideration.
Along with these old-age classes – of the perhaps 280,000 Jews who on
31/10/1941 were in the Old Reich and in Austria, perhaps 30% are over 65
years old – there will also be taken to the ghettos for the aged the Jews
who are serious war-wounded cases and Jews with war decorations (Iron
Cross, First Class). With this appropriate solution the many potentials for
exceptions will be eliminated with one blow.
[…]
In connection with the problem of the effect of the Jewish evacuation on
the economic life, State Secretary Neumann stated that the Jews employed
in war-important industries could not be evacuated for the present, as long
as there were no replacements available.
SS General Heydrich pointed out that these Jews, in accordance with
the directive approved by him for the execution of the current evacuations,
would not be evacuated.
State Secretary Dr. Bühler states that the Government General would
welcome the initiation of the final solution of this problem in the Government
General, because here for once the transport problem plays no outof-
the-ordinary role, and here labor commitment considerations would not
hinder the course of this action […] Furthermore, of the approximately
two and one half million Jews here in question the majority of cases were
unfit for work […] He had only one request, that the Jewish problem in this
territory be solved as quickly as possible.”
Here is unambiguous documentary evidence that no extermination program
existed; the German policy was to evacuate the Jews to the East. It did not,
moreover, require the capture of German documents to expose this fact. It was
well known during the war and, during the resettlement program’s early states,
it was reported and commented on countless times in the Allied press. In the
case of Vienna Jews deported to Poland in early 1941, the New York Times
even remarked that they “found their new homes much more comfortable than
they expected or even dare hope.” Later reports on the resettlement program
did not describe it so favorably, but the press at least reported approximately
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
288
what was going on.365
Rothe, incidentally, had taken the position that the Wannsee Conference is
itself a propaganda myth. His principal reason for this is his belief, for which
he presents respectable evidence, that Heydrich was in Prague on January 20,
1942. However the date attributed to the conference, and the document said to
be the minutes of the conference, are so consistent with everything else that is
known about the German policy that we believe that Rothe is mistaken on this
point.366
The only factual aspect of the program of evacuation to the East which is
generally consistent with the extermination claims is that many Jews sent to
the camps in Poland did not return, at least not to their former homes. This,
apparently, had been the reason why many people with more or less first hand
information about certain individuals have accepted the extermination claims.
However, the situation is basically simple. These camps were obviously serving
as transit camps for the program of evacuation to the East. We have observed
that at Birkenau there was a special compound that served as a transit
camp for Theresienstadt Jews, and that Dutch Jews also passed through
Auschwitz (Chapter 4). The concentration camp at Lublin also played this incidental
role on occasion.367 Treblinka, which was a labor camp but does not
appear to have been administered by the WVHA, clearly served also as a transit
camp, especially for Warsaw Jews. As with Auschwitz, Reitlinger finds the
alleged facts put forward concerning gassings at Treblinka difficult to reconcile
with one another. Sobibor was explicitly called a transit camp.368
It may astonish the reader that the documents we have reviewed, which
constitute very strong evidence that no extermination program existed, are not
passed over in silence by the bearers of the extermination legend, but are
thrust boldly into our faces as evidence that an extermination program did exist.
Not only is this the implicit idea conveyed by the collection of documents
in NMT volume 13; Reitlinger and Hilberg are quite serious in considering
these documents relevant to an extermination program. Thus the “evacuation
to the East” is claimed as a code term for extermination.
On account of the fact that a fixed feature of the extermination legend is
that one of the tasks of the Einsatzgruppen in Russia was the extermination of
the Jews, the bearers of the legend are committed to the view that the policy of
extermination had been settled on by the summer of 1941. Thus although
Göring’s letter of July 31, 1941, to Heydrich to specifically states that the “final
solution” is a program of emigration and evacuation, and although it
makes specific reference to the program which existed from 1939, which both
365 See particularly the New York Times (Feb. 28, 1941), 4; (Oct. 18, 1941), 4; (Oct. 28, 1941),
10; (Feb. 9, 1942), 5; (Mar. 15, 1942), 27; (Aug. 6, 1942), 1.
366 Rothe, 173-196.
367 NO-1611 and NO-1882 in NMT, vol. 5, 616-619.
368 Reitlinger, 149, 279; Hilberg, 318, 619 or 621.
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
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Reitlinger and Hilberg concede was an emigration program, both authors must
and do take the position that this was really an extermination order. They are
apparently not bothered by the fact, noted by them, that deportations of Reich
Jews to Russia and the Baltic states had started in the autumn of 1941.369
Continuing to keep faith with their fundamental commitment, the Wannsee
Conference of January 1942 is also interpreted as a veiled discussion of extermination,
although the evacuation program of which the minutes of the
Conference speak was in fact in progress. Both authors lay stress on the reference
to the “remnant that finally is able to survive all this” and are to be
“given treatment accordingly.” This passage could mean any number of
things. The version of the Wannsee Conference minutes that is printed in
NMT volume 13, incidentally, has the phrase “if they are allowed to go free”
deleted by the editors. This suggests that the editors may have interpreted the
passage as a recommendation that the “remnant” should be “allowed to go
free.” In commenting on the Wannsee Conference minutes, Reitlinger remarks
that “Heydrich was discreet enough not to mention the rest,” and that “the
drafting of circumspect minutes was one of the major arts of Hitler’s Reich.”
Hilberg resolves the lack of clarity of meaning of some of the passages (from
his point of view) by remarking that “we know from the language of the Einsatzgruppen
reports that he meant killing.”370 This amounts to making the extraordinary
claim that Hitler’s Reich was “circumspect” regarding the language
used in the minutes of secret conferences, but not circumspect regarding
the language used in the widely distributed Einsatzgruppen reports. In any
case, these passages in what is said to be the minutes of the Wannsee Conference
are the only passages in the documents describing German Jewish policy
for which a sinister interpretation is possible, although many interpretations
are possible.
The excessively strained interpretations of these documents are factors,
added to the several discussed in Chapter 4, which forced Reitlinger to declare
that Höss must have really meant the summer of 1942 as the date of receiving
his extermination orders from Himmler. Reitlinger and Hilberg both assume
that the deportations to the east were for the purpose of killing the Jews there,
in one way or another, and that the gas chambers in Poland were established in
mid-1942 as a change in the method of killing. We have seen that this theory
does not harmonize with the dates associated with the planning of and preliminary
work on the Auschwitz crematories that are supposed to have been
designed for the exterminations. Thus the claim that the documents should be
interpreted as meaning other than what they say leads one into irresolvable
contradictions and difficulties, but such would be the result if comparable
practices were applied to the interpretation of recipes, road signs, mathemati-
369 Reitlinger, 84-97; Hilberg, 262-263.
370 Reitlinger, 102-109; Hilberg, 264-265; NMT, vol. 13, 213.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
290
cal formulae, etc.
There is no point in discussing further these efforts to make these documents
mean other than what they say. The German policy, the “final solution,”
was to resettle Jews in the occupied territories in the East. This is what their
documents say and the program spoken of in these documents is confirmed by
neutral sources and even, to a significant extent, by hostile sources. By way of
additional confirmation, it is worth mentioning passages by Grayzel in his
History. In one paragraph he says that the Germans were doing what their
documents say they were doing:
“They followed this up with wholesale deportations. They set aside a
number of places in Eastern Europe in which they concentrated Jews from
other lands, in line with the avowed Nazi policy of ‘freeing’ all of Europe
from Jewish influence.”
In the next paragraph Grayzel contradicts this statement by saying that the
Germans were doing what the Allied propaganda said they were doing: exterminations,
gas chambers, etc. Grayzel makes no attempt to resolve the contradiction.
371
“It may be wondered why the authors of the hoax have presented us
with documents which describe, in very general terms, what the German
policy was. The hoaxers were confronted with (a) the fact that Europeans
were told by the Germans, at the time of the deportations, that the Jews
were to be resettled and (b) the fact that the resettlement program had
been reported in the Allied press and (c) the fact that, in regard to the
documents, it was necessary to make a choice among three possibilities:
presenting no high level documents dealing with the Jewish policy, presenting
forged high level documents dealing with the policy, and presenting
selected high level documents dealing with the policy. Under the circumstances,
the third of the three possibilities was obviously to be preferred.
It was clearly better to present a genuine document, signed by
Göring and speaking of the ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question, than to
present a forged document or no document. Although the final solution is
specified as ‘emigration and evacuation,’ it was considered not possible to
avoid the fact that the Nazis described their program in such terms. Thus
today the bearers of the extermination legend merely claim that all of this
was code terminology.”
One must not pass over the important work of R. L. Koehl, who is that
strange bird, a professional academic historian writing in or near a field completely
dominated by non-historians. The main value of Koehl’s work is in
putting Poland into proper focus and perspective.
During the war years Germany undertook to change the composition of the
populations near its eastern borders. The main instrument of this program was
371 Grayzel, 785-786.
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
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the RuSHA (Race and Settlement Main Office) of the SS. The basic policy
was to move selected Reich Germans and ethnic German communities of
Eastern Europe (Volksdeutsche) into the conquered territories contiguous to
Germany. Jews and Poles were expelled from these areas and sent to various
places, in some cases to the farms the ethnic Germans had vacated, to special
Eastern ghettos, and also to certain special “Z villages” in Poland.
Koehl explicitly endorses the reality of the extermination program, but his
account of it is most peculiar:372
“The official version insisted that the Jews were going to be moved further
east into conquered Soviet territory to remove them more effectively
from the German sphere of life. Like many other German pronouncements
this one contained several grains of truth: (1) train-loads of Jews from the
Reich were sent as far east as possible for liquidation, often at the hands of
non-Germans such as the Ukrainians or the Baltic peoples. (2) The Poles
were, in Rosenberg’s early plans as Minister for the East, to be considered
for resettlement in the Soviet area (Smolensk), thus freeing the General
Government for German settlement.”
Koehl does not provide any evidence for the killings by Ukrainians or the
Baltic peoples; the sources cited at this point make no such claims. Then in referring
to the extermination camps:373
“In the fall and winter of 1941-1942 the last 240,000 Jews of the annexed
provinces were removed to the newly constructed extermination
camps at Kolo, Belzec, Majdanek, and Sobibor.”
The list excludes Auschwitz, which comes up in Koehl’s book only in a
remark about some Germans sent there for punishment, in connection with
“Action Reinhardt” (to be explained below), and also in the following:374
“[Dr. Klukowski] stated that of 691 villages in the county of Zamosc,
297 were wholly or partly evacuated by July 1943. He estimated that
110,000 Poles and Jews were removed from the area, males and females of
working age going to forced labor in the Auschwitz Hydrogenation Plant,
the rest going to the other 394 (‘Z’) villages.”
One may draw one’s own conclusions. Koehl’s book is recommended to
the reader who wishes a detailed view of Nazi population policies, especially
in their relations to German nationalism, Nazi racial ideology, and internal
Nazi party politics.
372 Koehl, 131-132.
373 Koehl, 146.
374 Koehl, 130, 184.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
292
Numbers Deported: Whence and Whither
Many European Jews were deported East and we should now take a closer
look at this program of deportations. There are several obvious questions: who
was deported, how many, to where, what was life like where they were sent,
and what happened to them. To some extent only partial or provisional answers
are possible here.
First we should consider the numbers and origins of the Jews involved in
this resettlement program. Here we run into the problems discussed in Chapter
1; counting Jews can be difficult. However it is not statistical accuracy we
seek here but order of magnitude or approximate figures that can be used to
show that, on the basis of verifiable data, the Jews who were deported could
easily have survived after all. It will thus be satisfactory to merely accept certain
figures offered by Reitlinger and by Hilberg for the purposes of discussion,
although one can pick quarrels with them (as one can with Rassinier’s
study). The figures are estimates of numbers killed; it is understood that here
we assume that these people had merely been resettled in the East. In the case
of Reitlinger we employ his higher estimate:375
Table 8: Numbers of resettled Jews
REITLINGER HILBERG
Germany 180,000 160,000
Austria 60,000 53,000
Czechoslovakia 251,000 271,000
Denmark 1,000
France 65,000 70,000
Belgium 28,000 50,000
Luxembourg 3,000 2,000
Norway 700 1,000
Holland 102,700 120,000
Italy 8,000 17,000
Yugoslavia 58,000 63,000
Greece 60,000 62,000
Totals 816,400 870,000
To some extent these figures are based on German documents, notably the
“Korherr Report,” documents NO-5193-8; to some extent neutral sources are
involved, such as the Dutch Red Cross with the Holland figures. There is also
a certain amount of demographic speculation involved. However I believe that
at least the totals given are of the correct order.
We do not admit Hungary into the list because those said by both Reitlinger
and Hilberg to have been exterminated are pure invention; they were not
375 Reitlinger, 533-546; Hilberg, 670.
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
293
even deported East. Somewhat fewer than 100,000 were sent to Germany for
labor toward the end of the war; quite a few of these must have perished in the
chaotic conditions of the last months, but the number is essentially impossible
to arrive at.
Romania is also supposed to have lost 200,000-370,000 Jews via extermination
but, as Reitlinger remarks, such figures are “conjectural” on account of
“the lack of reliable information.” Conceded to be in the same category are the
largest groups of allegedly exterminated Jews: 2,350,000-3,300,000 from Poland
and 400,000-700,000 from the USSR. These figures are pure demographic
speculation, with absolutely no supporting data other than the declarations
of post-war Communist governments.
These figures will be considered further below. At this point we merely recall
that the Jews deported from France and Belgium were not French or Belgian
Jews, but that those deported from Holland were almost all Dutch Jews
(Chapter 3). The reason for this appears to have been a mere legal technicality.
France and Belgium had formally surrendered to the Germans and formal armistice
terms were agreed to. In Holland the King had merely fled to England
and thus the Germans viewed Holland as being without an independent
state.376 German rights in Holland were correspondingly more extensive. Of
course, the Germans intended to eventually expel all Jews from Europe, but
they naturally started with the ones for which the minimum of legal difficulties
existed.
The excerpt of the Red Cross Report, which we examined in Chapter 5, is
certainly in conflict with the extermination claims in the case of the Romanian
Jews. It is reasonable to assume that the bulk of the Jews in Soviet controlled
territory that was occupied by the Germans after June 22, 1941, escaped into
the interior before the arrival of the latter, a belief that is also held by Reitlinger
(page 241). In any case, there is no evidence that the Germans did more
than adopt, toward the Jews who remained, the sort of guarded and hostile attitude
that was implied by the partisan menaces discussed in the preceding
chapter. The Polish Jews constituted the majority of the Jews moved around
by the Germans and present, on account of their location and circumstances,
the greatest difficulties to any detailed analysis of the matter. We can only reconstruct
in general outline what happened to them.
We first remark that, while it is convenient here to distinguish between
Russian and Polish Jews, the real distinction is most slight, if it could be said
to exist at all. Before World War I, both sets of Jews were subjects of the Russian
Empire.
The first relevant events involving Polish Jews were due to Russian, rather
than German, measures. Germany and Russia partitioned Poland in 1939, the
eastern half and thus a large portion of the Polish Jews thereby coming under
376 Reitlinger, 367, 377.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
294
Soviet rule. These Jews were the objects of a Russian resettlement program
whose broad features have been described by Korzen in an article published
by the Israeli Government. Korzen’s article is of some importance to the matters
treated in this chapter.377
Briefly, what happened is that “hundreds of thousands” of these Jews were
dispersed throughout the Soviet Union in an evacuation program which commenced
in June 1940. At first, many were sent to labor camps but, after September
1941, a serious effort was made “to convert the refugees into Soviet
citizens and prevent their leaving the Soviet Union.” The dispersion was as far
as Central Asia and even to the Far East. Details are difficult to develop and
Korzen pleads for more interest in research into the matter. Many became Soviet
citizens, some trekked back to Poland after the war and, in may cases,
proceeded on to Israel (Korzen remarks that the Jews who remained in Poland
as leaders of the new Communist regime were put under pressure “to change
their names to purely Polish-sounding ones, as well as to keep their Jewish
origin secret”). Some eventually arrived at places such as Persia and India via
Shanghai. The Joint Distribution Committee of New York maintained contact
with the refugees in the Soviet Union during the war, and assisted their movements
after the war.
It is also known that a large number of Jews, given by one source as
300,000, fled from western to eastern Poland in 1939 when the Nazis invaded
the former.378 Thus a significant fraction, perhaps as many as a third, of the
Polish Jews had been moved beyond reach of the Germans before the outbreak
of war between Russia and Germany in June 1941.
Although there had been a limited German resettlement program earlier,
notably for Vienna Jews, the Nazi resettlement program began with earnestness
in the autumn of 1941. If Polish Jews are excluded but Romanian Jews
included in our immediate considerations, we see that the Germans moved at
most a million Jews to settlements or ghettos in the occupied East. From the
locations that have been mentioned we can get a fairly good idea of where
these settlements were located: Riga – Minsk – Ukraine – Sea of Azov (north
of the Black Sea) forms a connected and plausible line on a map.
While we have a good idea of where these settlements were, we know little
else about them other than that they existed. As one should naturally expect,
the Allied occupation destroyed the relevant German records and documents,
so that only scraps survive that deal with the resettlement program in terms
more specific than, say, the Luther memorandum (NG-2586-J reproduced
above). Indeed, Steengracht’s defense made a serious effort to produce such
documents at Nuremberg, but the best it could do, relative to the eastern
camps, was to submit two documents into evidence. The first, Steengracht
377 Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 3, 119-140.
378 Kimche & Kimche, 63.
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
295
64,379 is a letter from Eichmann, dated June 5, 1943, to the Foreign Office for
the attention of Thadden. It concerns the Jewish camps in the east and some
articles that had appeared in various European magazines concerning them. It
appears that “fantastic rumors” in Slovakia concerning these camps were being
given credence by some people there and Eichmann remarked that, in addition
to citing the magazine articles,
“[…] to counteract the fantastic rumors circulating in Slovakia about
the fate of the evacuated Jews, attention should be drawn to the postal
communications of these Jews with Slovakia […] which for instance
amounted to more than 1,000 letters and postcards for February/March
this year. Concerning the information apparently desired by Prime Minister
Dr. Tuka about the conditions in Jewish camps, no objections would be
raised by this office against any possible scrutinizing of the correspondence
before it is forwarded to the addressees.”
The second Steengracht document, Steengracht 65 (also going under the
number NO-1624), is somewhat more effective in giving a picture of the situation
of the Jews in the occupied east. It is an order, dated August 20, 1943, by
the chief of the RuSHA (Race and Settlement Main Office), SS General
Hildebrandt, relative to associations between Germans and Jews in the occupied
east, and to the permissible ways in which the latter could be employed.
It reads:
“It has been pointed out to me by various sources, that the behavior of
German offices in the occupied Eastern territories toward Jews had developed
in such a way in the past months as to give rise to misgivings. In particular,
Jews are being employed in jobs and services which, in consideration
of maintaining secrecy should only be assigned to absolutely reliable
persons, who should appear to be the confidential representatives of the
German offices in the eyes of the indigenous population. Unfortunately, in
addition to this, there is allegedly personal association of Reich Germans
with Jewesses which exceeds the limits that must be strictly observed for
ideological and racial reasons. It is said to concern native Jews as well as
Jews and Jewesses who have been deported from the Old Reich to the occupied
Eastern territories. This state of affairs has already led to the fact
that Jews are exploiting their apparently confidential positions in exchange
for the supply of preferential rations by the indigenous population. It is
said that recently, when apprehensions were expressed in the East about a
German retreat, indigenous persons endeavored to ingratiate themselves
particularly with those Jews employed in German offices, in order to ensure
better treatment at the hands of the Bolshevists. The decent section of
the indigenous population viewed these events with great disapproval, be-
379 Steengracht 64 in NMT, vol. 13, 300; NO-1247 cited by Reitlinger, 308, and quoted by Hilberg,
254. Steengracht 65 (or NO-1624) does not appear to be reproduced anywhere.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
296
cause it saw in them the contradiction between National Socialist principles
and the actual attitude of the Germans.
Owing to improper labor assignment of Jews, the esteem of the Greater
German Reich, and the position of its representatives are being harmed,
and the necessity for effective police security of the occupied Eastern territories
prejudiced. Grave dangers could arise particularly from the fact that
the Jews are utilizing the jobs assigned to them for espionage and propaganda
in the service of our enemies.
I therefore request that the subordinate offices in the occupied Eastern
territories be given the following instructions:
1) Jews and persons of a similar status may only be employed in manual
labor. It is prohibited to employ them in office work (such as bookkeeping,
typewriting, card indexing, registration). Strict attention must be paid
to the fact that they will not be given work which would permit them to
draw conclusions on matters that are to be kept secret.
2) It is forbidden to employ Jews for general or personal service, for the
discharging of orders, for the negotiation of business deals, or for the procuring
of goods.
3) Private association with Jews, Jewesses and persons of a similar
status is prohibited, as well as any relations beyond those officially necessary.”
The “persons of a similar status” referred to were probably mainly gypsies.
We assume that Steengracht’s counsel made a thorough search of the documents
which had been allowed to survive at Nuremberg. Hildebrandt’s order
to the RuSHA merely repeated, verbatim, a Kaltenbrunner order of August 13,
1943, to all German offices in the occupied eastern areas (document NO-
1247). The failure of Steengracht to use NO-1247 was probably due to its being
nearly identical to NO-1624.
Such documents are only a pathetic scrap from what must have been extensive
written records dealing with the Jewish settlements in the East. The first
was probably allowed to survive because it speaks of “fantastic rumors” in
circulation in Slovakia. The other two probably just slipped through because
their implications were not sufficiently obvious.
In Boehm’s book We Survived, Jeanette Wolff, a German Jewess who was
a leader of the German Social Democratic Party, has contributed an article on
her experiences after being deported to Riga in Latvia. Her tale of gratuitous
beatings by the SS, sex orgies and drunkenness is not believable. Her article is
worth noting, however, because it shows that there was a large system of settlements,
ghettos and camps for Jews in the vicinity of Riga. These settlements
quartered not only Latvian Jews, but also large numbers of Jews deported
from Germany and other European countries. Of course, in Chapter 4
we noted the Theresienstadt source who reported that the Nazis were deporting
Jews to Riga and other places throughout the course of the war. Nazi
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
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documents dealing with the Riga settlement have not survived.
The Polish Ghettos
One can see, in general outline, what happened to the Polish (and Latvian
and Lithuanian) Jews by consulting the “holocaust” literature which has been
contributed by “survivors.” In the larger towns and in the cities, the Jews
within Poland were quartered in ghettos which existed throughout the war. In
Poland, there were particularly large ghettos at Lodz (Litzmannstadt), Warsaw,
Bialystok, Lwow and Grodno; in Lithuania, at Vilna and Kovno; in Latvia,
as we noted above, at Riga. Although the “survivor” literature offers endless
ravings about exterminations (frequently of a sort not reconcilable with
the legend, e.g., gas chambers in Cracow in December 1939), it also offers
enough information for one to grasp approximately how things were. In each
ghetto, there was a Jewish Council, Judenrat, which was the internal government
of the ghetto. The ghetto police were Jewish and responsible to the
Judenrat. The Judenrat usually counseled cooperation with the Germans because,
under the circumstances, it saw no other plausible course. The Germans
made frequent demands for labor details drawn from the ghetto, and the
Judenrat then drew up the lists of people to be thus conscripted. There were
also resistance organizations in the larger ghettos, usually well armed, whose
members often viewed the Judenrat as composed of German stooges.380
Dawidowicz’s book devotes several chapters to conditions in the Polish
ghettos. Although the initial policy of the Germans, immediately after occupying
Poland, had been to forbid Jewish schools, this policy was soon abandoned
and Jewish children received an essentially regular education in schools
operated either privately or under the authority of the Judenrat. Cultural activities
for adults – literary, theatrical, musical – helped alleviate the otherwise
unhappy features of ghetto life. The Jewish social welfare agency was the ZSS
(dissolved in mid-1942 by the Germans but shortly later reconstituted as the
JUS), which drew supplies of food, clothing and medicine from the German
civil administration and which also maintained contact, through the German
Red Cross, with foreign organizations that provided money and supplies. Before
the US entry into the war, the bulk of such external funds came from the
Joint Distribution Committee in New York, but after December 1941 this was
no longer legally possible.
Despite the protected status of the ZSS-JUS, it sometimes provided cover
for illegal political activities. The various political organizations – Socialist,
380 In the “survivor” literature, see in particular Glatstein et al., 25-32, 43-112; Gringauz (1949
& 1950); Friedman & Pinson.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
298
Communist, Zionist, Agudist – were connected with the resistance organizations,
whose activities ranged from active sabotage to propaganda and, on occasion,
to armed resistance. Extermination propaganda started in underground
publications slightly earlier than it started being generated by the World Jewish
Congress (see Appendix E) but it was not believed by the Jewish population
because nothing in their experiences supported it; letters received from
Jews deported East reassured friends and relatives. As Dawidowicz writes in
her introductory chapter on the problems posed by the “holocaust” for historical
research:
“One impediment was the inadequacy of Jewish documentation, despite
its enormous quantity. […] The absence of vital subjects from the records
may be explained by the predicament of terror and censorship; yet, lacking
evidence to corroborate or disprove, the historian will never know with
certainty whether that absence is a consequence of an institutional decision
not to deal with such matters or whether it was merely a consequence
of prudential policy not to mention such matters. The terror was so great
that even private personal diaries, composed in Yiddish or Hebrew, were
written circumspectly, with recourse to Scripture and the Talmud as a form
of esoteric expression and self-imposed reticence.”
As is clear from all studies of German population policies in Poland, e.g.
those of Dawidowicz and of Koehl, there was a constant moving about of
Jews, in accordance with the general German policy of concentrating them as
far east as practicable. According to the “Korherr Report” of March 1943,
1,449,692 Jews had been transported “out of the East provinces to the Russian
East.” It is further specified that 90% of these had passed through camps in the
General Government, and the others had passed through camps in the
Warthegau (presumably meaning mainly Lodz). The huge ghetto of Warsaw
was liquidated in the spring of 1943 and most of the Jews were sent further
east, with Treblinka serving as a transit camp for this resettlement. This was
only accomplished, however, after fierce Jewish resistance and a battle that
received world publicity while it was raging. The resettlement, however, was
not complete, because there were always at least some Jews at the site of the
ghetto and, as remarked above, all of the larger ghettos existed in some degree
throughout the war.
When a resettlement was announced to a ghetto, it was the duty of the
Judenrat to draw up the lists of those to be resettled. With only rare exceptions,
the Jews being resettled went along peacefully, because it was well
known that the “resettlement” was just that.
It appears that epidemics were common in the ghettos. The Germans attributed
them to “a lack of discipline” on the part of the Jews. They took what
counter-measures they could and, as the New York Times reported on at least
one occasion, “many ambulances were sent to Warsaw to disinfect the
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
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ghetto.”381
While the general eastward movement of these Jews is an established fact,
the data to reconstruct exactly what numbers were sent where does not exist.
The important point to note, however, was that it is almost certain that the
greater number of Polish Jews were completely cleared out of all of pre-war
Poland except the most eastern part. Because the territory of post-war Poland
is made up of what had been eastern Germany and western and central Poland
(Russia acquiring what had been eastern Poland), this means that most Jews
had, indeed, been removed from what is today referred to as Poland. In connection
with the large ghettos which are mentioned above, it is worth noting
that Lwow, Grodno, Vilna, Kovno and Riga were all absorbed into the Soviet
Union after the war, and that Bialystok is now at the extreme eastern side of
Poland. If there were about three million Jews in Poland before the war then,
when one takes into account the numbers which fled to the Soviet Union in
1939, those who were deported by the Russians in 1940, those who managed
to slip into such countries as Slovakia or Hungary, and those who might have
perished in epidemics, we see that there were at most two million Polish Jews
in scattered ghettos in German controlled territory, and that the greater number
of these people had been sent to territory considered Soviet after the war.
Thus we see, in general outline sufficient for our purposes, the actual nature
of the so-called “final solution of the Jewish problem.” It is not necessary
here to attempt to fill in much more detail and the ultimate prospects for providing
great detail are questionable in any case. That this “solution” was really
in no sense “final,” and that the Jews would have returned with a change in
the political climate, is not so extraordinary. Twentieth century governments
invariably give their projects bold and unrealistic labels: Peace Corps, Alliance
for Progress, Head Start, war to end wars, etc.
What Happened to Them?
It remains to consider what happened to all of these people. Here again we
have a situation in which there exists much less data than one would hope for.
However we have enough information to reconstruct, to an extent suitable for
our purposes, what happened. Actually, we must consider several possibilities
in this respect. The following are the reasonable possibilities.
1. The Germans liquidated many while in retreat, because these people
could be considered manpower to be employed against the Germans. It is necessary
to consider this as a reasonable possibility because we have noted that
the Germans had, indeed, considered this aspect of the matter seriously
381 New York Times (Oct. 18, 1941), 4.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
300
enough to make it difficult for Jews to emigrate from Europe.
However there are two things working strongly against the possibility that
the Germans liquidated on a significant scale while in retreat. First, the most
able workers, who were also of military age, had already been picked out for
labor and were being employed by the Germans in various ways. Second, and
most importantly and simply, if the Germans had carried out such liquidations
on a large scale the Allies would have charged them with it. The Allies would
have had material for legitimate extermination charges rather then the “gas
chamber” nonsense.
While the evidence indicated that the German authorities did not carry out
large scale liquidations of Jews while in retreat, common sense and a feel for
the conditions that existed should cause us to assume that there were numerous
massacres of Jews carried out by individuals and small groups acting on
their own. Some German, Hungarian or Romanian troops, and some East
European civilians, their anti-Jewish feelings amplified by the disastrous
course of the war, no doubt made attacks on Jews at the time of the German
retreats. It is known that earlier in the war, when East Europeans had attempted
to start pogroms, the German authorities had restrained and suppressed
them.382 However, under conditions of chaotic retreat, the Germans
were probably much less concerned with anti-Jewish pogroms.
2. The Russians liquidated many. We list this only because Russia is such
an enigma and its actions in the populations area often seem very arbitrary.
However, there is no evidence for liquidations at the hands of the Russians
and one should doubt this possibility.
3. Many perished on account of conditions in the camps or ghettos. This is
a most serious possibility. We have seen that health conditions can be very
unstable in camps and that the situation can be very sensitive to any sort of
chaos or shortage of necessities. Moreover, we have observed that the ghetto
conditions, whether the Germans were at fault or (as the Germans claimed) the
Jews were responsible, were favorable to epidemics even early in the war
when the Germans had the general situation under control in other respects.
Therefore there is a good possibility that many Jews in ghettos perished in the
chaotic conditions that accompanied the German retreats. Also, Korzen believes
that many of the 1940 exiles to Russia died in the Russian camps they
were sent to, so it is possible that many ghetto Jews perished on account of
Soviet ways of administering the ghettos after they fell into Russian hands.
4. Many were dispersed throughout the Soviet Union and integrated into
Soviet life somewhere. This is a most likely possibility because it is well established
that the Soviet Union encouraged the absorption of Jews during and
382 The best source to consult to see the nature of and motivation for the anti-Jewish pogroms,
and the German measures to suppress them, seems to be Raschhofer, 26-66. See also Burg
(1962), 50.
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301
immediately after the war. For example, we have noted that this was the policy
exercised toward the 1940 deportees. Another example is what happened
with respect to the Carpatho-Ukraine, before the war a province of Czechoslovakia,
and annexed by the Soviet Union after the war. Ten thousand Jews,
former residents of the Carpatho-Ukraine, had the status of refugees in
Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1946. Russia insisted that these Jews be repatriated
to the Soviet Union. Although such a step was contrary to the existing
agreements on refugees, the Soviet pressure on President Benes was great
enough to force him to yield.383
One should also note the existence, within the Soviet Union, of the specifically
Jewish “autonomous state” of Birobidzhan, which is in the Soviet Far
East, on the Amur river on the border of Manchuria. Birobidzhan had been established
by the Soviets in 1928 as a Jewish state. Immediately after the war
there existed in New York the “Einstein Fund of Ambijan” (acronym for
American Birobidzhan Committee), whose purpose was “to help refugee
colonization of Birobidzhan.” There were other operations in New York
which aided Jews resettled in Birobidzhan immediately after World War II.
There were also Jewish organizations, such as the Joint Distribution Committee,
which aided Jews in other parts of the Soviet Union, and there also existed
in New York the Committee for Aid to Minsk and Neighboring Towns.
There also existed UNRRA programs in White Russia (Byelorussia) and
Ukraine, which will be commented on below. These efforts to aid Jewish
refugees in the Soviet Union had the public support of prominent Jews, e.g.
Albert Einstein expressed appreciation to the Soviet Government for helping
“hundreds of thousands of Jewish people” by giving them a home in the
USSR.384
While the Soviet Union encouraged the absorption of Jews, it also made a
specific agreement with the Communist government of Poland for the repatriation
of those who had been Polish citizens on September 17, 1939. The
agreement, made in July 1945, specifically included those resident on territory
annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, and provided that such people could either
elect Soviet citizenship or Polish citizenship. With respect to Jews, it was
eventually decided that the deadline for making the choice was June 30, 1946.
As we noted in Chapter 1, Reitlinger concedes that the post-war Jewish
population of the Soviet Union might very well have exceeded the pre-war
figure, on account of the addition of Polish (and Baltic and other) Jews. He
regards the Jewish Observer estimate of 500,000 Polish Jews who elected to
remain in the Soviet Union as “very conservative,” and concedes huge and insuperable
uncertainties in this connection. Thus, although the Russians were
383 New York Times (Apr. 31, 1946), 8. [correction needed for date, ed.]
384 New York Times (Jul. 20, 1945), 9; (Sep. 7, 1945), 5; (Nov. 25, 1945), 32; (Mar. 10, 1946),
2; (Apr. 17, 1946), 27; (May 13, 1946), 18; (May 17, 1946), 5; (Dec. 2, 1946), 5.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
302
willing to let Polish Jews leave before the June 30, 1946, deadline, they nevertheless
encouraged their absorption into the Soviet Union. This could account
for an enormous number of the Jews who had been resettled to the East by the
Germans. It is pointless, however, to try to infer anything from alleged population
statistics offered by the Russians or by Jewish organizations.385
5. Many of the uprooted Jews might have returned to their original homes,
or at least to their original homelands, in Europe. We have seen that the Russians
were willing to allow Polish Jews to leave the Soviet Union, and we
should assume that a similar policy was practiced toward Jews of other nationalities.
It is only possible, and not probable, that the Soviet Union absorbed
all of the Jews who had been deported East, by the Germans, from
Germany, the Netherlands, etc.
At first thought it might appear that the clearly logical course after the war,
for any uprooted Jew, would have been to return to his original country of
residence. This is not the case, however, for various reasons. For one thing, in
perhaps the majority of cases there was nothing to return to. The main reason
for this was the German program called “Action Reinhardt“ in which Jews
deported to the East were deprived of almost all of their property; their furniture,
any livestock, business property, their jewelry, any clothing they could
not carry as luggage, and all but about $25 of any ordinary currency they had
were simply confiscated in the course of resettlement (some of the business
property might have been resettled with them). The camps at Lublin and
Auschwitz were principal gathering and processing points for much of this
property, wherever it had actually been confiscated.386 Thus many Jews, having
neither property nor relatives at their original homes, had no very compelling
reasons for returning to them. The German program had truly been one of
uprooting.
Another aspect of the situation was that, in late 1945 and in 1946, there
was much talk about anti-Jewish pogroms allegedly occurring with great frequency
in Poland and other East European countries. If these reports were
true, then the pogroms were a powerful inducement to the Jews to leave. If
these reports were merely Zionist propaganda having little, if any, basis in
fact, then one can infer that the Zionists were engaging in operations designed
to move Jews out of eastern Europe. Thus, whether the reports of pogroms
were true or false, they suggest a movement of Jews out of eastern Europe.
At the Yalta meeting in 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin had agreed
that “it would be impossible for Jewish refugees to return to Poland and be reintegrated
into its normal life.”387 While it is certain that many Jews returned
to their homelands, there were solid facts and also, apparently, much propa-
385 Reitlinger, 534, 542-543; New York Times (Jul. 8, 1945), 1; (Mar. 24, 1946), 3.
386 Koehl, 198-199; NMT, vol. 5, 692-741; vol. 4, 954-973.
387 New York Times (Jun. 28, 1945), 8.
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ganda discouraging them from doing so. If this is true, and if it is also true that
a significant number of Polish Jews left Soviet territory, then many of them
must have proceeded through Poland to other destinations. This is the case.
The Zionist political leadership had other destinations in mind for them.
6. Many of the Jews eventually resettled neither in the Soviet Union nor in
their original countries but elsewhere, mainly in the US and Palestine. We all
know this to be true but there is some uncertainty in the numbers involved,
principally in the case of the US immigrants. Until November 1943 the US
Immigration and Naturalization Service recognized a category “Hebrew”
among “races and peoples,” but in that month this practice was stopped, and
no official records of Jewish immigration have been kept since then.388
Another problem in accounting in detail for Jewish movements around the
time of the end of the war is that we run right into the War Refugee Board and
the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) in attempting
to examine this subject. It will be recalled that the WRB was set up
in early 1944 as an apparently joint venture of the US State, Treasury and War
Departments but that it was, in fact, under the control of Secretary of the
Treasury Morgenthau. The Board was granted the extraordinary power of appointing
special attachés with diplomatic status. Another very irregular feature
was that the WRB worked very closely with private organizations. Collaboration
with the Joint Distribution Committee and the World Jewish Congress
and several other Jewish and Zionist organizations was extensive. Some non-
Jewish organizations were also involved, notably the American Friends Service
Committee. The WRB and the three US government departments involved
with the WRB were specifically “authorized to accept the services or
contributions of private persons or organizations.”389 We therefore have a
rather slippery entity involved here, engaged in both propaganda and relief
work, with the rights of a government operation when an official status
seemed convenient, and the rights of a private organization when a private
status was advantageous.
Relief activities were carried on by the WRB from about mid – 1944 to
mid – 1945, at which time the operations of an international character fell almost
entirely into the hands of the UNRRA. This organization had been set up
in November 1943, and had operated until March 1949. Its first director, appointed
by Roosevelt, was Herbert Lehman, ex-Governor of New York State
and a leading New Deal Democrat. Roosevelt’s reported logic for choosing
Lehman was that “It would be a fine object lesson in tolerance and human
brotherhood to have a Jew head up this operation, and I think Herbert would
be fine.”390 Lehman was succeeded in early 1946 by Fiorello LaGuardia, ex-
388 Davie, 33.
389 US-WRB (1945), 3-4, 12-13.
390 Rosenman, 399.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
304
Mayor of New York City. Although LaGuardia’s father was not Jewish and he
naturally found it profitable to court the huge New York Italian vote, LaGuardia
really counts as a Jewish Zionist politician and is essentially treated as
such by the Encyclopedia Judaica. Thus we can be sure that the crowd involved
here is basically the same as with the WRB. Also, we again have a
slippery entity, this time because it is a so-called international organization.
For example when, in September 1945, Congress demanded that the General
Accounting Office be allowed to examine the UNRRA operations (the US was
said to be paying about two-thirds of the costs of UNRRA, but the fraction
was probably somewhat higher), Lehman told it to mind its own business.391
The UNRRA operations were far-flung. Most of the UNRRA aid went to
Eastern Europe, and the amount sent to Poland was second only to that sent to
China. Aid was also sent to White Russia and Ukraine.392
By mid – 1944 the WRB and the UNRRA were operating a large system of
refugee camps in North Africa, Italy and Palestine. These camps were almost
exclusively for Jews. Starting in 1944 extensive evacuations of Jews from
Europe to these camps were in progress. Many were evacuated from the Balkans
via Istanbul, and there was also a Black Sea route through Istanbul. Entry
into the US or countries of South America was sought and obtained for many
of these people while the war was still in progress. It was in this context that
the camp at Oswego, NY, right next to the Canadian border, was established.
In addition, many who had not initially been put into one of the camps in Palestine
managed to reach that destination anyway.393
After Germany collapsed the UNRRA administered DP (displaced persons)
camps, mainly in the British and American zones of occupation in German
and Austria. Of course, there were many non-Jews in these camps, but
the Jews had a privileged position and, in may cases, were quartered in houses
or hotels which had been requisitioned for them.394
The UNRRA operations in Germany were one of the scandals of the occupation
era. Notorious were the raids on German homes for purposes of “rescuing”
children. It had been the Nazi policy in eastern Europe, when orphans fell
into their hands, to conduct a racial examination in order to select the Aryan
orphans for adoption by German families. These children were being raised
exactly as German children were, and became the innocent victims of the
UNRRA terror. It is not known what happened to them.395
The behavior of the DP’s in the UNRRA camps was abysmal. As the most
prominent historian of the US military government in Germany wrote.396
391 New York Times (Sep. 21, 1945), 7.
392 New York Times (Dec. 23, 1945), 1.
393 US-WRB (1945), 9, 16-45, 61-69, 72-74.
394 John & Hadawi, vol. 2, 34.
395 Koehl, 219-220.
396 Zink, 121-122.
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“They not only consumed large quantities of food, but they exhibited
many of the psychoneurotic traits which must be expected from people who
have undergone the tribulations that many of the displaced persons suffered.
It was commonplace for them to allege that they were not receiving
the consideration that they deserved from the Allied authorities. They often
objected to the camps in which they were living, maintaining that it reflected
on their position to be lodged in camps. Some urged that the best
German houses be cleared of their occupants and placed at the disposal of
the displaced persons, especially the Jews. They refused to assist in some
instances in keeping their quarters reasonably habitable, taking the position
that it was not their responsibility to make any effort to help themselves.
During this period the actual care of the displaced persons was
handled for some months by UNRRA, but final responsibility remained
with military government and it had to give attention to the charges made
in the press as to inadequate treatment.
Moreover, the displaced persons continued their underground war with
the German population, despite all their promises and the efforts exerted
by UNRRA and the American Army personnel. Forages into the countryside
never ceased; some displaced persons took advantage of every opportunity
to pick a quarrel with the Germans. With German property looted,
German lives lost, and German women raped almost every day by the displaced
persons, widespread resentment developed among the populace,
especially when they could not defend themselves against the fire-arms
which the displaced persons managed to obtain.”
In one well publicized incident Jewish and Polish DP’s, with the assistance
of some US Army personnel, forced German townspeople to dig up recently
buried bodies and, while beating and kicking the Germans, forced them to remove
decayed flesh and clean the bones.397
Zionism Again
We are interested, however, in the political role that these DP camps
played, and the simple fact of the matter is that the Jewish DP camps and
other living quarters served as transit and military training camps for the invasion
of Palestine.
The world had an opportunity to learn this fact as early as January 1946.
As happens on occasion in “international organizations,” the nominal head of
the UNRRA operations in Germany, British General Sir Frederick E. Morgan,
was his own man and not a Zionist stooge. While he had real control only over
397 New York Times (Oct. 26, 1946), 5.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
306
a part of the UNRRA German operations, he knew most of what was going
on, and made a public issue of it. At a press conference in Frankfurt he
charged that an organized Jewish group was sponsoring an exodus of Jews
from Poland into the US zone in Germany. He ridiculed “all the talk about pogroms
within Poland,” pointing out that Jews arriving in trainloads in Berlin
were well fed, well dressed and had plenty of money: “They certainly do not
look like a persecuted people. I believe that they have got a plan, a positive
plan, to get out of Europe.” Morgan added that their money was to a great extent
occupation marks, printed by the Russians. It may be recalled by the
reader that one of the most spectacular acts of Soviet agent Harry Dexter
White, whom we encountered in Chapter 3 as the boss of the US Treasury’s
international operations, was his transmission to the Russians of the plates of
the US occupation currency.
Chaim Weizmann denounced Morgan’s statement as “palpably anti-
Semitic” and Rabbi Wise declared that it savored of Nazism at its worst and
was reminiscent of the fraudulent Protocols of Zion. UNRRA headquarters in
the US announced that Morgan had been dismissed, but Morgan denied this.
Wise, Henry Monsky (president of B’nai B’rith), and other prominent Jews
then huddled with Lehman and “assured Governor Lehman that it was unwise
under the circumstances to press the case against Morgan,” since Morgan apparently
had enough evidence to support his statement.
Later in 1946, there was an inquiry into the Jewish problem by an Anglo-
American committee, which determined that Morgan had under-estimated the
situation. In the Jewish DP camps “faces changed from day to day and new
persons answered to old names on the nominal roles as the Zionist Organization
moved Jews ever nearer to Palestine.” The Jews, mainly Polish, were
pouring into western Germany from the East and passing through the UNRRA
operated camps. In these camps many of them received military instruction,
for the invasion of Palestine, from uniformed non-commissioned officers of
the British and US armies. Although it was the case that almost none actually
wanted to go to Palestine but to the US, every means of forcing immigration
to Palestine was employed. Summing up his association with UNRRA, General
Morgan wrote in his memoirs (Peace and War, 1961): “To serve such an
outfit is beyond description.”
Years later, Zionist authors conceded Morgan’s charge in laudatory accounts
of the organized exodus of Jews from Europe.398
In August 1946 LaGuardia fired Morgan for charging that UNRRA served
as “an umbrella covering Russian secret agents and criminal elements engaged
in wholesale dope-peddling and smuggling.” Morgan was replaced by Meyer
Cohen of the Washington office of UNRRA. This action was taken at a time
when there was a great deal of well-publicized conflict between UNRRA and
398 Kimche & Kimche, 88-89; John & Hadawi, vol. 2, 23-26, 34-36; Morgenthau Diary, 79.
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
307
military authorities in Germany. LaGuardia had come to Germany at the time,
in order to deal with various problems, Morgan being one of them. At a news
conference held immediately after he fired Morgan, LaGuardia had an angry
exchange with Hal Foust of the Chicago Tribune, whom we encountered in
Chapter 1. Foust had asked how much money nations other than the US had
contributed to UNRRA. LaGuardia, however, would answer none of Foust’s
questions, on the grounds that Foust’s “dirty, lousy paper would not print it
anyway.” To Foust’s repeated requests for the information, LaGuardia
shrieked “Shut up!”399
Morgan had not been the first high ranking Allied officer to collide with
the Zionists. In the summer of 1945 the “Harrison report” to the White House
had asserted that Jews in the US zone in Germany were treated almost as
badly as they had been under the Nazis. Although many Jews in the camps
publicly ridiculed these claims, General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied
Commander visited General George S. Patton, Jr. (US Third Army commander
and military governor of Bavaria) and “read the riot act to him and astounded
him by saying that he meant it when he said that Germans were to be
ousted from their homes, if necessary, to make their victims comfortable.”
Shortly later, Eisenhower relieved Patton of his duties, allegedly because Patton
had said in public that too much fuss was being made about ousting Nazis
from key positions, that the distinction between Nazis and non-Nazis was
similar to the distinction between Republicans and Democrats, and that the
key to a successful occupation of Germany lay in showing the Germans “what
grand fellows we are.” This was just the most publicized instance of the widespread
“reluctance of occupation authorities on the operational level to act as
tough as the policies enunciated by the heads of state in Berlin and by General
Eisenhower himself.” Patton was assigned to command a group writing a military
history, but he was in an automobile accident in December 1945 and died
two weeks later from complications.400
Eisenhower’s attitude toward Zionists had always been most friendly.
Shortly before the end of the war the Zionist organizer, Ruth Klieger, a native
of Romania who had emigrated to Palestine before the war, had visited Eisenhower’s
SHAEF headquarters in Paris in order to explain to Judge Rifkind,
Eisenhower’s adviser on DP matters, her mission of organizing transports of
Jews to Palestine from Germany. She was made a US Army colonel on the
spot and given the papers necessary for her mission in Germany. Eisenhower’s
services did not end there, because the troop transport ship Ascania,
owned by SHAEF and manned under orders from Eisenhower’s command,
was then put at the disposal of the Zionists and 2,400 Jews were taken to Palestine
in it. The British met it on arrival but did not want complications with
399 New York Times (Aug. 14, 1946), 10; (Aug. 21, 1946), 1, 5; (Aug. 23, 1946), 18.
400 New York Times (Oct. 1, 1945), 2; (Oct. 2, 1945), 1; (Oct. 3, 1945), 1.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
308
SHAEF so they allowed the passengers to enter Palestine. Eisenhower later
became President of the United States.401
As suggested above, the Jews who left the Soviet Union for Poland did not,
for the most part, remain in that country very long. Supported by the Joint
Distribution Committee and related Jewish organizations (contributions to
which were tax-deductible in the US),402 the Jews moved on to Germany and,
in some instances, Czechoslovakia, spurred on by Zionist propaganda of all
sorts. There was the talk, which we have noted, of pogroms, and there was
also, no doubt, a widespread idea among the Jews that all were bound for the
US from Germany many did, indeed, eventually depart for the US. But many
others moved on to Italy, where there were also UNRRA camps for them, or
to France which, at that time, earned a reputation for marked friendliness to
the Zionist cause. From Czechoslovakia the Jews moved on to Italy or to Vienna,
and from Vienna to ports in Italy or Yugoslavia or to Budapest, Belgrade
and points near Palestine. In all this hectic illegal movement there was,
of course, no respect paid to such things as legitimate passports or identity papers.
Greek identity papers were manufactured on a large scale and many Jews
posed as Greeks returning home from Poland. When the Greek government
learned of this they sent an official to investigate, but the official was an active
Zionist himself, and merely informed the Zionist Organization that he could
cover up the past illegalities, but that the “Greek” angle would have to be discarded.
It had, however, served so well that in Czechoslovakia, border guards
who thought that they had learned from the large number of “Greeks” that
they had processed, what members of that nationality looked like, got suspicious
and made arrests when real Greeks appeared.403
In the beginning of the mass movements the Zionist Organization had
found that the Jews were too undisciplined and demoralized to serve as members
of an effective movement. They therefore settled on the method of the
propaganda of hatred to boost the fighting morale of the Jews in the various
camps; they began “to instill into these Jews a deep dislike and hatred for the
German and, indeed, for their entire non-Jewish environment, for the goyim
around them.” In the winter of 1946, the Anglo-American investigation committee
visited the Jewish camps in Germany, and was “overwhelmed by this
anti-goyism among the camp inmates, by the impossibility of maintaining any
contact between the displaced Jews and the British and American peoples.”404
The US occupation authorities in Germany were naturally very concerned
about the fact that so many people, so tenuously classified as “refugees,” were
pouring into their area of responsibility, but were reluctant to speak out too
401 Kimche & Kimche, 101-103.
402 Kimche & Kimche, 97-98.
403 Kimche & Kimche, 85-88.
404 Kimche & Kimche, 81-83.
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loudly or bluntly for fear of the sort of abuse that had been heaped on Patton
and Morgan. However, the constant increase in the “refugee” population was
creating problems that could not be ignored. In June 1946 a group of US editors
and newspaper executives arrived in Frankfurt as the first stop in a tour of
Germany, and were told by “high United States officers” that Jews were
flooding into the US zone at the rate of 10,000 per month, thereby creating a
“grave problem.” It was said that “many of them are coming from Russia and
if they join those in Poland in an apparent mass movement toward Palestine,
we may have to look after 3,000,000 of them.” Of particular interest in this
statement is where “many” of the Jews were coming from, and the fact that
the US Army authorities felt it plausible to use a figure of 3,000,000 (not a
misprint). They were, of course, exaggerating the situation in order to provoke
some sort of relevant action, for there was never any possibility that 3 million
Jews would enter the US zone in Germany. Nevertheless, their use of such a
figure, and their specifying that “many” of the Jews were “coming from Russia,”
are worth noting.405
The problem got so much attention that in early August 1946 the American
military governor, General McNarney, announced that “the United States border
patrol will not permit Jewish refugees from Poland to enter the United
States zone in organized truckloads and trainloads.” McNarney added, however,
that “if persecutees come across the borders individually, of course, it is
a different matter, and we will accept them.” It may have surprised many observers
that this seemingly unimportant qualification was so satisfactory for
the Zionists that, shortly later, Rabbi Wise and other prominent Zionists publicly
lauded “the attitude of Gen. Joseph T. McNarney […] toward the entire
problem.” The puzzle was resolved the following November, when it was reported
that a record 35,000 Jews entered West Germany from Poland (the
greater part of them to the US zone) in September, and that the “trickle” that
existed in November amounted to “150 to 200 persons daily.”406
In the news stories of this period, it was frequently the case that the Jews
“returning” from Russia to Poland were described as consisting mainly of the
1940 deportees to the Soviet Union. Such a press treatment was to be expected,
because the others were supposed to be dead, but such interpretations
may be disregarded although, as Korzen remarks, this group included 1940
deportees.
During 1946, the US Senate War Investigating Committee sent its chief
counsel, George Meader, to Germany to investigate the US occupation policies.
Meader’s report, which charged, inter alia, widespread immorality and
racketeering in the Army, was suppressed as a result of “tremendous pressure
by the White House, State and War Departments, and Senator Arthur Vanden-
405 New York Times (Jun. 24, 1946), 12.
406 New York Times (Aug. 10, 1946), 4; (Aug. 27, 1946), 6; (Nov. 2, 1946), 7.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
310
berg” and a threat of resignation by General Clay, but the contents eventually
were made public anyway. The report was very critical of the entire practice
of accommodating the Jews who were pouring in from Poland, because they
were not really refugees (in the sense of having been stranded in Germany at
the end of the war) but part of the mass movement of people that was being
sponsored by private groups on behalf of a specific political cause, Zionism.
The US, therefore, was “financing a political program” by receiving these
Jews in the German DP camps, although that program had never been submitted
to the Congress for consideration. In the US, therefore, there was concern
with and opposition to the substantial support that US “refugee” policy was
giving to the Zionist cause, but it was too late and too little to have any significant
influence on events.
In his report, Meader complained of the difficulty of getting the Jewish (as
distinct from non-Jewish) DPs to do any work or even help fix up their own
dwellings. Nevertheless they constantly complained that things were not being
done as well as they thought they could be done. Meader also pointed out that
illegal activities and crimes of violence by DPs were numerous. He remarked
that the US had agreed to accept as immigrants 2,250,000 refugees from
Europe.407
It is of only slight value to report here the figures that were being given for
the number of Jewish DPs. In the autumn of 1946 it was said that there were
185,000 Jewish DPs in camps in West Germany. When one adds those in Austria,
the figure would exceed 200,000. It is also said that there were over
400,000 Jewish refugees in Western Europe on July 1, 1947.408 However such
figures do not say very much because the camps for Jews and other refugees
really served as transit camps and, in the case of the Jews, there was the constant
movement toward the US and Palestine, largely illegal or “unofficial” in
the case of the latter destination and also, possibly, in the case of the former
destination as well.
The principal, but not sole, destinations of the Jews who left Europe were
Palestine and the US, so we should attempt to estimate the numbers involved.
Palestine population figures kept by the British authorities are probably accurate
up to some point in 1946, see table 9.409
In late 1946 there were supposed to be 608,000 Jews and 1,237,000 Moslems,
Christians and “Others.” Past this point accurate British figures do not
exist, on account of the large extent of illegal immigration as the British
gradually lost control of the situation. In any event, by the time some of the
dust had settled in July 1949, the Israeli Government reported that there were
925,000 Jews in Israel. These were predominantly Jews of European origins,
407 New York Times (Dec. 2, 1946), 3; (Dec. 3 1946), 13.
408 New York Times (Nov. 2, 1946), 7; Kimche & Kimche, 95.
409 John & Hadawi, vol. 2, 45, 179.
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
311
the large scale immigration of Jews from North Africa and Asia having been a
subsequent development promoted by the Israeli Government. By 1957, there
were about 1,868,000 Jews in Israel, and 868,000 Arabs had fled to neighboring
countries since the Jewish takeover.410
It is worth pausing here to remark that many people have a very mistaken
picture of Zionism and Israel. It is now widely assumed that Zionism was
born at the end of World War II, when large numbers of European Jews, having
decided that they could no longer live in Europe, invaded a previously all-
Arab Palestine and drove the Arab inhabitants out. In fact Zionism, the
movement for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, has a history
that starts in the late nineteenth century. By 1917 Zionism was such a potent
political force that Britain, locked in bloody struggle with Imperial Germany,
made the “Balfour Declaration,” effectively promising Palestine to the Jews,
in return for Jewish support in the war. Since Britain also had certain agreements
with the Arabs, Palestine became the “too often promised land.”
Zionist organizations promoted the movement of Jews to Palestine after
World War I, and during the Thirties, as the population figures above suggest,
Palestine had become perhaps the biggest headache of British foreign policy,
which faced the impossible task of reconciling the Jewish and Arab claims to
Palestine. It was during the late Thirties that Zionism found itself actively cooperating
with the Gestapo, which met regularly with Zionist representatives
and even helped in the provision of farms and facilities to set up training centers
in Germany and Austria for Jewish emigrants. The Zionists and the Gestapo
had the same objective of getting Jews out of Europe.411
The consequence of World War II did not create Zionism as an effective
political movement; they merely gave Zionism the world political victory it
needed for the final stage of the takeover of Palestine. All world power had
fallen to the US and the Soviet Union, both of which were most friendly to the
Zionist cause at the time. Under the circumstances the Arab position was
hopeless, because it depended on the firmness and political independence of a
Britain that was almost prostrate politically and economically.
410 World Almanac (1950), 193; (1958), 364-365; Prittie, 149-150; McDonald, 142-143.
411 Kimche & Kimche, 15-19.
Table 9: Palestine population
YEAR MOSLEMS JEWS CHRISTIANS OTHERS
1924 532,636 94,945 74,094 8,263
1929 634,811 156,481 81,776 9,443
1934 747,826 282,975 102,407 10,793
1939 860,580 445,457 116,958 12,150
1944 994,724 528,702 135,547 14,098
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
312
Migration to the USA
While it is possible to get a presumably fair idea of the extent of Jewish
immigration into Palestine, one encounters what amounts to a stone wall in attempting
to determine this for the US. We have seen that the policy of classifying
immigrants as “Hebrews” was dropped in the same month of 1943 that
the US government went into the business of processing DPs on a large scale
through the creation of UNRRA. Immediately after the war, there was naturally
much Jewish pressure for the admission of great numbers of Jewish immigrants,
and in December 1945 President Truman announced that there
would be an acceleration in the immigration process in order to allow a higher
rate of admission. While Truman regretted that the unused quotas from the
war years were not cumulative and could not be applied to future admissions,
he pledged that all outstanding immigration quotas and regulations would be
respected.412 If they were, indeed, respected, then the effect on Jewish admissions
would nevertheless have been secondary because they entered under the
categories of the various nationalities: German, Austrian, Dutch, Polish, etc.
However the existing regulations did not permit the admission of as many persons
as was desired so, shortly after the war, there was special legislation relating
to the admission of DPs, in which “existing barriers were set aside.”
The legislation also set up a “Displaced Persons commission” to assist in the
resettlement of the immigrants and, according to the account of the Commission,
over 400,000 such persons were resettled in the US in the period 1948-
1952 (the period specified in the legislation). The official account goes on to
claim that only 16 percent of these 400,000 were Jewish, but that is just the official
account of a government which had taken specific steps to assure that
the relevant data would not exist.413
For what it is worth, we summarize here the more relevant parts of the immigration
data that the US government has published, see table 10.414
We have only given the numbers for selected European countries, i.e. those
countries that may have contributed many uprooted Jews, although there is a
difficulty involved here, as we shall see shortly. The total for Hungary 1951-
1960 does not seem to include those who entered on account of special legislation
passed in connection with the refugees from the Hungarian rebellion in
1956, about 45,000 of whom were admitted to the US. It is worth mentioning
that 285,415 persons entered the US from Europe in the years 1954-1971 under
various other provisions for refugees.
412 New York Times (Dec. 23, 1945), 1.
413 US Displaced Persons Commission, v, 248.
414 This data comes ultimately from the Annual Report of the US Immigration and Naturalization
Service. In this case I employed the summaries given in the Information Please Almanac
(1969) and the Statistical Abstract of the US (Sep. 72).
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
313
For reasons that will be clear when we attempt to interpret this data we
note the immigration totals from the various continents:
Table 11: Immigration totals by continent
AREA REGULAR IMMIGRATION DPS
1941-1950 1951-1960 1948-1952
TOTAL
FROM AREA
Europe 621,704 1,328,293 405,234 2,355,231
Asia 31,780 147,453 4,016 183,249
N.&S. America 354,804 996,944 307 1,352,055
Africa 7,367 14,092 107 21,566
Pacific 19,242 16,204 10 35,456
Totals 1,034,897 2,502,986 409,674 3,947,557
An important point in interpreting this data is that, in the case of regular
immigration in the years 1941-1950 and 1951-1960, the country of origin is
defined as the country of last permanent residence, while in the case of the
DPs who entered in US in 1948-1952, the country of origin is the country of
birth.
That nationality was the country of last permanent residence in the case of
regular immigration makes these figures particularly difficult to interpret. This
is well illustrated by the total 766,466 who entered the US from Germany,
more than 90 percent on the regular quota basis. If we imagine a German Jew
as a Jew who actually was raised in Germany and had possessed German citi-
Table 10: US government immigration data
REGULAR IMMIGRATION DPS
AREA 1941-1950 1951-1960 1948-1952
TOTAL
FROM AREA
Austria 24,860 67,106 8,956 100,922
Belgium 12,189 18,575 951 31,715
Czechoslovakia 8,347 918 12,638 21,903
Denmark 5,393 10,984 62 16,439
Estonia 212 185 10,427 10,824
France 38,809 51,121 799 90,729
Germany 226,578 477,765 62,123 766,466
Greece 8,973 47,608 10,277 66,858
Hungary 3,469 36,637 16,627 56,733
Italy 57,661 185,491 2,268 245,420
Latvia 361 352 36,014 36,727
Lithuania 683 242 24,698 25,623
Netherlands 14,860 52,277 64 67,201
Poland 7,571 9,985 135,302 152,858
Romania 1,076 1,039 10,618 12,733
USSR 548 584 35,747 36,879
Yugoslavia 1,576 8,225 33,367 43,168
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
314
zenship, then only a fraction of the 766,466 could have been Jews, for the
simple reason that the greater number of the estimated 500,000 or 600,000
German Jews had emigrated before the war. In order to get some idea of the
number of German Jews who might have immigrated into the US after the
war, recall that the Jews deported east by the Germans from France and Belgium
were almost all German Jews who had emigrated from Germany before
the war. Thus if we accept Reitlinger’s figures the total German Jews deported
to the east might have been around 250,000. If, say, half went to Palestine after
the war, then it would appear that no more than about 125,000 of the
“Germans” who entered the US could have been Jews. However this calculation
is upset by the simple observation that the status of “permanent resident”
might have been conferred on many of the Jews of several nationalities who
were quartered under various conditions in Germany immediately after the
war. The period was not noted for strict adherence to legalities, so it is safe to
assume that somewhat more than 125,000 of these “Germans” were Jews.
Likewise with the figures for Italy.
The haziness of the concept of “permanent resident” is also the reason for
the inclusion of immigration figures from such places as North and South
America and Asia. We should not expect that the uprooted Jews were particularly
scrupulous in regard to legal credentials, and we have seen this illustrated
in the case of the “Greeks” who passed through Czechoslovakia. It should not
have been difficult to arrange for the creation of credentials which declared
Jews to have been permanent residents of various South American countries,
and possibly also of Canada. A side trip to the country in question while en
route to the US might have been necessary, but such a trip would have been
scenic anyway. South American countries would probably have been happy to
cooperate, because the Jews were not in the process of settling with them, and
there was no doubt bribe money as well.
For these reasons I believe that one is perfectly safe in assuming that at
least 500,000 uprooted Jews entered the US, and the correct figure is probably
higher. Since the area of New York City is the home of millions of Jews, a
few hundred thousand could have moved there alone, and nobody would have
observed more than the fact that he, personally, was aware of a few Jews who
came to New York from Europe after the war.
In this analysis we have assumed, of course, that the great masses of Jews
who resettled after the war were uprooted Jews and did not include statistically
significant portions of, say, French Jews, who had no more reason to
leave France than Jews in the US have to leave that country. The net result of
the Nazi Jewish resettlement policies was that a great number of Jews, uprooted
from their homes, came into the power of Zionist-controlled refugee relief
organizations, which were able to direct these masses of Jews to destinations
chosen for political reasons.
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
315
Recapitulation
This is as far as the demographic analysis need be carried here and it is
probably essentially as far as it could be carried in any case. If we assume that
at the end of the war there were about three million uprooted Jews whose
situations had to be disposed of somehow by the Allies, then it is possible that
one-half million emigrated to the US, one-half million went to Palestine, one
million were absorbed by the Soviet Union, 750,000 settled in Eastern Europe
excluding the Soviet Union, and 250,000 settled in Western Europe. On the
other hand, the correct figures, including those offered here as data, may very
well be somewhat different. The treatment presented here is guaranteed to be
valid in a general way, but statistical accuracy cannot be attained.
If we attempt to estimate the number who perished, on account of the chaotic
conditions in the camps as the Germans retreated, on account of epidemics
in the ghettos during more normal periods, on account of pogroms or massacres
that might have taken place especially while the Germans were retreating,
on account of Einsatzgruppen executions, and on account of unhealthy
conditions in the concentration camps in Germany, especially at the very end
of the war (which affected only Jewish political prisoners and ordinary criminals
and the young adult Jews who had been conscripted for labor and sent to
the concentration camps), we again have an impossible, in my opinion, problem
on our hands. Rassinier’s estimate is about a million Jewish dead, but one
can take very many exceptions to his arguments. A figure of a million Jewish
dead, while possible, seems rather high to me. However, given the vast uncertainties
involved, I really have no taste for arguing the matter one way or another.
One should feel no need to apologize for such confessions of statistical ignorance.
Korzen, in his study of the Polish Jews dispersed by the Russian deportations
of 1940, confesses large and important areas of ignorance in his
study, especially in regard to numbers, and he had the friendly offices of the
Israeli government to help with his research. A study such as the present one
necessarily labors under severe handicaps regarding relevant statistics. Indeed,
I was surprised that it was possible to reconstruct statistical and quantitative
aspects even to the incomplete extent presented here. The most powerful
groups on earth have sought to distort the record of what actually happened to
the Jews of Europe during the Second World War.
J. G. Burg
In his memoirs, J. G. Burg (Josef Ginsburg) has presented a story completely
consistent with the historical record. At the outbreak of war in SepArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
316
tember 1939 he was resident in Lemberg, Poland. He immediately fled with
his family to Çzernowitz, Romania, in the province of Bukovina, which the
Red Army occupied in June 1940. A year later the German attack on Russia
drove out the Red Army, and Ukrainian bands started conducting pogroms,
which were halted by German and Romanian troops. Later Ginsburg and his
family were deported east to Transnistria, where life was at least bearable. A
Mr. Kolb of the Swiss and International Red Cross visited their settlement in
early 1943.
After the German defeats mount, there is growing tension between the
Germans and Romanians and many Romanians attempt to befriend the Jews.
The German-Romanian front starts to collapse in mid-1944 and Ginsburg and
family return to Çzernowitz. Everywhere there is chaos, starvation and the
Russian terror. Even after the end of the war conditions are not very good so,
in 1946, Ginsburg and family moved on to Breslau and then proceeded to an
UNRRA DP camp near Munich in the US occupation zone of Germany. In the
camp almost all Jews are naturally very interested in the possibility of proceeding
to the US, because they know that many Jews are doing just that.
However the Zionist leadership attempts by all means to divert their interest
from the US to Palestine. To the question “Can one emigrate to the US and
remain a Zionist?” A Professor Spiktor replies:
“Whoever emigrates to the US in this hour of destiny, can not only be
no Zionist, he also thereby forsakes his own Jewish people.”
Six months later Professor Spiktor emigrates to the US. Ginsburg and his
family go to Palestine with many of the other Jews from the camp.
Conclusions
We are now very close to the end of our study. The thesis of this book has
been proved conclusively. The Jews of Europe were not exterminated and
there was no German attempt to exterminate them. The Germans resettled a
certain number and these people were ultimately resettled again in accordance
with Allied programs. Although various statistical details are missing from our
analysis, it is possible to reconstruct quantitative aspects of the problem to a
satisfactory degree.
The Jews of Europe suffered during the war by being deported to the East,
by having had much of their property confiscated and, more importantly, by
suffering cruelly in the circumstances surrounding Germany’s defeat. They
may even have lost a million dead.
Everybody in Europe suffered during the war, especially the people of central
and eastern Europe. The people who suffered most were the losers, the
Germans (and Austrians), who lost 10 million dead due to military casualties,
Chapter 7: The Final Solution
317
Allied bombings, the Russian terror at the end of the war, Russian and French
labor conscriptions of POW’s after the war, Polish and other expulsions from
their homelands, under the most brutal conditions, and the vengeful occupation
policies of 1945-1948.415
Himmler Nailed it Perfectly
The “gas chambers” were wartime propaganda fantasies completely comparable
to the garbage that was shoveled out by Lord Bryce and associates in
World War I. The factual basis for these ridiculous charges was nailed with
perfect accuracy by Heinrich Himmler, in an interview with a representative
of the World Jewish Congress just a few weeks before the end of the war:416
“in order to put a stop to the epidemics, we were forced to burn the
bodies of incalculable numbers of people who had been destroyed by disease.
We were therefore forced to build crematoria, and on this account
they are knotting a noose for us.”
It is most unfortunate that Himmler was a “suicide” while in British captivity
because, had he been a defendant at the IMT, his situation would have
been such that he would have told the true story (being fully informed and not
in a position to shift responsibility to somebody else) and books such as the
present book would not be necessary because the major material could be read
in the IMT trial transcript. But then, you see, it was not within the bounds of
political possibility that Himmler live to talk at the IMT.
That Himmler’s assessment of the gas chamber accusations is the accurate
one should be perfectly obvious to anybody who spends any time with this
subject, as we have seen especially in Chapter 4. In particular, Hilberg and
Reitlinger should have been able to see this before completing even fractions
of their thick books, which are monumental foolishness.
415 Aretz, 337-346.
416 Reitlinger, 521.

319
Chapter 8:
Remarks
Miscellaneous Objections
We close this work with a few miscellaneous remarks, most of which deal
with some objections that may arise in certain situations.
An objection that one highly intelligent critic actually expressed was that
he thought that my story was similar to ones he had read about “flying saucers”
and “divining rods.” The reaction was startling but it was at least understandable.
Years of propaganda have so associated Nazi Germany with the six
million legend that, for many people, denial of the legend seems at first almost
as preposterous as denying that World War II happened at all. Nevertheless
the objection is not one that can be answered, except by pointing out that our
account does not involve the supernatural or extraterrestrial or, indeed, anything
more unusual than people lying about their political enemies. With this
critic, one can only ask that he attempt to say something intelligent.
The most consequential objection to this work will be that I have employed
the “holocaust” literature, in particular the books by Reitlinger and Hilberg, as
sources although I have also denounced such books as “monumental foolishness.”
This objection is a serious one because I would be the first to hold that,
once the extermination legend had been buried, these books will become significant
only as supreme examples of total delusion and foolishness, and will
be referenced only in connection with the great hoaxes of history. However
our task here is precisely to bury the legend and the only way to do that is by
considering the story that has been advanced, and this amounts to analyzing
the case put forward by Reitlinger and Hilberg. The only practical way of exposing
the hoax is by considering the claims that have been put forward by the
extermination mythologists.
There was a second reason for employing Reitlinger and Hilberg as
sources. In this work great weight had been placed on providing documentation
that a reader without access to a large library can confirm on his own. Unfortunately
this desire could not be entirely satisfied, because a good part of
the analysis relies on documents and publications that are not readily available
without going through complicated borrowing procedures. In order to partially
overcome this difficulty I have used Reitlinger and Hilberg as sources on
many such points, but I have only done this in cases where I have been able to
confirm their remarks. I have not adopted the practice of assuming that anyArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
320
thing that Reitlinger or Hilberg says that helps my case must be true. For example,
in connection with our discussion in Chapter 5 concerning the date of
the first Allied air raid at Auschwitz, I gave reasons for the conclusion that the
first raid did not occur before August 1944. It would have been dishonest to
merely reference Hilberg on this point, because Hilberg believes that the first
raid occurred in December 1944, and is obviously confused on this point.417
Another reason for the frequent referencing of Reitlinger and Hilberg is my
sincere wish that the reader would take a look at such books; it is only then
that the reader can become completely convinced that the hoax is a hoax. In
this connection one can recommend a typical procedure that the reader may go
through to confirm the matter in a general way. First get a copy of Hilberg’s
book. On pages 567-571 Hilberg presents a magnificent discussion of the alleged
role of the Zyklon B in the exterminations, and on page 619 or 621 he
points out that the German documents speak only of a program of deportations
to the East and associated operations. It is also useful to read his discussion of
what the Nuremberg trial documents say happened in Hungary, 509-554, and
to note the document numbers he cites in this connection. Next find, if possible,
a copy of Reitlinger’s book, first or second edition. On pages 158-159
(150 in the first edition), he reproduces the text of document NO-4473, in
which he notes that the “gas chamber” that allegedly existed in the building
which contained Crematory II at Auschwitz was described as a “Vergasungskeller”
in the original German. On pages 118, 121 and 182 (112, 114-115 and
169 in the first edition) Reitlinger remarks on the “mystery” that “at certain
periods, entire transports (of Jews) were admitted” into Auschwitz. Reitlinger
also briefly mentions the chemical industry at Auschwitz, pages 109 and 492
(105 and 452 in the first edition). Hopefully, the reader will undertake a more
thoroughgoing confirmation, but the above would be a good start.
Some people may assume, fallaciously, that opinions expressed by Jews
and Germans on the subject of the “Final Solution” carry nearly authoritative
weight.
Under circumstance where the subject of this book is being discussed by a
group of people a seemingly potent argument, because it is so laden with emotion
and can upset the decorum of the group, may be offered by a Jew who
claims to have lost some relative or close acquaintance in the “holocaust,” and
he may even have knowledge that the supposedly missing relative had been
sent to Auschwitz, Treblinka or some such place.
There are several ways to react to such a point. An obvious possibility is
that the man is lying. However it is more probable that he is telling the truth as
he knows it. Assuming that his story is valid, there is only one sense in which
it can be valid. That is, all he can claim is that he or his family lost contact
with some relative in Europe during the war and never heard from that person
417 Hilberg, 632.
Chapter 8: Remarks
321
again. Obviously, such data does not imply the existence of a Nazi extermination
program.
That contact was lost during the war was almost inevitable, either because
it was difficult for Jews deported to the east to communicate with people in allied
countries, or because it was difficult or impossible to communicate from
the east to points farther west during the chaotic last year of the war. Thus the
only point of interest in such a case is the claim that contact was not reestablished
after the war.
The simplest explanation is that the relative did, indeed, along with an indeterminate
number of other persons of central and east European nationalities,
perish somewhere in Europe during the war, or in a concentration camp,
from causes that have been covered in this book.
The second possibility is that the relative survived the war, but did not reestablish
contact with his prewar relations. One possible, although not very
likely, motivation for such a failure to reestablish contact could have been
some prohibition on such correspondence imposed by the Soviet Government
on those Jews who had been absorbed into the Soviet Union.
A more important and more plausible motivation for failing to reestablish
contact held when a separation of husband and wife was involved. A very
large number of marriages are held together by purely social and economic
constraints; such constraints didn’t exist for a great number of the Jews uprooted
by the German policies and wartime and postwar conditions.
In many cases deported Jewish families were broken up for what was undoubtedly
intended by the Germans to be a period of limited duration. This
was particularly the case when the husband seemed a good labor conscript;
just as German men were conscripted for hazardous military service, Jews
were conscripted for unpleasant labor tasks. Under such conditions it is reasonable
to expect that many of these lonely wives and husbands would have,
during or at the end of the war, established other relations that seemed more
valuable than the he previous relationships. In such cases, then, there would
have been a strong motivation not to reestablish contact with the legal spouse.
Moreover none of the “social and economic constraints” which we noted
above were present, and Jews were in a position to choose numerous destinations
in the resettlement programs that the Allies sponsored after the war. This
possibility could account for a surprisingly large number of “missing” Jews.
For example suppose that a man and wife with two small children were deported,
with the man being sent to a labor camp and the wife and children being
sent to a resettlement camp in the East. Let us suppose that the wife failed
to reestablish contact with her husband. We thus seem to have four people reported
dead or missing; the husband says his wife and children are presumably
dead and the wife says her husband was lost. However, this one separation of
husband and wife could account for even more missing Jews, for it is likely
that the parents and other relatives of the wife, on the one hand, and the parArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
322
ents and other relative of the husband, on the other, would also have lost touch
with each other. Thus one had some number of people on the husband’s side
claiming that some number of people on the wife’s side are missing, and vice
versa. Obviously, the possibilities of accounting for “missing” Jews in this
way are practically boundless.
It is said that the Yad Vashem archives in Jerusalem now have the names of
between 2.5 and 3 million Jewish “dead from the Nazi holocaust.” The data
have supposedly been “collected on one-page testimony sheets filled in by
relatives or witnesses or friends.” Of course, it is in no way possible to satisfactorily
substantiate this production of the Israeli government, which certainly
cannot be claimed to be a disinterested party in the question of the
number of Jews who perished. There is no doubt that many Jews died during
the war, so we should expect that a part of the Yad Vashem claim is valid, but
it is also the case that there is no possible way to distinguish, in this data, between
Jews who actually died during the war and Jews with whom the signers
of the “testimony sheets” have merely lost contact. The data is particularly
meaningless when it is a “friend” who has contributed a declaration; I have
lost contact with a great many former friends and acquaintances, but I assume
that nearly all are still alive. Indeed, the use of the testimony of “friends” for
the purpose of gathering the Yad Vashem data shows that the data is mostly
meaningless; such “friends” have no more basis for declaring their missing
acquaintances dead than I do.418
I have no idea what is meant by the “witnesses” who signed the testimony
sheets. There is also a better than negligible possibility that some signers of
these declarations invented missing friends and relative for any of a number of
possible motivations, and it is even possible that some of the signers never existed.
To summarize our reaction to the claims of Jews regarding persons said to
be victims of the “holocaust,” such claims are no doubt valid to some extent,
because many Jews died, but the hard data possessed by Jews who report such
loses, when they are reporting truthfully, is not conclusive in regard to the
deaths of the persons involved, and certainly in no way implies the existence
of a Nazi extermination program.
Postwar Germany and Willy Brandt
One must be careful in interpreting the fact that Germans, themselves,
seem to believe in the exterminations. Certainly, most individual Germans
seem to concede the myth, and not all do so in order to stay out of trouble.
418 Colorado Springs Sun (Jan. 30, 1973), 6.
Chapter 8: Remarks
323
However it is clear that the German people were no better situated to see the
truth than anybody else. Many might, indeed, have observed local Jews being
deported, not to return after the war, and this may have given some an even
more vivid conviction in support of the extermination hoax than that which
holds generally. The basic observation to make relative to the views of individual
Germans in that the standard sort of “information” on this subject has
been available to them, and they are thus just as innocently deluded as other
nationalities.
The West German government which, by interminable war crimes trials,
now being held thirty or more years after the alleged crimes, by instruction in
the schools, and now by means of naked terror, as shown in the Stäglich episode,
does everything possible to keep the lie propped up and to prevent open
discussion, is a different matter because the cause for its behavior is not innocent
misunderstanding. The basic fact is that the claim of the Bonn government
to be a German government is somewhat tenuous. The entire political
structure of West Germany was established by the US government. This includes
the control of the newspapers and other media, the control of the
schools, and the constitution of Bundesrepublik. As a puppet creation this
“German” political establishment necessarily had an interest in the lies of the
conquerors, and behaved accordingly. That is very simple, and this situation is
perfectly illustrated by the career of the man who was Chancellor of West
Germany during the greater part of the time when this book was being written:
Herr Willy Brandt (an alias – Brandt’s real name is Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm
– Frahm was his mother’s maiden name and he never knew who his father
was).
Marxist Brandt left Germany after the Hitler takeover and acquired Norwegian
citizenship. After the German invasion of Norway in 1940, he slipped
into neutral Sweden and eventually was given a position in the press corps
there. It was none other than Willy Brandt who, during the war, was transmitting
the concocted propaganda stories that had supposedly originated in
Stockholm and ended up on the pages of the New York Times.419
After the defeat of Germany Brandt naturally decided that the atmosphere
back home had improved so he returned to Germany, resumed German citizenship,
and entered West Berlin politics as a Social Democrat. He eventually
became Mayor of West Berlin and acquired a press aide, Hans Hirschfeld, a
German Jew who, along with Kempner, Marcuse, et. al., had been employed
in the OSS during the war. During the 1961 espionage trial in the US of R. A.
Soblen, which resulted in Soblen being sentenced to life imprisonment, a government
witness, Mrs. J. K. Beker, who had been a courier in a Soviet espionage
ring during the war but had turned FBI informer later, testified that she
had carried information from Hirschfeld to Soblen for transmission to Mos-
419 New York Times (Aug. 12, 1972), 23.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
324
cow. Mrs. Beker was the principal government witness, so the obvious answer
of the defense should have been to produce Hirschfeld. Indeed, Soblen’s defense
counsel said that he had attempted to convince Hirschfeld to come to the
US to testify, but Hirschfeld declined, at first on the grounds that the publicity
associated with his appearance as a witness could hurt Brandt, who was engaged
in an election campaign. Hirschfeld was also concerned about the possibility
that he might be charged with some sort of offense if he journeyed to
the US. Brandt, in New York during the controversy involving Hirschfeld,
naturally defended his former close associate, who had by that time been living
in retirement in Germany.
In order to give the defense every opportunity to make a case for Soblen,
the government offered Hirschfeld immunity against prosecution for “any past
acts or transactions” if he would come to the US to testify, adding only that
Hirschfeld could be prosecuted for any perjury committed in a retrial of
Soblen. Hirschfeld nevertheless declined to appear in Soblen’s defense.420
Brandt eventually became Chancellor of West Germany and won the Nobel
Peace Prize for 1971 for his efforts to build friendlier relations with the
eastern bloc, his “Ostpolitik.” Brandt seemed to be riding high but by 1974
various Brandt policies, including his Ostpolitik, had brought his Social Democratic
Party to a new low in popular esteem, and even SPD politicians in
long term SPD strongholds expressed the belief that they were going to lose
their next elections. Fortuitously for the SPD, the Günter Guillaume scandal
erupted in late April with Guillaume’s arrest as an East German espionage
agent. Although it had been known that Guillaume had been a member of an
East Berlin espionage organization, he had been cleared by the Brandt government
for a high post in the inner circle of Brandt’s associates and advisers.
The scandal brought Willy Brandt’s downfall with his resignation on May 7,
1974. Brandt was succeeded by Helmut Schmidt, whose leadership terminated
the decline of the SPD.421
Clearly, a career such as Brandt’s postwar career is possible only in a
country in which treason has become a normal part of political life, so it is not
in the least surprising that the Bonn government is a defender of the hoax.
An interesting objection is the claim that nobody would dare invent such a
tale as the six million legend; nobody had the extraordinary imagination required
and, even if he did, the obvious risks in telling such gigantic lies should
dissuade him. The argument amounts to the claim that the mere existence of
the legend implies the truth of its essentials, so I suppose we can classify it as
the hoaxers’ ontological argument.
What is interesting about this objection is its superficially logical quality.
420 New York Times (Oct. 6, 1961), 10; (Oct. 14, 1961), 10; (Oct. 17, 1961), 35; (Nov. 4, 1961),
11; R. H. Smith, 237n.
421 New York Times (May 8, 1974), 16.
Chapter 8: Remarks
325
Indeed I imagine that this calculation accounts in good measure for the widespread
acceptance of the legend; people assume that nobody would be so brazen
as to invent such lies. Nevertheless the logic is not sound, for history affords
us numerous examples of popular acceptance of gigantic lies, and in this
connection we can again cite witchcraft hysteria as precedent for the psychological
essentials of the six million hoax.
The Talmud
It is ironic that Hitler anticipated the psychology of the “big lie” in his remarks
on the subject in Chapter X of Mein Kampf. It is also ironic that the
most mind-boggling invented accounts of exterminations appear in the Jewish
Talmudic literature in connection with the last two of the three great Jewish
revolts against Rome, the Diaspora revolt of 115-117 AD and the Palestine revolt
of 132-135 AD. In connection with the Palestine revolt of 66-70 AD the
Talmudic writings do nothing more than bewail the loss of the Temple in Jerusalem
and discuss the implications of the loss for Jewish law. A good discussion
of the three revolts is given in Michael Grant’s The Jews in the Roman
World.
According to the ancient accounts (mainly Cassius Dio, who wrote around
200 AD, and Eusebius, the early fourth century Bishop of Caesarea) the Diaspora
revolt started in Cyrenaica (northeast Libya) at a time when the Emperor
Trajan had, for the purpose of annexing Parthia and its valuable Mesopotamian
territory, constituted a huge eastern army at the price of withdrawing
many small contingents that had served to keep order in various parts of the
Empire. The Jews attacked the Greek and Roman civilian populations and it is
said they killed 220,000 in Cyrenaica, amusing themselves in various gruesome
ways. The revolt then spread to Egypt, where the Jews killed an unknown
number, and to Cyprus, where they are said to have killed 240,000. In
Alexandria, however, the predominantly Greek population gained control of
events and are said to have massacred the Jews of that city. Recent archaeological
evidence indicates that the ancient accounts are not exaggerated.422
The Talmud says almost nothing about this revolt, except to give the number
of Jews killed in Alexandria as “sixty myriads on sixty myriads, twice as
many as went forth from Egypt,” i.e. 1,200,000 on the assumption that addition
and not multiplication is intended. The killings are blamed on “the Emperor
Hadrian,” which may be due to the fact that Hadrian was at the time the
commander of Trajan’s eastern army and succeeded Trajan as Emperor when
Trajan died in 117, possibly before the final suppression of the revolt.
422 Fuks.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
326
The figure given for the number of Jewish victims is obviously exaggerated
for, while it is usually difficult to be more than approximately correct in
estimating the populations of ancient cities, Alexandria of the period had a
population of 500,000 or more, with an upper bound of one million a reasonable
one to assume because that was the approximate population of the city of
Rome, a figure concerning which there is also some uncertainty, but if Rome
ever attained a population significantly greater than one million, it never got
near two million.423 The 1,200,000 martyred Jews may seem a brazen invention,
but you haven’t seen anything yet.
The next great revolt was in Palestine in 132-135 and was a serious attempt
by its leader, Bar-Kokhba, to set up a Jewish state with himself as king, although
he eventually claimed to be the Messiah. During the revolt he made
laws, issued money, and performed the other regular functions of government.
Bar-Kokhba’s end came in 135. Jerusalem not being suitable to withstand a
siege, he led the remnant of his army to the village of Bethar (the present Bittir),
which is located on high ground about 10 miles southwest of Jerusalem,
25 miles from the Dead Sea and 35 miles from the Mediterranean. The dimensions
of the ancient town were roughly rectangular, with a north–south length
of about 600 meters and an east–west width of about 200 meters. The south
half of the town was fortified.424 These dimensions plus the fact that the estimates
for the Jewish population of Palestine of the time range from a low of
500,000 to a high of 2.5 million make it unlikely that Bar-Kokhba’s Bethar
army numbered as many as 50,000 men.425
The Romans laid siege to Bethar in the summer of 135 and Bar-Kokhba’s
resistance collapsed in August. The Romans broke into the fortress and Bar-
Kokhba was killed in that final battle.
For general reasons it seems unlikely that the Romans carried out a massacre
of the Jewish population of Bethar. The only “evidence” for a general
massacre occurs in the Talmudic literature (including in this context the
Midrash Rabbah) which for reasons unknown comments extensively on the
siege of Bethar and its supposed aftermath. Except where noted, the Talmudic
passages are reproduced in the Appendix to the book Bar-Kokhba by the archaeologist
Yigael Yadin. The size of Bar-Kokhba’s Bethar army is given as
200,000 men. Bar-Kokhba is said to have been so tough that, when the Romans
catapulted missiles into his fort, he would intercept the missiles with his
knee with such force that he would knock them back into the faces of the astonished
Romans, killing many. The Talmud goes on to claim that the number
of Jews killed by the Romans after the fortress fell was 4 billion “or as some
423 Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 10, 296; Packer; Carcopino, 16-21; T. Frank, vol. 2, 245;
vol. 4, 158f; vol. 5, 218n.
424 Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 4, 735.
425 McCown.
Chapter 8: Remarks
327
say” 40 million, while the Midrash Rabbah reports 800 million martyred
Jews. In order to reassure us that these figures are given in earnest, the necessarily
accompanying events are set forth. The blood of the slain Jews reached
to the nostrils of the Romans’ horses and then, like a tidal wave, plunged a
distance of one mile or four miles to the sea, carrying large boulders along
with it, and staining the sea a distance of four miles out.
The Jewish school children of Bethar, according to the Talmudic literature,
were of course not spared by the Romans, who are said to have wrapped each
of them in his scroll, and then burned all of them, the number of these school
children having been either 64 million or at least 150,000 (the approximate
present public school population of Washington, DC).
The Romans matched the Germans in efficiency, for the bodies of the slain
Jews were used to build a fence around Hadrian’s vineyard, which is said to
have been eighteen miles square, and blood saved over from the tidal wave
was used to fertilize Roman vineyards for seven years. Shades of soap, glue
and fertilizer factories!
It is also claimed that Bar-Kokhba (usually referred to in the Talmudic literature
as Bar-Koziba – it is still not clear what his real name was) was killed
by rabbis for falsely claiming to be the Messiah.426
The Talmudic literature was not intended for general circulation so its authors
could exercise more freedom than the inventors of the six million hoax,
who had to assess the gullibility of a possibly skeptical gentile audience.
However the spirit of the Talmudic accounts, in the above instances, seems
remarkably similar to the spirit of our century’s hoax. In this connection it
may be noted that it is not really anomalous that a Talmudic scholar such as
Rabbi Weissmandel plays a possibly significant role in the hoax. Also, because
Rabbi Wise translated a good deal of ancient and medieval Jewish literature
and also founded a Jewish seminary, he may also have some claim to
being a Talmudic scholar. One suspects that such scholars might have been
exactly the type required to give birth to the hoax.
Credentials
A remaining objection could raise the question of my credentials for writing
such a book. This is a good point for it is true that my formal training has
been in engineering and applied mathematics and not history.
It is not unprecedented for investigators to make contributions in fields apparently
remote from their specialties, but I will concede that the point should
not be waved aside lightly. Normally, we expect developments in historical
426 Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 93b or p. 627 in the translation edited by I. Epstein.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
328
investigation to come from historians, just as developments in engineering
come from engineers. Exceptions to this rule can be admitted, but some justification
for the exception should be expected.
My justification is the obvious one: default on the part of regular professional
historians. No such person has come forward with a critical study of the
question or with any work actually arguing any particular side of the extermination
question and presenting the evidence which supports the thesis. The
closest thing to such a work is the book by Reitlinger, who is at least willing
to take explicit note of some of the anomalies that develop in presenting the
story of the “holocaust,” but Reitlinger is not a historian but an artist and art
collector. He has written several books, the most significant being his three
volume study of the history of dealings in objects of art, The Economics of
Taste. After Reitlinger, Hilberg manages a tiny bit of a critical attitude, but
Hilberg is a professor of political science (at the University of Vermont) and
his doctorate is in public law and government.
The books by Reitlinger and Hilberg recognize, to a very inadequate but
nevertheless perceptible degree, a responsibility to convince the skeptic. The
other extermination mythologists do not make any effort whatever to show
that the exterminations happened; they just assume we all know it happened
and then they take it from there. This is the case with the remaining three of
the five leading extermination mythologists – Nora Levin, Leon Poliakov and
Lucy S. Dawidowicz. Levin was a research librarian while writing her book
and now teaches history at Gratz College, a small Jewish school in Philadelphia.
Poliakov is research director of the Centre Mondiale de Documentation
Juive Contemporaine in Paris, and thus a professional Jewish propagandist.
Dawidowicz is the only regular professional historian in the group and occupies
the Leah Lewis Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Yeshiva University in
New York. All five of the leading extermination mythologists are Jews.
In books and articles on subjects that are other than, but touch on, the
“holocaust,” professional historians invariably give some sort of endorsement
to the lie, but the extent to which contrary hints are found in their writings is
considerable. No professional historian had published a book arguing and presenting
evidence, either for or against the reality of the exterminations. The
motivations are obvious. No established historian had been willing to damage
his reputation by writing a scholarly-sounding work supporting the extermination
allegations, solemnly referencing documents and testimonies produced at
illegal trials held under hysterical conditions and seriously setting forth, without
apology, obvious idiotic nonsense such as the alleged dual role of the Zyklon.
At least, no inducement to produce such a work seems to have come
along. On the other hand, the pressure of intellectual conformity (to put it
mildly) in academia has evidently terrorized historians into silence in the opposite
regard. This being the case, it is both justified and expected that works
such as the present one be produced by engineers and whatever.
Chapter 8: Remarks
329
Other Matters
As promised early in this book, we have dealt here at depth with only one
propaganda myth and have in no sense attempted to cover the general field of
World War II revisionism. There is no point in repeating here what has been
ably said by other authors who have contributed to demolishing lingering mythology
relating to the war, but a few words, intended mainly to direct the
reader to the appropriate literature, are in order.
The myth of Germany’s solitary responsibility for the outbreak of war in
1939 has been demolished by the American historian David L. Hoggan, in his
book The Forced War. A. J. P Taylor’s The Origins of the Second World War
is not as extensive, but it has achieved a much greater circulation and has been
available in paperback for some time. Taylor’s well deserved reputation as a
Germanophobe have made his book a notable addition to the revisionist literature.
The myth of extraordinary Nazi brutality, as compared to the brutalities of
the Western democracies, had been exploded by a number of books, of which
the best is F. J. P. Veale’s Advance to Barbarism, of which a new and expanded
addition appeared in 1968. Other noteworthy books are Unconditional
Hatred by Captain Russell Grenfell, RN, America’s Second Crusade by William
Henry Chamberlin, and Freda Utley’s The High Cost of Vengeance.
However these authors ignore one of the greatest crimes of the western democracies,
the forcible repatriation of Soviet citizens to the Soviet Union after
the war (“Operation Keelhaul”). Most of what we know of this shameful episode
is due to the efforts of Julius Epstein, a Jew who left Germany during the
Thirties for the usual reasons, but started his crusades for truth during the war
with his investigations into the Katyn Forest massacre and has spent the
greater part of the postwar period investigating Operation Keelhaul. His book
on the subject was published in 1973. Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago
offers a long discussion of Operation Keelhaul which, because it is written
from a Russian point of view, supplements Epstein’s treatment notably.
Nicholas Bethell’s The Last Secret explores the political background of the
forced repatriations.
For a reader interested in a more thoroughgoing discussion of the revisionist
literature, the best seems to appear in the testimonial volume Harry Elmer
Barnes, edited by Arthur Goddard. The pamphlet by Barnes, Blasting the Historical
Blackout, is a more intensive analysis of the status of World War II revisionism,
and is still available.
None of the above named publications touch the gas chamber myth or deal
in a serious way with whatever was supposed to have happened in the German
concentration camps. Here we have treated the camps almost entirely from a
single point of view and have not deeply investigated the factual basis of other
allegations of brutalities of a more random and less systematic nature. HowArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
330
ever the Ilse Koch case, which was discussed in Chapter 2, should be sufficiently
instructive in distinguishing between fact and fiction, and the methods
used at Dachau by the US authorities to produce “evidence” of extraordinary
brutalities should be conclusive.
The scandal of the continued imprisonment of Rudolf Hess, now over 81
years old, has been treated by a number of recent books, notably Prisoner No.
7: Rudolf Hess, by Eugene K. Bird, one of the US commanders at Berlin’s
Spandau prison, who broke regulations by not only talking to Hess but also interviewing
him in depth. Two other books are Motive for a Mission, by James
Douglas-Hamilton, and Hess: The Man and His Mission, by J. Bernard
Hutton.
Some Implications
In this book we have necessarily restricted ourselves to the demolition of
only one myth, and have not attempted to treat the very broad subject of the
general behavior of Nazi Germany as compared to the Allies, except by recommending
the above publications. They will help support the major implication
of this work; the media in the western democracies are exposed as constituting
a lie machine of vaster extent than even many of the more independent
minded have perceived.
A second implication of this work naturally relates to Palestine. The “justification”
that Zionists invariably give for driving the Arabs out of Palestine
always involves the six million legend to a great extent. Of course there is
more than one non sequitur involved; Palestine was not invaded by six million
dead Jews or, indeed, by any dead Jews and, in any case, it is not just or reasonable
to make the Arabs pay for whatever the Germans are supposed to
have done to Jews in Europe during the Second World War. Moreover Israel
is not a land that welcomes all persons who suffered in some way at the hands
of the Nazis, but all Jews, regardless of whether they or their relatives had
ever had any contact with the Nazis.
Today the United States supplies enough aid to Israel to assure that Israel is
able to retain, by armed occupation, lands that the United States itself declares
to be rightfully Arab (the territories seized in the 1967 war). Although it is
hard to see why the six million legend should motivate such a policy, such a
motivation or justification is very often advanced. When, in November 1975,
an overwhelming majority at the United Nations, in a burst of intellectual clarity
rare for that organization, endorsed a resolution declaring Zionism to be a
form of racism (a truth as inescapable as 2 + 2 = 4) the US representative,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an otherwise impressive intellect, was reduced in
astonishingly short order to hysterical yapping about the six million. As was
Chapter 8: Remarks
331
shown by the aftermath of the “Yom Kippur War” of 1973, this support of Israel
is completely contrary to the interests of the West. The obvious fact that
this support is immoral in terms of the moralizing that has become a pervasive
feature of Western foreign policies makes it doubly mad.
Another country that has extended considerable material aid to Israel is
West Germany. As of 1975, the Bonn government had paid Jews about $2???
billion worth of restitutions and indemnifications of various sorts (calculated
mainly in terms of dollars of the late Fifties and early Sixties), and was still
making commitments for new payments.427
The largest single such program was defined in the 1952 Luxembourg
Treaty between the Federal Republic and Israel; Bonn committed itself to paying
Israel $750 million, primarily in the form of German industrial products
and oil shipments from Britain. The program, referred to in Israel as the Shilumin
program, was completed in 1966. The text of the Luxembourg Treaty
opens with the words:428
“Whereas
unspeakable criminal acts were perpetrated against the Jewish people
during the National Socialist regime of terror
and whereas
by a declaration of the Bundestag on 27 September 1951, the Government
of the Federal Republic of Germany made known their determination,
within the limits of their capacity, to make good the materiel damage
caused by these acts […].”
The Bonn government has undertaken additional programs of indemnification
that have been similarly motivated. Because this work has shown that the
“unspeakable criminal acts,” in the sense in which that expression is used in
the Luxembourg Treaty, are largely a hoax and, specifically, a Zionist hoax, it
then develops that Israel owes Germany a lot of money, because the proposed
justification for the reparations has been invalidated.
427 New York Times (Jan. 18, 1975), 6.
428 Vogel, 56, 88-100.

333
Appendices
Appendix A: The “Statement”
Document 1553-PS is a set of documents, typewritten in French (except for
a short part in English), and said to have been authored by Kurt Gerstein. The
English translation, as provided by the Nuremberg staff, is presented below,
with certain modifications that are explained. The original is reproduced by
Roques.429 The first document is the lengthiest of the set and is what would
normally be considered to be the “Gerstein statement”.
“Graduate engineer for Mine surveying (Bergassessor Diplomingenieur)
Kurt Gerstein Rottweil, 26 April 1945
Personal particulars: Gerstein, Kurt, Mine Surveyor, expelled from
State service in 1936 as an anti-Nazi; certified engineer. Born on 11 August
1905, at Muenster, Westphalia. Partner of the factory De Limon Fluhme
& Company, automatic greasing of locomotives, brakes Westinghouse,
Knorr, etc. Duesseldorf, Industriestrasse 1 – 17.
Father: Ludwig Gerstein, President of the District Court
(Landgerichtspraesident) at Hagen, Westphalia, retired.
Mother: Clara Gerstein, nee Schmemann, died 1931.
Married since 2 May 1937 to Elfriede nee Bensch at Tuebingen,
Gartenstrasse 24, 3 children: Arnulf, 5 years old Adelheid 3-1/2 years old
Olaf 2 years old. Life: 1905 to 1911 Muenster, 1911 to 1919 Sarrebruck,
1919 to 1921 Halberstadt, 1921 to 1925 Neuruppin near Berlin, graduated
in 1925. – Studies 1925 to 1931, Marburg on the Lahn, Aachen, Berlin-
Charlottenburg Universities and technical colleges, 1931, certified engineer’s
examination. Since 1925, active member of the Protestant youth organization
the Y.M.C.A., and above all, of the Higher Christian Youth,
called the ‘Bible Circle’ (Bk, Bibelkreis). Political career: follower of Stresemann
and Bruening, active on their behalf; since June 1933, persecuted
by the Gestapo for Christian activities against the Nazi State. 2nd of May
1933, joined the NSDAP; 2 October 1936, expelled from the NSDAP because
of activities against Party and State. 30 January 1935, public protest
in the theater of the town of Hagen in Westphalia, against the anti-
429 Roques, 222-227.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
334
Christian drama ‘Wittekind’. Beaten and wounded by the Nazis. 27 November
1935, mining surveyor’s examination (Bergassessor). Then employed
by the State at Sarrebruck. On 27 September 1936, imprisoned by
the Gestapo for ‘activities against the State’ because of having sent 8,500
anti-Nazi pamphlets to high officials of the State. Imprisoned until the end
of October 1936, released, was expelled from civil service. From December
1936 till the beginning of the war, medical studies at the Institute for
the Protestant Medical Mission in the tropics, at Tuebingen. One-third –
approximately – of income, that is one-third of 18,000 Reichsmarks per
year, I donated since 1931 for my ideal religious goals. At my own expense,
I had printed and mailed about 230,000 religious anti-Nazi pamphlets.
14 July to 28 August 1938, second imprisonment, in the Welzheim concentration
camp. Hearing of the massacres of idiots and insane people at
Grafeneck, Hadamar, etc., shocked and deeply wounded, having such a
case in my family, I had but one desire, to see, to gain an insight of this
whole machine and then to shout about it to the whole world! With the help
of two references written by the two Gestapo employees who had dealt with
my case, it was not difficult for me to enter the Waffen SS. 10 March to 2
June 1941, elementary instruction as a soldier at Hamburg-Langehorn,
Arnhem and Oranienburg, together with forty doctors. Because of my twin
studies – technology and medicine – I was ordered to enter the medicaltechnology
branch of the SS-Fuehrungshauptamt (SS Operational Main
Office) – Medical Branch of the Waffen SS – Amtsgruppe D (Division D),
Hygiene Department. Within this branch, I chose for myself the job of immediately
constructing disinfecting apparati and filters for drinking water
for the troops, the prison camps and the concentration camps. My close
knowledge of the industry caused me to succeed quickly where my predecessors
had failed. Thus, it was possible to decrease considerably the death
toll of prisoners. On account of my successes, I very soon became a Lieutenant.
In December 1941, the tribunal which had decreed my exclusion
from the NSDAP obtained knowledge of my having entered the Waffen SS.
Considerable efforts were made in order to remove and persecute me. But
due to my successes, I was declared sincere and indispensable. In January
1942, I was appointed Chief of the Technical Branch of Disinfection, which
also included the branch for strong poison gases for disinfection. On 8
June 1942, the SS Sturmbannfuehrer Guenther of the ReichsSicherheits-
Hauptamt entered my office. He was in plain clothes and I did not know
him. He ordered me to get a hundred kilograms of prussic acid and to accompany
him to a place which was only known to the driver of the truck.
We left for the potassium factory near Colling (Prague). Once the truck
was loaded, we left for Lublin (Poland). We took with us Professor Pfannenstiel
MD, Ordinary Professor for Hygiene at the University of Marburg
Appendix A: The ‘Statement’
335
on the Lahn. At Lublin, we were received by SS Gruppenfuehrer Globocnek.
He told us: this is one of the most secret matters there are, even
the most secret. Whoever talks of this shall be shot immediately. Yesterday,
two talkative ones died. Then he explained to us: at the present moment –
17 August 1942 – there are three installations:
1. Belcec, on the Lublin-Lemberg road, in the sector of the Russian demarcation
line. Maximum 15,000 persons a day. (Seen!)
2. Sobibor, I do not know exactly where it is located. Not seen. 20,000
persons per day.
3. Treblinka, 120 km NNE of Warsaw. 25,000 persons per day. Seen!
4. Maidanek, near Lublin. Seen in the state of preparation.
Globocnek then said: You will have to handle the sterilization of very
huge quantities of clothes, 10 or 20 times the result of the clothes and textile
collection (Spinnstoffsammlung) which is only arranged in order to
conceal the source of these Jewish, Polish, Czech and other clothes. Your
other duties will be to change the method of our gas chambers (which are
run at the present time with the exhaust gases of an old ‘Diesel’ engine),
employing more poisonous material, having a quicker effect, prussic acid.
But the Fuehrer and Himmler, who were here on 15 August – the day before
yesterday – ordered that I accompany personally all those who are to
see the installations. Then Professor Pfannenstiel asked: ‘What does the
Fuehrer say?’ Then Globocnek, now Chief of Police and SS for the Adriatic
Riviera to Trieste, answered: ‘Quicker, quicker, carry out the whole
program!’ he said. And then Dr. Herbert Lindner, director in the Ministry
of the Interior said: ‘But would it not be better to burn the bodies instead
of burying them? A coming generation might think differently of these matters!’
And then Globocnek replied: ‘But, gentlemen, if ever, after us such a
cowardly and rotten generation should arise that they do not understand
our so good and necessary work, then, gentlemen, all National Socialism
will have been for nothing. On the contrary, bronze plates should be buried
with the inscription that it was we, who had the courage to achieve this gigantic
task’. And Hitler said: ‘Yes, my good Globocnek, that is the word,
that is my opinion, too’.
The next day we left for Belcek. A small special station of two platforms
leans against a hill of yellow sand, immediately to the north of the road
and railways: Lublin-Lemberg. To the South, near the road, some service
houses with a signboard: ‘Belcec, service center of the Waffen SS’. Globocnec
introduced me to SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Overmeyer from Pirmasens,
who with great restraint showed me the installations. That day no
dead were to be seen, but the smell of the whole region, even from the
large road, was pestilential. Next to the small station there was a large
barrack marked ‘Cloakroom’ and a door marked ‘Valuables’. Next a
chamber with a hundred ‘barber’ chairs. Then came a corridor, 150 meArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
336
ters long, in the open air and with barbed wire on both sides. There was a
signboard: ‘To the bath and inhalations’. Before us we saw a house like a
bath house with concrete troughs to the right and left containing geraniums
or other flowers. After climbing a small staircase, 3 garage-like rooms
on each side, 4 x 5 meters large and 1.90 meters high. At the back, invisible
wooden doors. On the roof a Star of David made out of copper. At the
entrance to the building, the inscription: Heckenholt Foundation. That was
all I noticed on that particular afternoon.
Next morning, a few minutes before 7, I was informed: In 10 minutes
the first train will arrive. And instead, a few minutes later the first train
came in from Lemberg. 45 cars, containing 6,700 persons, 1,450 of whom
were already dead on their arrival. Behind the little barbed wire opening,
children, yellow, scared half to death, women, men. The train arrives: 200
Ukrainians, forced to do this work, open the doors, and drive all of the
people out of the coaches with leather whips. Then, through a huge loudspeaker
instructions are given: to undress completely, also to give up false
teeth and glasses – some in the barracks, others right in the open air, to tie
one’s shoes together with a little piece of string handed everyone by a
small Jewish boy of 4 years of age, hand in all valuables and money at the
window marked ‘Valuables’, without bond, without receipt. Then the
women and girls go to the hairdresser, who cut off their hair in one or two
strokes, after which it vanishes into huge potato bags ‘to be used for special
submarine equipment, door mats, etc.’, as the SS Unterscharfuehrer
on duty told me. Then the march begins: Right and left, barbed wire, behind,
two dozen Ukrainians with guns. Led by a young girl of striking
beauty they approach. With police Captain Wirth, I stand right before the
death chambers. Completely naked they march by, men, women, girls, babies,
even one-legged persons, all of them naked. In one corner a strong SS
man tells the poor devils, in a strong deep voice: ‘Nothing whatever will
happen to you. All you have to do is to breathe deeply, it strengthens the
lungs; this inhalation is a necessary measure against contagious diseases,
it is a very good disinfectant!’ Asked what was to become of them, he answered:
‘Well, of course, the men will have to work, building streets and
houses. But the women do not have to. If they wish to, they can help in
house or kitchen’. Once more, a little bit of hope for some of these poor
people, enough to make them march on without resistance to the death
chambers. Most of them, though, know everything, the odor has given them
a clear indication of their fate. And then they walk up the little staircase –
and see the truth! Mothers, nurse-maids, with babies at their breasts, naked,
lots of children of all ages, naked too; they hesitate, but they enter the
gas chambers, most of them without a word, pushed by the others behind
them, chased by the whips of the SS men. A Jewess of about 40 years of
age, with eyes like torches, calls down the blood of her children on the
Appendix A: The ‘Statement’
337
heads of their murderers. Five lashes into her face, dealt by the whip of
Police Captain Wirth himself, chase her into the gas chamber. Many of
them say their prayers, others ask: ‘Who will give us the water for our
death?’ (Jewish rite?). Within the chambers, the SS press the people
closely together, Captain Wirth had ordered: ‘Fill them up full’. Naked
men stand on the feet of the others. 700-800 crushed together on 25 square
meters, in 45 cubic meters! The doors are closed. Meanwhile the rest of the
transport, all naked, wait. Somebody says to me: ‘Naked also in winter!
But they can die that way!’ The answer was: ‘Well, that’s just what they
are here for!’ And at that moment I understood why it was called ‘Heckenholt
Foundation’. Heckenholt was the man in charge of the ‘Diesel’ engine,
the exhaust gases of which were to kill these poor devils. SS Unterscharfuehrer
Heckenholt tries to set the Diesel engine moving. But it does
not start! Captain Wirth comes along. It is plain that he is afraid because I
am a witness to this breakdown. Yes, indeed, I see everything and wait.
Everything is registered by my stopwatch. 50 minutes, 70 minutes – the
Diesel engine does not start! The people wait in their gas chambers. In
vain. One can hear them cry. ‘Same as in a synagogue’, says SS Sturmbannführer
Professor Dr. Pfannenstiel, Professor for Public Health at the
University of Marburg/Lahn, holding his ear close to the wooden door.
Captain Wirth, furious, deals the Ukrainian who is helping Heckenholt 11
or 12 lashes in the face with his whip. After 2 hours and 49 minutes, as
registered by my stopwatch, the Diesel engine starts. Up to that moment
the people in the four already filled chambers were alive, 4 times 750 persons
in 4 times 45 cubic meters. Another 25 minutes go by. Many of the
people, it is true, are dead at that point. One can see this through the little
window through which the electric lamp reveals, for a moment, the inside
of the chamber. After 28 minutes only a few are living. After 32 minutes, finally,
all are dead! From the other side, Jewish workers open the wooden
doors. In return for their terrible job, they have been promised their freedom
and a small percentage of the valuables and the money found. Like
stone statues, the dead are still standing, there having been no room to fall
or bend over. Though dead, the families can still be recognized, their
hands still clasped. It is difficult to separate them in order to clear the
chamber for the next load. The bodies are thrown out, blue, wet with sweat
and urine, the legs covered with excrement and menstrual blood. Everywhere
among the others, the bodies of babies and children. But there is not
time! Two dozen workers are engaged in checking the mouths, opening
them by means of iron hooks: ‘Gold to the left, without gold to the right!’
Others check anus and genitals to look for money, diamonds, gold, etc.
Dentists with chisels tear out the gold teeth, bridges or caps. In the center
of everything, Captain Wirth. He is on familiar ground here. He hands me
a large tin full of teeth and says: ‘Estimate for yourself the weight of gold.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
338
This is only from yesterday and the day before yesterday! And you would
not believe what we find here every day! Dollars, diamonds, gold! But look
for yourself!’ Then he led me to a jeweler who was in charge of all these
valuables. After that they took me to one of the managers of the big store of
the west, Kaufhaus des Westens, Berlin, and to a little man whom they
made play the violin, both chiefs of the Jewish worker commands. ‘He is a
captain of the royal and imperial (K.u.K.) Austrian Army, who held the
German Iron Cross 1st Class’, I was told by Hauptsturmfuehrer Obermeyer.
The bodies were then thrown into large ditches of about 100 x 20 x
12 meters, located near the gas chambers. After a few days the bodies
would swell up and the whole contents of the ditch would rise 2-3 meters
high because of the gases that developed in the bodies. After a few more
days swelling would stop and the bodies would collapse. The next day the
ditches were filled again, and covered with 10 centimeters of sand. A little
later, I heard, they constructed grills out of rails and burned the bodies on
them with Diesel oil and gasoline in order to make them disappear. At Belcek
and Treblinka nobody bothered to take anything approaching an exact
count of the persons killed. The figures announced by the BBC are inaccurate.
Actually, about 25,000,000 persons were killed; not only Jews, however,
but especially Poles and Czechoslovakians, too, who were, in the
opinion of the Nazis, of bad stock. Most of them died anonymously. Commissions
of so-called doctors, actually nothing but young SS men in white
coats, rode in limousines through the towns and villages of Poland and
Czechoslovakia to select the old, tubercular and sick people and to cause
them to disappear, shortly afterwards, in the gas chambers. They were the
Poles and Czechs of (category) No. III, who did not deserve to live because
they were unable to work. The Police Captain, Wirth, asked me not to propose
any other kind of gas chamber in Berlin, to leave everything the way
it was. I lied – as I did in each case all the time – that the prussic acid had
already deteriorated in shipping and had become very dangerous, that I
was therefore obliged to bury it. This was done right away.
The next day, Captain Wirth’s car took us to Treblinka, about 120 km
NNE of Warsaw. The installations of this death center differed scarcely
from those at Belcec but they were still larger. There were 8 gas chambers
and whole mountains of clothes and underwear about 35 – 40 meters high.
Then, in our ‘Honor’ a banquet was given, attended by all of the employees
of the institution. The Obersturmbannfuehrer Professor Pfannenstiel MD,
Professor of Hygiene at the University of Marburg/Lahn, made a speech:
‘Your task is a great duty, a duty so useful and so necessary’. To me alone
he talked of this institution in terms of ‘beauty of the task, humane cause’,
and to all of them: ‘Looking at the bodies of these Jews one understands
the greatness of your good work!’ The dinner in itself was rather simple,
but by order of Himmler the employees of this branch received as much as
Appendix A: The ‘Statement’
339
they wanted as far as butter, meat, alcohol, etc. were concerned. When we
left we were offered several kilograms of butter and a large number of bottles
of liqueur. I made the effort of lying, saying that I had enough of everything
from our own farm, so Pfannenstiel took my portion, too.
We left for Warsaw by car. While I waited in vain for a vacant bed I met
Baron von Otter, Secretary of the Swedish Legation. As all the beds were
occupied we spent the night in the corridor of the sleeper. There, with the
facts still fresh in my memory, I told him everything, asking him to report it
to his government and to all the Allies. As he asked for a reference with regard
to myself I gave him, as such, the address of the Superintendent General,
D. Otto Dibelius, Berlin-Lichterfelde West, Bruederweg 2, a friend of
Martin Niemoeller and chief of the Protestant resistance against Nazism.
Some weeks later I met Baron von Otter twice again. He told me that he
had sent a report to the Swedish Government, a report which, according to
him, had a strong influence on the relations between Sweden and Germany.
I was not very successful in my attempt to report everything to the
chief of the Vatican Legation. I was asked whether I was a soldier, and
then was refused an interview. I then sent a detailed report to Dr. Winter,
secretary of the Berlin Episcopate, in order to have him pass it on to the
bishop of Berlin and through him to the Vatican Legation. When I came
out of the Vatican Legation in the Rauchstrasse in Berlin I had a very dangerous
encounter with a police agent who followed me. However, after
some very unpleasant moments I succeeded in giving him the slip.
I have to add, furthermore, that in the beginning of 1944, SS Sturmbannfuehrer
Guenther of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt asked me for very
large supplies of prussic acid for obscure use. The acid was to be delivered
to his business office in Berlin, Kurfuerstenstrasse. I succeeded in making
him believe that this was impossible because there was too much danger
involved. It was a question of several carloads of poisonous acid, enough
to kill a large number of persons, actually millions! He had told me he was
not sure whether, when, for what kind of persons, how and where this poison
was needed. I do not know exactly what were the intentions of the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt and the SD. But later on, I thought of the words
of Goebbels of ‘slamming the door behind them’ should Nazism never succeed.
Maybe they wanted to kill a large part of the German people, maybe
the foreign workers, maybe the prisoners of war – I do not know! Anyhow,
I caused the poison to disappear for disinfection purposes, as soon as it
came in. There was some danger for me in this, but if I had been asked
where the poisonous acid was, I would have answered that it was already
in a state of dangerous deterioration and that therefore I had to use it up
as disinfectant! I am sure that Guenther, the son of the Guenther of the Racial
Theory, had, according to his own words, orders to secure the acid for
the – eventual – extermination of millions of human beings, perhaps also in
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
340
concentration camps. I have here bills for 2,175 kgs, but, actually about
8,500 kgs are involved; enough to kill 8 million people. I had the bills sent
to me in my name; I said this was for reasons of secrecy; however, I did
this in order to be somewhat free in my decisions and to have a better possibility
of making the poisonous acid disappear. I never paid for these
shipments in order to avoid refunding, which would have reminded the SD
of these stocks. The director of Degesch, who had made these shipments,
told me that he had shipped prussic acid in ampoules for the purpose of
killing human beings. On another occasion Guenther consulted me about
the possibility of killing a large number of Jews in the open air in the fortification
trenches of Maria-Theresienstadt. In order to prevent the execution
of this diabolic proposal, I declared that this method was impracticable.
Some time later I heard that the SD had secured, through other channels,
the prussic acid to kill these unfortunate people at Theresienstadt.
The most disgusting camps were not Oranienburg, Dachau, or Belsen, but
Auschwitz (Oswice) and Mauthausen-Gus near Linz/Danube. These are the
places in which millions of people disappeared in gas chambers or gas
chamber-like cars. The method of killing the children was to hold a tampon
with prussic acid under their nose.
I myself witnessed experiments on living persons in concentration
camps being continued until the victim died. Thus, in the concentration
camp for women, Ravensbruck near Fuerstenberg-Mecklenburg, SS
Hauptsturmführer Grundlach MD made such experiments. In my office, I
read many reports of experiments made at Buchenwald, such as the administration
of up to 100 tablets of Pervitine per day. Other experiments –
every time on about 100 – 200 persons – were made with serums and
lymph, etc., till the death of the person. Himmler personally had reserved
for himself the granting of permission to conduct these experiments.
At Oranienburg, I saw how all the prisoners who were there for being
perverts (homosexuals) disappeared in one single day.
I avoided frequent visits to the concentration camps because it was customary,
especially at Mauthausen-Gusen near Linz-Danube, to hang one
or two prisoners in honor of the visitors. At Mauthausen it was customary
to make Jewish workers work in a quarry at great altitude. After a while
the SS on duty would say: ‘Pay attention, in a couple of minutes there will
be an accident’. And, indeed, one or two minutes later, some Jews were
thrown from the cliff and fell dead at our feet. ‘Work accident’ was written
in the files of the dead. Dr. Fritz Krantz, an anti-Nazi SS Hauptsturmfuehrer,
often told me of such events. He condemned them severely and often
published facts about them. The crimes discovered at Belsen, Oranienburg,
etc., are not considerable in comparison with the others committed at
Auschwitz and Mauthausen.
I plan to write a book about my adventures with the Nazis.
Appendix A: The ‘Statement’
341
I am ready to swear to the absolute truth of all my statements.
[signed by hand:] Kurt Gerstein”
It is difficult to believe that anybody intended that this “statement” be
taken seriously. A few specific points are examined here but, on the whole, I
leave the reader to marvel at it. The part printed in the NMT volumes starts at
“Hearing of the massacres” and ends at “one understands the greatness of your
good work!” However the remark about the BBC and the 25 million gas
chamber victims is deleted. The version used by Eichmann’s Jerusalem tribunal
was far more drastically edited.430
The original version of this book presented a very faithful reproduction of
the English translation provided by the Nuremberg staff, a shortcut that I came
to regret. For example, where it says above “Naked also in winter!”, the
French was “aussi en hiver nus!” However in my original version it read “Naked
in winter!”, because that is how the Nuremberg staff rendered it. This
caused a misunderstanding on my part that I passed along to readers; the
events were supposed to have happened in August but the incorrect translation
implied it was winter. Thus, I have attempted here to bring the English text
into closer conformity with the French language original. I have also been able
to use the subsequent work of Henri Roques, which was the basis for a 1985
Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Nantes.
In this book it has been the practice not to give SS ranks since these would
not be understood by most readers; an Oberscharführer sounds just as important
as an Obergruppenführer. Approximate contemporaneous U.S. Army
equivalents have been used instead (these correspondences are given in Appendix
B). However in presenting the Gerstein statement this practice has not
been adhered to on account of the document’s lack of both descriptive and orthographic
consistency. For example Pfannenstiel is identified as both an
“Obersturmbannfuehrer” (Lieutenant Colonel) and as a “Sturmbannführer”
(Major). In the translation of the Nuremberg staff he became a “Sturmfuehrer”.
We see both the correct “Reichssicherheitshauptamt” and the incorrect
“ReichsSicherheitsHauptamt” and, below, “Reichs-Sicherheitshauptamt”. Below
we also see both “Niemöller” and “Niemoeller”. It is difficult to believe
that a German could have followed such practices in a statement written out
voluntarily.
No two people could possibly agree on how such deranged material should
be presented in English. Do not assume that an obvious error is mine. As for
the very long paragraphs, that is the way the document came. For the sake of
the reader I even inserted a couple paragraph breaks that were not there.
It may seem impossible to squeeze 700 or 800 people into a chamber 20 or
25 meters square and 1.9 meters high, but it is possible if one uses a scrap
press, but in that case the victims would be literally, just as the document as-
430 Rassinier (1964), 93-106.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
342
serts, “crushed” and gassing would be quite superfluous.
It is of passing interest that in the original document “Warsaw” is not referred
to via the German or French names for the city, but via the Polish
“Warsawa”.
As Rassinier has put it, if it is not true that Hitler made the said visit to
Lublin-Majdanek,431 if it is not true that 700 to 800 people can be contained in
a gas chamber of 25 square meters, and if it is not true that the Germans
gassed 25 million people then, since the document contains little else, we
should ask, what does it contain that is true?
The role of Baron von Otter, a young Swedish diplomat during the war,
was scrutinized in the postwar period. No confirmation of the Gerstein-Otter
meetings had come from any Swedish source during the war, i.e., before the
document we have examined was created. Moreover, everybody knows that
there was no friction in Sweden’s relationship with Germany over the allegations
attributed to Gerstein, or anything similar.
In the immediate postwar period the Allies were eager to organize support
for their atrocity charges. Having the Gerstein document in hand, but no Gerstein,
they approached Baron Lagerfelt, a Swedish diplomat in London, to ask
him to press von Otter to confirm the Gerstein story. Von Otter was then stationed
in Helsinki, and Lagerfelt was a personal friend. These communications
took place in July 1945 and Lagerfelt’s success was only partial. He was
able to compose an aide-mémoire for the Swedish Foreign Office, dated August
7, 1945, confirming the substance of what the Gerstein statement says
about the meetings with von Otter, but he did not identify von Otter. The aidemémoire
identifies only “a foreign diplomat of a neutral country”, and the
country is not even named.432 Von Otter, in 1945, evidently refused to allow
his name to be used to confirm the story in an official document. However
Lagerfelt was covered, in submitting the document, by his private correspondence
with von Otter.
Von Otter’s wish for anonymity in a 1945 report to his own Foreign Office
raises problems. First, there was a document, our 1553-PS, that named him, so
the maneuver was futile. Perhaps at that early point von Otter did not grasp
that a document naming him was to get into the public record. That view was
understandable; the Nuremberg trials were months off and 1553-PS had not
yet become notorious.
The second problem in interpreting von Otter’s wish for anonymity is that
the Gerstein statement presents him as having told Gerstein, at a subsequent
meeting in 1942, that he had reported the allegations to the Swedish Foreign
Office. Why then the wish for anonymity in 1945? A more basic question:
why was a 1945 report to the Foreign Office needed at all, if von Otter had re-
431 Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (April 1953), 177-185, esp. note 39a.
432 Roques, 312.
Appendix A: The ‘Statement’
343
ported the matter in 1942? We shall see.
The Gerstein matter followed von Otter around in the postwar period. The
Swedish Foreign Ministry wrote to the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine
in Paris, on Nov. 10, 1949, attaching a copy of the aide-mémoire
of August 7, 1945, apparently to a letter naming von Otter. On Nov. 22, 1952
Dibelius, as Lutheran Bishop of Berlin, wrote to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte
in Munich, confirming that he not only heard the story of the gassings directly
from Gerstein, but had also learned from von Otter, “a few days” after the
August 1942 train ride from Warsaw, of the encounter with Gerstein and the
contents of his story.433
Von Otter does not seem to have confirmed the Gerstein story in a public
forum until 1966, during an interview with Pierre Joffroy, author of a book on
Gerstein. Von Otter then confirmed the meetings with Gerstein and the associated
story, but was very vague on details. He also said that he never transmitted
the Gerstein story to Dibelius, as Gerstein had supposedly asked, although
he encountered Dibelius by chance, in Berlin, in the autumn of 1942.
(We see that at least one distinguished citizen lied! I think the liar on this point
was Dibelius.) On May 29, 1981, von Otter testified in a French trial similarly.
In March 1983 von Otter stated, in a television interview, that his alleged 1942
report of the Gerstein encounter to the Swedish Foreign Office was only oral,
not written. Moreover, he never made a personal memorandum of the encounter.
434 That resolves the puzzle of the quest for anonymity in 1945, and the
need for a report in 1945. There was no 1942 report to the Swedish Foreign
Office. Add that to the 25 million etc., as a falsehood in the document.
As for Dibelius, although he had been a leading member of Hugenberg’s
Nazi linked DNVP before 1933, he became associated with the Niemöller led
church opposition to the Nazis after 1933. Niemöller was incarcerated in
1935, but Dibelius was allowed to go free and then he vanished into the obscurity
of a minor post in a church welfare organization, being made Bishop
after the war ended in 1945. It is not correct to characterize Dibelius as an active
member of the wartime resistance, as the Gerstein statements do, thereby
inflating his significance well beyond what the facts warrant.435
In the relevant reports of Cesare Orsenigo, the Papal Nuncio in Berlin, that
have been published by the Vatican, there is of course no reference to Gerstein.
See Appendix E.
A German version of the “Gerstein statement”, of essentially the same content,
was produced about a year after Gerstein’s disappearance. His wife said
that Gerstein had, unknown to her at the time, deposited it among their be-
433 Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (April 1953), 177-185, esp. p. 181 and note 10.
434 Roques, 309-313. On the 1983 television interview Roques cites Alain Decaux, L’Histoire en
Question – 2.
435 Mosse, 245. New York Times (Feb. 1, 1967), 39.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
344
longings at the Hotel Mohren in Rottweil. Frau Gerstein’s discovery of such a
document in the dark days of 1946 naturally buttressed her status as the wife
of Saint Gerstein rather than the wife of ordinary SS officer Gerstein, an enviable
position for a German at the time. The German version of the “Gerstein
statement” is typewritten and unsigned, and reproduced by Roques.436
What is presented above is what would normally be considered the “Gerstein
statement” but the statements allegedly (according to document 1553-
PS) deposited by Gerstein in various languages in the spring of 1945 actually
continue:
“Kurt Gerstein, additional statement.
In my flat in Berlin W 35, Buelowstrasse 47, second floor, left, I was
surrounded by a circle of anti-Nazis. Here are some of their names:
Major Lutz Reis, now at Hamburg, Glasurit-Works.
Dr. Felix Buss, chief legal counsel to Telefunken, Berlin, SW 11,
Hallesches Ufer 30.
Director Alex Menne, Hamburg, Glasurit-Works.
Pastor Buchholz, chaplain of the Pleetzensee prison, who accompanied
the officers of July 20,1944 to the scaffold. These officers as well as my
good friend, Pastor Martin Niemöller, smoked the cigarettes and cigars I
got into the prison for them.
Pastor Mochalski, who replaced Pastor Martin Niemöller at the Annon
Church at Dahlem.
Dorothea Schulz, secretary of Pastor Niemöller.
Mrs. Arndt, secretary of Pastor Martin Niemoeller at Dachau.
Emil Nieuwenhuizen and his friend Hendrik, from Phillips-Eyndhoven,
deportees whom I had met at Church and who, for a long time already
were my guests twice or three times a week. They had meals at my place,
and listened to the wireless.
Director Haueisen, Berlin NW 7, Mittelstrasse, Francke printing works.
Herbert Scharkowsky, editor, Scherl-Press.
Captain Nebelthau and his wife, now at Kirchentellinsfurt-
Wurttemberg.
Dr. Hermann Ehlers, trustee of the Niemoeller anti-Nazi resistance
Church.
Dr. Ebbe Elss, same as Dr. Ehlers.
Other references: General Superintendent D. Otto Dibelius, ‘chief of
the Church’ resistance against Nazism.
Pastor Rehling, Hagen-Westphalia, active in the Westphalia Church
anti-Nazi resistance movement.
436 Roques, 229-241.
Appendix A: The ‘Statement’
345
Praeses Dr. Koch, Bad Oeynhausen, likewise.
Baron von Huene, anti-Nazi professor of the University of Tuebingen.
Bernhard J. Goedecker, Fabrikant, Munich, Tizianstrasse, anti-Nazi.
Director Franz Bäuerle, Munich, Siemensstrasse 17, anti-Nazi.
The Catholic Priest, Valpertz, Hagen-Westphalia.
Pastor Otto Wehr, Sarrebruck.
Pastors Schlaeger and Bittkau, Neuruppin near Berlin.
August Franz and his entire family, great anti-Nazi, Sarrebruck, now at
Talheim-Wurttemberg.
Doctor Straub, Metzingen-Wurttemberg, and family.
[unsigned]”
With the exception of Niemöller and Dibelius, I recognize none of the
names, on the list of “anti-Nazis”, in connection with any known wartime activities,
anti-Nazi or otherwise. The only one I recognize in any connection is
Dr. Hermann Ehlers, who became a leading CDU politician after the war, and
who died in 1954. It may be that the person identified as “Praeses Dr. Koch”
is supposed to be Dr. Karl Koch, a Protestant theologian who was a member,
along with Dibelius, of the DNVP in the Weimar days, and who died in 1951.
The next part of document 1553-PS is a letter to Gerstein from DEGESCH
regarding the preservability of the Zyklon and the possibilities for future
shipments in the face of bombing attacks which had destroyed a plant. The letter
would be worth reproducing here only if it, too, were in French (it is in
German). The next part of the document is a short handwritten note:
“According to the annexed notes, the prussic acid was requested by the
Reichs-Sicherheitshauptamt, Berlin W 35, Kurfürstendamm, by order of SS
Sturmbannführer Guenther. I was in charge of this particular job and I
performed my duties very faithfully, so that once the acid had arrived at
Oranienburg and Auschwitz, I could have the boxes disappear into the disinfection
rooms. Thus it was possible to prevent a misuse of the acid. In
order to avoid drawing the attention of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt to
the presence – or, as I should say, to the absence – of these stocks, I never
paid for these shipments, the bills for which went to the same address, that
is, my own. In this manner, it was possible to have the acid disappear as
soon as it had arrived. If the absence of the acid had been noticed I would
have answered: It is a mistake made by the local disinfection office which
did not know, and should not have known, either, the real destination; or I
would have said: The acid had become putrefied and it was impossible to
keep it any longer.
[signed:] Gerstein”
The final part of the document is the note in English:
“Bergassessor a.D. Domicil permanent:
Kurt Gerstein Tuebingen/Neckar, Gartenstr. 24
Diplomingenieur 26 April 1945
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
346
My report is intressant for Secret Service. The Things, I have seen, no
more than 4-5 others have seen, and these others were nazies. Many of responsables
of Belsen, Buchenwald, Maidanek, Oswice, Mauthausen, Dachau,
etc. were men of my service, daily I have seen them in my double position.
1) SS Fuehrungs-Hauptamt, D, Sanitary-service and
2) Reichsarzt SS and Polizei, Berlin
I am in a situation to say the names and crimes of in reality responsables
of this things, and I am ready to give the material for this accusation
in World-Tribunal.
My-self, cordial friend of reverend Martin Niemöller and his family
(now at Leoni/Starnberger See/Bavaria!) I was after two prisons and concentration-
camp agent of ‘confessional-church,’ SS-Obersturmführer and
compartment-chief in SS-Führungshauptamt and of Reichsarzt SS and Polizei,
a dangerous position!
The things I have seen nobody has seen. 1942 August, I have made my
reports for Svenska legation in Berlin. I am ready and in situation to say
all my observations to your Secret-Service.
The secretary of Svenska legation Berlin, now at Stockholm Baron von
Otter is ready to be wittnes of my relation of 1942 of all this crueltys – I
propose to demand me for this informations.
Reference: Msr. Niemoeller [reverend Martin Niemoeller’s women]
Leoni/Starnberger See/München Bavaria)
[signed:] Gerstein
Nota: Your army has not find
Mr. Niemoeller
Mr. Stalin junior
Mr. Schuschnigg
at Dachau.
They are deported, nobody now, who they are. Please do not publish my
report bevore exactement now: Niemoeller is liberated or dead.
Gerstein”
The remainder of document 1553-PS is the collection of Zyklon invoices. I
have made no corrections in the above note in “English”. Clearly, it was composed
by a person who knew something of the French language. “Mr. Stalin
junior” is no doubt a reference to Stalin’s son, who was a POW in Germany.
Schuschnigg was the Austrian Chancellor at the time of the Anschluss; he and
Niemöller had been detained at Dachau for some time. Rassinier has provided
an interesting discussion of Niemöller.437
437 Rassinier (1964), 35-39.
347
Appendix B: SS Ranks
The SS ranks and their approximate U.S. Army equivalents are as follows:
Table 12: SS ranks and their approximate
US Army equivalents
U.S. ARMY SS
Private SS Mann
Private First Class Sturmmann
Corporal Rottenführer
Sergeant Unterscharführer
Staff Sergeant Scharführer
Technical Sergeant Oberscharführer
Master Sergeant Hauptscharführer
First Sergeant Sturmscharführer
Second Lieutenant Untersturmführer
First Lieutenant Obersturmführer
Captain Hauptsturmführer
Major Sturmbannführer
Lieutenant Colonel Obersturmbannführer
Colonel Standartenführer
Colonel Oberführer
Brigadier General Brigadeführer
Lieutenant General Gruppenführer
General Obergruppenführer
General of the Army Oberstgruppenführer
One can exercise a certain amount of choice on this subject. The three
grades of Gruppenführer are sometimes equated with Major General, Lieutenant
General and General, respectively. An Oberführer is sometimes described
as a “Senior Colonel” or a Brigadier General; in the latter case a Brigadeführer
is equated with a Major General.
These ranks had their origin in the early days when the SS was something
of an offshoot of the SA, which had similar ranks.

349
Appendix C: Deportation of Jews
The six booklets which are the Netherlands Red Cross report entitled
Auschwitz are actually about the approximately 100 transports of Jews which
left the Netherlands, the first leaving on July 15, 1942, and the last on September
13, 1944. Auschwitz was the immediate destination of about twothirds
of the deported Jews, although large numbers were also sent to Sobibor,
and some were sent to Theresienstadt, Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbrück. The
Netherlands Red Cross (NRC) data is exhaustive in regard to all matters pertaining
to the transports while they were in the Netherlands; the dates of departure,
the destinations of the transports, and the numbers of people in each
transport, with breakdowns of the numbers according to sex and age. The authors
assume that all Jews whom they are unable to account for, after the Jews
reached their immediate destination, were gassed or perished in some other
manner. Thus they conclude that a majority of the approximately 100,000
Jews deported from the Netherlands perished, since, obviously, their study is
very short on data regarding what happened at the camps when these people
reached them. There are, however, exceptions to those statements; there is
data regarding the evacuation of Auschwitz in 1945 and there are other bits,
e.g., data from the Monowitz hospital. The most significant data, however, is
what is said to be the registration and death record from the Birkenau men’s
camp for the period July 16 to August 19, 1942, which is presented in volume
two of the report. Because the NRC also provides detailed data regarding the
Jewish transports from Westerbork (transit camp in the Netherlands) during
this period, a comparison can be made, and the comparison (as Reitlinger admits)
contradicts the claim that a majority, or even a significant number, of the
Jews were immediately gassed on arrival at Auschwitz. There were thirteen
transports from Westerbork in July and August, 1942, and they were composed
as follows:
Table 13: Men transported from Westerbork in July and August, 1942
BREAK-DOWN BY AGE
DATE TOTAL 0-12 13-15 16-17 18-35 36-50 51-60 61+
15-Jul 663 41 9 85 356 157 11 4
16-Jul 640 32 7 41 285 193 62 20
21-Jul 511 62 14 54 317 61 2 1
24-Jul 573 51 6 83 340 75 11 7
27-Jul 542 60 17 90 315 55 4 1
31-Jul 540 47 13 93 326 56 5
3-Aug 520 72 21 31 255 139 1 1
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
350
BREAK-DOWN BY AGE
DATE TOTAL 0-12 13-15 16-17 18-35 36-50 51-60 61+
7-Aug 510 67 28 21 172 168 48 6
10-Aug 288 18 8 19 93 97 45 8
14-Aug 238 43 14 5 36 68 72
17-Aug 364 36 8 11 247 60 2
21-Aug 493 56 12 49 269 97 9 1
24-Aug 351 26 5 19 192 78 23 8
TOTAL 6233 611 162 601 3,203 1,304 295 57
Table 14: Women transported from Westerbork in July and August, 1942
BREAK-DOWN BY AGE
DATE TOTAL 0-12 13-15 16-17 18-35 36-50 51-60 61+
15-Jul 472 36 3 38 318 74 3
16-Jul 255 28 6 27 161 32 1
21-Jul 420 53 8 36 268 54 1
24-Jul 427 52 3 42 273 51 6
27-Jul 468 55 13 50 291 55 4
31-Jul 467 65 10 51 296 44 1
3-Aug 493 85 17 29 232 129 1
7-Aug 477 74 21 26 167 175 13 1
10-Aug 271 19 8 12 99 109 23 1
14-Aug 267 53 19 3 43 100 49
17-Aug 142 18 6 12 49 53 4
21-Aug 515 58 16 36 253 132 19 1
24-Aug 168 26 8 6 63 39 18 8
Total 4,842 622 138 368 2,513 1,047 142 12
Table 15: Total deportations from Westerbork, July – August 1942
DATE TOTAL MEN WOMEN
WITHOUT CHILDREN WITH CHILDREN TO 15
YEARS
15-Jul 1,135 663 472 63
16-Jul 895 640 255 42
21-Jul 931 511 420 83
24-Jul 1,000 573 427 75
27-Jul 1,010 542 468 85
31-Jul 1,007 540 467 81
3-Aug 1,013 520 493 104
7-Aug 987 510 477 96
10-Aug 559 288 271 35
Appendix C: Deportation of Jews
351
DATE TOTAL MEN WOMEN
WITHOUT CHILDREN WITH CHILDREN TO 15
YEARS
14-Aug 505 238 267 52
17-Aug 506 364 142 26
21-Aug 1,008 493 515 85
24-Aug 519 351 168 39
Total 11,075 6,233 4,842 866
The data said to be from the Birkenau men’s camp is now presented, in order
to be compared with the preceding Westerbork data. Column 1, below,
gives the times (morning, M, and evening, E) of the roll-calls at Birkenau,
column 2 gives the date of the roll call, column 3 gives the total number
counted in the roll call, column 4 gives the number who died between roll
calls, column 5 gives the number of new arrivals registered between roll calls,
and column 6 gives the number lost between roll-calls on account of release or
escape. In column 7 are comments on the origins of the various transports to
the camps, and the transports from Westerbork are indicated. Pithiviers,
Drancy, and Beaune la Rolande were assembly points in France for Jewish
transports and Mechelen had the same function in Belgium. The transports
from Slovakia were probably Jewish transports, but the composition of those
from Poland is rather problematical. Where “various nationalities” (var. nat.)
are indicated, the transports were most probably composed predominantly of
political prisoners and ordinary criminals. Column 8 gives registration numbers
assigned to the people indicated in column 5.
Table 16: Birkenau registration number assignments, July 1942
DATE TOTAL DIED NEW LOST ORIGINS NUMBERS
M 16246 40 22
E 16-Jul 16277 100 131
M 16848 30 601 Westerbork 15-Jul 47087-47687
E 17-Jul 16950 83 185 var. nat. 47688-47842
M 17902 25 977 Westerbork 16-Jul
Slovakia
47843-48493
48494-48819
E
18-Jul
17846 101 46 1 48820-48901
M 17852 18 24
E 19-Jul 17770 82
var. nat.
M 18526 53 809 Pithiviers 17-Jul 48902-49670
E 20-Jul 18478 122 74
M 18450 28
E 21-Jul 18361 110 21
var. nat. 49671-49795
M 18963 18 620 Pithiviers 19-Jul 49796-50270
E 22-Jul 18847 125 9 var. nat. 50271-50405
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
352
M 19312 14 479 Westerbork 50406-50884
E 23-Jul 19319 127 134 Poland 50885-51002
M 19717 13 411 Drancy 20-Jul 51003-51413
E 24-Jul 19635 173 91 Poland etc. 51414-51503
M 20415 11 791 Drancy 22-Jul
var. nat.
51504-52102
52103-52115
E
25-Jul
20278 208 73 2 Slovakia
var. nat.
52116-52332
52333-52367
M 20767 26 515 Westerbork 24-Jul 52368-52882
E 26-Jul 20696 71
M 21038 28 370 Pithiviers 24-Jul 52883-53252
E 27-Jul 20939 167 69 1 53253-53325
M 20914 24 1
E 28-Jul 20713 205 4
var. nat.
M 21163 23 473 Westerbork 27-Jul 53326-53790
E 29-Jul 21094 100 31 var. nat. 53791-53829
M 21327 16 249 Pithiviers 27-Jul 53830-54078
E 30-Jul 21236 91
M 21220 16
E 31-Jul 21183 113 76 var. nat. 54079-54154
Table 17: Birkenau registration number assignments, August 1942
DATE TOTAL DIED NEW LOST ORIGINS NUMBERS
M 21421 32 270 Pithiviers 29-Jul 54155-54424
E 1-Aug 21489 98 166 Slovakia 54425-54590
M 21953 31 495 Westerbork 31-Jul
var. nat.
54591-55071
55072-55085
E
2-Aug
21882 71
M 22534 41 693 Pithiviers 31-Jul 55086-55778
E 3-Aug 22478 107 51 var. nat. 55779-55840
M 22443 35
E 4-Aug 22354 100 11
M 22796 38 480 var. nat
Westerbork 3-Aug
55841-55907
55908-56334
E
5-Aug
22781 82 67 var. nat 56335-56387
M 22759 44 22 var. nat 56388-56409
E 6-Aug 23127 78 446 Mechelen 4-Aug 56410-56855
M 23079 48
E 7-Aug 23065 93 79 var. nat. 56856-56991
M 8-Aug 23383 55 373 Beaune la Rolande
5-Aug 56992-57308
Appendix C: Deportation of Jews
353
DATE TOTAL DIED NEW LOST ORIGINS NUMBERS
E 23353 121 91 var. nat.? 57309-57399
M 23598 70 315 Westerbork 7-Aug 57400-57714
E 9-Aug 23500 98
M 23483 80 63 var. nat. 57715-57777
E 10-Aug 23392 219 128 Pithiviers 7-Aug 57778-57905
M 23336 56
E 11-Aug 23109 232 5 var. nat. 57906-57910
M 23204 69 164 Westerbork 10-Aug 57911-58074
E 12-Aug 23010 205 11 var. nat. 58075-58085
M 23106 44 140 Drancy 10-Aug? 58086-58225
E 13-Aug 23199 213 306 Mechelen 11-Aug? 58226-58531
M 23088 111
E 14-Aug 22984 206 102 ??? 58532-58633
M 23073 63 152 Drancy 12-Aug 58634-58785
E 15-Aug 23166 177 270 ??? 58786-59055
M 23222 109 165 Westerbork 14-Aug 59056-59220
E 16-Aug 23097 134 9 var. nat. 59221-59229
M 23085 127 115 Drancy 14-Aug 59230-59344
E 17-Aug 23183 157 255 Mechelen 15-Aug 59345-59599
M 23096 92 5 var. nat. 59600-59604
E 18-Aug 23112 390 87 var. nat. 59605-59691
M 19-Aug 23112 319 Westerbork 17-Aug 59692-60010
E 22925 220 33 var. nat. 60011-60043
TOTALS (JUL. & AUG.) 6507 13173 5
To give an example of interpretation of these figures, we see that between
the evening of July 16 and the morning of July 17, 1942, the Westerbork
transport of July 15 arrived at Auschwitz, and that 601 men from this transport
were registered in the Birkenau men’s camp and assigned registration numbers
47087-47687. During this period 30 men also died in the camp, so the net
change in the roll-call figure is 601-30 = 16848-16277 = 571. Note that the
601 men from the Westerbork transport of July 15 are approximately the total
men that started out on that transport if one subtracts boys through 15 years of
age. Since the table of Westerbork deportations has a separate column for
“Women with children to 15 years,” it is most probable that such children
went with the women.
We have taken the liberty of making two corrections of obvious errors in
the Birkenau men’s camp data. The NRC report specified that 43 died between
the evening of August 5 and 6, but a figure of 44 deaths brings agreement
with the roll-call figures and the total of column 4. Also, the NRC report
specifies that the Mechelen transport of August 15 received registration numArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
354
bers 59345-59699, an obvious error which has been corrected.
The increments in registration numbers in column 8 do not agree in all
cases with the numbers reported in column 5. Indeed, this is the case with the
majority of transports which arrived between July 17 and July 24, and it is
also true of the transports which received registration numbers 56856-57308.
However, in all other cases the registration numbers in column 8 agree with
the figures in column 5.
When boys through 15 years of age are subtracted from the total of men in
the various deportations from Westerbork, the resulting figures are in good
general agreement with the numbers reported registered in the Birkenau men’s
camp although, for reasons that one can probably guess, the agreement is not
perfect. There were probably small numbers who either joined the incoming
transports, and are not listed as such, and also numbers who were not accepted
into Birkenau for various reasons and sent to another destination. The largest
unaccounted differences are in connection with the Westerbork transports of
August 7 and August 10, where about 100 men are missing in each case in the
registration at Birkenau.
This data, plus the one volume of the Birkenau Death Book (which is also
discussed in vol. 1 of the NRC reports, except that it is referred to as the
Auschwitz Death Book there), confirm the WRB report claim that there was a
great epidemic at Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, forcing work there to
stop. We know of no data covering a substantially later period which reports
comparably high death rates at Auschwitz although, as explained in the text,
the death rate there was always deplorably high from 1942 on.438
438 The Kalendarium, published in 1964 in German, says that of 1500 people in a transport that
arrived at Auschwitz on April 16, 1944, from the camp in Drancy, France, a certain number
of the men were registered as inmates and the others gassed. Many years ago Robert Faurisson
pointed out that, according to the deportation lists, “the others” included Simone Veil,
who as Faurisson wrote was President of the European Parliament. Later I noticed that the
English translation of the Kalendarium, published in 1990 (D. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle
1939-1945), engages in a little bit of revisionism on this, and now says some of the women
were registered. A document from the International Tracing Service, Arolsen, Germany, is
cited.
355
Appendix D: The Belsen Trial
Josef Kramer’s two statements as they appear in Phillips, ed., Trial of Josef
Kramer:
“Statement Of Josef Kramer
I was born on 10th November, 1906, at Munich. I am married and have
three children. I volunteered for the SS in 1932; I had no training whatsoever,
and was detailed for duty in a concentration camp. I did not volunteer
for this specific kind of duty. When war broke out the SS was taken
over by the Army and I volunteered for active service, as I would have preferred
a fighting job, but I was told that I would have to do the job for
which I was detailed. My first rank was Unterscharführer and my promotion
to Scharführer and Oberscharführer was in 1934 and 1935. I cannot
remember the dates.
Dachau. In 1936 I was in the office of the concentration camp at Dachau.
The Kommandant of that camp was Standartenführer Loritz. There
were only German prisoners in the camp. I cannot be absolutely certain,
but as far as I can remember, they were all German. The SS Unit was
Wachttruppe, Ober-Bayern. There were only political prisoners, criminals
and anti-socials in this camp. Anti-socials are people like beggars and
gypsies and people who do not want to work. No death sentences were carried
out in the camp. The only cases in which people were killed was when
they were trying to escape, in which case the guard had orders to shoot. In
the case of any shootings, whilst prisoners were trying to escape, investigations
were made by the Police. I left this camp at the beginning of June
1937.
Sachsenhausen. From Dachau I went to Sachsenhausen Concentration
Camp. I had been promoted to commissioned rank, outside the establishment,
to Untersturmführer. When I went to Sachsenhausen I was on the establishment
there. The prisoners at Sachsenhausen consisted of the same
three types as at the previous camp. The Kommandant of the camp was
Standartenführer Baranowsky. There were no death sentences carried out
in this camp. I was in charge of the mail department and therefore did not
know everything that was going on, but have heard occasionally that people
have been shot while trying to escape.
Mauthausen. My next concentration camp was Mauthausen in Austria.
This camp was just being built when I arrived. The Kommandant was
Standartenführer Ziereis. Here I had the same rank as before. Whilst in
this camp I was promoted to Obersturmführer. I think this was in January,
1939. I was a sort of adjutant in charge of the office and at the disposal of
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
356
the Kommandant. The prisoners were all Germans and of the same three
types as I have described before. The last type, i.e. rogues and vagabonds,
were mainly Austrians, as there seemed to have been many when Austria
was taken over by Germany. There were between 1500 and 2000 prisoners
and they were all men. This includes Jewish prisoners. There was sufficient
room in the camp for all prisoners when I was there. None of the prisoners
knew at the time they arrived when they were going to leave. There were
only a few who had a sentence like three months or six months, and the
biggest part of the prisoners were there for an undefined period. Solitary
confinement and solitary confinement with bread and water, or extra work
on Sundays, were the sentences awarded for breaches of discipline. The
prisoners were never beaten, nor do I know of any case of shooting. There
were prison-breaks, but I was never present when somebody tried to escape.
I was in the office and the telephone would ring and one of the
guards would report that one of the prisoners had tried to escape. It was
my duty then to go out and see where the prisoner worked and how it was
possible for him to escape. We then notified the police and gave particulars
of the person who had escaped. The instructions were that no prisoners
had to go beyond a certain border-line. If a prisoner did, the guard had to
challenge him three times with the words, ‘Halt, or I shoot,’ then first fire a
shot in the air and only the second shot to kill. It is difficult to say how
many shootings of this kind took place whilst I was at the camp because it
is such a long time ago. I think that 10 to 15 people were shot, but I cannot
say exactly. Every case of shooting had to be reported to the authorities at
Mauthausen and at Linz. The nearest big town carried out an investigation.
If someone was shot at, or shot whilst escaping, the guard was immediately
put under a sort of open arrest, but none was ever convicted of wrongful
shooting. Most of the people who were shot in this manner were criminals
or vagabonds, the reason being that the larger part of the inmates of the
camp belonged to that category.
The deaths that occurred were mostly from natural causes. When somebody
died his relatives and the authorities, who had sent them to the concentration
camp, had to be notified. There was one very severe winter
when the deaths rose, but otherwise there were very few deaths. The prisoners
were kept in wooden huts with three-tier beds, 250 to 300 in a hut.
Whilst I was at this camp, Obergruppenführer Eike, who was in charge of
all concentration camps, visited the camp three or four times, but I cannot
remember the dates. There were no war prisoners in this camp. A few more
political prisoners came in, but there were no great increases. Their nationality
was mostly Austrian. There was no member of the former Austrian
Government or of Schusnigg’s Party either in Dachau or Mauthausen. I
was in charge of the office and I dealt with the incoming and the outgoing
mail on behalf of the Kommandant. I would read the mail to him and he
Appendix D: The Belsen Trial
357
would give me his orders, which I would pass on to the various subcommanders.
The powers of the Kommandant, with regard to punishment
of prisoners, were not exactly laid down, but I think he could give up to 21
days. He was the only one who had disciplinary powers. I do not know the
number of prisoners when I left in 1940, but the camp was full. The
strength was recorded every day, but I cannot remember now what the
number was. Some of the prisoners were sent away to other camps. These
transfers were made not according to the type of prisoners but according
to the type of work we wanted done, and according to their trades. Whilst I
was there, some people were released back to freedom. I cannot remember
whether they were political prisoners or others, but I remember that on
Hitler’s birthday, 20th April, 1940, I saw 50 prisoners in the courtyard
who were gong to be released.
Auschwitz. I went to Auschwitz in May 1940. I lived outside the camp
in a village with my family. I had an office in the camp where I worked
during the day. The Kommandant of the camp was Obersturmführer Höss.
I was adjutant. I do not know what the number of the staff was when I
came. The biggest part of the prisoners at Auschwitz were political prisoners
of Polish nationality. There was very little there when I arrived, as the
camp had just been built. All that was there when I left, four months after
my arrival, were stone buildings which had been built by the Poles. There
had been men, women and cattle living in the wooden buildings. The stone
buildings were empty. The former inhabitants of the wooden buildings
were shifted. When I first started, the camp staff consisted of only myself
and one clerk, and there was only one SS Company for guard there. I cannot
remember the name of the company, but they were referred to as
‘Guards Company Concentration Camp Auschwitz.’ This company had no
‘Feldposte’ number. The highest ranking officer was the camp Kommandant,
after him came the Kommandant of the Guards Company, Obersturmführer
Plorin. There were no officers, apart from the company commander.
The platoons were commanded by warrant officers. There were
three platoons per company and between 30 and 40 men in a platoon. This
varied as required. Beside the camp Kommandant, myself, the clerk and
the SS Company, there was nobody there. A second clerk came later. There
were 40 or 50 SS men who did not belong to the Guards Company, who
had administrative duties in the camp, such as in charge of the kitchen and
of the barracks, etc.
I do not know the number of prisoners in that camp. It may have been
between 3000 and 4000, but I would not like to commit myself. Untersturmführer
Meyer was in charge of administration. I cannot remember his
Christian name as I always kept well away from the others. The reason for
that was that I had my family there. There was a doctor there and I think
his name was Potau. He came from Upper Silesia. He died later on, but I
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
358
cannot recollect this very well. There was another Untersturmführer, by
the name of Meier (or Meyer), who was in charge of the prisoners. I think
his Christian name was Franz. The Kommandant issued orders to the SS
officer in charge of the guard. His orders came from the next highest SS
formation. This formation was SS Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt, Berlin,
Amtsgruppe D, Berlin, Oranienburg.
When prisoners arrived we were notified by the Gestapo in Katowice.
There were cases when prisoners came in who were brought by ordinary
policemen, and they also brought files relating to them. The came mostly in
batches. They arrived by train at Auschwitz station and were collected by
car from there. The prisoners were all men. There were no questionings by
the Gestapo in the camp. All the questioning was done before the prisoners
arrived. There was one official of the police on the camp staff who dealt
with criminals against whom proceedings had been taken before. I cannot
remember his name. He only stayed a short while and was then exchanged
for another one. When the prisoners arrived, some were healthy and some
were not, but none showed any sign of ill-treatment or malnutrition. I think
that during the time I was there, there were no cells for solitary confinement,
but, as I say, the camp was only in its initial stages. The same rules
as to German political and German prisoners were applied to the Poles
and, later, to the Russians. There was no difference. One of the stone buildings
was reserved for a hospital. This stone building did not differ in any
way from the other buildings. Beside the one doctor I have mentioned,
there was another doctor supplied from the interned people, among whom
there were many doctors and medical students. It was not within my power
to give any orders to the medical staff as the doctors came immediately under
the Kommandant. The rate of deaths was roughly one per cent, in the
summer or possibly one and a half per cent, this was a weekly average.
These were natural deaths and it depended upon what was wrong with
them when they came in. Reports were made by the camp doctor and I, as
adjutant, saw them. I received an average of 30 of these reports per week.
The prisoners who had died were burnt. There were prisoners working in
the crematorium under orders of guards. The ashes were sent to the relatives
if they required them.
There were very few releases from this camp whilst I was there. These
releases were authorized only by the Gestapo in Berlin, for political prisoners;
or by the police authorities for ordinary criminals. The Gestapo organization
who dealt with the camp was the Gestapo Departmental Headquarters
at Katowice. Whether there was another Headquarters between
Katowice and the Central HQ in Berlin, I do not know. The Gestapo men
were either civilians in plain clothes, or uniforms, with no distinguishing
marks. Some of them wore an SD badge. The SD and the Gestapo were two
different things. I depended upon the SS for my orders. So did the KomAppendix
D: The Belsen Trial
359
mandant of the camp. The Gestapo, however, dealt with the political prisoners
within the camp. All corporal punishment had to be authorized from
Berlin. The camp authorities could not authorize any corporal punishments.
In the beginning, corporal punishment was administered by the
guards, but, later on, this was forbidden by Berlin, and the prisoners had
to administer the punishment themselves. I do not know why this order
came form Berlin. It was signed by Gruppenführer Glücks and came from
Oranienburg, Berlin.
Dachau. Between 15th and 20th November, 1940, I went back to Dachau.
So far I had always been employed in the office, first as clerk, then
as adjutant, and now I should get to know the work immediately connected
with the prisoners. I was to be trained to become a Lagerführer. My transfer
was authorized by the Central SS organization in Berlin. When I arrived
in Dachau the camp was in perfect running order and consisted of 30
or 32 wooden buildings, all told, for housing the prisoners, including the
hospital, etc. The number of prisoners in one barrack varied between 300
and 450. The total number of prisoners was between 13,000 and 14,000.
There were three companies of SS (120 to 150 men in each company) to
guard them, and the administrative personnel consisted of about 100 or
120. The officers of the Guards Companies were not professional SS. They
were people who had been called up from trades or professions, put in the
Army, and then detailed to SS. They were then from the SS detailed to their
particular duties, e.g. concentration camps; they did not volunteer for
these particular duties. They received their orders from the Kommandant
who, in turn, received his orders from Berlin, Oranienburg. The Kommandant’s
name was SS Obersturmführer Piorkowski. The next in rank after
the Kommandant was the Lagerführer, Hauptsturmführer Eill. I do not remember
his Christian name. There was one officer in charge of administration,
Haupsturmführer Wagner. Then there were three company commanders
whose names I cannot remember.
The prisoners were all men and consisted of criminals and political
prisoners as before, and a new type, namely Poles and Russians, who had
been prisoners of war and who were detailed for certain work, e.g. farming
jobs, and who had committed minor crimes such as trying to escape or refusing
to work, and they were therefore sent to the concentration camp.
These prisoners of war were interned because they had committed these
crimes. At this time there were only prisoners from the Eastern front,
namely Poles and Russians. It has been pointed out to me that the war in
Russia only broke out in June, 1941, whereas I left again in April, 1941. If
this is so I must have mixed it up with Auschwitz. I was only there as a sort
of trainee and had very little to do with the organization of the place. I
cannot remember any prison-breaks. The death rate I cannot remember
because it had nothing to do with me, but I know it was a very good camp.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
360
There was a furniture factory and prisoners worked as carpenters and
joiners, also as tailors and cobblers. Prisoners were only allowed out outside
the camp in exceptional cases, such as for gardening. There were
about forty to fifty new intakes per week whilst I was there. There were few
transfers and very few releases. The prisoners came from the Gestapo in
Munich. If they were criminals they came from the Police, also in Munich.
Parties, organized by the camp administration, who visited the camp and
going round the camp, were a regular feature about two or three times a
week. These parties were formed mostly of prominent guests from abroad,
statesmen and politicians from countries allied to Germany. No highranking
German officials ever visited the camp.
Natzweiler, April 1941, to 10th or 15th May 1944. My appointment at
Natzweiler was Lagerführer and in October, 1942 I was appointed camp
Kommandant. I had been promoted to the rank of Hauptsturmführer before
I was appointed Kommandant. When I arrived at the camp the Kommandant
was Sturmbannführer Huettig. The officer in charge of administration
was Obersturmführer Faschingbauer. The doctor was Obersturmführer
Eiserle. the OC Guards Company was Obersturmführer Peter. The administrative
personnel consisted of 20 to begin with, and 70 to 75 in the end.
The camp is a very small one. There were no prisoners when I arrived as
the camp had just been built. When I left in May 1944, there were 2500 to
3000 prisoners, comprising the three usual categories: political, antisocials,
criminals and, later, Polish and Russian prisoners of war who had
committed minor crimes or tried to escape or refused to work. There were
also a few hundred prisoners form Luxembourg. I cannot quite say for certain
whether there were any French prisoners there or not. The prisoners
arrive with papers and their nationality was on these papers, but I cannot
remember any details because I did not go through the papers myself.
None of these people came in the camp direct; they all came from other
concentration camps. I can, therefore, not say what they were in for, but as
far as I know they were of the same three types as I have described before.
I cannot remember that, at any rate, prisoners have been lent for experiments
to a doctor in Strassburg. I cannot remember Professor Pickard
of Strassburg. It is quite impossible that experiments of any kind on prisoners
have been carried out without my knowledge, as in both my appointments
as Lagerführer and later as Lager Kommandant, I would have
known. Obergruppenführer Glücks from the Ministry in Berlin came to inspect
the camp twice in the beginning, once in the summer of 1941 and
once in the spring of 1942. The visit of Gruppenführer Pohl took place a
the end of April or the beginning of May 1944. The only things that Glücks
enquired into were how many political prisoners, how many anti-socials
there were. Foreigners figured as political prisoners. He did not ask for
their nationalities. I do not know of any British prisoners having been
Appendix D: The Belsen Trial
361
there. I have never seen a document which shows British as the nationality
of any prisoners in the camp. There were 15 wooden barracks in the camp
and up to 250 prisoners to each of these barracks. The camp was on top of
the hill and my office was in the camp boundary. I lived in the village at the
bottom of the hill with my family. The officers were all married and lived
with their families in the village. One change in the personnel which I can
remember was that Obersturmführer Peter, who commanded the company
of guards, was transferred and replaced by an Obersturmführer called
Meier. I do not know any of the Rottenführer who were there. There was a
crematorium at the camp. the death rate depended upon the season. There
were about 7 to 8 per week in the good season and about 15 to 18 in the
bad season. They all died natural deaths. The same procedure of informing
the relatives and the authority that had sent them to the camp was followed
in this camp as in the others described before.
There was only one medical officer on the staff (Obersturmführer Eiserle),
and four or five medical orderlies (German). There were doctors and
medical students among the prisoners who assisted the MO [Medical Officer].
Many persons of over 50 years died of natural causes, such as heart
diseases. Compared with other camps, the death rate in this camp was very
low. I used to go into the doctor’s surgery and he explained the various
things, like medical supplies, he had there, but as it was in Latin I did not
really know what it was all about. He never complained about lack of
medical supplies. There were two barracks set aside for the hospital, one
for the people who were only weak and the other one as a real hospital.
There were 60 to 75 beds in the real hospital. The surgeon had facilities
for carrying out minor operations but not major operations. For these
people were sent to Strassburg. A document was signed when a person
went there and it was signed again when he returned, and the death rate
was shown in the books of the camp.
There were 20 to 25 prison-breaks whilst I was there, and ten of the
prisoners who tried to escape were shot. Eight or nine were recaptured
and brought back and the others got away. The eight or nine who were recaptured
got between 14 and 21 days’ detention, according to their age
and physical condition. In four or five cases out of twenty, they were either
whipped or beaten. The culprit got 10 or 15 lashes in each case. This was
supervised by the Lagerführer and the camp doctor. When I was Lagerführer
I supervised this myself. Generally speaking, when corporal punishment
was administered, the number of lashes given varied between 5
and 25. The number was laid down in the order coming from Berlin.
Twenty-five was the maximum. The doctor had to be present when corporal
punishment was administered. I cannot recollect where a prisoner was unable
to stand his punishment and fainted. If such a case had arisen, it
would have been the doctor’s duty to interfere as that was why he was
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
362
there. The punishment was administered with ordinary wooden sticks, 3 or
4 feet long and about as thick as my thumb. the sticks were made of solid
wood, as you find them in the woods around the camp. The punishment was
administered by another prisoner, who was chosen at random, and in the
following manner: the prisoner was made to bend down over a table, and
the lashes were given on his backside, without his clothes having been removed
previously. I never had any difficulties with prisoners who had to
administer this punishment. They were given the order and they complied
with it. If they had refused to comply with the order I could not have punished
them for this refusal. The orders from Berlin were that so many
lashes had to be administered by another prisoner, but the order did not
say what should be done if one of the prisoners refused to beat one of his
comrades.
There were no set rules for what crimes corporal punishment could be
administered. It was up to the Kommandant to apply to Berlin for authority
for corporal punishment to be administered. The application to Berlin had
to say what kind of offense the prisoner had committed and what punishment
he had been given already for offenses committed previously. This
letter had to be signed by the Kommandant. The sort of offenses for which I
would have applied to Berlin for authority for corporal punishment to be
given was: ‘This prisoner has already three or four times stolen food form
his fellow prisoners’ or for untidiness or for disobedience or for attacking
a guard. The first thing that happened when somebody broke out of the
camp and was brought back, was that the Criminal Investigation Department
made investigation to find out whether he had committed any crimes
whilst at large, and then he was brought before the Kommandant without
any trial and the Kommandant ordered punishment. Every man who tried
to escape had to be reported to Berlin and likewise had to be reported
when he was brought back. The Kommandant could give him 21 days’ detention
without referring to higher authority, but could give corporal punishment
only with authority from Berlin. Every member of the guard was
armed with a rifle and there were machine-guns on the turrets. Whips and
sticks were forbidden. The guards just carried rifles.
When the prisoners came in in a bunch they were all put in the same
block. Eventually, they were sorted out into three groups, politicals, antisocials
and criminals, but never according to their nationalities. There
were no strict rules as to that point, but it developed like this as we went
along. The three above-mentioned categories were kept apart only in their
living quarters. They worked together, fed together and could talk to each
other. In the beginning the prisoners worked only in the camp itself. Later
we opened a quarry nearby. Other work that was done was that airplane
engines were taken to pieces and those parts were salvaged which could be
used again. Fifteen to twenty prisoners were released while I was there.
Appendix D: The Belsen Trial
363
The order for releases came from Berlin. I do not know why the order
came. They were all political prisoners and of German nationality.
The camp was surrounded by barbed wire – 3 meters high. There were
towers at the corners of the camp with machine-guns. There was one row
of barbed wire where the guards patrolled and then another row of barbed
wire. The wire was not electrified in the beginning because there was no
current, but later, when current was available, this was done, in the spring
of 1943. I was Kommandant then. Two months before I left the camp eight
or nine dogs arrived, who were used to assist the guard. They were controlled
by the guards. I remember two incidents where prisoners tried to
escape from the quarry, but I cannot remember that they were shot. During
the whole of my three years I had only two shootings in the quarry. The
other eight prisoners who tried to escape, whom I have already mentioned,
tired to escape from the camp itself and not from the quarry.
The only hanging that took place was in the summer of 1943 and it was
done on orders from Berlin. Two Gestapo agents brought a prisoner to the
camp and showed me an order, signed by somebody in Berlin, saying that
this man had to be delivered to my camp and had to be hanged. I cannot
remember by whom this order was signed. I therefore detailed two prisoners
to carry out the execution. A scaffold was built in the camp and the
execution was carried out in my presence. The people present were: the
camp doctor (Obersturmführer Eiserle), who certified that the cause of
death was hanging, the two Gestapo agents who had brought the prisoner,
the two prisoners who carried out the execution, and myself. I cannot remember
the name of the prisoner; I think his nationality was Russian. I
cannot remember his name because he never appeared in my books. He
was only delivered to be hanged. It is quite impossible that any other executions
took place whilst I was camp Kommandant. The other prisoners of
the camp were not paraded for this execution. No authorized shootings or
any other executions took place at the camp on orders from Berlin. I have
never heard of any special, narrow cells where men were hanged by their
arms. There were no special buildings for prisoners who were under arrest,
and no solitary confinement cells. It is quite impossible that any execution
by hanging prisoners by their arms was carried out without my
knowledge. The only prison we had was a block which was separated by
barbed wire from the rest and this one was used for people who had contravened
camp discipline.
All the prisoners in this camp were men. I have never heard of a prisoner
called Fritz Knoll at this camp. He was not a foreman, but he many
have been one of the prisoners. I cannot remember his name. If someone
had died on a working party it would have been reported to the office and
the office would have reported to me, but I cannot remember such an incident
having occurred. Every instance of a prisoner dying at work or
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
364
through any other cause would be reported to the office, by the office to the
Criminal Investigation official and by him to the Kommandant. My command
and control over all happenings in the camp at Natzweiler was so
complete, and my staff had such definite orders, that the execution of any
prisoners without my knowledge during the time when I was Kommandant
is an utter impossibility.
Only SS personnel were allowed to inspect the camps. Nobody else was
allowed anywhere near it. This included army officers who were forbidden
to enter any concentration camp. One could only go into a concentration
camp with authority from the SS General Commanding in Berlin. SD personnel
were not allowed in the camp either, without authority from Berlin.
With the exception of Gruppenführer Glücks, who came from the Ministry
in Berlin, and Obergruppenführer Pohl, nobody visited the camp for the
two years I commanded it. Apart from these visits, I was answerable to no
one, except on paper, to Berlin. I cannot remember any particulars of the
visit of Obergruppenführer Pohl at the beginning of May 1944. He came to
inspect the camp and just had a good look round.
During the time I was Lagerführer I received the Kriegsverdienstkreuz
(2nd Class) in the spring of 1943. There was no particular reason for this
decoration. It was mainly for being Lagerführer for two years in that
camp. I was put forward for the decoration by the Kommandant. I have
also got the Kriegsverdienstkreuz (1st Class), which I received in January
1945. During the whole of the time I was at Natzweiler I was responsible
for the camp. When I left I handed over to my successor. He was Sturmbahnführer
Hartjenstein. The handing-over proceedings took place in my
office, and I handed over the whole camp to him. The books were not
handed over formally to my successor, they were not mentioned.
Auschwitz, 10th to 15th May 1944, till 29th November 1944. Auschwitz
was an enormous camp to which many smaller camps in the vicinity belonged.
As the responsibility for the whole camp could not be taken by one
man, it was split, and I was put in charge of one part of the camp. I was
Kommandant of that part, but as I came under the supreme commander of
the whole camp, who was my superior officer, my duties were those of a
Lagerführer, though my appointment was called Kommandant. I had under
me in my part of the camp the hospital and the agricultural camp, which
was an enormous camp and contained many thousand acres. The number
of prisoners under my immediate control varied between 15,000 and
16,000 and 35,000 and 40,000, comprising male and female.
There were between 350 and 500 deaths a week. The death rate was
higher among the men, the reason being that the influx from the working
camp consisted mainly of sick people. When I speak of the death rate in
Auschwitz, I mean that all these people died of natural causes, that is to
say either from illness or old age. The death rate was slightly above norAppendix
D: The Belsen Trial
365
mal, due to the fact that I had a camp with sick people who came from
other parts of the camp. The only reason I can see for the higher death
rate, not only at Auschwitz but at all concentration camps in comparison
with civil prisons, was that prisoners had to work, whereas in civil prisons
they had not to work.
In Auschwitz the prisoners went out to work at 5 a.m. in the summer
and returned at 8 p.m., sometimes ever later. They worked seven days a
week, but on Sundays they returned at 1, 2 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
The work was of an agricultural nature and all the work there was done by
prisoners. The whole camp contained about 90,000 to 100,000 prisoners,
but this is only a rough estimate. My superior officer, and the Kommandant
of the whole camp, was Obersturmbannführer Höss. There were men,
women and children in the camp. The majority of prisoners under my immediate
control were Easterners, i.e. Poles and Russians. I have no reason
to believe that there were any prisoners of war among them, although there
might have been without my knowing it. As far as I can remember there
were no British internees. I think the British prisoners were in the concentration
camp at Sachsenhausen and in another camp near Hamburg called
Neuengamme. It is possible that there were some French people in my
camp, but I cannot say for certain. There were more women then men prisoners.
I had three companies of SS under me to guard the camp. Some of the
guards were men of the Waffen SS, and there were women employed by the
SS as wardresses. There were roughly 420 male SS guards and about 40 to
50 women guards. The men and women prisoners who were outside the
camp in the agricultural part were invariably guarded by men. The women
guards only guarded the prisoners within the compound. There were about
10 to 14 doctors for the whole camp, out of which two were detailed to my
particular part of the camp. There was a hospital in each part of the camp,
but the biggest was in my part. I cannot say exactly how many beds there
were in the hospital; this depended on how close you could put the beds
together.
Prisoners were housed in wooden buildings with three-tier beds. The
men were separated from the women and the children were with their
mothers. Married people were separated. There were 150 buildings all
told, men and women camps together; about 80 or 90 were for men and
about 60 for women; 25 or 30 buildings were set aside for the hospitals.
The camp was only being started, and it was planned to enlarge it considerably.
All prisoners who died were cremated. There was no sort of service
held when they died. They were just burnt. The cremations were carried
out by prisoners. All I had to do when a prisoner died was to inform Obersturmbannführer
Höss and he would deal with it. I had no administration
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
366
in Auschwitz. All the prisoners were known by numbers only. I had nothing
to do with meting out punishment in Auschwitz; that was all done through
Höss. When I came to Auschwitz there was no corporal punishment for
women, but I have heard it mentioned, and it was talked about in the camp,
that there had been corporal punishment for women before, and that it had
been abolished. The only way in which I was informed corporal punishment
for women was not allowed, was that conversation in the camp to
which I have referred. I cannot remember with whom this conversation
took place. If a case would have arisen in which a woman would have
committed one of the crimes for which a man would have been beaten, I
would have pointed out to the women guards that corporal punishment
could not be administered to women. The only authority on which I could
have placed this was that conversation shortly after my arrival. Even if
corporal punishment for women would have been allowed, I would never
have put it into practice, as such a thing is inconceivable to me. The punishment
administered to women, if they had committed any of the crimes
for which men were beaten, was that they were transferred to another
working party where they had a dirtier type of work or longer hours.
When a request for labor came from Berlin, the prisoners had to parade
before the doctor. I was very often present at these parades, but not always.
The examination took place by the prisoners filing by the doctor
without undressing. Then the decision whether a man or a woman was fit
enough to be sent to work was made. If, however, somebody had to be examined
to ascertain whether he was fit to receive corporal punishment, a
proper medical examination was carried out. The reason why no proper
medical examination could be carried out in the case of detailing people
for labor was that the requests ran into thousands and the doctor would
have been busy for days. This method of choosing people for work was the
normal method applied in all concentration camps. There was nothing unusual
about it.
There were four or five cases of people trying to escape whilst I was
there. These attempts were made separately. Some of these prisoners got
away. No prisoners were flogged; there were no executions, shootings or
hangings in my part. I went through the camp frequently on inspections.
The doctor alone was responsible for certifying the cause of death if a
prisoner died. The doctors changed continuously. One of these doctors was
Hauptsturmführer Mengele. I carried out inspections of the bodies of people
who had died through natural causes in my capacity as Kommandant
when I was wandering round the camp. Whoever died during the day was
put into a special building called the mortuary, and they were carried to
the crematorium every evening by lorry. they were loaded on the lorry and
off the lorry by prisoners. They were stripped by the prisoners of their
clothes in the crematorium before being cremated. The clothes were
Appendix D: The Belsen Trial
367
cleaned and were re-issued where the people had not died of infectious
diseases. During my inspections I never saw prisoners who had died
through physical violence. When a prisoner died, a doctor had to certify
the time of death, the cause and the details of the disease. A doctor signed
a certificate and sent it to the Central Camp Office. These certificates did
not go through my hands. The two doctors worked daily from 8 o’clock in
the morning until 8 or 9 at night. All efforts were made by these doctors to
keep the prisoners alive. Medical supplies and invigorating drugs were applied.
Two different doctors took charge of my part of the camp every day.
I remember one very well, because he had been the longest period in my
particular part of the camp and he had also served under my predecessor,
Hartjenstein. I do not know how long he had been there. His name was
Hauptsturmführer Mengele, as mentioned before.
The camp wire was electrified and the dogs were only used outside the
camp compound to guard prisoners who were working on agricultural
jobs. It was never reported to me that prisoners had to be treated for dog
bites. No interrogations were carried out in the camps, and I have never
done any interrogating at all whilst I was Kommandant. I sometimes sent
people away for interrogation to the Criminal Investigation Officer, in
which case they went to the Central Camp Office and were brought back
after the interrogation had been completed. I do not know who did the interrogating.
I have heard of the allegations of former prisoners in Auschwitz referring
to a gas chamber there, the mass executions and whippings, the cruelty
of the guards employed and that all this took place either in my presence
or with my knowledge. All I can say to all this is that it is untrue from
beginning to end.
Belsen, 1st December 1944 till 15th April 1945. On 29th November
1944, I went to Oranienburg, Berlin, to report to Gruppenführer Glücks.
His appointment was Chef der Amtsgruppe D, which means that he was the
officer in charge of the organization of all concentration camps within the
Reich. He was responsible to Obergruppenführer Pohl, whose appointment
was Chef der Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamtes der SS (head of the Administration
Department of the SS at the Ministry): equivalent to a General
in the Army. He said to me: ‘Kramer, you are going to Belsen as Kommandant.
At Belsen there are, at the moment, a lot of Jewish prisoners who will
eventually be exchanged.’ It was later, when I was in Belsen, that I learned
that these Jewish prisoners were being exchanged against German nationals
abroad. The first exchange took place between 5th and 15th December
1944, and was carried out under the personal supervision of an official
who came from Berlin for that purpose. I cannot remember his name. His
rank was ‘Regierungs-Rat.’ The first transport contained about 1300 to
1400 prisoners. Glücks said to me at the interview in Berlin: ‘It is intended
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
368
to turn Belsen into a camp for sick prisoners. This camp will take all sick
prisoners and internees from all concentration camps in Northern and
North-Western Germany, and also all sick persons among these prisoners
who are working either in firms or with industrial firms.’ He was referring
to Arbeitseinsatzstellen, which means prisoners who have been allotted to
peasants or industrial firms, coal mines, and the quarries for labor and for
whom special camps have been erected on the premises. Responsibility for
feeding and for accommodation is entirely the responsibility of the firm.
Responsibility for administration remained with the parent concentration
camp. He said: ‘There are considerable numbers of prisoners working with
industrial firms who are sick or physically unfit to do the work they are detailed
for. All these prisoners will be drafted into Belsen Camp. It puts an
unnecessary burden upon the industrial firms concerned and therefore
these prisoners must be transferred. Which prisoners and how many Belsen
is eventually going to hold I cannot tell you at the moment, because that
will have to be worked out as we go along. The general rule is to be that
every prisoner who through illness is absent from his work for more than
10 or 14 days will be transferred to Belsen. If and when these prisoners recover
in Belsen, they will either be formed into new detachments and sent
out to new jobs or returned to their old work, whichever may be more expedient.
You see that this is going to be a very big task for you. I suggest
that you go to Belsen now to look at the camp and see how you get along.
If you want any help you can either come back to Berlin or write.’
This is where the duty conversation came to an end. Glücks then asked
me how my wife and children were, and I enquired into the well-being of
his family. I also asked whether it would be possible when I took over Belsen
Camp to move my family there. He told me that I would have to go to
Belsen and have a look. If I could find a suitable house I should write to
him and he would authorize the move of my household. This conversation
took place between Gruppenführer Glücks and myself, there was nobody
else present. These were the only instructions I received and I did not ask
for any more. I did not think I would require any more instructions and
was quite satisfied with my orders.
After the interview with Glücks I spoke to three officers whom I knew
personally. They were: Standartenführer Maurer (he was in charge of the
allocation of prisoners to camps and for labor); Hauptsturmführer Sommer
(he worked in Maurer’s department); and Sturmbannführer Burger (he
was the man who supervised the administration in the various concentration
camps). I did not have any conversation on duty matters with either of
the three above-named people. They were friends of mine, and as I happened
to be in the house, I went to their various offices to say ‘Hello.’ The
leading doctor was a Standartenführer Dr. Lolling. He was the MO in
charge of all concentration camps. I cannot remember any names of other
Appendix D: The Belsen Trial
369
people, but I can remember these four names because they either came to
visit the camps or I saw their names on various letters coming from the
Ministry.
I then travelled to Belsen, where I was received by Obersturmführer
Schaaf. He was the officer in charge of administration. The next morning I
went to the office and met Sturmbannführer Haas, the Kommandant, who
knew that I as arriving from Berlin to take over complete charge of Belsen.
I asked him how many prisoners the camp contained, and he said,
‘Roughly 15,000.’ He said that it was not much use to discuss matters in
the office and suggested a tour through the camp. On that tour he pointed
out changes and improvements which he still wanted to make. The camp
was about 1-1/2 kilometres long and between 300 and 350 metres wide.
There were roughly 60 barracks, including accommodation for guards and
stores; 40 to 45 were for the accommodation of the prisoners. The prisoners
were made up of men, women and children; families were allowed to
live together; otherwise men were separated from women. Six buildings in
the men’s camp, three in the family camp, and two in the women’s camp
served as hospitals. There was a crematorium in the camp.
I do not know of what nationality the prisoners were when I arrived,
because there were no files or papers of any kind in the camp. It was impossible
for me to know what kind of prisoners there were as they had been
sent to Belsen because they were ill, from all concentration camps over the
country. Many of them had lost their identification marks, and as there
were no records it was absolutely impossible to tell who was who. I started
to keep my own records of the prisoners, but these records were all destroyed
on orders which I received from Berlin about the end of March. I
do not remember who signed these orders.
The personnel consisted of one Guard Company SS. The OC of the
company was Hauptscharführer Meyer. He came from somewhere near
Hanover. He was of average height, about 1.m 70; he wore spectacles, had
hardly any hair and was about 50. Then there was Haupsturmführer Vogler.
He was the officer in charge of administration who took over from
Schaaf, whom I mentioned before as officer in charge of administration on
my arrival. The officer in charge of the Criminal Department was Untersturmführer
Frericks. The Lagerführer (Obersturmführer Stresse) was
transferred a few days after my arrival, and I was without a Lagerführer
for over two months and had to do the job myself with only one NCO as assistant,
whose appointment was Rapportführer; he was Oberscharführer
Reddhaser. The MO was Sturmbannführer Schnabel. A Hauptscharführer
acted as dentist. He was later on promoted Untersturmführer. His name
was Linsmeier. There were no other officers and I had no Adjutant. There
were 60 to 70 NCOs, 20 to 25 of whom were in the Guards SS Company
and the others employed on administrative duties. One of the NCOs emArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
370
ployed was the NCO who was Office Clerk to the Officer in charge of Administration.
He was Unterscharführer Kuckertz. There was another senior
NCO in my office. His name was Unterscharführer Rang. He acted as
Untersturmführer and Adjutant. Other NCOs whom I remember are Oberscharführer
Hilmer (NCO Administration); Unterscharführer Lademacher
(also NCO Administration); Unterscharführer Wille (also NCO Administration);
and Unterscharführer Müller, who was in charge of the food
stores. When I took over Belsen there were six officers, including myself. I
had no senior NCOs. When I took over there were three women on the
staff. I cannot remember their names at the moment.
The death rate when I arrived was between 40 and 60 a week. When I
entered the camp the Lagerführer had to report to me and had to say:
‘There are so many in the camp; so many died yesterday; which leaves so
many.’ On my arrival a book was kept in which these figures were entered,
but was later dispensed with. This book I had taken over from my predecessor.
It was kept by the acting Lagerführer in his office. There was also
another book in which the strength was recorded. The acting Lagerführer
held a parade every morning to count the prisoners. On this parade every
Blockführer reported the strength of his unit and the number of deaths that
had occurred the previous day, and the Rapportführer added up the
strength of the various blocks on a sheet of paper, making a grand total.
This report included the number of deaths that had occurred the previous
day. There were approximately 40 Blockführer on parade every day.
In January I took over a new camp, adjoining the old camp, in which
there were 40 to 50 new blocks. I did not get any more staff when I took
this camp over. Only later, when camps in Silesia were evacuated, guards
arrived with prisoners, thus putting up the strength of personnel. I was not
always informed when transports of prisoners arrived; especially transports
of prisoners evacuated from Silesia arrived without warning. There
were transports with only 100 or 200 people, and others with 1500, 2000,
2500, etc. I had food reserves in the camp, and when a new batch of prisoners
arrived I had to fall back on these reserves until I had reported the
new strength and thus got additional food for the higher number of prisoners.
There was no regular food transport; the railway should have brought
the food whenever there was a train available. I am unable to say how
many prisoners I had after this month because it was my orders that I had
to sent out prisoners for work as fast as possible. The incoming prisoners
were therefore balanced by those being sent out for work and the figures
fluctuated every day. Every prisoner who was fit to work was sent out with
working parties (‘Arbeitseinsatz’) to industrial firms. The other prisoners
worked only inside the camp and for the maintenance of the camp.
On 1st December when I took over there were roughly 15,000 people in
the camp; roughly 200 died in December; on 1st January there were
Appendix D: The Belsen Trial
371
roughly 17,000 people in the camp; 600 died in January; on 1st February
there were 22,000 prisoners in the camp. From the 15th February onwards
I am unable to say how many prisoners I had as no more books were kept,
as this proved utterly impossible in view of the transports streaming in
from camps in Silesia which were being evacuated and, as I have already
said, the records which I had maintained I destroyed in March.
I do not know the number of deaths which occurred in this period at all,
but the conditions in Belsen got worse from the middle of February till the
middle of April 1945, when the Allies came. I inspected the camp daily during
this period and was fully aware of the conditions and the great number
of people who were dying. The death rate during the months of February,
March and April gradually mounted until it reached 400 or 500 a day. This
figure was due to the fact that if people were healthy I had to send them out
on working parties and only retain the sick and dying. I was notified by the
Stationmaster that a transport had arrived and I would have to collect the
prisoners. The transports arriving were checked in by the guards only by
numbers and not by names. About twice a week food was indented for from
local depots and a return sent to the Ministry in Berlin, which was based
on the figures given by the guards, who checked the people on entering the
camp.
All prisoners received three meals a day. I cannot tell what the daily ration
was as this was laid down by the food depot and was standardized. I
never checked up on the rations from the depots, but I made sure that each
prisoner had one litre of vegetable stew for the main meal, and in the
morning the prisoner had coffee and bread, if available, and for the evening
meal coffee and bread, again if available, and cheese or sausage. If
the prisoners had worked on this diet it would have been insufficient for
them to survive, but as they did not work I think it was enough to keep them
alive. I thought they could stand this diet for about six weeks, and after six
weeks I was hoping to get some more food. The rations described above
were the normal rations in any concentration camp at that time. The main
point on which the food deteriorated was bread, as this was lacking entirely
for two or three days running several times. It was absolutely impossible
for me to procure enough bread to feed the number of prisoners I
had. In the early days the bread had been supplied by local bakeries at
Belsen. Later there were so many prisoners in the camp that the local bakeries
could not supply the required quantity any longer, and I sent out lorries
to Hanover and other places to fetch bread, but even then I was not
able to get half the bread I required to feed prisoners on normal rations.
Apart from bread, the rations were never cut down. Flour was supplied in
lieu of bread and was employed in making meals. It turned out, however,
that had we made bread of this flour the death rate would not have been so
high. I went to the depot in Celle and then to the next higher authority in
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
372
Hanover and put them in the picture as to what was going on in Belsen. I
also pointed out to them that if a catastrophe was going to happen, I would
not only disclose the facts but also make them responsible. I cannot remember
whom I saw at either of these places. I have never applied to Berlin
in these matters because they could not have helped me in any way.
This was entirely a matter for the ration people in Celle and in Hanover.
My visits to these depots resulted in extra rations of potatoes and turnips
arriving some time later.
I remember one case of cannibalism quite well. It was reported to me
that a prisoner had entered the mortuary and that parts of one body were
missing. I put a guard on the dead bodies at night and that guard arrested
a man the same night who had approached a dead body. This man was arrested,
but before he could be interrogated next morning he hanged himself.
Whether there were more cases of cannibalism I cannot tell, but I put
a guard on the mortuary from that night onwards. That guard consisted of
prisoners. I thought that the prisoners would guard the bodies against
other prisoners. Whether they did or did not do so I cannot tell. The mortuary
was not always in the same building, as the prisoners fluctuated to
such a great extent. I had to shift the accommodation continuously and
therefore the building detailed as a mortuary was not always the same. If
changes took place, this building was cleaned by the prisoners and used
for their accommodation the next day.
The camp doctor reported sick and was replaced by Dr. Klein at the
middle of February. Roughly, on 1st March another MO arrived. His name
was Hauptsturmführer Horstmann. Two days before the Allies arrived
Horstmann left with the troops and only Dr. Klein remained. Apart from
those two (Klein and Horstmann), there were no SS doctors in the camp. At
the end of January Dr. Lolling, from the Ministry in Berlin, arrived on an
inspection tour. I pointed out to him that if, as I was told in Berlin, Belsen
was gong to be a camp for sick people. I needed more doctors. He said that
there were none available at the moment, but that as soon as he had some
he would send them. Dr. Lolling inspected the camp and was fully aware of
the conditions prevailing there at the time when he inspected it. He spent a
whole day walking through the camp with Dr. Schnabel and inspected it
thoroughly. The measures taken were that Dr. Lolling took a list of requirements
with him and said he would see to it that we got the necessary
medical supplies. Even though I was Kommandant I did not know anything
about the supply of medical equipment and medical stores. This I left entirely
to the MO. All medical supplies were asked for direct from Berlin
(Dr. Lolling’s department). This is all I know about this matter.
During my stay at Belsen there were 15 to 20 prison-breaks. Some of
the prisoners trying to escape were shot whilst trying to escape. I do not
know how many. Towards the end of December an order arrived from BerAppendix
D: The Belsen Trial
373
lin forbidding corporal punishment altogether. From that moment onwards
no corporal punishment was meted out.
Between 20th and 28th February the MO notified me that spotted fever
had broken out in the camp. This fact was certified by a Bacteriological Institute
in Hanover. I therefore closed the camp and sent a report to Berlin.
The answer from Berlin was that I had to keep the camp open to receive
transports coming from the East, fever or no fever. The second time I wrote
to Berlin was between 1st and 10th March, when I sent a complete report
on the conditions prevailing in the camp. These two occasions were the
only occasions on which I ever made any representations to higher authority.
These two letters were addressed to the Verwaltungsgruppe B in Berlin.
I did not go to Berlin myself as I was instructed at my interview in November,
because that would have taken three of four days and there was
nobody to carry on in my absence.
As far as I can remember, Gruppenführer Pohl inspected Belsen Camp
about 20th March. He came with one other officer. I conducted Pohl right
through the camp and pointed out conditions as they were. He did not
come because of the letter I had written. He came on a routine inspection
tour – ‘Just to have a look at the camp.’ Whether the letter I had written to
the Central Office in Berlin was mentioned during our conversations I
cannot tell. I pointed out conditions to him, and he said that something
must be done. The first measure he suggested was to close the camp and
put no more people into it. I suggested two measures to Pohl to cope with
the situation: (a) no further transports to come in; and (b) the exchange of
the Jews in the camp to take place immediately. The result of this was that
he dictated a letter from my office, addressed to Berlin, saying that the exchange
of Jewish prisoners had to take place immediately. This exchange
did eventually take place during the last days of March, I do not know
again where these prisoners were to be exchanged, but they left Belsen going
to Theresienstadt. Between 6000 and 7000 people were sent away to be
exchanged (three trainloads). These 6000 or 7000 constituted the entire
number of Jewish prisoners who were to be exchanged. They were transported
in three train-loads, each train consisting of 45 to 50 trucks. I had
orders to send off three consignments on three different days. Each time I
detailed a few guards – I cannot remember how many – and there was an
NCO in charge of each train, probably a Scharführer, but I cannot remember.
I do not know to whom these NCOs had to report at the other end. All
I knew was I had to send off three train-loads. I never saw these NCOs
whom I sent away, again.
I pointed out to Pohl that I wanted more beds and more blankets, and
he agreed that in this matter, like as in the other matters, immediate help
was required. The doctor and the officer in charge of administration also
spoke to Pohl. The officer in charge of Administration pointed out his diffiArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
374
culties in obtaining food, whereas the doctor was satisfied with the position
as he had just received a new consignment of medical stores. Pohl held his
appointment in Berlin for roughly two years. Glücks was there much
longer as he had been there already under Eike. Eike was later sent to the
Western Front and afterwards to the Eastern Front, where he was killed.
I do not know what nationality any of the prisoners were of at Belsen as
there were no papers sent with them and the only check was done by numbers.
I therefore cannot tell whether there were any British subjects among
the prisoners, but it is possible that there were. I have never heard of a
prisoner called Keith Meyer, who was a British subject.
The female staff increased in number the same as the male staff, as
women guards arrived with women transports from the east. All women in
the camp were under my command, the same as the men. Twenty to 22
wardresses were still at Belsen when the Allies arrived, and approximately
26,000 women prisoners. Unless I received complaints from the prisoners
themselves I had no means of ascertaining what treatment was meted out
by the female guards, but I had complete confidence in those guards. The
only criticism I had to make was that they were a bit too familiar with the
female prisoners. I had the same confidence in the male guards. They were
100 per cent correct and I have never received any complaints from the
prisoners. In February or March – I cannot remember the exact date –
Oberaufseherin Volkenrath arrived and was put in charge of the women
guards. I had complete confidence in her.
There was a crematorium in the camp and as long as coke was available
all dead bodies were cremated. When there was no more coke available
they were buried in mass graves. I have never seen a Red Cross official
in any of the camps I had been to. I cannot tell why not. If a Red Cross
official had called I would have rung up Berlin immediately to ask whether
he was permitted to enter the camp, as nobody could enter the camp without
permission from Berlin. What the answer would have been I cannot
tell.
There were no standing orders from Berlin for any of the concentration
camps I have been to as to: (a) the space allotted to individual prisoners;
(b) sanitation, or (c) working conditions. This was completely left to the
discretion of the Kommandant. I can remember no standing orders or instructions
from Berlin except with regard to visitors to the camp and to
punishments. In all other matters the Kommandant had complete discretion.
When Belsen Camp was eventually taken over by the Allies I was
quite satisfied that I had done all I possibly could under the circumstances
to remedy the conditions in the camp.
Further Statement of Josef Kramer
1. I relinquished command of Struthof-Natzweiler in May 1944, and
Appendix D: The Belsen Trial
375
handed over to Sturmbannführer Hartjenstein. At this time and for at least
a year previously Buck was commanding Schirmeck, but there was no official
connection between Schirmeck and Struthof. There was a Gestapo officer
attached to me during my period at Struthof; his name was Wochner
and he was sent by the Gestapo at Stuttgart. According to the district allocation
Struthof should have been, in my opinion, in Strassburg Gestapo
area, but I believe that in any case Strassburg Gestapo depended on Stuttgart.
2. With reference to the orders received to gas certain women and despatch
them to Strassburg University, as sworn by me before Commandant
Jadin of the French Army, I give the following details: The orders I received
were in writing signed by order of Reichsführer Himmler by Gruppenführer
Glücks. As nearly as I can remember they stated that a special
transport would arrive from Auschwitz and that the people on this transport
were to be killed and their bodies sent to Strassburg to Professor Hirt.
It further said that I should communicate with Professor Hirt as to how the
killing was to take place. This I did and was given by Hirt a container of
gas crystals with instructions how to use them. There was no regular gas
chamber in Struthof, but he described to me how and ordinary room might
be used. I do not know any more of the professors concerned with Hirt, but
I do know that there was in one of the departments a Professor Bickerbach.
3. The first time I saw a gas chamber proper was at Auschwitz. It was
attached to the crematorium. The complete building containing the crematorium
and gas chamber was situated in Camp No. 2 [Birkenau], of which I
was in command. I visited the building on my first inspection of the camp
after being there for three days, but for the first eight days I was there it
was not working. After eight days the first transport, from which gas
chamber victims were selected, arrived, and at the same time I received a
written order from Höss, who commanded the whole of Auschwitz Camp,
that although the gas chamber and crematorium were situated in my part
of the camp, I had no jurisdiction over it whatever. Orders in regard to the
gas chamber were, in fact, always given by Höss, and I am firmly convinced
that he received such orders from Berlin. I believe that had I been
in Höss’ position and received such orders, I would have carried them out,
because even if I had protested it would only have resulted in my being
taken prisoner myself. My feelings about orders in regard to the gas chamber
were to be slightly surprised, and wonder to myself whether such action
was really right.
4. In regard to conditions at Belsen, I say once more that I did everything
I could to remedy them. In regard to the food, the prisoners throughout
March and April 1945, got their full entitlement, and in my opinion this
entitlement was perfectly sufficient for the healthy prisoner, but from the
middle of February onward sick people began to come in and I felt they
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
376
should have more food. I sent my Messing NCO, Unterscharführer Müller,
to the food depots in Celle and Hanover, but he was told that no further
food could be issued because we were already getting our entitlement. I
did, in fact, get some food from the food store in the Wehrmacht Camp at
Belsen, but it would have been no use my asking for more from them because
they were not my correct authorized depot.
5. In regard to accommodation, when I was ordered to take 30,000
more people in early April, when the camp was already more than full, I
appealed to Lieutenant-General Beineburg in the Kommandantur in the
Wehrmacht Camp at Belsen and it was he who arranged for 15,000 prisoners
to be lodged in the barracks in that camp. He had to get special
permission over the telephone to do this. I never appealed to the General
for help on the food situation or any other difficulties because I knew that
he would not have been able to help me, in that he had no jurisdiction. I do
not consider that I should have appealed to him because I knew that he
could not have helped. Furthermore, I do not believe that anybody in Germany
could have altered the food entitlement for the prisoners in the camp
because I do not believe that the food was available. It surprises me very
much to hear that there were large and adequate stocks of food in the
Wehrmacht Camp. Nevertheless, I still feel that an appeal to the General
would have been useless.
6. I have been told that some of my SS staff were guilty of ill-treatment
and brutality toward the prisoners. I find this very difficult to believe and I
would trust them absolutely. To the best of my belief they never committed
any offenses against the prisoners. I regard myself as responsible for their
conduct and do not believe that any of them would have infringed my orders
against ill-treatment or brutality.
7. The Hungarian troops took over guard duties around the perimeter
of my camp during the first days before the British arrived. I agree that
during this period more shootings took place than was customary when the
Wehrmacht were doing guard. I remember the incident on 15th April 1945,
in the late afternoon, when I went with British officers to the potato patch
and was ordered to remove the dead body of a prisoner from that patch. I
think it is wrong that this man should have been shot and have no doubt at
all that it was either the Wehrmacht or the Hungarians who were responsible.
8. The rifle range which is visible at the north-west corner of my camp
was used fairly regularly by the Wehrmacht two or three days a week.”
377
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
The implications of a lie on the scale of the Jewish extermination hoax
cannot be constrained to bear on isolated subjects such as Israel or World War
II revisionism. Before not many years it was realized that, during and after the
war, Pope Pius XII had never spoken out in condemnation of the supposed exterminations
of Jews. This fact naturally raised some problems for the propaganda
history of World War II. The specific event that ignited general controversy
was Rolf Hochhuth’s play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy). Supposedly
based on the “Gerstein statement,” the play performs a completely unscrupulous
job of character assassination on Pius XII by relating events inconsistent
with the “statement,” thereby piling invention on invention. However the play
was unquestionably the catalyst for the discussion of a fairly important fact,
although the ensuing discussion, carried on among people who had been completely
taken in by the hoax, never clarified anything and only amplified the
confusion.
It is no more necessary, here, to explain why Pius XII did not speak up
about exterminations of Jews, than it is necessary to explain why he did not
protest the extermination of Eskimos. However the role of the Vatican is of
some interest to our subject, so a few words are appropriate.
First a few background remarks. During the period 1920-1945 the Vatican
considered Communism to be the principal menace loose in the world. This
being the case, it was open to friendly relations with the Fascists after their assumption
of power in Italy in 1922 and the Concordat of 1929, reversing the
earlier pre-Fascist anti-clerical policies of Italian Governments, was the basis
for relations that remained generally good until Mussolini fell from power in
1943.
When Hitler came to power in 1933 the Vatican had similar hopes for an
anti-Communist regime that would make domestic peace with the Church. At
first, it appeared that events would unfold as in Italy, and the Concordat of
1933 with Hitler (still in force), guaranteeing the church a portion of tax revenues
and further defining the proper spheres of Church and State, reinforced
this expectation.
Things did not turn out so well, however. Although the Concordat had defined
the Church’s rights in the sphere of education, and youth culture in general,
to the satisfaction of the Vatican, the Nazis found it difficult to live with
such terms, and found various ways of undercutting the Catholic position
without formally repudiating the terms of the Concordat. For example, the
Catholic Youth associations were forbidden to engage in sport, on the shrewd
calculation that such restrictions of such associations to the realm of the truly
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
378
spiritual would guarantee that they would wither. There were also various
means of intimidation employed against parents who insisted on sending their
children to Catholic schools. Moreover Nazi publications such as Das
Schwarze Korps (the SS magazine) and Der Stürmer were openly anti-
Christian, and constantly heaped abuse on the Pope and the Catholic clergy in
general, favorite charges being that the holy men were homosexuals or were
having amorous liaisons with Jewesses. Although the Nazis never reneged on
the most important provision of the Concordat, the commitment on tax revenues,
the mutual hostility became so great that many felt that there was always
a good possibility for a second Kulturkampf (Bismarck’s unsuccessful attempt
of the 1870s to break the power of the Roman Church in Germany).
The Nazi-Vatican hostility led, in 1937, to the most unusual Papal encyclical
Mit brennender Sorge. Issued in German rather than the usual Latin, it was
among the strongest attacks that the Vatican had ever made on a specific
State. The Pope at the time was Pius XI and Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, who
was to become Pope Pius XII in 1939, was the Vatican Secretary of State.
Pacelli, a diplomat of world-wide experience, for ten years Papal Nuncio in
Germany and fluent in German, was already regarded as the obvious heir to
Pius XI and his pre-eminence in the area of international diplomacy was unquestioned.
Mit brennender Sorge was written under his supervision.439
Despite the unquestioned hostility between the Church and the Nazis, it
should be kept in mind that Communism, in the eyes of the Vatican, was still
the prime enemy. With an antagonist such as the German Nazis, there was
room for maneuver for the Church but the Communists, up to that date, had
shown themselves to be total and deadly enemies. Moreover, Germany was
not the only European State with which the Vatican was displeased. France
and Czechoslovakia had strongly anti-clerical Governments. Thus, when war
came, the Vatican (although, of course, officially neutral) could not be enthusiastic
for either side. Because Communism was considered the prime enemy,
it is probably correct that the Vatican rather preferred the Axis side, but in
their eyes this was definitely a choice of lesser evils. Moreover, there was a
considerable diversity of preferences within the Church. For example the wartime
Papal Nuncio in Berlin, Msgr. Cesare Orsenigo, was evidently satisfied
with the German victory over France in 1940, and expressed to the German
Foreign Office his hope that the Germans would march into Paris through
Versailles. On the other hand the Jesuit-controlled Vatican radio was so anti-
German that the British considered it a virtual extension of their own propaganda
service.440
So much for the political background of the Vatican’s situation during the
war; we return to consideration of the fact of Pope Pius‘ silence on extermina-
439 Rhodes, 171-210.
440 Rhodes, 246.
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
379
tions of Jews. It would not be feasible to review here the views of all who
have contributed to the controversy, so we shall restrict ourselves in this respect.
First, there is the Vatican itself, which is represented mainly by the nine
volumes of wartime documents that it published in the years 1967-1975, Actes
et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale. The principle
editor of this series had been Robert A. Graham, an American Jesuit and
former editor of the Jesuit magazine America. Graham, who accepts the extermination
legend, has emerged as the principal spokesman for the Vatican in
these matters. It is unfortunate that the only volumes of the nine that are devoted
entirely to war victims are the last two, published in 1974-1975, which
carry the subject no further than December 1943.
Among the numerous authors in the controversy, the various positions are
well represented by two recent books, The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators
by Anthony Rhodes (London, 1973), a defender of the Vatican, and The
Pope’s Jews by Sam Waagenaar (London, 1974), a critic of the Pope.
The official Vatican position, as set forth in the Introduction to the eighth
volume of Actes et documents, is as follows:
“During his brief visit to the Vatican on 26 September [1942], the personal
representative of President Roosevelt, Myron Taylor, renewed an official
request for information. They had received, from the Geneva office of
the Jewish agency for Palestine, information on the desperate situation of
the Polish Jews and the Jews deported to Poland. The report, dated 30 August,
described the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, executions in a camp
called Belick, in Lwow and in Warsaw. The destination of the deportations
was death: ‘The Jews deported from Germany, Belgium, Holland, France
and Slovakia,’ said the report, ‘were sent to the slaughterhouse, while the
aryans deported to the East from Holland and France were actually used
for labor.’ The memorandum from Taylor to Cardinal Maglione [Vatican
Secretary of State] said: ‘I would be very grateful to Your Eminence if it
were possible to tell me if the Vatican has any information which tends to
confirm the report contained in this memorandum. If so, I would like to
know if the Holy Father has some suggestions touching on some practical
means of using the forces of public opinion of the civilized world in order
to prevent the continuation of this barbarism.’
Cardinal Maglione had to reply, on 10 October, that he had on his part
no particular information confirming the Geneva report. In effect, the most
detailed information, received those days by the Vatican, was the same as
that received by the United States. The sources were the Polish Ambassador
to the Vatican and the Jewish organizations themselves. ‘The reports
on severe measures adopted against non-aryans have also come to the
Holy See from other sources, but at present it has not been possible to verify
their accuracy.’ Under these conditions, the second question on practical
means to put into operation did not call for a reply.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
380
Very significant are the notes set down by Maglione after having received
the Taylor document: ‘I do not believe that we have any information
which confers these grave tidings. Right?’ For his part the ‘minutante’ [recorder
or archivist] wrote: ‘There is Mr. Malvezzi’s.’ The information of
Malvezzi, official of an Italian firm, recently returned from Poland, was
grave but general, and did not harmonize with the Geneva report.
That which the Cardinal Secretary of State heard as ‘severe measures’
can be interpreted in the light of the documents of these two years. The information
received in the Vatican consisted of second or third hand reports,
taken seriously however, concerning the brutal treatment imposed
on the Jews of Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, France and other countries.
What was the ultimate destination of the deportees, what was the plan of
the Nazis, then remained an enigma. When, for example, in the month of
March, Msgr. Burzio, the Chargé d’affaires in Slovakia, spoke of the deportees
as going to ‘a certain death,’ it is clear that he based this assertion
on the inhuman conditions of the departures and the brutality of the
guards. After such a beginning, it was easy to imagine that the old, the sick
and the children were not able to live long, even if typhus did not cut them
down in the overpopulated and unsanitary camps. In the same sense was
taken the remark of the Croation police chief Eugene Kvaternik, according
to whom the Germans had already caused two million Jews to die and that
the same fate awaited the Croatian Jews. Afterwards, these words have
been confirmed as only too exact. It is obvious, however, that the representative
of the Holy See, Father Abbé Marcone, in reporting them to the
Vatican, did not believe or was unable to believe that they should be taken
literally. One took them at least as a grave intimation of the tragedy which
appeared only in general outline.
The end of the year 1942 saw several public declarations on the deportations.
On 17 December, the United Nations published in London a declaration
on the rights of man, in which it denounced, in strong but general
terms, the treatment inflicted on the Jews. On 24 December Pope Pius XII
made, in his Christmas Eve message, a very clear allusion to the deportations,
concerning which the world, at that time, was able only with difficulty
to form an idea.”
This Vatican explanation is not acceptable. It is of course true that only occasional
scraps bearing on exterminations of Jews appear in their documents.
Moreover no reasonable person would deny that most of these scraps must be
classified as inventive propaganda, for the claims of exterminations are either
coupled in some sense with other claims that nobody would defend today, or
are associated with other oddities demolishing their credibility. For example, a
note of 2 January 1943 to the Vatican from Wladislas Raczkiewicz, the President
of the Polish exile government in London, claimed that the Germans had
embarked on a general extermination of the Polish population in addition to its
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
381
Jewish minority (in agreement with our analysis of Chapter 3, the note mentions
the Auschwitz concentration camp with an implication that it is not one
of the sites of exterminations).441 We have already noted, in Chapter 3, that
Msgr. Burzio, the Papal Chargé d’affaires in Slovakia, sent some invented
tales back to Rome. Additional scraps of this sort are reviewed below.
One must, of course, accept the Vatican claim that such information as
they had during the war could not have been taken as decent evidence of exterminations;
that has already been proved in this book. However, that is not
the point. The Vatican spokesmen today assert not merely that their information
did not reveal an extermination program, but that the exterminations happened,
on a continental scale, without reliable information about them coming
to the Vatican. It is this claim that is completely ridiculous and simply cannot
be entertained for more than a few seconds.
It is not possible for an extermination program of the type claimed to have
transpired without the Vatican learning of it. The slaughters are supposed to
have taken place mainly in Catholic Poland, where the Church had its agents,
Catholic priests, in every village, situated in such a way (hearing gossip, confessionals,
etc.) that no such thing as the exterminations could possibly have
happened without the entire Polish Catholic clergy knowing about then. It is
true that the Germans imposed a censorship on communications to or from
Poland, so that the Polish clergy and the Vatican could not communicate with
customary freedom, as explained in the Introduction to volume three of Actes
et documents, but as also there explained, there were many ways of circumventing
the censorship, notably through Italians who had business of various
sorts in Poland and points east, and through messages carried by private persons
from Poland to the office of the Papal Nuncio in Berlin, who communicated
with the Vatican through privileged diplomatic channels.
Rhodes realizes that the claim of ignorance of the exterminations is not
tenable and concedes (because he assumes the exterminations happened) that
Pius XII must have known about them. The explanation for the failure to
speak up unambiguously seems to Rhodes to be a fear that any public and explicit
condemnation would have made the situation of Catholics in Germany
and the occupied territories worse. Rhodes then asserts that “in his private
messages to Heads of States in connection with the persecution of the Jews,
Pius XII certainly ‘spoke up’” (Rhodes’ italics), and then gives two examples
of such private messages, bearing on Slovakia and on Hungary, which however
contain nothing about exterminations, but speak only of deportations and
persecutions of Jews in general terms.442
Rhodes‘ picture of a timid Pius, afraid to speak up against the Nazis and
their programs, does not hold up for many reasons. As shown by the docu-
441 Actes et documents, vol. 7, 179.
442 Rhodes, 347.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
382
ments Rhodes quotes, he must claim that the Pope was also too timid to speak
up in confidential diplomatic communications. Moreover the historical record
does not support Rhodes’ picture of a Catholic Church terrorized into silence
by the Nazis. While, in parallel with their counterparts in Allied countries,
they never opposed the German war effort, they were quite vocal during the
war in their opposition to the religion-related policies and values of the National
Socialist regime, and expressed their opposition in the Catholic press in
Germany and in pulpits throughout Germany. In December 1942 the German
Bishops, meeting in their annual conference in Fulda, sent a declaration to the
German Government denouncing the persecution of Catholic Churches in occupied
countries. In January 1943 Konrad Count von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin,
made a public condemnation of Nazi racial theories and policies. In August
1943 the German Bishops publicly denounced the Nazi policies hostile to
Catholic education, and this denunciation was read in public all over Germany.
443 The inescapable fact is that the Catholic Church was not terrorized
into silence.
Timidity does not explain why Pope Pius failed to condemn the alleged exterminations
after the Nazis had been defeated. The Pope’s speech to the College
of Cardinals on June 2, 1945, was a long and blistering attack on the defeated
Nazis, and yet the only thing in the speech that could possibly be interpreted
as a reference to exterminations was a reference to “applications of national
socialist teachings, which even went so far as to use the most exquisite
scientific methods to torture or eliminate people who were often innocent.”
However reading further in the speech it becomes clear that the Pope, like so
many other people at the time, was thinking of the catastrophic scenes found
in the German camps at the end of the war. The only specific victims mentioned
are the Catholic priests interned at Dachau, a high percentage of whom
perished there for reasons abundantly covered in this book. Although Pope
Pius did mention that one Polish auxiliary bishop died of typhus, his remarks
leave the impression that he believed that the deaths in the camps were intentional
on the part of the Nazis, and the priests interned at Dachau are described
by Pius as having “endured indescribable sufferings for their faith and for
their vocation.” There is nothing in the address about exterminations of any
racial, religious or national group.444
While it is the case that the record does not indicate that the Roman Church
was terrorized into silence during the war, the Vatican was nevertheless vulnerable
to pressure to some degree, as is made evident by an examination of
the circumstances behind the declaration of Pope Pius‘ which came closest to
sounding like a condemnation of exterminations, his Christmas Eve message
of 1942.
443 New York Times (Jan. 22, 1943), 6; (May 13, 1943), 8; (Sep. 5, 1943), 7; (Sep. 6, 1943), 7.
444 New York Times (Jun. 3, 1945), 22.
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
383
In Chapter 3 and above we saw that, in the autumn of 1942, the Allies inquired
of the Vatican whether it had any information supporting the extermination
claim s that Rabbi Wise and some others had been making for several
months, and that the Vatican had no such information. While Pope Pius and
the Secretary of State, Luigi Cardinal Maglione, no doubt smelled Greuelpropaganda
immediately upon hearing such stories, the Vatican material reproduced
above shows that they at least made some effort to inquire into the
matter. Also, the Papal Nuncio in Italy, Msgr. Francesco Borgongini-Duca,
met on November 10, 1942, with Guido Buffarini, Undersecretary in the Italian
Ministry of the Interior, for the purpose of discussing the general military
and political situation. The situation of the Jews was discussed and Borgongini-
Duca reported to Maglione that445
“He then spoke to me concerning the speech of Hitler [in Munich on 8
November] and, I having asked him if in allusions to retaliations, they
might mean asphyxiating gas, he twice replied to me decidedly no.”
Thus the Vatican had essentially no information, in the autumn of 1942,
tending to confirm the extermination claims, and it took this position in its exchanges
with Allied representatives, when the matter came up. In Chapter 3
we noted that there was one anonymous note supposedly from a Vatican
source, produced in late November, which supported the extermination
claims. However, since that was not the Vatican position, the note was no
doubt a forgery in some sense. If it did come from a source inside the Vatican,
it may have been authored by Virgilio Scattolini, and employee of the Vatican
newspaper l’Osservatore Romano, who posed as a Vatican insider during the
war in order to sell his fabricated “information”, suitably tailored for the
buyer, to all comers, and who for a while was considered “our man in the
Vatican” by the OSS.446 A lesser possibility is that the note came from the
priest Pirro Scavizzi, who is discussed below.
The information that the Vatican had in December 1942, relative to Nazi
persecutions of Jews, is well represented by a message composed by Msgr.
Giuseppe Di Meglio of the staff of Orsenigo, Papal Nuncio in Berlin, and delivered
to the Vatican by Di Meglio on December 9, 1942. The message deals
at length with the German policies toward the Jews and it is a good assumption
that such material was written in response to a request, to Orsenigo from
the Vatican, for such information. the Berlin Nunciature was doubtless considered
about the best source of such information within the church because,
as we noted above, a good deal of the communication between Poland and the
Vatican was through Orsenigo’s Berlin office. The heart of the part of the
message that dealt with the Jews was:447
445 Actes et documents, vol. 7, 82.
446 Catholic Historical Review, vol. 59 (Jan. 1974), 719f.
447 Actes et documents, vol. 8, 738-742.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
384
“Since many fled, before the arrival of the German troops, from the
Polish territories occupied by the Russians and from territories properly
Russian, one estimates that presently, in the Reich and the occupied territories,
including the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, there are more
than four million Jews, i.e., one fourth of the entire world Jewish population.
Measures.
1. Institution of ghettos.
Internal quarters of some cities have been designated for the Jews as
their official homes, with the right of administration, police forces, and appropriate
means of communication.
Of the ghettos established up to now, the most important are those of
Litzmannstadt (Lodz) and Warsaw. Some ghettos are also found in the Baltic
countries and in the occupied Russian territories.
2. Concentration camps.
Since, as is evident, places cannot be found for all Jews in the city ghettos,
immense concentration camps have been created where they lead a
harsh life; little food is given them; they are assigned to extremely hard
working conditions which quickly lead many to death.
It is said that such concentration camps are found up to now in Poland,
that the eastern territories, particularly Poland, have been established in
the plans of the German Government as the definitive place of residence
for the Jewish population of Europe.
Generally, in order to not attract the attention of the population too
much, they are forced to leave in the middle of the night; they are permitted
to take little clothing with them and only a small sum of money.
3. The Star.
Since the month of September 1941, a mark of identification has been
compulsory for all Jews: a yellow star, six pointed, to be worn on the
breast, with the inscription in the center, Jude!
The sight of these wretches who, pale and emaciated (their food rations
are much less than those of the Germans; some foodstuffs are denied to
them entirely), walk the streets at predesignated hours of the day or, when
travelling, cluster together in corners, awakens a profound sense of horror
and pity.
Inhuman treatment in the occupied territories and in the countries politically
subject to Germany:
An Italian journalist, returned from Romania, gave me, some time ago,
a long account concerning the brutal methods adopted in that country,
mainly by German instigation, against the Jews.
He related to me that a train was completely filled with Jews; every
opening was then closed, so that no air could enter. When the train arrived
at its destination, there were only a few survivors, those, that is, who, findAppendix
E: The Role of the Vatican
385
ing themselves near some incompletely sealed opening, had been able to
breathe a bit of air. […]”
Di Meglio closed this part of his message by noting the anti-Christian
character of Alfred Rosenberg’s Institut für Erforschung des jüdischen Einflusses
auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben (Institute for Investigation of Jewish
Influence in German Religious Life), and also by noting the unconcern of the
German clergy with the tribulations of the Jews.
In several respects Di Meglio’s information was obviously erroneous. For
example we can gain a fair idea of the actual conditions of the deportations of
Romanian Jews from the Report of the Red Cross, both from the excerpt reproduced
in Chapter 5 here and from other sections,448 and also from the writings
of Ginsburg. It is certain that the events in the story related by the anonymous
Italian journalist were invention. Di Meglio seems willing to accept the
worst.
Di Meglio’s treatment of the role of the concentration camps admits some
misinterpretations of the actual conditions. For one thing, he suggested that
many Jews were sent to concentration camps because there was insufficient
space for them in the ghettos; this is not correct. Jews, among others, were
sent to the camps in Poland as labor needs required. Di Meglio also gave the
impression that the camps were primarily for quartering Jews, which is also
incorrect. He also probably exaggerated the poverty of the diet in the camps
but, as we saw in Chapter 4, he was at least correct on the matter of the high
death rate in the camps, at the time he wrote his account, although overwork
was not the cause of the deaths.
In other words, Di Meglio’s description of the situation was the general or
approximate truth, with some inaccuracies, and colored by his willingness to
believe the worst. It is clear that he had no information on the existence of an
extermination program even remotely resembling the one that was then taking
shape in Allied propaganda and was being related to the Vatican by various
Allied diplomats and Jewish organizations.
The Pope’s Christmas address made a passing remark, without specific reference
to the Jews, on “the hundreds of thousands who, through no fault of
their own, and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to
death or progressive extinction.” Berlin had mixed reactions to the address;
the RSHA considered it a direct assault on the Nazi regime, while the Foreign
Office appears to have considered it so much holy hot air. The Allies, we recall
from our Chapter 3, had officially embraced the extermination claims on
December 17, in a statement in which “the number of victims” was “reckoned
in many hundreds of thousands” of Jews, and they were not satisfied with the
Pope’s statement, and thought it was not explicit enough.449 From our point of
448 Red Cross (1948), vol. 3, 520ff.
449 Rhodes, 272ff; Waagenaar, 409, 435f.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
386
view, however, the Christmas remark seems at first puzzlingly strong, in view
of the picture of the situation that the Vatican had received from the Berlin
Nunciature, and also in consideration of the oddity that the Pope’s strongest
remark of such a category should have been made so early in the war and then
not repeated.
An explanation for the appearance of the “death or progressive extinction”
remark in the Pope’s Christmas address is found in the Vatican’s wartime
documents. In late 1942 and early 1943 one of the Vatican’s principal diplomatic
objectives was to secure a pledge from the Allies not to bomb Rome.
The British were particularly insistent on their right to bomb Rome, as compared
to the Americans, who had a large Catholic minority that constituted a
very important component of the political base of Roosevelt’s New Deal. The
British took the position that Rome could not be given special consideration
and would be bombed if and when military factors indicated such action. In
pursuit of its objective, the Vatican dealt not only with the Allies, attempting
to divert them from their apparent course, but also with the Germans and Italians,
attempting to persuade them to remove any operations of a military nature
from Rome (there was little or no war industry in the city, but there were
military command headquarters and military barracks). In December 1942 the
Italian Government agreed to relocate its military headquarters away from
Rome. Feeling that some progress toward their objective had been made, Cardinal
Maglione met on December 14 with the British Minister to the Vatican,
Sir F. D’Arcy Osborne, in order to communicate this development to the British
and to further discuss the bombing issue. Osborne, however, was unimpressed
and pointed out that there remained Italian troops quartered in the city.
Maglione’s notes on the meeting summarized the exchange thus:450
“The Minister pointed out that one has the impression that the Holy See
is particularly preoccupied with the Italian cities, when it speaks of bombings,
because they are Italian.
I made him observe: (1) that for Rome there are special considerations.
I recounted them to him (and I did not fail to repeat to him that if Rome is
bombed, the Holy See will protest); (2) that the Holy See now intervenes
against the bombing of the civilian population of the Italian cities because
such bombings are in progress. The Minister must not forget that the Holy
Father spoke against bombing of defenseless populations on other occasions:
when the English cities were being bombed everybody knew that the
bombings of the English cities did not escape really harsh words from the
Holy Father.
The Minister recognized the justice of my observation and, then, exclaimed:
‘But why doesn’t the Holy See intervene against the terrible
450 Actes et documents, vol. 7, 136ff. Waagenaar, 413, quotes from the Osborne-Maglione exchange,
but he does not quote it in its proper context of the bombing threat to Rome.
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
387
slaughter of the Jews?’
I recalled for him that the Holy Father had already asserted, in his
messages, the right to life, to a peaceful existence, and to a sufficient share
in the goods of this world, for all men, whatever their race or religion.
One must not ignore, I added, how much the Holy Father has done and
is doing to alleviate the plight of the poor Jews. These people know it and
frequently thank the Holy See for how much it is doing for them.
The Minister insisted on this point: it would be necessary that the Holy
See intervene to stop the massacres of the Jews. [end of note]”
Later the same day Osborne ran into Msgr. Domenico Tardini, Secretary of
the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastic Affairs (the Vatican Foreign
Office) and, regarding the departure of the Italian military command headquarters
from Rome, Osborne assured Tardini that “It changes nothing!”
Tardini summarized his conversation with Osborne in his notes and concluded
that451
“The removal of the military commands may help put better in evidence
that whoever bombs Rome is barbaric (and thus it is well that the Holy See
be an interested party), but it will not spare Rome from the bombs.”
We thus see the background of the Pope’s Christmas Eve remark. To the
Vatican, it appeared from the exchange between Osborne and Maglione that
the English were in effect proposing a deal: the Pope condemns extermination
of Jews and the Allies do not bomb Rome, a persuasive position that can convince
even a Holy Father. Aside from any possible ethical considerations, it
was obvious to the Vatican that it could not wreck its official neutrality by
publicly accusing the Germans of completely fabricated offenses and, in any
case, the Germans were still the dominant military power on the Continent at
that time, so the remark appeared in the Christmas address without specific
reference to Jews or Germany (along with other remarks that sounded more or
less anti-German without being specific). However the Allied bombing threat
to Rome did not diminish after Christmas 1942. Thus except for a brief similar
remark, ignored by the world press, which occurred in a long papal address of
June 2, 1943, no more talk of this nature came from the Vatican. Pope Pius
made a favorable reference to the Christmas remark in his letter of April 30,
1943, to his friend von Preysing, but even in that confidential communication
his specific words were milder than those of the Christmas remark.452
Although the Vatican was entirely justified in interpreting Osborne’s remarks
as a specific proposition, it is most likely that this was a misinterpretation
nevertheless, and that Osborne did not imagine himself as offering a deal.
It is possible, for example, that Osborne felt that Maglione had a relatively
strong position and thus he grasped at something somewhat out of context in
451 Actes et documents, vol. 7, 138f.
452 Actes et documents, vol. 2, 326; vol. 9, 40; Rhodes, 348f.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
388
order to supplement his side of the verbal exchange. The official Allied declaration
on extermination of Jews came three days later and thus the matter was
no doubt somewhat in the air in the diplomatic corps and came to Osborne
rather naturally.
Rome was first bombed on July 19, 1943 (by the Americans), the targets
being the rail center that German and Italian troops had started passing
through after the Allied landings in Sicily on July 9th. In subsequent raids
bombs occasionally fell on the Vatican, but the damage to historical and religious
monuments, in the Vatican and elsewhere in Rome, was slight.
The only other point of some interest in regard to the role of the Vatican is
that its efforts in extending aid to Jews were fairly extensive, as discussed by
Rhodes. However Waagenaar should also be read in this connection, on account
of Rhodes’ failure to make some points. However, from the point of
view of analyzing the extermination legend, the only significant inference to
draw from such activities of the Vatican is that they offer further data showing
that, the Vatican being somewhat involved in Jewish affairs in Europe at the
time, the exterminations could not possibly have happened without the Vatican
knowing of them.
While the significant points regarding the role of the Vatican are not many
and have been covered, there are a few odd matters that we may as well set
forth while we are on this subject.
A strange character appearing in the Vatican’s wartime documents is Pirro
Scavizzi, a very ordinary priest who rode Italian military hospital trains that
shuttled back and forth between Italy and the eastern front. He was called an
“almoner” and he administered to the wounded Italian soldiers whatever incantations
are delivered in such circumstances. Since he did so much traveling,
however, he was frequently used as a courier, and his frequent near contact
with, and regular delivery of messages to high ranking prelates seems to
have fired his imagination.
The first oddity we run into was in February-March 1942. Scavizzi produced
a letter, allegedly from Adam Sapieha, Archbishop of Cracow, on the
subject of the sufferings of Catholic priests under the brutal Germans. As related
in Actes et documents, however, the circumstances were most peculiar:
453
“[…] the Archbishop renounced all precaution and described […] the
rigor of the Nazi oppression and the tragedy of the concentration camps.
But after having deposited this testimony with […] Scavizzi, he grew fearful
and sent Scavizzi a message asking him to burn the document ‘for fear
that it fall into the hands of the Germans, who would have shot all the
Bishops and perhaps others.’ The Abbé Scavizzi destroyed the note in
question, but not without first having made a copy in his own hand and
453 Actes et documents, vol. 3. 15f. Rhodes, 288.
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
389
having added at the same time his own testimony on the tragedy and the
despair which constituted the daily course of existence of the Catholics of
Poland.”
Scavizzi’s producing of a letter which he had burned, in honoring the request
of the author of the letter, necessarily makes one a bit uneasy about him,
but let us bear with him a bit. He next appears in connection with a letter he
wrote to Pope Pius from Bologna on May 12, 1942:454
“In regard to the present Nuncio, the Cardinal [Orsenigo, Nuncio in
Berlin] deplored the silence about it and expressed the judgment that He
[the Pope] is too timorous and not interested in such grave tidings.
The anti-Jewish campaign in implacable and constantly grows worse,
with deportations and even mass executions.
The massacre of the Jews in the Ukraine is already complete. In Poland
and Germany they also intend to carry it to completion, with a system of
mass killings.”
We have seen above that this did not represent the information of the Berlin
Nunciature, so Scavizzi was just projecting opinions of his own onto Orsenigo.
However even if Orsenigo had held such views, it is ludicrous in the
extreme to imagine that he would have confided them to Scavizzi, even for
Scavizzi’s personal information, not to mention for transmission to the Pope
via Scavizzi. One is now entitled to raise suspicions regarding Scavizzi’s reliability.
Scavizzi next appears on October 7, 1942, when he wrote a “report on the
situation in Poland” that managed to get into the Vatican files:455
“The Jews: The elimination of the Jews, with mass killings, without regard
for children or even for babies, is almost total. As for the remainder
of them, who are all marked by white armbands, civilized life is impossible.
They are not permitted to shop, enter business establishments, take streetcars
or taxis, attend spectacles or frequent non-Jewish homes. Before being
deported or killed, they are condemned to forced hard labor, even if
they are of the cultivated class. The few remaining Jews appear serene,
almost ostentatiously proud. It is said that more than two million Jews
have been killed.”
At this point, one develops a second suspicion, namely, that the Vatican
took as knowledge what we have set forth as our first suspicion about
Scavizzi: that little weight should be attached to Scavizzi’s statements. They
had such material from Scavizzi in their files but did not consider it as confirming
the claims of the Zionist organizations, as is made clear above.
Possibly because the Vatican wartime documents are still in the process of
editing for publication at the time this is being written, Scavizzi makes no
454 Actes et documents, vol. 8, 534.
455 Actes et documents, vol. 8, 669n.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
390
more appearances in them. However in 1964 (he died around 1967) he
claimed, in an Italian magazine, that during the war, the Pope had confided to
him, Pirro Scavizzi, on the apparently negative implications of a proposed excommunication
of Hitler (a nominal Catholic) for his exterminations of
Jews!456 That does it. Scavizzi was obviously a weaver of self-inflating tall
tales designed to make him appear rather more important than his humble station
in riding the hospital trains would have suggested. It therefore becomes
clear that our second suspicion must be correct; Scavizzi was considered by
the Vatican to be a harmless nut who could be trusted to administer last rites,
and even to deliver messages, but not to keep facts straight. It is mildly humorous
that, judging from their editorial comments, the editors of Actes et
documents seem to take Scavizzi seriously. However, because the interpretation
of Scavizzi as a teller of tall tales fairly leaps out at the reader from the
documents, it is possible that the editors have other thoughts on the subject of
Scavizzi that they have not expressed.
There is, however, one point of not negligible importance in connection
with Scavizzi’s reports, particularly the report of May 12, 1942 concerning
what Orsenigo allegedly confided to him. It is not likely that Scavizzi independently
invented the extermination legend, although it is remotely possible.
If he did not invent the extermination claims appearing in his letter of May 12,
1942, he must have heard them somewhere, a fact of some interest, as his report
is dated over a month before Zionist organizations in the West started
talking this way (the first known such statement for the World Jewish Congress
was on June 29, 1942, as we noted in Chapter 3). This suggests that such
propaganda was in circulation in Eastern Europe earlier than June 1942. This,
indeed, is in agreement with the account of Dawidowicz, according to whom
extermination claims for the Wartheland (the annexed part of Poland south of
the Corridor), claiming killings via gasmobiles at Chelmno, first appeared in
the four-page Jewish underground, the Veker, which printed these first extermination
claims on pages three and four in issues published in February 1942.
Claims of exterminations in the General Government of Poland (via gassing at
Belzec) appeared in the underground publication Mitteylunge in early April
1942.457 The evidence, thus, suggests that the extermination legend owes its
birth to obscure Polish Jewish propagandists, but the nurturing of the legend to
the status of an international and historical hoax was the achievement of Zionist
circles centered primarily in the West, particularly in and around New
York.
Since it appears that extermination propaganda was in existence in Poland
in the spring of 1942, and because much of the information that reached the
Vatican from Poland came through the office of the Papal Nuncio in Berlin,
456 Rhodes, 345; Waagenaar, 431.
457 Dawidowicz, 295ff.
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
391
such stories might have reached Orsenigo at the time. Indeed, a letter of Orsenigo’s
to Msgr. Giovanni Montini (the present Pope Paul VI, who often substituted
for Maglione during the war), dated July 28, 1942, was devoted
mainly to deploring the difficulty of ascertaining exactly what was happening
in regard to the Jews. After commenting on the occasional practice of the Nazis
of suddenly and without warning ordering selected Jews to pack up for deportation,
he wrote:458
“As is easy to understand, this lack of advance notice opens the door to
the most macabre suppositions on the fate of the non-aryans. There are
also in circulation rumors, difficult to verify, of disastrous journeys and
even of massacres of Jews. Also every intervention in favor only of the nonaryan
Catholics has thus far been rejected with the customary reply that
baptismal water does not change Jewish blood and that the German Reich
is defending itself from the non-aryan race, not from the religion of the
baptized Jews.
Among such sinister rumors there is no lack of some less bleak: thus for
example there is talk that in Holland, where deportations of the non-aryans
have now commenced, an outspoken protest by the clergy, with which the
Catholic Bishops associated themselves, succeeded in getting the baptized
non-aryans excepted from the deportations. Likewise it was reported that
in the notorious ghetto of Litzmannstadt, in the Wartheland, a Polish
priest, who with a spirit of apostolical heroism had requested it, was
granted permission to enter and remain there for the care of the souls of
the non-aryan Catholics.”
An editorial footnote remarks that the story from Holland was false. We
remark in passing that a considerable portion of the Vatican concern for aiding
Jews, in this period, was specifically for the families of Jewish background
that had converted to Catholicism, and whose situation was particularly tragic,
since it seemed that nobody wanted them; the Germans considered them Jews,
and the Jews considered them renegades.
The preceding remarks of Orsenigo make it clear that Scavizzi had at least
misrepresented him, but also make it clear that he had heard certain horrid
rumors, although it is not clear what he meant by “massacres” (eccidi in
massa). There were, of course, as we noted in Chapter 7, occasional massacres
of Jews during the war, and the reports he had received may have pertained to
them, or they might have had their origin in the extermination propaganda that
had recently started coming from Jewish underground organizations in Poland.
It is even possible that he was thinking of some report that Scavizzi had
made at the Berlin Nunciature in connection with the “information” he transmitted
in his letter of May 12, 1942. In any case the Di Meglio letter of December
9, 1942, shows that the Nunciature, at that time, had accepted no ex-
458 Actes et documents, vol. 8, 607f.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
392
termination claims (except possibly for the story from Romania), if such
claims reached it.
There are just a couple more points worth discussion, in relation to the
Vatican documents. During the war the Vatican representative in Greece and
Turkey was Msgr. Angelo Roncalli, the later Pope John XXIII. On July 8,
1943, he reported to the Vatican from Istanbul as follows:459
“1. In accord with my rule of circumspection in my contacts with various
people, even those entitled to special respect, I avoid meetings not
strictly necessary or singularly useful. For example I saw von Papen
[German Ambassador to Turkey] only once in six months, and only hastily
and in passing on the occasion of my Easter visit to Ankara. At the time
there was much talk of the Katyn affair which, according to von Papen,
should have made the Pole reflect on the advantage of their turning to the
Germans. I replied with a sad smile that it was necessary first of all to
make them overlook the millions of Jews sent to Poland and soppressi
there, and that in any case this was a good occasion for the Reich to improve
its treatment of the Poles.
Now that von Papen has returned, as has the entire diplomatic corps,
from Ankara to Istanbul and the Bosphorus, occasions for meetings will
not be lacking.
2. Now and then the fine Baron von Lersner comes to see me. […]”
Roncalli then proceeded to discuss matters not relevant to our subject.”
When this document was published by the Vatican, the press reported that
Roncalli had remarked on “the millions of Jews sent to Poland and annihilated
there,”460 a fair enough translation, but a few words on the point of the translation
are worthwhile. The Italian verb sopprimere (whose past participle appears
in Roncalli’s note) is cognate to the English “to suppress” and the
French supprimer (which is relevant because Roncalli and von Papen probably
spoke to each other in French). The Italian and French words are equivalent in
meaning, but they are not equivalent to the English word because, when applied
to people, sopprimere and supprimer carry some implication of killing in
large numbers. However when applied to people they are not entirely equivalent
to “extermination” or “annihilation”; both French and Italian have words
cognate to and equivalent to these two English words. To apply sopprimere to
a large group of people carries an implication only of large numbers of killings,
and may or may not mean “extermination,” depending on the context.
Thus one must allow the possibility that Roncalli was thinking of something
other then the sorts of extermination claims that the Allies had made, and
which Roncalli had certainly heard by then. For example, he may have been
thinking in terms of such things as the then recent and highly publicized Ger-
459 Actes et documents, vol. 7, 473f.
460 New York Times (Apr. 5, 1973), 1, 5.
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
393
man suppression of the Warsaw ghetto rebellion, in the course of which the
Germans killed many Jews. However I am inclined to reject such an interpretation;
it seems more likely to me that Roncalli was indeed thinking in terms
of extermination such as the Allies had claimed.
If, however, one reads the Roncalli account carefully, against its proper
diplomatic background, it becomes clear that it is not really very important
what, very specifically, Roncalli was thinking about when he made this remark.
He describes a chance meeting between two diplomats, one of whom,
he, did not wish a meeting. In accord with his “rule of circumspection” his
words would therefore have been chosen to “avoid meetings.” What Roncalli
in effect said to von Papen was that, if the latter wished to prolong the meeting,
Roncalli was going to be difficult. Roncalli communicated to von Papen,
in diplomatic language, the attitude he sets forth in plain and direct language
in the first sentence of his report. Roncalli’s remark was a diplomatic parry of
a certain well known type, wherein it is not really important to determine, in
better than vague terms, what the speaker was referring to, or to determine
whether or not the speaker himself accepted the truth of the allegation in question.
All that is relevant in the exchange is that Roncalli did not want to talk to
von Papen, and that was all he communicated to von Papen. If, on the other
hand, Roncalli wished to speak to von Papen, he certainly would not had
opened his side of the exchange with such necessarily antagonistic remarks,
either in reference to exterminations or in reference to bloody suppression of
ghetto revolts, and quite independently of any of his own opinions on the subject
of alleged German atrocities and brutalities.
Because the Vatican was an observer of and participant in the events of
World War II it was inevitable that the extermination stories, which the whole
world heard, were heard also by the Vatican. The stories are thus naturally reflected
in passages found in the Vatican documents and, when we encounter
such passages there, they should be viewed in the context of the possible specific
motivations of the person making the remark and also of the evolution of
the propaganda as analyzed in this book, especially in Chapter 3. Roncalli, as
his report clearly implies in its first sentence, was merely trying to get rid of
von Papen, at their July 8, 1943, encounter in Ankara, when he repeated the
extermination claim which, as he well knew, had not been specifically endorsed
by the Vatican despite Allied pressures.
Another letter we encounter in the Vatican documents was written to Pope
Pius in August 1942 by the Ukrainian Roman Catholic Archbishop André
Szeptyczkyi. The letter dwells at great length on supposed German atrocities
and the reader will be very puzzled, especially in regard to motivation, until
the last lines are read and Szeptyczkyi finally comes to the whole point of his
letter. He remarks on his failures over a three year period to obtain from the
Pope an Apostolic Benediction (i.e. a papal endorsement, most important in
religious politics) and then points out that his sufferings and strivings under
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
394
“evil” Germans should certainly be adequate grounds for granting one at
last.461
That the few passages appearing in the Vatican documents and bearing on
exterminations of Jews merely reflect the evolution of the propaganda, as analyzed
in this book, is very clear. Another example is a set of notes made by
Maglione on May 5, 1943, recording extermination stories. The occasion for
composing the notes is not clear, i.e. the reader cannot tell from what has been
published whether Maglione was recording his own impressions or merely allegations
made by somebody else (other documents written by Maglione
around that time do not suggest that he believed the extermination stories). In
any case, gas chamber exterminations at Treblinka and near Brest-Litovsk are
noted. The editors of Actes et documents, obviously puzzled, remark462
“The information, probably delivered by an Italian official, would seem
quite old, since it mentions neither Birkenau nor Auschwitz, where the
greater part of the exterminations were concentrated at the time.”
Further on this theme, the editors remark that in 1943463
“[…]the Allied propaganda, which dwelled abundantly on the German
atrocities, was completely silent, for reasons which have never been satisfactorily
analyzed, on Auschwitz.”
Just as it was inevitable that some of the propaganda would manifest itself
in the Vatican’s documents, it was also inevitable that some of the truth, in regard
to the matters we are concerned with here, would find its way into that
part of the Vatican archives selected for publication. Thus the documents suggest
that the Vatican did after all have some access to Jews in Poland, not only
Polish Jews but also Italian Jews who were deported after the German occupation
of Rome on September 8, 1943.464 Also the editors of volume 9 of Actes
et documents (on the subject of war victims in 1943) note that friends and
relatives of deported Jews were known to have later received mail from them,
that the members of the Dutch resistance who were “in constant contact with
the Jews of their country (reported) simply that the deportees were enlisted for
work in the camps, while the aged were sent to ghettos,” and that the Jewish
leaders in Rome were unaware of any extermination program and feared deportations
only in connection with such things as “the rigors of winter and the
fragile health of many deportees,” as is confirmed by “many letters received
then at the Vatican, and which today form a thick dossier in the archives […]
no mention is made of their brutal extermination.” We also read that Father
Marie-Benoit (a priest who was deeply involved in wartime aid to Jews) made
a report in July 1943 on deportations of Jews from France and remarked that
461 Actes et documents, vol. 3, 625-629.
462 Actes et documents, vol. 9, 39, 274.
463 Actes et documents, vol. 9, 42.
464 Actes et documents, vol. 9, 493, 499, 632-636.
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
395
the Auschwitz and nearby camps were work camps where “the morale among
the deportees is generally good and they are confident of the future.”465
Because Auschwitz extermination propaganda started in 1944 we will
probably encounter Auschwitz extermination claims in the Vatican’s wartime
documents when the Vatican publishes documents for 1944-1945, because
that is all there is, bearing on exterminations, in the documents of this critically
situated source: propaganda.
Addendum on Robert A. Graham
The obituary/tribute below first appeared, very slightly modified, in the
Journal of Historical Review, March/April 1998, based on my manuscript of
31 July 1997. The Graham letter of 24 January 1983 was reproduced there
from the original.
When I was writing The Hoax of the Twentieth Century I encountered an
extraordinary source, viz. the multi-volume collection of documents and
commentary Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre
mondiale (Acts and documents of the Holy See relative to the Second World
War). The series, whose principal editor was Robert A. Graham, was still being
published by the Vatican and more volumes were in the future.
Graham was a former editor of the Jesuit magazine America. The “extermination”
claim was not challenged in the series, and it was generally understood
that Graham’s main interest was in defending the wartime Pope Pius XII
against charges of tacit consent to, and even collaboration with, Nazi policies
of physical extermination of the Jews. Such charges crested with Rolf
Hochhuth’s play The Deputy.
I believed that the Vatican documents constitute an important source. I devoted
an entire appendix of my book to discussing them.
In studying the series of volumes I was struck by some of the editorial remarks,
and believed that the editor, although not a revisionist in our sense,
was implicitly raising fundamental questions of a revisionist bent. A good example
was the quotation of some selected passages from some reports, from
apparently well informed sources, delivered to the Pope on 15 July 1943,
which described Auschwitz as essentially a work camp, and spoke of Jews
who had been deported from France sending letters back to their families.466
These impressions were so strong that I believed it necessary to contact
Graham directly. In early 1977 I wrote to him in Rome, thus starting a very
465 Actes et documents, vol. 9, 38, 42f.
466 Actes et documents, vol. 9, pp. 42, 393. The footnote on p. 42 should refer to “Nr. 264”, not
164. More examples are given toward the end of “Appendix E” of my book.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
396
satisfactory and years long correspondence, although the request for copies of
documents that I made to him at the time could not be filled, for reasons beyond
his control.467
In summer 1977 I was in Rome and visited him. Our conversation confirmed
to me what I had read between the lines in Actes et documents; the editor
was puzzled by the evidence he had examined, because much of it seemed
impossible to reconcile with the “extermination” legend. He showed me a
pamphlet I had not seen, published in 1943 by the “Polish Labor Group”
which was New York based but in touch with the Polish underground. Its title
was appropriate: Oswiecim – Camp of Death (“Oswieçim” is Polish for
“Auschwitz”). The pamphlet presented the truth with some embellishment but
what was important to Graham was that it did not speak of “exterminations” in
any way reconcilable with the legend. He let me borrow the pamphlet to photocopy.
Vol. 10 of Actes et documents was long delayed and I wrote to Graham
several times in my eagerness to see it. Publication finally came in 1980 and
Graham was thoughtful enough to alert me personally. I got a copy and found
references to more interesting but unpublished documents. Again I wrote to
Graham and happily, this time, my request was filled.468
At the IHR Convention in 1982, I compared the Holocaust legend to the
Donation of Constantine and sent Graham a copy of the paper. In the paper I
had noted that the Jewish historian Walter Laqueur understood as I did “that
the far-flung nature of the operations of the Catholic Church guaranteed that
the Vatican would have known what was happening to the Jews”.469 Graham
acknowledged receipt of the copy of my paper with a very kind, respectful and
encouraging letter, referring to and not disputing the remark about the Vatican:
“VILLA MALTA 24 January 1983
Dear Mr. Butz,
Your airmailed copy of your September 1982 paper reached me today. I
467 I wanted copies of the documents about deportations of Jews from France that Actes et
documents had quoted but not reproduced. Graham told me to send my “request through
channels”, i.e. to Archbishop Agostino Casaroli, Secretary of the Council for the Public Affairs
of the Church. I did so but Casaroli replied that since the reports in question “were
provided by Jewish authorities in France” then I should address myself to them. I wrote to
the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, in Paris, but received no answer. I also
visited the Centre in July 1977, but I could not find the documents.
468 The most interesting document was a letter from Alexandru Safran, Grand Rabbi of Romania,
to Msgr. Andrea Cassulo, Papal Nuncio in Bucharest, dated 30 June 1944. It expressed
concern that the Jews of Hungary were “exposed to great privations and sufferings”, at a
time when the legend would have us believe they were mostly dead. The Jews of Hungary
and Romania remained in close contact throughout this period.
469 The paper appears as a Supplement in recent printings of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.
“IHR” means “Institute for Historical Review”, my publisher at the time.
Appendix E: The Role of the Vatican
397
hasten to thank you for keeping me in mind when elaborating on your
theme.
On a quick reading, I see I must reflect further on the validity of your
approach. I never thought of this in analogy of the Donation of Constantine!
I note your quote from Laqueur on the Vatican. He was apparently
peeved at us for telling him we published what we had, as of 1942. What
makes him assume that there is on the contrary a lot more? This is begging
the question.
I wish you a prosperous New Year and fresh discoveries and new insights
on a great drama!
Sincerely yours,
Robert A. Graham”
I always knew that there was an honest and honorable man editing the publication
of the Vatican documents.
Rev. Robert A. Graham, S.J., died in a California retirement home, at age
84, on 11 February 1997.

399
Supplements
Supplement 1: The International Holocaust Controversy
Presented orally at the 1979 conference of the Institute for Historical Review.
This is a slightly edited version of the paper as published in the Journal
of Historical Review, vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 1980, pp. 5+.
Some of you may be accustomed to hearing of me speak on the subject that
I call “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century,” the legend of the physical extermination
of millions of Jews, usually six million, by the government of National
Socialist Germany during the Second World War. On several occasions
I have met with interested groups and given them what amounts to an oral
synopsis of many of the arguments in my book.
Today I will cover different ground, I shall not concentrate on the hoax itself
but on the development of the international controversy surrounding the
hoax. I have several reasons for this choice of subjects and probably the most
obvious is the fact that this is after all an advanced group of well-informed
persons, many or most of whom are familiar with the relevant English language
literature, and Dr. Faurisson is here to show you some things about the
hoax you probably have not seen yet.470 Another subject only partially known
to most here is the development of the international controversy. Indeed many
“well informed” Americans are not aware that there has been a very loud international
Holocaust controversy recently, because they are forced to get
most of their information on world developments from the US press, which
sometimes gives readers the impression that Butz is the only author who has
rejected or challenged central claims of the extermination legend.
There are important perspectives to be gained by viewing the controversy
on an international scale. Permit me to say a few more words motivating the
present focus on the controversy surrounding the hoax rather that the hoax itself.
A Simple Subject
One of my dilemmas is that, by writing a whole book on the hoax, I may
have suggested something that I did not wish to suggest, because there is an
470 Robert Faurisson, “Extensive Research on the ‘Gas Chambers’ at Auschwitz”, audio tape,
90 min., Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review. Published as: “The Mechanics
of Gassing,” The Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1980, p. 23-30.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
400
important point that I should perhaps have stressed. I wrote in Chapter 1, but
did not stress, the important point that
“There are many considerations supporting this view and some are so
simple that they may surprise the reader even further. The simplest valid
reason for being skeptical about the extermination claim is also the simplest
conceivable reason; at the end of the war, they were still there.”
The dilemma I am delineating is that, by generating much verbiage on this
subject, I may give some the impression that it is a complex one. Therefore let
me state emphatically that the great verbiage is required not because the subject
is complicated but because public opinion has become distorted by the
media’s generation of many times that verbiage, generated over several decades,
with the consequence that unusual and elaborate therapy is required.
However it is very important that this select group not lose sight of the fact
that the subject is quite simple, and that only a cultural illness has made the
great efforts of revisionists necessary.
The elements in an effective exposé of the hoax are not many. The principal
points are as follows:
1. The Jews were singled out for special persecution by Nazi Germany.
Many were deprived of their property, conscripted for labor, or deported
east during the war. The German documents do not speak of exterminations.
The term “Final Solution” (Endlösung) meant the expulsion
of the Jews from Europe, and the deportations to the east were a
step toward that objective.
2. Documents published by the International Red Cross and the Vatican do
not harmonize with the extermination claims, and the very well informed
wartime Pope, Pius XII, is often castigated for not speaking up
against exterminations of Jews.
3. Partially on account of general wartime conditions and partially as a
consequence of the German measures against the Jews (e.g. crowding
into ghettos), a large number of Jews perished, but nothing near six million.
4. Published population statistics are quite meaningless, mainly because
almost all of the Jews involved in the problem were East European (e.g.
two or three million Polish Jews), but also because in the USA there has
been no reliable count – the census does not treat this and the concept
“Jew” was not admitted into the official records when a very large
number entered the US after the war. To the extent that a significant
number of Jews might seem to be missing from some region they occupied
before the war, they can to the best of our knowledge be accounted
for in terms of the massive and well known postwar movements of Jews
to the US, Palestine and other lands, and also in terms of their simply
remaining in the Soviet Union where the Germans had put them, according
to the German documents.
Supplement 1: The International Holocaust Controversy
401
5. The evidence for the extermination allegations depends crucially on trials,
such as the Nuremberg trials, held before courts that were for political
reasons constrained to accept the basic truth of such allegations.
Thus to many relevant defendants it seemed that the only possible defense
strategy was to deny not the exterminations but only their personal
responsibility for them (e.g. Ernst Kaltenbrunner or Adolf
Eichmann).
6. The horrible scenes found in the German camps in 1945 were the result
of the total collapse – in the context of the total collapse of German industry
and transport – of all German countermeasures against diseases,
mainly typhus, that had plagued all German camps throughout the war.
These German countermeasures had included periodic showers of all
inmates and also extensive and periodic use of insecticides, such as
Zyklon B, for disinfection purposes.
7. Concentration camp inmates were an important source of labor for the
hard pressed wartime German economy, and the high death rate that
prevailed in the camps throughout the war was considered “catastrophic’
by the Germans (Chapter 4). As a result of the high death rate,
about 350,000, or perhaps 400,000, inmates died in the German camps
during the war, some minority of that number being Jews.471
8. There were crematoria in all of the camps for the disposal of the bodies
of people who died there.
9. The camps in Germany are not even claimed to have been “extermination
camps,” except in occasional publications of a frankly sensationalistic
nature. The so-called “extermination camps,” such as Auschwitz,
were all in Poland, and were captured by the Soviet troops after having
been evacuated in an orderly fashion by the Germans. The Russians
found no horrible scenes comparable to those we later found in Germany,
and no evidence of exterminations.
10. The “gas chambers” are fictitious and the best the bearers of the legend
can do to argue their existence is to advance the ludicrous claim that the
Zyklon did double duty in exterminating Jews as well as lice, or to misrepresent
a shower or even an ordinary room as a “gas chamber.” Another
tactic is to confuse the concept of a “gas oven.” All crematorium
ovens are “gas ovens.”
471 The figure is for deaths of people who had been registered as camp inmates, in written records
of which enough have survived to permit the estimate. The legend asserts that the “exterminated”
millions were not entered in such records. See the report, “The Number of Victims
of the National Socialist Persecution,” available from the International Tracing Service,
D-3548 Arolsen, Germany. The remark should not be misinterpreted as a claim that the
number of Jews who perished was some minority of 350,000. Many more died outside of
the concentration camps, from diseases in ghettos, in occasional pogroms, and in other
commonplace and uncommonplace ways. The number is not known.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
402
That is the basic structure of the hoax.
Why a “Hoax”?
At this point it is convenient to remark on the title I chose for my book. In
the controversy, one of the things that jolted some, even some who were otherwise
favorably impressed by the book, was my use of the term “hoax” to describe
the received legend. Some felt that, whatever the truth of the legend, the
term was not adequate or appropriate to the situation. Such a trivializing concept,
it was thought, should not be applied to a legend that lives on the vast
scale of the Holocaust – it struck some as comparable to criticizing Handel’s
Messiah as a “ditty.”
Let me assure you that the choice of “hoax” was calculated, and that today
I am even more convinced that it was a felicitous choice, for the reason that
the thing really is trivial. The term “hoax” suggests something cheap and
crude, and that is precisely what I wish to suggest. A term such as “myth,” although
correct and sometimes used by me, does not convey this important description
of the nature of the evidence supporting the extermination claim.
The uncomfortable reaction to the term “hoax” merely reflects the nature
of the great popular delusion on this subject. At one time some of the people
who are addressing you here, such as Dr. Faurisson and myself, shared not
only the popular belief in the truth of the legend but also the popular impression
that its truth was beyond question – “as established as the Great Pyramid”
– as I wrote. However at some point we undertook an investigation and discovered,
remarkably quickly, that beneath the legend’s face of granite there
stood feet of clay.
It is this focus on the feet of clay, that revisionists have seen in the historical
record, that creates a great psychological distance between the revisionists
and even many intelligent people, and sometimes causes revisionists to appear
to be crusaders of some sort. Those who have not seen the feet of clay cannot
have the degree of certainty that seems to accompany revisionists. I believe
that perhaps this contrast between the apparent dignity of the received legend
and the reality of its crude and contemptible foundations is the key point that
must be developed in the psychological reorientation of people whom you
wish to inform. Once such a psychological reorientation is accomplished, the
rest is routine. The jolt that the word “hoax” causes is a calculated initial step
in this reorientation.
A Societal Problem
Another reason for the wish to focus on the controversy here is that it
represents a distinct problem. That is, there is an historical problem, treated in
my book, and there is also the problem of the societal status of the legend, the
subject of my talk today. The former, the historical problem, is relatively simSupplement
1: The International Holocaust Controversy
403
ple in comparison to the latter, or perhaps I should say that I do not feel that I
understand the societal status of the hoax nearly as well as I understand the
hoax itself. However a couple of obvious features can be safely noted. For one
thing, it is a case of media induced hysteria. For another, the political interests
involved are not dead and gone, like those of World War I, but are as contemporary
as tomorrow’s headlines, for Israel is always in trouble, and will be in
trouble as long as it exists as a Jewish state.
This has put historical scholarship into a dreadful situation, which can be
seen more clearly if we consider the manner in which knowledge is almost
always diffused in the “hard” sciences. There it is almost always the case that
trained specialists, with appropriate credentials as professionals in the scientific
area involved, make the initial revelations of new knowledge. These revelations
are normally made first to colleagues and are formulated in the esoteric
language of the specialty. Then, over some period of time, the new knowledge
filters to general society, with the terms in which it is described undergoing in
the process gradual simplification and popularization.
That is clearly not what has been happening in this “Holocaust” area. The
non-specialist who has seen the feet of clay cannot get his most urgent and
elementary questions answered by consulting the scholarly journals, for the
simple reason that the societal and political conditions I have referred to have
frightened the scholars away, and that is essentially the cultural illness I referred
to earlier. It is not so much that the historians have had the wrong answers
– they have not even confronted the questions, and the number of persons
outside of the historical profession, to whom that fact is painfully obvious,
is as least literal myriads today. Imagine such a situation holding in physics.
Now one can understand the curiosity that so disturbs many persons, that
this is “a field completely dominated by non-historians,” as I wrote in Chapter
7. Although the remark is no longer entirely true it is still largely the case that
the people who have drawn the obvious conclusions from the feet of clay and
have publicized their conclusions do not have backgrounds as historians –
mine is in engineering. I am the first to concede that this is a sorry situation,
but the situation would be even more sorry if nobody were asking questions
about the so-called Holocaust. We can and should take considerable comfort
from the fact that we have retained the cultural vitality to carry on here despite
the default of the historians.
Another facet of this is the fact that, the normal channels for the flow of
knowledge having been blocked, leadership in disseminating the revisionist
view of the Final Solution has fallen to publications with special ideological
orientations. For example The Spotlight in the US and the National Zeitung in
Germany are weekly newspapers that do not claim to be scholarly, but again
we should take comfort from the fact that somebody has been beating the
drum, for such widely read publications do nevertheless create pressures on
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
404
the historians that make it more difficult for them to continue avoiding this
subject.
They also serve to inform the general public and here we should take note
of the requirements of historical revisionism, because I may be misunderstood
by some here, and it may appear from my remarks that I am claiming that ideally
such matters should be confined to scholarly journals and that the general
public should not be bothered with them. I intend no such meaning, but it is
true that there must be a distinction between the matters treated by scholars
and those treated by the popular press.
The general public does not have the faculties or temperaments to treat
knowledge in the ways of the specialists, so one must be prepared to accept
something else for such purposes, and here it is useful to distinguish between
an intolerable and a tolerable popular outlook. It would for example be intolerable
if the populace believe the world to be flat. However, I suppose that for
all practical purposes a belief that it is spherical would be tolerable, and that a
concern for the macro and micro deviations from sphericity can be left to the
relevant specialists.
A comparable situation holds in this “Holocaust” area, and most of the
publications that have been propagating the revisionist viewpoint on the “Six
Million” have been doing a reasonably good job, both in terms of informing
their readerships, given the noted constraints imposed by them, and in terms
of generating pressures on the historians who might prefer to avoid the subject.
Development of the Controversy
Before the early Seventies there was only a relatively minor amount of
publicly expressed questioning of the Holocaust legend. The most significant
literature was the work of the former Buchenwald inmate and French Resistance
member Paul Rassinier, who died in 1967. However, in reflection of the
fact that there existed little interest in the subject, English translations of the
Rassinier books were not published until very recently, i.e. in the past four
years.
Around 1972 or 1973 there was an international development, by its nature
not noticed at the time, that remains fundamentally mysterious. What I am referring
to is the fact that a number of persons in several countries, virtually
simultaneously and completely independently of each other (in fact each was
not even aware of the existence of the others), resolved to question the received
legend, in the manner that was appropriate to his own situation, and to
publish his conclusions. Thies Christophersen’s booklet Die Auschwitz Lüge,
based on his recollections of his own stay near Auschwitz during the war, and
with an Introduction by Manfred Roeder, was published in Germany in 1973,
and it was soon followed there by Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich’s short article in the
Supplement 1: The International Holocaust Controversy
405
monthly Nation Europa, also based on his recollections of his wartime assignment
near Auschwitz. The year 1973 also saw the appearance in the US of
Dr. Austin J. App’s booklet The Six Million Swindle.
Richard Harwood’s booklet Did Six Million Really Die? was published in
Britain in the Spring of 1974, and later in the same year there was the uproar
at the Sorbonne over a letter by Dr. Robert Faurisson, so both were at work on
this subject in 1973 if not earlier. My work commenced in 1972 and my book
was published in Britain in the Spring of 1976 and in German translation a
year later.
In this review I have not mentioned every relevant publication and no
value judgments should be made purely from the inclusion or exclusion of
anything from the list. The purpose here is not to offer a bibliography, or a critique,
but to discuss the development of the controversy.
These developments of the early and mid-Seventies initiated reactions and
a controversy that still shows no sign of subsiding, as I think you are aware. In
Germany, Roeder was successfully prosecuted for his Introduction to the
Christophersen booklet,472 and Stäglich was punished with a five year, twenty
percent reduction of his pension as a retired judge.473 These acts of officially
enforced censorship did not daunt any of these persons. A new version of the
Christophersen booklet was issued with an Introduction by Stäglich substituted
for Roeder’s. Stäglich has recently published his fine book Der Auschwitz
Mythos through the Grabert-Verlag, and he has also co-published a
shorter work with Udo Walendy. The so-called liberal establishment in Germany
has been in a dither over this lone courageous man, and it has been
openly asked in its press “is it really so difficult to get this old and neo-
Nazi?”474
Events unfolded differently in Britain, indeed in such a manner as to
clearly suggest that questioning of the holy Six Million was not much longer
to be restricted to an underground of any sort. In an astonishing development,
the now famous Harwood booklet was favorably reviewed, by the well known
author Colin Wilson, in the November 1974 issue of the influential monthly
Books and Bookman. A furious controversy, which lasted about six months,
ensued in the “Letters” section of this magazine. I have elsewhere criticized
the Harwood booklet and pointed out some serious errors in it.475 However it
also has its virtues, and has been effective in stimulating questions, cerebration
and discussion of its formerly taboo subject. It was banned in South Africa
in 1976,476 and effectively banned in West Germany, in its German trans-
472 Jewish Chronicle (London), February 27, 1976, p. 3; Patterns of Prejudice (London), January-
February 1977, p. 12.
473 Nation Europa (Coburg), August 1975, p. 39.
474 Die Zeit, May 25, 1979, p. 5.
475 Voice of German Americans (New York), March 1978.
476 Patterns of Prejudice, September-October 1977, p. 19.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
406
lation, in late 1978.
The Institute of Jewish Affairs in London published its quite vacuous article
on my book in the November-December 1976 issue of its magazine Patterns
of Prejudice. Around the same time there began at Northwestern University
an uproar over my book that soon resulted in national and even international
publicity. There was a long story in the New York Times, but the story
misreported the title of the book as Fabrication of Hoax.477 I shall say a few
more words about the fuss at Northwestern later.
In April 1977 I wrote to the magazine Index on Censorship (headquartered
in London and affiliated with Amnesty International) to report to them the
many acts of official censorship in this area such as the events in Germany
and South Africa. Index has assumed the responsibility of merely reporting instances
of censorship, usually without further comment. They replied to me in
May 1977 that they “will put the question of whether or not to take it up to our
editorial board.” On my trip to Europe in the Summer of 1977 I visited their
headquarters and was told the editorial board had not yet deliberated on the
matter. I have heard no further word from them and I intend to write to them
again soon to report new instances of censorship, which were not long in coming,
for I was forbidden from speaking in Munich on September 3, 1977.478
Another development of 1977 was the commencement of the English language
publishing operations of Ditlieb Felderer’s excellent group in Sweden.
479
March 1978 brought the tragedy of the assassination of the French historian
François Duprat, allegedly by an Auschwitz “remembrance commando,”
for the offense of having denied the Six Million.480
Spring 1978 saw the US airing of NBC’s eight hour Holocaust monstrosity,
with all the preliminary and post hoopla. The inanities and hysterics were
repeated in Britain later in 1978 and in several European countries early in
1979. In Germany the airing of Holocaust was perfectly timed to influence the
Bundestag’s decision not to permit a statute of limitations to go into effect for
“war crimes.” I criticized Holocaust elsewhere and I shall not waste words on
it here.481 I understand that it is to be shown again soon.
In the Summer of 1978 the Noontide Press edition of some of Rassinier’s
writings appeared.482 A year later Historical Review Press issued its English
translation of Rassinier’s Eichmann book.483
Late 1978 brought a significant escalation of the controversy in all senses.
477 New York Times, January 28, 1977, p. A10.
478 Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 2, 1977, p. 13; September 3-4, 1977, p. 13f.
479 Bible Researcher, Marknadvsvagen 289, 2 tr, S-183 Taby, Sweden.
480 Le Monde, March 19-20, 1978, p. 24; March 23, 1978, p. 7.
481 Spotlight (Washington), May 8, 1978.
482 Rassinier (1978).
483 Rassinier (1979).
Supplement 1: The International Holocaust Controversy
407
In October the German publisher Propyläen issued Prof. Hellmut Diwald’s
massive Geschichte der Deutschen (History of the Germans). Propyläen is an
old firm, now owned by Axel Springer, which specializes in publishing books
written by scholars but for an intelligent lay readership. On two pages Diwald
said some things very much in harmony with things revisionists of the “Final
Solution” have said, and of course the clamor of the Establishment’s spokesmen
was deafening. Golo Mann wrote that “these two pages […] are the most
monstrous that I have had to read in a German book since 1945”484 and the
publisher responded to the clamor by stopping the sale of the first edition and
substituting a new edition with the two offending pages hastily rewritten, in a
style I am assured is not Diwald’s, in order to conform to the usual line. Axel
Springer further promised publicly, in words I cannot imagine coming from a
US publisher under any circumstances, that this was only the beginning of the
rewriting of the book, and that by Fall 1979 the book would be “not recognizable.”
485
The original two pages that Diwald had published were not particularly
significant in themselves; relatively little was said. There are however two
points of major significance to note. First, Diwald does not lack credentials as
an historian. He is a history professor at the Friedrich-Alexander University in
Erlangen and has been well known in the historical profession since taking his
doctorate under the German-Jewish historian Hans-Joachim Schoeps more
than two decades ago. Second, the fact of the panic rewriting of the two pages,
as a result of public pressure, definitively established points that should be
made when people ask such questions as “why do even the Germans concede
the reality of the six million murders?” or “why do the historians concede
them?” The market in ideas in this area is not a free one. Throughout the
world, there are at least informal and unofficial barriers to free expression and
discussion.
In some countries, especially in Germany, there are also formal and legally
enforced barriers. That fact has already been noted here, but late 1978 saw the
initiation in Germany of a great new wave of repression. In that country there
exists the concept of “youth-menacing media” (jugendgefährdende Medien). It
is something like the “X rating” concept in the USA, except that its application
is supervised by the government and not almost entirely restricted to pornography.
In theory, the law is supposed to prevent only the availability of
things to youth, but when non-pornographic matter goes on the list, the practical
effect is to ban it, for the law specifies that listed literature may not be advertised
or sold to private parties by mail. It can still be sold in bookstores,
subject to certain restrictions, but with the exception of the Diwald book the
literature that has been discussed here had never been stocked by regular
484 Der Spiegel, December 4, 1978, p. 14f.
485 Der Spiegel, April 9, 1979, p. 232ff; National Zeitung (Munich), February 16, 1979, p. 6.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
408
bookstores in Germany anyway.
Late 1978 marked the beginning of an obviously systematic campaign in
West Germany to put much of the literature I have told you about on the list of
youth-menacing literature. The first was the German translation of the Harwood
booklet, and the German translation of my book, entitled Der Jahrhundertbetrug,
went onto the list in May 1979.486 There is also a move against the
Stäglich book that is too recent to discuss further here. Such developments in
the official area in Germany, together with developments in the unofficial
area, such as the Diwald affair, answer conclusively the question of why even
Germans concede the reality of the “exterminations.” The system that we set
up there after the Second World War gives them no other choice.
Almost simultaneously with these events in Germany, things were happening
in France. In late October 1978 l’Express, a magazine comparable to
Newsweek, published an interview with Louis Darquier de Péllepoix, who had
been commissioner for Jewish affairs in the Vichy government during the
German occupation, and who has lived in Spain since the war. Darquier’s
generally unrepentant attitude, plus his claim that the only creatures gassed at
Auschwitz had been lice, set off a French uproar virtually coincident with the
one around Diwald on the other side of the Rhine. Most significantly for our
interests, the spotlight then turned on Robert Faurisson, who was then teaching
at the University of Lyon-2, and who had been almost forgotten since the
relatively minor flap when he was at the Sorbonne in 1974. The disorders on
the part of some of the students led to Faurisson’s suspension from his teaching
duties, a suspension that is still in effect, but another result of all their attention
to Faurisson’s supposedly outrageous views was that Le Monde, the
French equivalent of the New York Times, saw itself obligated, much against
its wishes, to give him space in which to express these views. It is true that Le
Monde gave the other side much more space, but an important barrier had
been broken, at least in France, and I am told that today there are a lot of questions
being openly asked in that country whose expression would have been
inconceivable only a year ago.487
As a consequence of the publicity in France, Faurisson was able to participate
in a three hour debate on Italian-language Swiss television on April 17,
1979. I am told that the program generated enormous interest, that most impartial
observers thought Faurisson had won the debate, and that the whole
thing was rebroadcast on May 6. As a result of the television debate, a long interview
with Faurisson was published in the August 1979 and following issues
of the Italian magazine Storia Illustrata; this interview is by far the most in-
486 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 16, 1979, p. 23; New York Times, May 22, 1979, p.
A13.
487 Le Monde, November 22, 1978, p. 42; December 16, 1978, p. 12; December 29, 1978, p. 8;
January 10, 1979, p. 11; January 16, 1979, p. 13; February 3, 1979, p. 10; February 21,
1979, p. 23; March 8, 1979, p. 31.
Supplement 1: The International Holocaust Controversy
409
structive material on the Holocaust subject to be published, to date, in an “Establishment”
magazine or newspaper.488
At the height of the Diwald and Faurisson controversies in Europe, another
one broke out in Australia. John Bennett, a Melbourne civil liberties lawyer,
had sent copies of my book to several Melbourne academics, together with a
memo by him summarizing what seemed to him to be some of the principal
arguments in support of the thesis of the book, and inviting critical comment
(I understand that to date, despite the publicity there, almost no such comment
had been forthcoming). Neither the memo nor anything else Bennett had written
on the subject had been intended for publication, but one weekly newspaper
got a copy of the memo somehow and published it, igniting a controversy
that lasted several months.489
In these controversies the guardians of the legend have said very little of
intellectual content. It has, with only rare exceptions, been all name-calling –
“anti-Semitic,” “neo-Nazi,” etc. So here are a few people who have lived well
up to or into middle age without it ever having occurred to anybody to call
them such things, and who are now so belatedly assaulted with these political
cuss words just because they asked questions about the Six Million.
There was another important development early in 1979 and it came,
oddly, from the CIA. Two photointerpreters released their study of some aerial
reconnaissance photographs of Auschwitz that the US made in 1944, when
Auschwitz was of strategic interest as an oil target. Despite the publicity and
even an historian’s claims that the photographs provided some sort of evidence
of exterminations, there was no such evidence in the photographs.490
What was to be found in the photographs was on crucial points exactly what
was predicted in my book, where it was shown in Chapter 5 that such photographs
must exist, although I had not seen them.491
Negative Reactions in Academia
I have suggested that the negative reactions to revisionists of the Final Solution
have been on the whole emotional, and I made no distinction between
reactions of professional scholars and laymen. This was no oversight. I am sad
to report that to an extent that stunned me the reactions of very many scholars
have been what one might have expected from a hyperemotional Jewish
grandmother. In the early stages of the public reactions to my book one Prof.
488 English translation published as R. Faurisson, “The gas chambers: Truth or lie?”, Journal of
Historical Review, Winter 1981, p. 319-373.
489 National Times, February 10; February 24; The Age, February 15; February 16; March 3;
March 15; March 17; March 22; March 23; March 24; March 28; April 6; April 14; May 8;
Nation Review, May 24; May 31; June 28; Weekend Australian, May 26-27. All 1979.
490 Washington Post, February 23, 1979, p. A1; New York Times, February 24, 1979, p. 2;
March 6, 1979, p. A16.
491 Brugioni and Poirier.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
410
Wolfe of New York University made a fool of himself by writing to the New
York Times that Northwestern University should bring me up on charges of
“academic incompetence” and “moral turpitude” for authoring and publishing
the book whose title, he reported in his letter, was “Fabrication of a Hoax.”
Clearly he had seen the New York Times story about the book, which reported
an incorrect title, and he had not seen the book itself.492
That was an extreme case but it is still true that scholars who should know
better have made a lot of noises while saying almost nothing of substance. In
all of the professorial criticism of my book at Northwestern, the only point of
historical weight that was raised against it, and that reached me, was that the
published population statistics are in conflict with my claims. That fact is
mentioned and discussed in the first chapter of my book.
The History Department at Northwestern supposedly undertook to sponsor
a series of lectures entitled “Dimensions of the Holocaust,” but then in his introductory
remarks the Chairman of the Department gave the show away by
thanking the Hillel Foundation for rounding up the speakers for the affair. The
University shortly later published the lectures in a booklet that is presumably
still available.
There was another instructive development at Northwestern. There was
published in the student newspaper a full page advertisement, sponsored by
the Hillel Foundation and bearing a statement of “condemnation” signed by
about half of the faculty.493 There is no need to reproduce the text here. The
statement mentioned “the murder of over eleven million people, among them
six million Jews, by Nazi Germany,” and I think the most interesting feature
of this is not the six million Jews but the five million or more others, who
seem to have been added to the propaganda both rather recently and rather arbitrarily,
although it is said that so-called “Nazi-hunter” Simon Wiesenthal has
used the figure for some time.494
There is apparently some specific propaganda point served by the five million
Gentiles. Wiesenthal claims that “one of the biggest mistakes made on the
side of the Jews” has been to emphasize only the six million Jews and not the
others, with the result that Jews “lost many friends.” I must confess that I do
not see the point at all, but apparently it has been decided to toss the five million
Gentiles into the propaganda on at least selected occasions.
To return to the statement of condemnation that was signed by so many
faculty members at Northwestern, there is clearly something graver involved
here than mere conformity to a doctrine or established myth, for it is a certainty
that the vast majority of the signers had never heard of the five million
492 New York Times, February 4, 1977, p. A22.
493 Daily Northwestern, March 30, 1977, p. 5.
494 Chicago Daily News, November 12-13, 1977; Los Angeles Times, May 6, 1979, part 9, p. 4;
Los Angeles Times Calendar, May 13, 1979, p. 2; New York Times, May 28, 1979, p. D7.
Supplement 1: The International Holocaust Controversy
411
goyim until they were confronted with the statement to sign. Their subscription
was not therefore based on mere unquestioning acceptance of a familiar
historical claim. It was based on considerations even more baleful to an academic
environment. I will not explore the point further here, but it is easy to
get the dismal impression that many would have signed almost anything related
to the controversy, provided the Hillel Foundation wished it signed.
It is dismaying to report such behavior on the part of those to whom society
has entrusted the custody of its affairs of the intellect. However there are at
least some indications that it is being realized that a more serious treatment of
my book, if only to attempt to discredit it, is required. It has recently been said
that “Butz might succeed in delivering ammunition to more ‘revisionists’ of
the Final Solution. Here lies the danger. Butz should be unmasked, not ignored.”
495
Conclusions
You can see the gist of the conclusions I am going to draw from this account
of the development of the controversy. What I have described to you
has been a process whereby a thesis has emerged from the underground, to
which it had been assigned both on account of political pressures and on account
of its seeming implausibility (given the decades of propaganda), into the
light of day where it is being discussed and argued in establishment publications
throughout the world. It is still a minority thesis, but the trend in favor of
revisionists is obvious to anybody who is not willfully blind.
Revisionists of the Final Solution, a handful of lone individuals of meager
resources, have been successful far beyond their expectations – at least I did
not expect things to unfold to rapidly – and this cannot be explained entirely
in terms of the quality of their efforts. It can only be explained in terms of society’s
being receptive to such views at this point in history. The development
that I have outlined here has now gone so far that I now believe it is almost irrelevant
what I and my present revisionist colleagues do, or what happens to
us.
To see the reason for this one need only return to one of my earliest points:
this is a simple subject. The almost universal delusions have existed not because
of the complexities of the subject but because of political factors in
Western society. A corollary of the simplicity of the hoax is that it only need
be questioned and discussed, in a context free of intimidation and hysteria, for
the psychological reorientation spoken of earlier to be accomplished, the shattering
of the delusions following in due course. That point has for all practical
purposes been reached or soon will be reached.
I shall make an observation that may seem harsh. Revisionists of the Holo-
495 Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, April 1979, p. 264.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
412
caust have been, to put it bluntly, victims of multifarious persecution. You
know only a part of it – the part that appears in the newspapers, such as the
book bannings in Germany or Faurisson’s suspension at the University of
Lyon-2. The other part, the more personal part, is at most only hinted at in the
newspapers, is generally not known to you, and we shall not bother you with
details of such painful things, but let me assure you they exist. I therefore am
fully cognizant that it is harsh of me to make this observation: we should greet
the fact of the persecutions, for they are symptomatic of success, and even the
victims should be as elated over them as is psychologically possible in the
grim personal circumstances they are in.
Sometimes it is said that the revisionist Holocaust thesis is comparable to
claiming that the world is flat, but note that nobody bothers the flat earth people.
It is not rough to go up against the whole world with no chance of winning,
but it is very rough to go up against it with some chance of winning.
That is what revisionists of the Final Solution did, and that is the reason for
the persecutions, but the persecutions are too late and in vain, for as I just
noted it is almost irrelevant at this point what happens to today’s Holocaust
revisionists. The present inertia of the controversy has the weight to bring
down the hoax even without their personal participation, and deliver these
mendacious and pernicious years into the trash can of shattered hoaxes.
413
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective
in the Holocaust Controversy
Presented orally at the 1982 conference of the Institute for Historical Review.
This is a slightly edited version of the paper as published in the Journal
of Historical Review, vol. 3, no. 4, Winter 1982, pp. 371+.
When in the discussion of some subject we criticize somebody because “he
can’t see the forest for the trees,” we refer to a special sort of intellectual failing.
We do not mean that the object of our criticism is incompetent or that his
views on the subject of interest are erroneous or irrelevant. His views may, on
the contrary, be buttressed by investigations of depth and power that would be
a credit to any intellect. We mean that he is so focused on details that he fails
to see the subject in proper and larger context, especially from the higher perspective
which, if adopted and pursued, would solve many of the problems
that excited general curiosity in the subject in the first place.
When I first addressed an IHR conference three years ago I explicitly made
reference to this problem by pointing out that on p. 2??? (Chapter 1) of this
book I mentioned the consideration that, if appreciated adequately, would
have made much of my study superfluous:
“The simplest valid reason for being skeptical about the extermination
claim is also the simplest conceivable reason; at the end of the war they
were still there.”
Through all of the controversy on the Holocaust my thoughts have continually
returned to this point. That so much controversy could have raged,
with only rare occurrences of this observation, raises questions that are worth
exploring.
On the one hand my making of the above and similar general historical observations
shows that I did not myopically see only the trees and not the forest.
On the other hand in some parts of the book my focus may seem to be on
obscure details and to suggest myopia. This bifocalism is the topic of this paper.
For one thing, I want to develop the “forest” side of the subject further,
i.e. I want to place the “Holocaust” subject more firmly in the context of the
higher history of the twentieth century. On the other hand, I want to consider
the fact that so much of the investigation that has been conducted in recent
years, certainly including my own, has presupposed and sought to satisfy myopic
demands. I will argue, partly from historical analogy, that as a practical
matter this great emphasis on detail seems justified and even necessary in the
times we are in, but that it is important, in order to avoid getting tripped up on
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
414
points of detail, that we keep the larger context in mind.
Gitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny’s article in the New Statesman of November 2, 1979, furnishes
a useful illustration. She attempted to counter my arguments in only
one respect. In the course of writing Into That Darkness she had interviewed,
in a German prison, Franz Stangl, former commandant of Treblinka (a facility
in central Poland that served as a transit camp for deportations of Warsaw
Jews). She wrote:
“I talked with Stangl for weeks in prison; I talked to others who worked
under him, and to their families. I talked to people who, otherwise uninvolved,
witnessed these events in Poland. And I talked to a few of those
very few who survived.
Butz claims in his Hoax that those [hundreds] who admitted taking part
in extermination were doing so as plea-bargaining, in order to get lighter
sentences. But those I talked to had been tried. Many had served their sentences,
and none of them had anything to gain – except shame – by what
they told me. Stangl himself wanted only to talk, and then to die. And
Stangl is dead. But if […] Butz […] were really interested in the truth,
Stangl’s wife, and many other witnesses are still able to testify.”
Although the point is not of major importance, I note that Sereny had misleadingly
reported Stangl’s hopes during her interview. According to her Into
That Darkness Stangl was awaiting the decision on his appeal against a life
sentence, so he presumably wanted to get out of jail before he died.
Anybody who has taken even a brief look at the details of the Treblinka
legend (e.g. the claim that the exhausts of captured Russian tanks and trucks
were used in the “gassings”) would understand that history was not being
served by Sereny’s remarks on her interviews with Stangl. However I am
afraid that in the typical case such healthy skepticism might be accompanied
by some myopia in offering an explanation for Sereny’s account.
The most obvious myopic reaction would be to say or suggest that Sereny
was lying, that Stangl never said anything like what she has attributed to him.
Other possibilities might be to suggest that such remarks by Stangl were produced
by bribery or torture. That such reactions quite miss the mark is easily
seen by first considering the context, rather than the content, of Stangl’s remarks.
He was by then an old man. He had heard the tales of what was supposed
to have happened at Treblinka for twenty-five years. Of course he privately
scoffed at them at first. Then he got accustomed to living in a culture in
which such tales were never publicly challenged. He may (as sometimes happens
in such circumstances) have started to believe them himself, or perhaps
he privately cultivated his knowledge that the tales were almost pure invention.
It is most unlikely that we shall ever know, but we do know that in his
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
415
confrontation with the journalist Sereny, the hapless old man could scarcely
have reasoned that he could help himself by denying the legend as it applies to
Treblinka. I am confident that Stangl told Sereny something like she reports.
Of course Stangl sought to excuse himself personally, but what possible selfserving
reason could he have found for telling Sereny that the “gassings” are a
myth?
Accordingly I wrote in my letter of reply to the New Statesman, which was
not published there but was later published elsewhere:496
“The key point is that the objective served by such statements should be
presumed to be personal interest rather than historical truth. At a ‘trial’
some specific thing is to be tried, i.e. the court is supposed to start by treating
that thing as an open question.
The ‘extermination’ allegation has never been at question in any practical
sense in any of the relevant trials, and in some it has not been open to
question in a formal legal sense. The question was always only personal
responsibility in a context in which the extermination allegation was unquestionable.
Thus the ‘confessions’ of Germans, which in all cases sought
to deny or mitigate personal responsibility, were merely the only defenses
they could present in their circumstances.
This is not exactly ‘plea-bargaining,’ where there is negotiation between
prosecution and defense, but it is related. All it amounts to is presenting
a story that it was possible for the court to accept. The logical dilemma
is inescapable once the defendant resolves to take the ‘trial’ seriously.
To deny the legend was not the way to stay out of jail.
Moreover it is not true, as Sereny implicitly asserts, that this logical dilemma
no longer holds when the defendant is serving a life sentence. If he
is seeking pardon or parole, he would not try to overturn what has already
been decided in court; that is not the way pardon or parole works. For example,
at the Frankfurt ‘Auschwitz trial’ of 1963-1965, so monstrous were
the supposed deeds of Robert Mulka that many thought his sentence to 14
years at hard labor unduly light. Then, in a denouement that would amaze
all who have not studied this subject closely, Mulka was quietly released
less than four months later. However, if Mulka had claimed in any plea (as
he could have truthfully), either at his trial or afterwards, that there were
no exterminations at Auschwitz and that he was in a position to know, then
he would have served a full life sentence in the former case and the full
fourteen years in the latter, if he lived that long.
It is not widely known, but there have been many such instances – the
subject is hard to investigate.[497] In no instance would it have made any
496 Journal of Historical Review, vol. 2 no. 2. Summer 1980, pp. 153ff. The “Dr.” before my
signature was added by the editor. I never sign that way.
497 Los Angeles Herald Examiner. September 2, 1979, p. E2.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
416
sense, in terms of immediate self interest, to deny the exterminations. That
was not the way to get out of jail.”
If one accepts, as the terms of the debate, the purely defensive attitude of
responding to the specific points made by the other side, then I still believe
this to be the correct way to answer Sereny. I was satisfied as I wrote those
lines but, in the course of so doing, the madness of the immediate context
struck me. It was 1979, not 1942, and Sereny was trying to explain to readers
of the New Statesman, via her account of a lone old man’s remarks, that they
should believe the “extermination” tales. Continuing the letter, then, I wrote:
“We do not need ‘confessions’ or ‘trials’ to determine that the bombings
of Dresden and Hiroshima, or the reprisals at Lidice following Heydrich’s
assassination, really took place. Now, the extermination legend
does not claim a few instances of homicide, but alleges events continental
in geographical scope, of three years in temporal scope, and of several
million in scope of victims. How ludicrous, then, is the position of the
bearers of the legend, who in the last analysis will attempt to ‘prove’ such
events on the basis of ‘confessions’ delivered under the fabric of hysteria,
censorship, intimidation, persecution and blatant illegality that has been
shrouding this subject for 35 years.”
To put it another way, Sereny in her 1979 article was arguing the reality of
the colossal events alleged by reporting what a tired old man recently told her
in prison. One might as well argue that the gypsies burned down New York
City in 1950, on the basis of confessions of gypsies who were living there at
the time. Of course Sereny would argue that I am seizing on only one remark
of hers and making it appear to be her whole argument. However, while I concede
that she has a great deal more to say on this subject, the basic observation
still stands. She was taking a great deal of space in a prominent journal in presenting
arguments that in 1979 were wildly incommensurate with the allegation
in question. If the Jews of Europe really had been exterminated, such arguments
would not be offered.
When I saw Robert Faurisson in 1980 he congratulated me on this point,
i.e. for pointing out that we do not need “trials” in order to believe in real historical
events (Hiroshima, Lidice, etc.), and said he wished he had thought of
it. I knew how he felt for, at about the time of Sereny’s article a man I had
never heard of before telephoned me and raised a point I wished I had thought
of, namely, why didn’t those Jewish bodies outside the Axis sphere, who had
so much to say about “extermination” and “murder,” undertake to warn the
Jews under Hitler what supposedly lay in story for them in the German resettlement
programs? In all accounts we are told that the Jews packed up for the
deportations and entered camps later without imagining that they were to be
killed. This feature of the legend is of course necessary for it is well known
that violent resistance to the deportations was very rare (I implicitly touched
this point on p. 122??? (Chapter 4), but nowhere nearly as strongly as I should
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
417
have).
The general lesson suggested by these two incidents is the subject of this
paper. We see that what was involved in both incidents was temporary myopia,
not merely of the bearers of the received legend, but more importantly of
the revisionists, who were so busy analyzing the trees that it took some fortuitous
prodding to make them notice some important features of the forest. This
is not a failing of individuals. It is a consequence of the historical circumstances
in which we find ourselves. I shall try to describe those circumstances
and show how we should handle them today. This is done partly by presenting
my approximation of posterity’s outlook on these matters, and partly by offering
several suggestions on the conduct of practical controversy.
The Donation of Constantine
The “Donation of Constantine” is the most famous forgery in European
history. It first appeared somewhere around the year 800. It is a document allegedly
in the “hands” (sic) of Emperor Constantine I (288? – 337), which recounts
the long-standing and false legend of Constantine’s conversion and
baptism by Pope Sylvester I. Its principal feature is its grant to the Pope of
temporal authority over “the city of Rome and all the provinces, places and
states of Italy, and the western regions.” It also decrees that the Pope “shall
have the supremacy as well over the four principal (holy) sees, Alexandria,
Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople,” and makes various additional specific
grants. To make it clear that the Donation is in earnest, the document
then has Constantine declare his intention to transfer his own capital to “the
practice of Byzantia (where) a city should be built in our name […] for where
the primate of priests and the head of the Christian religion is established by
the Heavenly Emperor, it is not right that an earthly Emperor shall have authority
there.”
What is of the greatest interest here is that the authenticity of this document
was rarely questioned before the fifteenth century, despite the facts that (1)
according to legends and histories widely available throughout the Middle
Ages and to the document itself, the city that Constantine founded on the ancient
site of Byzantium, and which was later called “Constantinople,” had not
yet been founded, much less made the site of a principle holy see and (2) more
conclusively, and in analogy with our “they were still there” observation on
the Holocaust, according to records and histories available throughout the
Middle Ages, imperial rule continued in Italy during the times of Constantine,
Sylvester, and their immediate successors.
It was certainly not lack of interest or relevance that explains the long failure
to see the Donation as a fraud. Much of the political life of the Middle
Ages revolved around the controversy over the relative power of Pope and
Holy Roman (i.e. German) Emperor, and able intellects participated in cirArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
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cumstances in which the Donation was considered one of the arguments on
the side of the Pope. Even Dante (1265-1321), an outspoken enemy of papal
temporal power, touched on the Donation in his Inferno only to deplore Constantine’s
granting of it:
O Constantine, what great evil had as its mother
Not your conversion, but that dowry
Which the first rich father got from you!
Thus a wildly ahistoric forgery, approximately in the class of a letter bearing
the alleged signature of George Washington, granting the Methodist Episcopal
Church “authority to rule over Washington, DC and subject territories of
North America,” went almost unchallenged throughout centuries of relevant
controversy.
The first challenges were typically silly, off the mark, tendentious, or circumlocutory,
and often, with Dante, challenged only the desirability of the
Donation and not its historicity. In the middle of the twelfth century the reform
movement of Arnold of Brescia attacked the whole legend of Sylvester
and the Donation by arguing that Constantine was already a Christian when he
met Sylvester. Among the anti-papal Ghibellines of Germany there arose
around 1200 the legend that, when Constantine made the Donation, the angels
cried audibly “Alas, alas, this day has poison been dropped into the Church of
God.” The partisans of the Pope retorted that, sure, the weeping was heard, but
it was just the Devil in disguise, trying to deceive us. Others argued that the
Donation was not valid because Constantine was tainted with Arian heresy, or
because the consent of the people had not been obtained, or because the grant
was supposed to apply only to Constantine’s reign. Others turned the donation
into a back-handed blow at the papacy by arguing that it showed papal primacy
to be derived not from God, but from the Emperor. Indeed the last argument
became, until the middle of the fifteenth century, a standard attitude
toward the Donation on the part of anti-papal spokesmen. Around 1200 two
writers had pointed to the fact of the continuity of imperial rule in Italy after
the alleged Donation, but their presentations were circumlocutory and did not
reveal their personal conclusions on the matter, and they had no evident influence
on future controversy.
What should have been a conclusive critique of the Donation came in
1433, not from an anti-papal source, but from somebody we might characterize
as a liberal reformer within the Church. Cusanus, Deacon of St. Florinus of
Coblenz, presented for the use of the Council of Basle a critique of the Donation
which emphasized the overwhelming historical evidence against any
transfer of sovereignty from Emperor to Pope in or just after the time of Sylvester
and Constantine.
Cusanus’ De concordantia catholica had little direct impact, partly because
of its dry and dispassionate tone, and partly because it was eclipsed by the
1440 treatise of Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini. It is
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Valla’s name that is most closely associated with the overthrow of the hoax,
partly because his own considerable talents were supplemented by Cusanus’
work, partly because of the oratorical and passionate nature of his treatise, and
partly because the quickly succeeding developments of printing and the Reformation
movement gave the treatise a massive distribution in various translations.
Valla’s basic approach was to subject the Donation to criticism from every
perspective that was available to him. For example he starts by trying to look
at the matter from the perspective of Constantine, “a man who through thirst
for dominion had waged war against nations, and attacking friends and relatives
in civil strife had taken the government from them,” who then allegedly
would “set about giving to another out of pure generosity the city of Rome, his
fatherland, the head of the world, the queen of states, […] betaking himself
thence to an humble little town, Byzantium.” After reading only a few pages
of Valla the Donation seems incredible, but the treatise runs to about 80 pages
in English translation and is a classic case of “overkill.” Valla supported Cusanus’
argument, that the alleged transfer of sovereignty had not taken place,
with the evidence of the Roman coins of the period, which were issued in the
names of Emperors, not Popes. Valla analyzed the language and vocabulary of
the Donation document, and showed they could not have represented the sort
of Latin used by Constantine. Such methods were novel for the times.
Valla was not a disinterested scholar. At the time he wrote the treatise he
was employed as secretary to Alfonso of Aragon, who was contesting the rule
of Naples with the Pope. Valla left his readers in no doubt of his view that
temporal power of the Pope is bad and ought to be abolished. Nevertheless
Valla’s treatise is a landmark in the rise of historical criticism, and I believe it
can profitably be studied today by those engaged in “debunking the genocide
myth.”
Although somebody was burned at the stake in Strassburg in 1458 for denying
the Donation, Valla’s thesis was at first quite well received among educated
people, although the treatise remained in manuscript. By 1500 it seemed
the legend was finished; the relative quiescence of fundamental controversy
on the character of the papacy was probably helpful. However the development
of the Reformation movement, and the wide use of Valla’s treatise as a
weapon against the papacy, had the ironic effect of reviving the defense of the
legend. On the one hand Martin Luther declared in 1537 that Valla’s treatise
had convinced him that the Pope was the embodiment of the Antichrist. On
the other hand Steuchus, librarian of the Vatican, produced in 1547 a rather
able attack on Valla’s treatise, which was put on the Index shortly later. The
process of overthrowing the legend could only be considered completed
around 1600 when the great Catholic historian Baronius declared that the falsity
of the Donation had been proved.
This short sketch begs at least two fundamental questions. First, we have
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
420
observed that the fraudulence of the Donation seems obvious, on the grounds
that the alleged transfer of sovereignty did not in fact take place. Why then did
it take so long to expose it?
I believe that the reason is fundamentally that it would have been impolitic,
earlier than the Renaissance, to have drawn the obvious conclusions about the
Donation. Important political and economic interests are difficult to oppose
with mere observations, regardless of how factual and relevant. The two explanations
that come most readily to mind, for the overthrowing of the legend
at the time it was done, are, first, that the Renaissance introduced a new higher
level of scholarship to Europe and, second, that the Reformation assisted antipapal
developments. I believe this interpretation is valid provided it is not
thereby implied that the Middle Ages did not have the intellectual acumen to
see through the fraud. The political developments of the post-medieval period
were decisive in making it safe and even opportune to see the obvious.
We can elaborate on this basically political explanation by noting the old
problem; we see the trees, not the forest, unless we make unusual efforts to do
otherwise. To see the obvious, it must first be presented somehow. What people
heard in the Donation controversy were the claim s of Popes to temporal
authority, references to the relevant document, and all sorts of arguments from
quarters hostile to the Pope. Roman history, while known to a good extent,
was not normally ably presented. For this perhaps amazing omission there are
simple explanations. For one thing the Popes represented the entrenched position
and called the tune on what was to be discussed; they could hardly be expected
to encourage examination on historical grounds. For another thing
spokesmen against the Donation, on account of their dissident position, had to
address familiar subjects in order to accomplish the practical objective of being
heard. Moreover as they typically represented political or religious interests
rather than historical studies, they often did not know the relevant history
anyway. On the other hand the professional scholars were largely dependent
upon ecclesiastic authorities for their livelihoods. Thus the field was suitable
for a reign of politically founded stupidity.
To ask a second fundamental question, if the fraudulence of the Donation
should have been obvious to the unintimidated and inquiring intellect, and if
political developments weakened and even removed the intimidation, then
why was a lengthy treatise such as Valla’s necessary to overthrow it?
The question as posed is loaded, mainly in the sense of presupposing cause
and effect relationships. We cannot separate causes and effects in complex
events which saw (a) the shattering of the power of the papacy in the Reformation
and (b) the overthrowing of one of the impostures which supported
that power and (c) the wide circulation of a book exposing that imposture.
At best we can ask what role Valla’s treatise played in these events and a
good conjecture can be made on the basis of the contents of the treatise, which
were far more extensive, and far more detailed, than what was required to
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prove the thesis. It contained intellectual material of such quantity and diversity
that the spread of its influence was all but irresistible. Old coin buffs got
something to talk about; the specialists in Latin grammar and language were
invited into the controversy; the historians of Rome saw something for them,
ditto the historians of the Church. In short, articulate tongues were set wagging
against a background of colossal political development.
In my Convention paper three years ago I stressed that extra-academic controversy
should not be underrated as a means of nudging scholars along on
controversial subjects (see Supplement 1). That is to say – and here I am
speaking from direct experience as a member of academe – the typical attitude
toward “hot subjects,” on the part of the basically honest but all-too-human
scholar, is evasion. To be sure there is a small minority, the hirelings of the
profiteers of the reigning thesis, who consciously lie and obfuscate. Eventually
there is a small minority that assaults the entrenched position, and whose
dissident utterances have the temporary effect of allying a larger minority with
the conscious liars, in denunciation of the heretics. However the typical honest
scholar, who tries to maintain self respect while paying his bills, evades the
hot issue.
This evasion is made difficult or impossible if diverse members of the
populace abound with challenging questions. If the popular expression goes
far enough, it can transform itself from a factor making evasion impossible,
into a factor making heresy relatively safe. Thus do not underrate popularization
of hot subjects as a means of nudging or even propelling those who ought
to handle then.
The main points I want to make in this section are as follows. Simple and
decisive arguments against the Donation of Constantine which, it seems to us,
should have been obvious to the Middle Ages, were smothered by the politics
of the times. Valla’s treatise, going into far more detail than seems necessary
to our historical sense, played a crucial practical role in bringing down the
legend of the Donation, but this process was inseparably linked to political
developments favorable to Valla’s thesis and its unintimidated consideration.
The Analogies
The analogies to our own Holocaust legend may seem almost too obvious
to belabor. The academics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance who
would not see the simple, stand in painful and embarrassing analogy to academics
of today. However it is worthwhile to expand on a few points.
We have seen that the legend of the Donation was overthrown in a period
of political development highly unfavorable to the papacy, and this suggests
another obvious analogy and expectation: that the Holocaust legend will be
overthrown in this period of political development highly unfavorable to Zionism.
This anticipated confluence is above all inevitable and inescapable, but it
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
422
is useful to note its dangerous aspects. It will introduce dangerous pressures,
political and intellectual, into the revisionist camp.
For example as this is written the Israeli invasion of Lebanon has made
Menachem Begin the most unpopular man, and Israel the most unpopular
state, in the world. It can plausibly be argued that the invasion has been brutally
negligent of the welfare of innocent Lebanese civilians who have died in
shocking numbers or suffered the privations attendant to the Israeli attempt to
destroy the PLO forces. It can plausibly be argued that Americans have been
dopes or dupes for giving Israel almost everything it wanted in the past. However
I have read, even in publications friendly to revisionism,498 that the Israeli
policy amounts to “genocide,” which it does not, either in intent or (thus far)
in effect, at least not in my understanding of the meaning of the word, which
is somewhat close to “extermination.” While such ill-conceived cussing may
be the norm for the popular press, it is upsetting to see revisionist-oriented circles
do it for they, above all, should be able to make the distinctions among
the various inhumanities that are necessary to keep the historical record
straight.
A recognition of real danger comes with the understanding that such confusion
of issues may have an explanation in terms of politics as well as in
terms of normal human inexactitude. In the coming years there will be strong
pressures on many, including revisionists, to be “for” the Arabs as distinct
from fair to them. The pressure will arise partly from the fact that it will be
precisely the Middle East developments that will create opportunities for the
revisionists to be heard. Thus the revisionists will have to walk a tightrope, on
the one hand resisting dangerous pressures, on the other hand exploiting such
openings, as political developments may make, for the expression of legitimate
historical observations. We should dearly love to consider the hoax in an
ivory tower, but it is not going to happen that way.
As history never repeats itself, the Donation-Holocaust analogy does not
hold on all salient points. However there is another important point of similarity
worth noting, namely, the excessive attention to detail in both Valla’s treatise
and in contemporary revisionist investigations: overkill in both cases. The
people of the Renaissance would not observe that the alleged transfer of sovereignty
did not take place, and let go at that, and we will not observe that the
Jews were still there, and let it go at that. Apparently we must pursue the subject
into areas of detail that may seem fantastic to posterity. For example we
are not satisfied that the Zyklon, allegedly used in the “gassings,” was an insecticide;
we need to exhaustively analyze the technical aspects of the claim.
This preoccupation with detail is both desirable and necessary. That it is
desirable has been suggested in the discussion of the Donation. A preoccupation
with detail entails a great diversity and quantity of thought on the legend
498 E.g. The Spotlight, July 26, 1982, pp. 10f.
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which, even if it might seem myopic to posterity will, indeed has, set tongues
wagging in the practical and urgent present to the extent that those formally
charged with such concerns will no longer be able to avoid them. Indeed that
this point “has” been reached is essentially admitted by Raul Hilberg, author
of The Destruction of the European Jews, in a recent interview in a French
weekly:499
“I will say that, in a certain manner, Faurisson and others, without
having wished it, have done us a service. They have raised questions which
have had as effect to engage the historians in new research. They have
forced the gathering of more information, the re-examination of documents,
and going further into the understanding of what happened.”
That our preoccupation with detail is also necessary in the present circumstances
follows from the propaganda strategy of the promoters and defenders
of the established legend. One aspect of that strategy is to evade the real and
simple question of whether or not the Jews of Europe were in fact physically
exterminated by the Germans, and concentrate instead on the superficially
similar and (provided enough confusion is generated) speciously equivalent
question of whether or not “gas chambers” were operated by the Germans.
This is one basic trick of the hoaxers (there are others I shall mention) and
too many of the revisionist camp or bent fall for it. To anticipate any misunderstanding
on the point, let me give my assurance that I hold the answers to
both questions to be “no”; there was no extermination program and there were
no gas chambers. However the former is the real bone of contention and the
latter is of only subsidiary importance to the Holocaust revisionist school as I
understand its implicit tenets. For example, if it turned out that, one day in
1942, ten adult male Jews were marched into Hitler’s headquarters in East
Prussia, placed in Hitler’s shower (with suitable hasty mechanical modifications)
and there gassed before the approving eyes of the Führer, I would have
may reasons, historical and technical, for being astonished, but I would not be
forced to change or withdraw any major conclusion on the “extermination”
matter. The discovery would rock the revisionists for whom Hitler is of central
interest, e.g. David Irving, but that is irrelevant.
By various tricks, e.g. focusing on certain types of testimonies or discussing
“Zyklon” out of context, the defenders of the legend are often able to arrange
the quiet substitution, in public controversy, of the “gas chamber” question
for the “extermination” question, not because they confuse the two, but
because by so doing they are able to take advantage of certain routine reservations
that apply to nearly every historical subject.
For example until a short time ago, if I were asked if the Japanese had
gassed prisoners during World War II, I would have answered that I was unaware
of any such gassings. Now I have very recently read a credible report
499 Le Nouvel Observateur, July 3-9, 1982, p. 70+.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
424
that they gassed 404 “human guinea pigs” in connection with “research on
biological warfare.”500 However I continue to be certain that the Japanese did
not “exterminate” any populations.
As another example, I am certain that during World War II the Allied powers
did not exterminate any significant portion of the Eskimo population, and I
am also confident that no individual communities of Eskimos were gassed by
them, but not that I am “certain” in the former case and only “confident” in
the latter. The difference arises from the fact that, while one can show that
there was no extermination program for Eskimos (e.g. insignificant absences
were noted after the war), one cannot show that no Eskimos were gassed. Of
course, one can cite the lack of an evident motivation for gassing Eskimos, the
lack of subsequent charges of Eskimo gassings, etc., and one can be “confident”
no communities of Eskimos were gassed (. Of course, one can cite the
lack of an evident motivation for gassing Eskimos, the lack of subsequent
charges of Eskimo gassings, etc., and one can be “confident “no communities
of Eskimos were gassed (of course individual Eskimos might have been
gassed for specific offenses in California). However one must e.g. allow the
possibility that some isolated Eskimo community, perhaps posing a security
menace to some highly secret Allied military operation, was gassed in great
secrecy. This is just routine historical reserve, applying to all phases of history,
whose potential relevance to every historical subject is so taken for
granted that it is rarely mentioned.
We can prove that the Eskimos were not exterminated, but we cannot
prove that no communities of Eskimos were gassed. Likewise, and at the risk
of giving the opposition words which can be lifted out of context and used
dishonestly, I can prove that there was no German program of physical extermination
of the Jews, but I cannot prove that no Jews were gassed, although
after living long with the evidence I am confident that no Jews were gassed.
If one examines closely the arguments that are offered when the tack is to
argue that Jews were gassed, it is clear that the allegation is of the “isolated
Eskimo community” sort. In place of geographical isolation, there is substituted
the claim of administrative isolation, i.e. that no written records were
kept of the design of the gas chambers or of their construction, or of the gassings
themselves, that in order to conceal the deeds the bodies were burned
and not a trace was left, and that in order to keep the number of witnesses to a
minimum Jewish work parties were used in the operations, these Jews later
being killed also. Why such secrecy should have been considered necessary or
relevant, given rallies in Madison Square Garden against the alleged slaughter,
official Allied and Presidential declarations in condemnation, etc.,501 is never
explained, and few will ask such questions. The important thing is that the
500 Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1982, section 1, p. 5.
501 See pp. 78f and 166f.???
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whole thing can then be “proved” via declarations of a few “witnesses,” upheld
in court, and then used to support a preposterous allegation of a very different
and even incommensurate sort, namely, the physical extermination of
the Jews of Europe.
It is a cheap trick. It relies on a massive dropping of context and shift of
perspective, wherein the rubes are not expected to follow the simple shell
game. Unfortunately it has been successful, and this is why a preoccupation
with detail, on the part of revisionists, is necessary as well as desirable. The
bearers of the legend do not want to confront the “extermination” allegation
directly, as easily available information makes it clear the Jews were not exterminated.
However, no easily available information makes clear what happened
at every location in eastern Europe during the war, especially in view of
the political character of the postwar exploitation of documents, and this is
where the hoaxers go to work. They offer to fill in such gaps, usually not via
written records, but via alleged reconstruction on the basis of their “trials.” As
they represent the entrenched position, they effectively call the tune on what is
to be debated, and that is why revisionists, in the minority of instances in
which their opponents engage them in superficially scholarly debate, will find
themselves confronted with details assembled for mendacious ends. The
hoaxers dare not focus on the real question, as it is too simple.
Context and Perspective
While the present interest in detail is desirable from the revisionist point of
view, it is also necessary because the defenders of the legend have decided
that, for the sake of their contrary purposes, a focus on detail can also be desirable,
when there is to be anything like a debate. This odd harmony of the
two camps is of course superficial.
That the focus on detail contains dangers for the revisionist is seen by noting
that the defenders of the legend take this tack because they have thereby
substituted more malleable questions for the real one. Specifically, they trick
their audiences into losing context and perspective. What Stangl said to Sereny
in jail cannot be understood without the perspective gained by noting
Stangl’s hapless position in the postwar world, particularly in postwar Germany,
which has a political system imposed by the foreign conquerors who
made possible the establishment of the legend in the first place. The claim that
the lack of ordinary historical evidence for “exterminations” is explained by a
German policy of utmost secrecy, cannot be easily demolished except via
some observation on the historical context of the alleged episode, such as
made above. Therefore while it is fine to focus on detail in these times, we
risk losing battles, if not the war, if we forget the historical context and lose
perspective.
Context and perspective constitute the theme of this paper, but it was necArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
426
essary to discuss at length the nature of the need. Posterity will see this “Holocaust,”
this curious imposture that enthralled us for two or three decades, as a
transient phenomenon involving what will appear to be utterly audacious distortions
of the historical record, which we should have seen more easily than
we did, as the relevant episodes will seem to have simpler interpretations than
we see or at any rate emphasize. While of course we cannot see things as posterity
will, we can at least attempt to see the subject from a higher perspective.
This will not only help our future reputation, but will also help us avoid getting
tripped up on details in current controversy.
We can start by asking just what will draw posterity’s attention as extraordinary.
It will not be “exterminations” of Jews, as there were none. It will also
not be the German program of expulsion of the Jews. There will of course be
some interest in that program, just as today there is interest on the part of the
historians in all sorts of past episodes. However that German program was in
its essentials far from unique, the Jews having been expelled from the Jerusalem
area in the second century and from Spain in the fifteenth, to mention
only the most famous two of many expulsions. The German program may
seem deplorable, but it will not seem extraordinary.
What will seem unique is the establishment in Western society of the
“Holocaust” legend, its exploitation past the point of sanity, its challenge from
unconventional quarters of a few decades later, and it subsequent overthrow.
One implication of this, perhaps for the revisionists at once instructive and deflating,
is that revisionists will themselves be objects of historical scrutiny, i.e.
we are part of the historical process that posterity will see, not merely its pioneering
investigators.
I believe they will see us that way mainly because of our tendency, explanations
for which have already been given, of getting entangled in details
while bypassing or downplaying the observations that, it will seem, should
have been both obvious and conclusive.
A specific illustration. In order for something to be “obvious” it ought to
be figuratively before our very noses. Let us look at two of the recently published
and widely discussed books in support of the extermination legend,
namely Auschwitz and the Allies by Martin Gilbert (biographer of Winston
Churchill) and The Terrible Secret by Walter Laqueur (Director of the Institute
of Contemporary History, London, and editor of the Journal of Contemporary
History). The two books look at the subject from similar perspectives
and cover much of the same ground.
At the end of his long and copiously annotated study, Gilbert writes:502
“Between May 1942 and June 1944, almost none of the messages
reaching the west had referred to Auschwitz as the destination of Jewish
deportees, or as a killing centre. Nor had the name of Auschwitz made any
502 M. Gilbert, p. 340.
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impression on those who were building up what they believed to be an increasingly
comprehensive picture of the fate of the Jews.”
On the other hand early in this shorter but also copiously annotated study
Laqueur explains that mass exterminations at Auschwitz could not have been
concealed, noting that Auschwitz was “a veritable archipelago,” that “Auschwitz
inmates […] were, in fact, dispersed all over Silesia, and […] met with
thousands of people,” that “hundreds of civilian employees […] worked at
Auschwitz,” and that “journalists travelled in the General Government and
were bound to hear,” etc.503
I have no quarrel with such observations, as I made them myself, on the
basis of essentially the same considerations.504 Now the reader of Gilbert,
Laqueur, and Butz can make a very simple determination. He is being told that
(a) in the period May 1942 to June 1944, those interested in such matters had
no information of mass exterminations at Auschwitz and (b) mass exterminations
at Auschwitz could not have been concealed from the world for any significant
length of time. Because Since he is hearing the same story from both
sides then, by a process of inference necessary to those who want to form an
opinion but do not have the time or means to become historians, he should assume
both claims true. There was no information of mass exterminations at
Auschwitz during the relevant period, and mass exterminations at Auschwitz
would not have been kept secret. Therefore, there were no mass exterminations
at Auschwitz.
The conclusion is inescapable and requires only elementary logic. It is
comparable to the syllogism: “I see no elephant in my basement; an elephant
could not be concealed from sight in my basement; therefore, there is no elephant
in my basement.”
Logic tells us that this observation should be conclusive, and yet I know
that in controversies to come it will often be lost sight of. It is a good example
of a point on which we shall puzzle posterity for our myopia, because it will
wonder why it was so seldom raised in a heated controversy. It is not the sole
example of its type. The literature of the defenders of the legend is overflowing
with concessions that will make posterity wonder how the legend ever
could have been believed in the first place, and why a revisionist literature
was necessary at all. Let us be specific.
The principal actors in the historical episode are the governments of the
various powers at war, Jewish organizations operating in allied and neutral
countries, Jewish organizations operating openly under the German occupation,
clandestine resistance organizations in German-occupied Europe, Jewish
or otherwise, the Catholic Church (on account of its twin attributes of ubiquity
and centralization), and the International Red Cross.
503 Laqueur, pp. 22-25.
504 See Chapter 3.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
428
Prominent among the Jewish organizations were the JDC (American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee), closely associated with the American Jewish
Committee, the “political organization of the non-Zionist elite of American
Jewry.”505 The JDC was primary in extending material assistance to Jews. In
Europe an important representative was Joseph J. Schwartz in Lisbon.506 More
important from our point of view was Saly Mayer, the sometimes unofficial
but always principal representative of the JDC in Switzerland. Mayer was in
constant contact with the JDC in Lisbon and New York, and also with Jews in
occupied Europe, eastern and western.507
Also prominent among the Jewish organizations were the JA (Jewish
Agency), the unofficial Israeli government of the time, whose guiding light
was Chaim Weizmann, and which was represented in Geneva by Richard
Lichtheim and Abraham Silberschein. Zionism was also represented by the
WJC (World Jewish Congress), whose guiding lights were Nahum Goldman
and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and whose principal representative in Switzerland
was Gerhard Riegner. The Swiss representatives of these and other Jewish organizations
were in constant contact with both Jews of occupied Europe and
with Jewish and other representative in the Allied countries. For example,
postal and telephone communications among Jews in occupied countries and
those in neutral countries such as Switzerland and Turkey were easily established.
508
As made abundantly clear by many books in addition to my own (e.g. Gilbert’s
book), it is from the WJC, supplemented by the JA, the Polish exile
government in London, and occasionally more obscure groups, that the early
extermination propaganda emanated.
Here are eight simple observations, all drawn from the literature of the defenders
of the legend (sometimes via the intermediary of my book), which establish
the non-historicity of the Holocaust or, more precisely, a program of
mass physical extermination of Europe’s Jews.
Wartime and Postwar Claims
The postwar claims had their origin in the wartime extermination
claims. However the differences between the two are such that it is implied
that the wartime claims were not based on fact.
There are two principal sorts of differences between the wartime and postwar
claims. First, much of what was claimed during the war was dropped afterwards,
only a fraction being retained. Second, the centerpiece of the postwar
claims, Auschwitz, was not claimed at all until the very end of the rele-
505 Bauer, p. 21f.
506 Bauer, Chapter 8.
507 Bauer, Chapter 9, pp. 246, 264, 272, 274, 333, 366f, 371f.
508 Laqueur, pp. 4, 170f, 188.
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vant period.
Both observations were made in Chapter 3 of my book, the second was
made above, and both are confirmed by more recent publications. The first is
shown by listing specific examples, and those given in Hoax can be supplemented
with some taken from the recent literature, particularly the Gilbert
book, which gives numerous such examples.509
To discuss a specific example, it is well to focus on one Jan Karski, a non-
Jewish member of the Polish resistance, who is said to have been sent from
Poland by the underground, in November 1942, to report to the Polish exile
government in London. His report described Polish Jews being sent to Treblinka,
Belzec, and Sobibor in railway cars packed with “lime and chlorine
sprinkled with water.” On the trip half die from suffocation, poisonous fumes,
and lack of food and water. These are burned. The remainder are put to death
by firing squads, in “lethal gas chambers” and, at Belzec, in an “electrocuting
station”; this remainder was buried. This report was widely publicized and
circulated.510
Of course the present story is that almost all the Jews were killed in gas
chambers, their bodies later being burned. Also there is nothing about Auschwitz
as an extermination camp in this report of the Polish underground which,
in this instance, cannot be accused of ignoring the plight of the Jews.
Karski published his story in 1944 as a silly book, Story of a Secret State,
which sold well. At present he is a Professor of Government at Georgetown
University in Washington, DC. Although the wild disagreement between his
wartime tall tales and the postwar tall tales is not novel to a student of this
subject, I thought it useful to select Karski for mention because in recent
years, in the deluge of Holocaust propaganda, he has been rediscovered and
feted as something of a hero. He wrote a new and sanitized version of his
story in 1979, no doubt for the benefit of those of his friends embarrassed by
his book.511 Then in 1981 he was a participant in a conference held at the State
Department and sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council
whose chairman, author Elie Wiesel, “organized the event in part to build a
bulwark against a rising tide of revisionist history.” I have no evidence that
anybody at the conference sought to get Karski to explain the discrepancies
between his and today’s received accounts of “exterminations.”512
I am sometimes asked why I ignore Elie Wiesel, so here I shall given him
one paragraph. I ignore him because, unlike authors I usually discuss, he is
frankly a novelist and there is next to nothing in his declarations that could be
considered historical argument. Even his allegedly autobiographical Night is
509 M. Gilbert, pp. 31, 39f, 44, 170.
510 M. Gilbert, pp. 93ff; Laqueur, p. 231.
511 Laqueur, Appendix 5.
512 Washington Post, October 28, 1981, p. A1; Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1981, pt. I, p.
20.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
430
too histrionic to be entertained as a purported primary source. This does not
mean that there is absolutely nothing to be gained from noticing him. That a
novelist was chosen to be Director of the President’s Commission on the
Holocaust, a plum for which there must have been a lot of behind-the-scenes
jostling, is tremendously revealing of the forces at work today. As for a short
judgment of Wiesel’s various writings on the “Holocaust”, I think it is fair to
characterize them as reaching the heights that most of us can reach only with
the help of magic potions containing gin and vermouth and comparable ingredients;
Wiesel does not need such help.513
To return to the point, namely, “that the wartime claims were not based on
fact,” the logic goes as follows. The defenders of the legend could explain the
retention of a small fraction of the wartime reports only by claiming that wartime
exigencies made corroboration of information impracticable and that as a
consequence many inaccurate stories were passed along for public consumption.
The result was a set of reports which, although originally inspired by
fact, exaggerated the real situation. However such an explanation cannot be
reconciled with the fact of the absence of Auschwitz from the extermination
claims. The Auschwitz aspect would be consistent with the proffered explanation
only if some story exaggerated in relation to the postwar claims had been
presented during the war, e.g. extermination of Jews by means in addition to
gas chambers. The logic thus leads to the conclusion that the wartime claims
were not inspired by fact.
Wartime Records
Both the wartime records and behavior of the Jews in occupied
Europe show that they had no information of an extermination program.
That resistance to deportation was rare, and that Jews went to the various
camps with no suspicion that they were to be killed, has been well known for
many years and recently published material has only reinforced this observations.
However its implications are usually not appreciated. Note that the observation
holds for the Jewish leadership in the various occupied countries as
well as for the general Jewish population.
To give some examples, late in 1942 Slovakian Jewish leaders, negotiating
with the Germans, took seriously the Germans’ offers to cease deportations of
Slovakian Jews from Auschwitz. In the French Jewish records “we find a
wealth of documentation that tends to deny” exterminations. French Jewish
leaders saw “Auschwitz as a place of work” and in November 1944 (after the
Germans had been driven out of France) were thinking, in regard to the de-
513 See e.g. his contribution to the booklet Dimensions of the Holocaust, Northwestern University
Press, Evanston, 1977. This is the published version of a lecture Wiesel gave at Northwestern
in the spring of 1977. An alternative is his article in the London Jewish Chronicle,
November 4, 1977.
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
431
portees, mainly of reuniting families. We are told that “Jews in Holland never
really knew what was going on in Poland” and that the records of the Amsterdam
Jewish Council of January 22, 1943, show that the possibility of “extermination”
was not even being entertained as an explanation for the breaking
up of families. Jewish leaders in Rome were unaware of any extermination
program and feared deportations only in connection with such things as “the
rigors of winter and the fragile health of many deportees.” Under such conditions
it is not at all surprising that there was only one derailment of an Auschwitz
deportation train engineered by Jewish resistance activities (in Belgium).
514
To focus on a man who should certainly have been well informed, Rabbi
Leo Bäck, the “venerated head of German Jewry,” showed via a letter he
wrote in November 1942 that he had no suspicion that Jewish deportees were
being killed, and by his own postwar admission told no other Jews of “exterminations”
during his stay at Theresienstadt, from which there were many deportations.
515
By the spring of 1944, right after the German occupation of Hungary, the
Hungarian Jewish leaders had heard the extermination claims, including (finally)
the Auschwitz claims. However they “gave no publicity whatsoever” to
such claims. “Not urgent warnings to their fellow Jews to resist deportation,
but secret negotiations with the SS aimed at averting deportation altogether,
had become the avenue of hope chosen by the Hungarian Zionist leaders.”516
As for Poland, there was a famous rebellion of the Warsaw ghetto in April
1943. However this came only after almost all the Jews of Warsaw had been
deported east. The claim is that “by March 1943 the destruction of Polish
Jewry was almost complete.” During the period that they were supposedly being
destroyed there was no significant resistance to deportations.517 Moreover
Jewish record-keeping in Poland was diligent and extensive, so that “many
posthumous records have come down to us.” Yet there is an “absence of vital
subjects from the records.”518
Thus the Jews were not cognizant of an extermination program in the only
senses that would be convincing, in the senses of resisting deportations or at
least recording the Holocaust in their confidential records.
World Jewry
Jewish bodies outside occupied Europe, such as the JDC, the WJC, the
JA and others did not act as though they believed their own claims of “ex-
514 See Chapter 8; see also Bauer, pp. 264, 271, 274, 371; M. Gilbert, p. 121.
515 See Chapter 4; see also Bauer, pp. 56, 58.
516 M. Gilbert, p. 204f.
517 Bauer, p. 325fff; M. Gilbert, p. 121.
518 Dawidowicz (1975), p. xvii; (1981), p. 125.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
432
termination.”
There are quite a few senses in which this is the case but the most important
relates directly to the point discussed above. The Jews who, we are told,
boarded deportation trains with no inkling that they were to be killed, were as
was noted above in close contact with Jewish bodies outside occupied Europe.
Indeed many of the records that show their ignorance of an extermination program
are among their communications with these Jews outside Europe. Yet
the Jews outside Europe did not undertake to impress on those inside what the
deportations were allegedly all about, if one were to believe the remarks they
were making for the consumption of others. Otherwise the alleged ignorance
would not have existed.
This is enough to prove the point but it is useful to give some good example
of the real behavior of the Jewish bodies outside Europe during their supposed
Holocaust.
Chaim Weizmann used the extermination claims when he thought them
useful. However in May 1943 Weizmann complained to Churchill’s secretariat
that if “an Allied press release reporting the fact that Jewish scientists
were among those involved in the Allied scientific war effort […] were repeated,
the Germans would carry out further anti-Jewish reprisals.”519 Just
what reprisals could be graver than physical extermination of all is not apparent.
It was noted above that the legend claims that by March 1943 almost all
Polish Jews had been killed. However throughout the alleged period of killing,
and even into 1944, Jewish relief organizations in the west sent food parcels to
Jews in Poland, particularly though the JUS (Jüdische Unterstützungesstelle
or Jewish Aid Office), with the permission and cooperation of the German authorities.
Money was also sent to Jewish organizations in Poland through the
London Polish exile government, again with the permission of the German authorities.
520
By 1944 Poland had become a battlefield. Accordingly on March 14, 1944,
the WJC reminded the British, as Soviet forces were approaching Lvov, that
there were “still a considerable number of Jews” in the Lvov area, and we
should issue “a fresh and emphatic warning to the Germans” and also speed
up the work of rescuing Jews from Nazi occupied territory (obviously to proceed
to Palestine, as the WJC made clear by its wartime statements).521 In the
opinion of the WJC, the murdered Jews were still there.
Jewish newspapers in the west, while occasionally publishing massacre
claims, clearly thought the claims exaggerated greatly and tended to contradict
themselves in their statements. For example the allegedly well-informed leftist
519 M. Gilbert, p. 143.
520 Bauer, pp. 329-334.
521 M. Gilbert, p. 181.
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
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Jewish “Bund,” in its publication The Ghetto Speaks for October 1943, spoke
of the “struggle linking the Polish and Jewish masses.” In their opinion, too,
the murdered Jews were still there. However, apart from such specific incidents,
it is admitted that even after the Allied declaration of December 17,
1942, the first official claim of “extermination,” “there was no forceful, unequivocal
response by American Jewry, including the JDC.” As a rule, “the
Jews themselves did not really press very hard for rescue, and their propaganda
for Palestine often seemed stronger than their concern for immediate
steps to save their brethren.”522
The historical record thus shows that, apart from their occasional public
claims of “extermination,” the Jewish bodies outside occupied Europe conducted
themselves as if there were no exterminations, as is most clearly shown
by their failure to undertake to warn the European Jews, and by the nature of
their real efforts (e.g. in connection with Palestine).
The Allies
Allied governments and their officials did not act as though they believed
the extermination claims, and their intelligence services never produced
any information corroborative of the claims.
In connection with the actions of Allied governments and their officials we
can say that (a) the declarations of the governments, in relation to “extermination,”
were inconsistent, equivocal, and unconvincingly timed, (b) no concrete
measures were taken to interfere with deportations of Jews or with whatever
was happening in the camps and (c) incidents involving leading officials show
that they did not believe the claims.
Among relevant declarations of governments, perhaps the best known is
the Allied declaration of December 17, 1942; this was unequivocally worded
although very much lacking in specific details. However it seems unconvincingly
timed. According to the legend exterminations outside Russia are supposed
to have been in progress for almost a year. Moreover this date also
marked the first unequivocal Soviet charge of “extermination,” although such
a program was allegedly in operation there since June 1941. This makes the
belated Soviet statement particularly incredible, as “there is every reason to
assume that the Soviet authorities were from the beginning well informed
about all important events in the occupied (Soviet) territories.”523
On the other hand the Allied “War Crimes Declaration” of November 1,
1943, condemning German atrocities, failed to mention Jews. During the
drafting of the declaration, the British Foreign Office had deleted references to
“gas chambers because the evidence was untrustworthy.”524
522 Laqueur, pp. 183-186; Bauer, pp. 188-193, 403.
523 See Chapter 3 and Chapter 6; see also Laqueur, pp. 68-72.
524 Laqueur, p. 121.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
434
In connection with Auschwitz, there was on October 10, 1944, a broadcast
from London and Washington charging the Germans with “plans (for the)
mass execution of the people in the concentration camps” Auschwitz and
Birkenau (my emphasis). The German Telegraph Service replied immediately
that “these reports are false from beginning to end.”525 The first high level
Auschwitz claim by the Allies that resembled the legend of today came in late
November 1944, after the claimed termination of the “exterminations,” in the
form of the publication of the document I have called the “WRB report” (as it
was published by the War Refugee Board).526 The Russians captured Auschwitz
on January 27, 1945, and did not open it for inspection, even after curiosity
was expressed, and even after the sensational publicity given to the captures
of Belsen and Buchenwald gave the Soviets a motive to chime in. Instead
the Russians merely declared in late April 1945 that 4,000,000 had been
killed at Auschwitz, and on May 7, 1945, issued a more detailed “report.”527
That the Allies undertook no concrete measures to warn the Jews in Europe
or to interfere with the deportation or whatever was happening in the German
camps is well known. This is most strikingly illustrated by the brief and
mostly confidential controversy over bombing Auschwitz for the purpose of
stopping exterminations there. Chaim Weizmann had proposed such measures
in the summer of 1944 (somewhat half-heartedly, it appears). The strong impression
gained is that the British and Americans, while pretending to consider
Weizmann’s proposal seriously, were just engaged in verbal games. For
example on July 7, 1944, Anthony Eden asked the Air Ministry to respond on
the feasibility of the proposal. A response to Weizmann took a while; on September
1, 1944, Richard Law of the Foreign Office wrote Weizmann “that in
view of the very great technical difficulties involved, we have no option but to
refrain from pursuing the proposal in present circumstances.” This was despite
the fact that at the time Weizmann’s proposals were allegedly being considered,
the air forces were planning the bombing of Auschwitz as one of many
oil targets, and bombed Auschwitz on August 20, 1944, and several times
thereafter on those grounds. The obvious suggestion is that the Auschwitz
claims were not taken seriously, and the suggestion is confirmed by the fact
that the supposedly crucial “information” of what became the “WRB report”
was received in London and Washington in July 1944 but simply filed away
by both governments “until resurrected three and a half months later.”528
Incidents involving leading officials, which show that they did not believe
the claims, are numerous. The “close association between the Jewish community
and the Roosevelt Administration” is well known. In September 1943
525 M. Gilbert, p. 325.
526 See Chapter 3.
527 M. Gilbert, pp. 337f.
528 M. Gilbert, pp. 267-273, 290, 299-311, 341.
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
435
the529
“Administration was reluctant to accept the reports of murder centers
and discounted the idea of an organized attempt to liquidate the Jews.
Roosevelt explained the deportations to Frankfurter; the deported Jews
were simply being employed on the Soviet frontier to build fortifications.”
It should be assumed that Roosevelt based his remarks to Justice Frankfurter
on information provided by his intelligence services. Frankfurter must
have been convinced, for when Jan Karski (above) later reached Washington
to tell his tales, Frankfurter told Karski “that he could not believe him.”530
When the Auschwitz claims reached Washington, involved officials at the
State Department privately commented that “Stuff like this has been coming
from Bern ever since 1942 […] Don’t forget, this is a Jew telling about the
Jews […] This is just a campaign by that Jew Morgenthau and his Jewish assistants.”
531
In Britain we find a comparable situation. In September 1942 Churchill
spoke in Commons condemning “the mass deportation of Jews from France,
with the pitiful horrors attendant upon the calculated and final scattering of
families.” He said nothing about “extermination.” In the Foreign Office the
extermination claims were generally not believed, and in the Colonial Office
one official called them “Jewish Agency sob-stuff.”532
In November 1942 Edward Benes, exiled President of Czechoslovakia in
London, who was well informed on events in his homeland, wrote to the WJC
that the claims coming from Riegner in Switzerland were false and that the
Germans had no plans to exterminate the Jews.533 The Swiss Government considered
the Allied Declaration of December 17, 1942, “foreign rumor propaganda
of the worst type.”534
Of great importance to our subject is what Allied intelligence had to say on
these matters. After quite a few years of living with the literature of this subject,
I have not encountered an instance of corroboration of “extermination”
by any wartime intelligence source. What we have from intelligence sources
militates strongly against the legend. For example on August 27, 1943, “William
Cavendish-Bentinck, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee
(Britain), whose task it was to evaluate the truth or falsehood of all such reports
from Nazi Europe,” declared confidentially that the stories being circulated
“tend to exaggerate German atrocities in order to stoke us up.”535
A US counterpart, John Beaty, one of the two editors of the daily secret
529 Feingold, pp. 9, 170; Laqueur, p. 94.
530 Laqueur, p. 3.
531 See Chapter 3; see also DuBois, pp. 184, 188.
532 M. Gilbert, pp. 68, 95f, 99.
533 Laqueur, pp. 162ff.
534 Bauer, p. 229.
535 Laqueur, pp. 83, 86; M. Gilbert, p. 150.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
436
“G-2 Report,” which was issued each noon to give persons in high places the
world picture as it existed four hours earlier, ridiculed the six million legend
in a book published in the Fifties.536
The only really important data that we have from an intelligence source are
the Auschwitz aerial reconnaissance photographs that were published by two
CIA photo interpreters in 1979. Many of the photographs examined were
taken in the spring of 1944 when, according to the legend, about 10,000 Hungarian
Jews entered the camp every day to be killed. Because Since it must be
conceded that the crematories at Auschwitz did not have such a massive capacity,
the legend claims that “corpses were burned day and night” out-ofdoors.
537 No evidence of this is to be found in the photographs and the photo
interpreters remark that even the crematory chimneys appear inactive.538
Thus the Allies also did not take the extermination claims seriously enough
to give them more than occasional lip service.
The Vatican
The Vatican did not believe the extermination claims.
It is agreed that the far-flung nature of the operations of the Catholic
Church guaranteed that the Vatican would have known what was happening to
the Jews.539 Nevertheless no unequivocal condemnation of exterminations of
Jews ever came from the Vatican even after the Germans had been driven out
of Rome or even after Germany’s defeat. This is despite strong pressures put
on the Vatican, by the Allies, to issue such a declaration.
There was an equivocal statement in the Pope’s Christmas message of
1942, but it was issued only after the British had strongly suggested that the
issuance of such a statement might help to dissuade the Allies from bombing
Rome. However, the Pope made it clear to the Allies, even as his declaration
was issued, that he did not believe the stories: “he felt that there had been
some exaggeration for the purposes of propaganda.”540 That Vatican spokesmen
of today support the legend in their public statements is irrelevant to the
historical point.
The International Red Cross (IRC)
The actions and reports of the International Red Cross do not harmonize
with the extermination claims.
As with the Vatican, the statements of IRC spokesmen of today do support
the legend, but that is irrelevant to the historical point. Also, general editorial
536 Beaty, pp. 134-135.
537 See Chapter 5; M. Gilbert, p. 231f.
538 Brugioni and Poirier.
539 Laqueur, pp. 55-58.
540 See p. 330 (Appendix E); see also M. Gilbert, pp. 104f.
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
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remarks in books of documents published by the IRC right after the war do
harmonize with the legend. However, all the historian should be interested in
are the actual content of the reports and activities of the IRC during the war.
That the actions and reports of the IRC do not harmonize with the legend
was discussed at length earlier and it seems pointless to repeat the material
here.541 A couple more points I noticed recently are worth mentioning.
On April 14, 1943, the IRC made it clear that it considered Auschwitz a labor
camp for deportees, to whom parcels could be sent.542
There were two highly publicized visits of the IRC to Theresienstadt, the
Jewish settlement in Czechoslovakia. The IRC reports were relatively favorable
in both cases. What is seldom noted is that the IRC delegate in the second
visit in the spring of 1945 was George Dunant, who described Theresienstadt
“as an experiment by certain leaders of the Reich, who were apparently less
hostile to the Jews than those responsible for the racial policy of the German
Government.” Because Since Dunant was guided around Theresienstadt by
Adolf Eichmann, he must have known that Theresienstadt was an operation of
Himmler’s SS. Dunant, moreover, was evidently in close contact with Jewish
representatives. For example early in 1945 he went to Bratislava, partly at the
urging of Saly Mayer, in order to supply hiding Jews with funds.543
German Documents
The German documents speak not of extermination, but basically of a
program of expulsion and resettlement in the east. There is nothing about
“gas chambers” in the concentration camp or other German records.
That the German documents do not speak of extermination is well known.
For example, there exists no written order of Hitler to kill the Jews.544 The
documents speak of the “Final Solution” as the ultimate expulsion of all Jews
from Europe and of a wartime process of resettling Jews in the occupied
east.545
The defenders of the legend of course claim that the Germans merely exercised
commonplace circumspection and evasion regarding what they committed
to writing. This excuse fails on the grounds that such attempts at concealment
would make sense only in regard to something it was possible to conceal.
It would have been obvious that the physical extermination of Europe’s
Jews, whatever the outcome of the war, would not have remained secret. Indeed
for reasons discussed above it would have become widely known while
it was happening. Even if we hypothesize incredible stupidity of the Germans
541 See Chapter 3 and 151ff.
542 M. Gilbert, p. 129.
543 Bauer, pp. 430f.
544 Laqueur, p. 152.
545 E.g. see Chapter 7.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
438
on this point, we surely must grant that they were aware of the atrocity claims
being made in the Allied countries and would have seen that documentary
masquerade was of no avail.
There is also nothing about “gas chambers,” in the sense of the legend, in
the German documents. What the legend does at this point is produce the insecticide
Zyklon B or other fumigation means, show us pictures of quite ordinary
looking showers (alleging extraordinary concealed features), make references
to the use of exhausts of diesel engines (apparently unconscious that the
exhaust of a diesel is mainly carbon dioxide, not carbon monoxide), or play
games with the concept of a “gas oven” (crematory ovens, like most kitchen
ovens, are “gas ovens” and the crematories in the German camps were no exception).
All of this is so idiotic as to be torturing to discuss further. There is also no
record of the design or construction of gas chambers. On the basis of my engineering
experiences, it seems quite out of the question to suppress all normal
historical records of engineering projects of the scope that could have produced
the great “gas chambers.” Documents must not only be produced, but
also distributed to the great number of individuals charged with specific details;
there is no other way to achieve coordination. Even if major documents
are closely controlled (as is supposed to happen with “classified” material in
the US) the various individuals would later be able, one way or another, to
supply details that, taken together, would cohere credibly. We do not have
such coherence with the Holocaust. Indeed we have incoherence at not one but
two levels. On one level we have the mutual incoherence, in relation to “gas
chambers,” of the authentic records dealing with crematories and disinfection
measures. On another level this attempt on the part of the hoaxers to supply
specific technical details does not cohere with the feature of the legend according
to which the “gas chambers” were improvised in a slapdash fashion
by local non-technical German personnel.546
It is of interest that two of Heinrich Himmler’s closest aides, SS Generals
Gottlob Berger and Karl Wolff, both testified that they had known nothing of
an extermination program during the war. It is a greater interest that toward
the end of the war Himmler, told a representative of the WJC that547
“In order to put a stop to the epidemics, we were forced to burn the
bodies of incalculable numbers of people who had been destroyed by disease.
We were therefore forced to build crematories, and on this account
they are knotting a noose for us.”
Are we to believe that the essential agreement between this attempt at self
exculpation on the part of Himmler, on the one hand, and on the other hand
the picture formed by the documents that Himmler’s enemies assembled in the
546 See Chapter 4.
547 See Chapter 6 and 7; see also Laqueur, p. 18.
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
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three year period after his death, was either accidental or arranged by
Himmler, through superhuman diligence and prescience? Are we to believe
likewise of the essential agreement between the German documents on Jewish
policy, and the real wartime behavior of Germany’s enemies?
German Resistance to Hitler
The German resistance to Hitler, including the substantial part that
was lodged in German military intelligence, was not cognizant in any way
of a program of exterminating Jews.
Part of the German resistance was of course opposed to the Hitler regime
for reasons related to its anti-Jewish stance. Moreover the Abwehr, German
military intelligence, was headed until 1944 by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, a
conscious traitor. Next in command in the Abwehr was Hans Oster, who handled
financial and administrative matters and kept the central list of agents.
Both Oster and one of his subordinates, Hans von Dohnanyi, an “Aryanized”
part Jew, made it their “business to deal with all kinds of operations unconnected
with their immediate tasks.” Among these operations were involvement
in the anti-Hitler opposition and illegal assistance to various Jews. Both
were executed for participation in the abortive coup of July 20, 1944.548
In the various accounts of the activities of the anti-Hitler resistance in
Germany, for example The German Opposition to Hitler by Hans Rothfels,
there is no evidence that this opposition was in any way cognizant of a program
of exterminating the Jews or passed any such information on to the Allies.
If there had been knowledge of such a program, it is a certainty that the
information would have been passed on because the anti-Hitler opposition was
in contact with the Allies and attempted, without success, to get promises of
some sort of Allied support in the event they succeeded in removing Hitler.549
Even if we grant the possibility that some Germans involved in the anti-
Hitler opposition could have been ignorant of a program of physical extermination
of the Jews, even if one had existed, are we to believe this possible of
high officials of the Abwehr?
This concludes the discussion of the “eight simple observations […] which
548 Laqueur, Appendix 1. The cases of the politician-journalist Lemmer and the economist
Sommer, who are said to have passed information about exterminations to Swiss contacts,
are of dubious import. Lemmer was not associated with the Abwehr and, as Laqueur notes,
there is nothing is his autobiography about passing on information about extermination.
Sommer was an army liaison officer between the General Staff and the Abwehr, and also
travelled to Switzerland in connection with trade relations. One can infer from M. Gilbert,
pp. 56ff, that Sommer’s association with a summer 1942 report that “camps are being prepared
where all the Jews of Europe and a great part of the Russian prisoners-of-war will be
exterminated by gas” has been claimed not by Sommer, who died in 1965, but by two Jewish
intermediaries. It is also worth noting that neither Lemmer nor Sommer appear to have
been seriously involved with the anti-Hitler opposition; both survived the war.
549 Rothfels, pp. 125-151.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
440
establish the non-historicity of […] a program of mass physical extermination
of Europe’s Jews.” The allegation fails every relevant historical test, and entails
a level of audacity or “chutzpah” that would have staggered the imagination
before the war. It is demanded that we believe that these “events continental
in geographical scope, of three years in temporal scope, and of several
million in scope of victims,” all transpired without one relevant party being
cognizant of them. It is like telling me that, while I saw no elephant when I
looked in my basement, he was there anyway. Also while I was sitting in my
living room I did not notice that the elephant managed to come upstairs and
romp about awhile, relevant stairways, door openings, and floors having suddenly
miraculously become compatible with such activities. Then the elephant
dashed outside into a busy mid-day shopping district, and then walked several
miles back to the zoo, but nobody noticed.
Rassinier said somewhere, in connection with the extermination claim,
“this is not serious.” I am not in accord with that evaluation. This is mad.
However that is not the point of this discussion. The point is that these observations
can be considered to lie “figuratively before our very noses” because
most have been made in books published recently, not by revisionists, but by
the defenders of the legend, and the minority that were not made can be readily
inferred from those books anyway. On account of the “Holocaustomania”
of the past several years, their existence and general contents have been
widely publicized. Perhaps these books have not served up the observations as
succinctly and forthrightly as I have, but they have served them up. It would
therefore be a case of myopia, of a sort posterity will find it hard to understand
if, while pursuing “Holocaust” controversy, we allow ourselves to get so
wrapped up with the little details that the defenders of the legend will raise
that we allow ourselves to be diverted from taking into account the extraordinarily
simple historical observations which really settle beyond doubt any
question of the existence of a program of physical extermination of the Jews
of Europe.
Concluding Remarks
In controversies to come, the partisans of the received legend will try
mightily to confuse and complicate the subject with all the tricks that we can
anticipate and perhaps then some. We have the precedent of the Donation controversy
showing that simple observations that establish the wildly ahistorical
nature of a reigning legend can get smothered. Thus my most important advice
to those who enter the controversy is that they not lose sight of the fact that
the real bone of contention, the extermination allegation, has been laid to rest
beyond peradventure by ordinary historical analysis.
It follows that the basic tactic of the defenders of the legend, in controversies
to come, will be to attempt to make claims that cannot be tested by the
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
441
normal method of placing them as hypotheses in appropriate historical context
and seeing if they cohere. That this process is under way can be seen from the
remarkable New Statesman article of Gitta Sereny that is discussed above. She
makes it clear that she would rather discuss places such as Belzec, Sobibor
and Treblinka than Auschwitz.
There are good reasons for this. Sereny puts it this way:
“Auschwitz […] combined enormous labour installations and nearby
facilities for extermination. Auschwitz, because so many people survived it,
has added most to our knowledge, but also most of our confusion as between
the two types of camps.”
There is a valid distinction here. Auschwitz was a huge, multi-faceted operation,
while the other alleged extermination camps were obscure facilities
that functioned only for short times for the virtually exclusive purpose of serving
as transit camps for Jews. Thus we have a great deal of information about
Auschwitz but much less about the others. For example there probably do not
exist relevant aerial reconnaissance photographs of the others,550 nor were
there any western prisoners of war at the others, nor were hundreds of ordinary
civilians employed at the others, nor did inmates at the others come into
contact with diverse people over a large territory, nor was there apparently any
IRC cognizance of the others, nor were there nearly as many transports of
west European Jews to the others (there were transports of Dutch Jews to Sobibor).
The consequence is that it is much easier to disprove the legend as it applies
to Auschwitz than as it applies to the others, when we for the sake of discussion
forego the general historical arguments against “extermination.” That
is really why the defenders of the legend would rather discuss Belzec, Sobibor
and Treblinka. There is much less directly contradicting their supposed “evidence,”
which consists mainly of postwar testimony. That postwar testimony
was mostly given before German courts and under the present legal and political
conditions in Germany, revisionists cannot examine it anyway.551 That is
neat.
However the defenders of the legend are in an impossible position here.
They cannot concede Auschwitz without conceding the whole issue, for the
reason that there is no sort of evidence they offer for the others that is not also
550 For aerial photographs of Treblinka, see J. C. Ball, Air Photo Evidence, Ball Resource Service
Ltd., Delta, BC, 1992; also M. Weber and A. Allen, “Treblinka,” The Journal of Historical
Review, vol. 12 no. 2 (Summer 1992), pp. 133-158. – Ed.
551 Under German law the records of a trial are not open to the public. Exceptions are granted
to those who are somehow involved personally in the case or to those considered to have a
scholarly interest in aspects of the trial. Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich, retired German judge and author
of Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence, was denied permission to consult trials
testimonies. See his pp 371ff. Dr. Robert Faurisson interprets remarks, made in a letter by
Justice Ministry official Dr. Hans de With to Die Realschule (October 1981), as suggesting
that if Faurisson sets foot in Germany he will be arrested and sent back to France.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
442
offered for Auschwitz. If the “confession?” of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf
Höss is fanciful,552 then who will believe the “confession” of Treblinka commandant
Franz Stangl? If the Auschwitz accounts of Rudolf Vrba and Miklos
Nyiszli are not credible, and their books sick jokes, then who will believe the
equally sick Treblinka accounts of Jankiel Wiernik and other obscure people?
553 If the Nuremberg and postwar German trials have not established the
truth about Auschwitz, then who will believe that they have established the
truth about Treblinka? If the large numbers of Jews admittedly sent to Auschwitz
were not killed there, then who will believe that the large number of Jews
sent to Treblinka were killed at that camp? Much advice, then, to those who
would engage in controversy is to not permit the defenders of the legend to get
away with ignoring Auschwitz. The fact is that it is very easy to bring down
the legend as it applies to Auschwitz and Auschwitz in turn, on account of the
nature of the evidence involved, brings down the rest of the legend with it.
There is another type of argument resorted to by the defenders of the legend.
It was very recently offered by Hilberg in the remarkable interview referred
to above, which I recommend to those who want to get a good idea of
the contemporary line.
“[…] the critics [i.e. the revisionists] do not account for a quite simple
fact: what then became of the people who were deported? The deportation
was not a secret event. It was announced. Several million people were displaced
to definite places. Where are those people? They are not hidden in
China!”
It may seem incredible, at a time when scarcely a day goes by that the
press does not discover some hitherto obscure Jew who was deported from his
home but survived, at a time when events in the Middle East cannot fail to
remind people of the great Jewish exodus from Europe after the war (and even
during it), and at a time when the revisionist literature is recalling the various
ways Jews were moved around during and after the war,554 that Hilberg would
say such a thing. There seems to be no difficulty in accounting for the Jews. A
reader’s first impulse might be to assume that Hilberg had been misquoted.
However while he does not elaborate on the point, I can think of two interpretations
of Hilberg’s remarks. He had an argument here, but as usual its
plausibility is only illusory and depends on myopia and a loss of context and
perspective.
What Hilberg probably has in mind is the fact that, while there is available
a great deal of documentation that proves that Jews were deported to the
camps in Poland, such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, etc., there is not available
552 See Chapter 4. For the final solution of the Höss confession question, see Faurisson’s discussions
in The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 1, no. 2 (Summer 1980), pp. 103+; vol. 2,
no. 4 (Winter 1981), pp. 311+, 319+.
553 A. Donat.
554 See Chapter 7.
Supplement 2: Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy
443
comparable documentation that proves that they proceeded on through those
camps to points further east. As least, I have not seen such German records. I
would be astonished to see them today. Admitted that the legend was thrown
together in a sloppy fashion, mainly because some continuity with wartime
propaganda was desired, it is nevertheless the case that the people who came
into control of the German documents after the war, and who put selections of
them into evidence at the Nuremberg trials, were not operating under such
handicaps. They could suppress very effectively.
One must certainly note who “the people who came into control of the
German documents” were. There are many ways to make it clear by historicalpolitical
argument or by specific example. My favorite among the latter is that
the David Marcus who was prominent in making the US occupation policy in
Germany during and immediately after the war, and who headed the War
Crimes Branch in Washington in 1946-1947, was the same David Marcus who
commanded the Jewish forces in Palestine in the first (1948) war with the Arabs.
One could go on.555
Hilberg’s point would have some weight if we were talking about virgin
historical records but, what he is in effect saying (if I interpret him correctly)
is that we should trust the architects of the Nuremberg trials, which presupposes
more than he is trying to prove (I presume he would want to argue only
that these architects were right in this instance). The attempt to drop context at
this point stands logic on its head. All that is being noted is that the hoaxers
have not handed over the materials that directly expose their hoax.
Hilberg might argue that such wholesale suppression is not possible and
that traces of deportation of Jews further east would be left. That is true;
moreover, there are such traces and scraps. If this is indeed Hilberg’s point,
then he ought to answer the following question:. Where are the German records
that deal with the deportations to and administration of the settlement
(not concentration camp) near Riga that is described in Jeanette Wolff’s article
in Boehm’s book? I do not know. I am not saying that they will never turn up,
but I know that they were not available to those who looked for such things at
the Nuremberg trials.556
There is a second possible interpretation of Hilberg’s remark. While little
weight can be given to postwar Jewish population figures claimed for eastern
Europe, it must be conceded that the number of Jews in postwar Poland is
only some fraction of the very large number (perhaps 3 million) that lived in
prewar Poland (not quite the same territory). This is not because we must believe
population figures that are offered. It is because Poland, unlike the Soviet
Union, is not a large country and such large communities of Jews would
certainly have been noticed if they were still there.
555 See Chapter 1.
556 See Chapter 7.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
444
Thus, if one drops all historical context the argument seems simple. They
are not in this territory we today call Poland; therefore they were killed. To
those familiar with fairly commonplace history the conclusion is as much a
non sequitur as would be the observation that because there were many millions
of Germans and ethnic Germans living east of the Oder-Neisse before
the war, and today almost none, then they were all killed. In fact the period
was one of massive population movements, and the Jews were no exception.
The Soviets deported many into the interior of the Soviet Union and in the period
after the war the Polish Jews pouring into west Germany to proceed on to
the US, Palestine and other destinations became a widely publicized problem.
557
I have little more advice at this time on prosecuting “Holocaust” controversy,
and I cannot anticipate every trick. I cannot even promise that the Sereny
and Hilberg expositions discussed here will be representative of what the
reader might encounter as argument in support of the legend. Even today one
runs into the argument that the American and British troops who captured
Belsen, Buchenwald and Dachau “saw it with their own eyes.” They saw dead
bodies, and it has been relatively easily available knowledge since 1945 that
the deaths were due to the privations entailed in Germany’s collapse, but the
reigning confusion is so great that we still hear the argument anyway. All I
can add is that one should keep current with the revisionist literature and the
more important pieces of literature in support of the legend and, in controversy,
be mindful above all of preserving historical context and perspective
and not getting trapped with myopic historical vision.
557 See Chapter 1 and 7.
445
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of
Holocaust Revisionism
Presented orally at the 1992 conference of the Institute for Historical Review.
This is a slightly edited version of the paper as published in the Journal
of Historical Review, vol. 13, no. 3, May-June 1993, pp. 23+.
Why Another Critique of Jean-Claude Pressac?
Jean-Claude Pressac’s 1989 book, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of
the Gas Chambers, has been examined at length in The Journal of Historical
Review558 and elsewhere. Pressac’s principal, almost sole, target is Robert Faurisson,
and I expect that Faurisson’s critique will become the definitive one.
Accordingly, this presentation is not meant to be a thorough critique of Pressac’s
book.
I do, however, wish to supplement what has already been written and said
with some reactions of my own. What will be illustrated is something that I
observed long ago and for which Pressac’s book is a wonderful example. The
Holocaust is such a gigantic fraud that it is a cornucopia of absurdities. One
has only to contemplate it from a slightly different perspective to see new absurdities
tumble out. Alternatively, one can view it from the same perspective
after some time has elapsed (or one can ask another person to observe it), with
the same results.
Also, Pressac has commented on my work and I think it appropriate to reply.
What Pressac has Done
It is generally agreed that Pressac did history a service in gathering and
publishing documents that were previously unknown, or at least not easily
available. He then interpreted these documents in the outlandish ways analyzed
in the earlier critiques.
He also accepted the chemical analyses reported by Fred Leuchter in 1988
(and since confirmed by accredited chemist Germar Rudolf),559 and the impli-
558 Reviews and analysis of Pressac’s 1989 book that have appeared in The Journal of Historical
Review: M. Weber in Vol. 10, No. 2 (Summer 1990), pp. 231-237; C. Mattogno in Vol.
10, No. 4 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 461-485; R. Faurisson in Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring 1991), pp.
25-66, and in Vol. 11, No. 2 (Summer 1991), pp. 133-175.
559 G. Rudolf, The Rudolf Report. This report also discusses various other contributions in this
matter, e.g. by the Cracow Institute for Forensic Research. Editor’s note.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
446
cation that the alleged mass gassings with the pesticide Zyklon did not leave
cyanide traces as were left in the delousing gas chambers (although he is not
entirely consistent about this).560 Thus he invented a gassing procedure that, he
claimed without offering evidence, would leave no such trace, declared it to
be the one followed at Auschwitz, and found that he was consequently obliged
to reject important details in the accounts of two star “witnesses”:
Commandant Rudolf Höss, who was supposedly in charge of the whole
operation, and Dr. Nyiszli.561 In the course of his exposition, he notes additional
problems with the standard testimonies. I am reminded of one of those
old cartoons showing a man sawing off the tree branch he’s sitting on. As we
shall see, even on the basis of the concerns he raised in his book, Pressac
should have come down much harder on the alleged eyewitnesses.
In summary, what Pressac offers is (a) an admission that the gassings at
Auschwitz cannot be proven by forensic means, (b) admissions that the usual
alleged witnesses to exterminations are at least unreliable, and (c) a collection
of German documents, ambiguous when taken out of context, that provide
what he calls “criminal traces” of exterminations. These three points have
been the foci of the earlier critiques of Pressac’s book.
Pressac’s book is entirely dedicated to supporting his claim that the wartime
German authorities at Auschwitz constructed and operated homicidal gas
chambers there. He cannot, and does not even try, to connect such operations
to any policy emanating from Berlin. Nor does he try to show that there existed
a three-year program employing trains continuously crossing Europe and
carrying Jews to their deaths, unobserved by Allied intelligence agencies, by
German military intelligence, by the Red Cross, by the Vatican, by the Jews
facing transport under German policies, or even by the Jewish leaders outside
occupied Europe who were publicly wailing about “extermination.”562 Such
major historical bounds having long been established, an opus such as Pressac’s,
with its strict focus on local questions, is the only kind of antirevisionist
essay possible.
Such an author is in the position of a man who would prove that there was
a recent war between Illinois and Indiana by scouring the countryside for
spent firearms casings. It is not necessary to play his game of dropping all historical
context in order to focus on a purely local matter, but a review of his
book can do naught else. Nevertheless, I shall show that the objection that
Pressac has dropped context holds even if we agree to play his game. That is,
given the restriction of his view to Auschwitz, Pressac still focuses on local
matters out of context, this time of the concentration camp in its full dimensions.
560 Pressac, p. 133.
561 Pressac, pp. 16, 53.
562 See Supplement 2 here.
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
447
The Crematories
In my view, page 184 of Pressac’s book is crucial. Here we are told:563
1. Mass gassings of Jews in “Bunker 1” (located near the newly built Birkenau
section of the Auschwitz camp), commenced in 1942, possibly in
January but certainly by mid-May.
2. On February 27, 1942 it was decided that the new 15-muffle Crematory
II would be built at Birkenau rather than at the Stammlager (main or
original camp).
3. On some unknown date in May or June 1942, it was decided that an “industrial”
extermination of the Jews would be undertaken. The new crematories
were accordingly modified for this purpose, this being indicated
by the first “criminal element” to appear on an engineering drawing:
the separation of the drainage of the alleged gas chamber from the
drainage of the rest of Crematory II. (Pressac has a very low threshold in
detecting a “criminal element.”)
4. In the summer 1942 it was decided that four new crematories, rather
than one, would be built at Birkenau for extermination purposes: Crematory
III, a mirror image of Crematory II with 15 muffles, and the mirror
image Crematories IV and V, each with eight muffles, for a total of 46
muffles (not counting Crematory I). Construction of these Birkenau
crematoria was completed in spring 1943, and Crematory I in the
Stammlager, with its six muffles, was shut down permanently in July
1943.
Pressac expects the reader to assume, as he does, that such great cremation
capacity could only be to support an extermination program. Accordingly, he
goes on to invite us “to imagine a village of 4,000 inhabitants with […] a crematorium
equipped with three 3-muffle furnaces. […] We need not dwell on
this picture.”
This point is repeated and emphasized elsewhere in the book. Regarding
the crematories, Pressac writes: “THEIR CAPACITY WAS EXCESSIVE IN
RELATION TO THE REAL NEEDS OF THE CAMP” (Pressac’s emphasis).
564 He argues that the cremation capacity was excessive for a normal
community of this many residents. However, nobody maintains Birkenau was
a normal community. Indeed, in Chapter 4 I conceded that it could properly be
called a “death camp.”
In making his argument, Pressac tries to ignore the catastrophic typhus epidemics
at Auschwitz – an impossible task because the documents emphasize
the importance of this matter. The first catastrophic epidemic – during the
summer of 1942 – is not mentioned at all by Pressac on page 184 of his book,
which is devoted to arguing (or at least asserting) that a decision was made in
563 Pressac, p. 132.
564 Pressac, pp. 200, 206.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
448
spring-summer of 1942 to launch an industrial extermination of the Jews, and
to expand accordingly the capacity of the cremation facilities then under construction.
Consider how horrible and devastating the summer 1942 typhus epidemic
at Auschwitz was. The number of recorded male deaths in the period July 1
through August 19, 1942, was 8,236. The records for female deaths in the period
are not available, but judging from the registration numbers the female
camp population was about 25 percent of the male. Therefore, the combined
male/female recorded deaths for the period July 1 through August 19, 1942,
was about 10,000.565 The Höss order of July 23 quarantining the camp566 was a
necessary response to an extraordinary situation. These are the events that
Pressac ignores as he considers, on page 184 of his book, the changes in crematory
construction plans that were made in summer 1942. He invites us “to
imagine” an ordinary village in considering these crematories. Why should
one try? What Pressac would have us ignore at this point is the virtual hellhole
of catastrophic epidemic at Auschwitz. Dishonesty on this scale is rare; only a
spinner of the “Holocaust” yarn could hope to get away with it.567
At first I considered this a most shocking instance of intellectual dishonesty.
Continuing to read, I noted that on page 187 he does mention the typhus
epidemic, and then, on page 188, I found the prize of the whole book. On that
page Pressac finally offers a relation of the measures being taken at Auschwitz
against typhus to the alleged extermination of the Jews. He wrote there:
“The SS used the extermination of the Jews, about which their superiors
had a general knowledge, without being informed of the practical details,
to hide the terrible hygienic conditions in the camp, and to cover up
their enormous consumption of gas for disinfestation purposes.” (Pressac’s
emphases.)
The SS therefore must have hidden the catastrophe from Himmler during
his visit to the camp on July 17-18, 1942. (My guess is that Himmler suggested,
or at least informally approved, the quarantine order that was issued on
July 23.)
Since the typhus epidemics cannot be ignored, Pressac mentions them on
subsequent pages. On one he notes, “it was necessary at all costs to stop the
epidemic,” while on another he ludicrously writes that in mid-September, almost
two months after the quarantine order, “the deaths caused by the typhus
epidemic were becoming a real problem” – the great understatement of the
565 D. Czech, “Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Hefte
von Auschwitz, No. 3, 1960, pp. 68-76. Also D. Czech, “Die Rolle des Häftlingskrankenbaulagers
im KL Auschwitz II,” Hefte von Auschwitz, No. 15, 1975, pp. 27ff.
566 D. Czech in Hefte von Auschwitz, No. 3, 1960 (cited above), p. 73.
567 Pressac, pp. 217-218, repeats this amazing evasion. On p. 384 he hurriedly suggests a very
weak relation between crematory construction activity and the epidemics.
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
449
book.568 That which every minimally discerning reader will see, a presumptive
link between the epidemics and crematory construction, is evaded. Here Pressac
argues an extraordinary role for the crematories by maintaining that final
approval for construction rested with the RSHA (the security/police branch of
the SS), rather than the WVHA (the camp administration agency). If true, all
that is indicated is some procedural point, or perhaps the generally acknowledged
inequality of the two departments.569 Pressac makes no effort to convey
the full horror of the typhus epidemic of 1942. These reluctant admissions of a
typhus catastrophe amount to evasions performed in order to strengthen, in the
reader’s mind, the “industrial extermination” interpretation of the crematories.
Pressac in fact thus engages in whitewashing the true horrors of Auschwitz.
Pressac’s reluctant and dispersed acknowledgment of the typhus epidemics
could be viewed as yet another instance of a feature that has bothered every
reviewer of the book: its poor organization. Many times I have come back to
the book to reread some point I remember having read somewhere, only to
find that the point is not at all where, logically, it ought to be, but rather in
some unexpected place. Normally such a lack of organization would be due to
sloppy craftsmanship, and would be rightly regarded as a nuisance that does
not carry argumentative weight against the author’s analysis. Further on, I will
offer another interpretation of the poor organization that does carry such
weight.
I wonder if Pressac’s evasions should be viewed as “dishonesty.” If I were
to put on an odd-looking hat like the one that Napoleon wore, and then go
around claiming to be the French emperor, would that be “dishonesty”? That
is, when the disguise is easily seen through by anybody not eager to self deceive,
should that be regarded as a disguise at all? Pressac may be king of the
clowns; he is not king of the hoaxers.
Pressac does not bother to consider the notion that the camp’s large cremation
capacity was appropriate for the epidemic conditions. In (Chapter 4) I
made the following point, but in view of Pressac’s book it seems necessary to
belabor it. In considering cremation capacity, it is difficult to reach conclusions
on a purely technical basis because of the distinction that must unavoidably
be made between what is physically possible and what is practically attainable.
For example, although I am told that my car can move at about 100
miles per hour, I know I cannot drive the 20 miles that separates my home in
Evanston from the University of Chicago in twelve minutes; too many obstacles
intervene. The technical data provides two numbers from which only an
irrelevant conclusion can be drawn, whose only value is that the arithmetic is
568 Pressac, pp. 188, 202.
569 Nobody believes Oswald Pohl was equal in influence to Reinhard Heydrich while the latter
was alive. It was RSHA head Ernst Kaltenbrunner who, toward the end of the war, issued
the order opening the camps to the International Red Cross. See Chapter 2.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
450
correct.
Pressac cites some documents on cremation capacity that he admits could
not relate to practical conditions.570 In the case of the crematoria in the concentration
camps, the two main obstacles to such apparently simple calculations
are (1) that the cremation equipment was not – and could not have been
– used continuously, and that (2), as I noted on p. 38??? (Chapter 2), the camp
inmates who routinely operated the crematories were normally “working with
a lethargy taught them by the Russians.”
Although the term “extraordinary” is applicable when referring to numbers,
I shall henceforth term as “ordinary” those camp deaths from nonhomicidal
causes, mainly disease but including execution for specific offenses,
virtually all of which were at some point recorded in German documents
and which are admitted by all sides. (Some of the “ordinary” deaths that
occurred in 1945, during the chaos of the final months of the war, were not recorded).
An “extermination camp” is then a hypothetical camp where unrecorded
deaths – in homicidal “gas chambers” – vastly exceeded recorded deaths. Revisionists
hold that, while some German wartime documents may be lost, the
ordinary deaths were essentially all the deaths, and that there were no “extermination
camps.” Consistent with the extermination legend, Pressac would
agree that all the deaths in such camps as Buchenwald and Dachau in Germany
were essentially ordinary deaths. However, he would assert that at
570 Pressac, on p. 108, cites a letter from Topf (reproduced in R. Schnabel, Macht ohne Moral,
Frankfurt/ Main, 1957, p. 346). This letter asserts that one of the firm’s double muffle ovens
can reduce “in about 10 hours 10-35 corpses” (that is, the average time claimed to reduce
one corpse in a muffle ranged from 34 minutes to two hours), and can be operated day and
night, an assertion not borne out by later experience at Auschwitz, as Pressac notes (pp.
227-247, esp. p. 244). I believe this document is authentic, and the exaggerations are the
usual ones of people trying to sell something. I note that it clearly specifies that corpses are
supplied to the oven serially (“hintereinander”), in contradiction to the usual “witness” who
claims that three or even more were fed into a muffle together. Witnesses also assert that the
crematories belched flames from the chimneys, certainly not the operational mode of modern
crematories. Pressac accepts such tall tales without protest (pp. 251, 253). I have far
more trouble with the document reproduced by Pressac on p. 247, ostensibly a letter of June
28, 1943, from the Auschwitz construction department claiming that the 52 muffles at
Auschwitz could reduce 4,756 corpses in 24 hours of operation. That works out to an average
of 16 minutes per corpse. The date of the document was when the breakdowns of the
crematories and consequent attempts at emergency repairs gave the SS no reason to exaggerate
the efficacy of Topf’s products (for example, Pressac, pp. 100, 227, 236). Moreover
according to another document reproduced by Pressac (on p. 224), the crematories operated
only 12 hours per day. On p. 91, Pressac gives the provenance of the June 28, 1943, document
as the “Committee of Anti-Fascist Resistants of the German Democratic Republic.” I
am in the position of a man staring at an authentic-looking German document that states
that a Volkswagen broke the sound barrier. If it is not a forgery, then it must have been some
sort of joke. In one of his neo-Pythagorean exegeses that Faurisson has noted (The Journal
of Historical Review, Vol. 11, No. 2, Summer 1991, pp. 145-149), Pressac says (pp. 110,
244) that such figures should be divided “by a factor of 2 to 5.”
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
451
Auschwitz in Poland large-scale unrecorded “extermination” deaths of
anonymous people were carried out, and that, consequently, only a fraction –
perhaps one-tenth – of the total deaths there were “ordinary” recorded deaths.
What we need to do is consider the recorded death rates in relation to the
cremation capacities. The most effective method, I think, is to compare the
(“non-extermination”) camps of Buchenwald and Dachau with the (“extermination”)
camp of Auschwitz in this respect. This is more convincing than citing
estimates of the amount of time required to cremate a corpse. To return to
the analogy of driving the 20 miles between my residence in Evanston and the
University of Chicago, I must essentially disregard technical data about the
speed capacity of my car and the distance between the two locations, and instead
refer to experience – either my own or another’s – to accurately estimate
the time required.
If it can be shown that the cremation capacity in each camp was proportionate
to the numbers of “ordinary” and recorded deaths in each camp, then
there must be an assumption that the crematories at Auschwitz played, and
were intended to play, the same ordinary role as the crematories at Buchenwald
and Dachau (which by universal agreement were not extermination
camps).
There are a few difficulties in such a comparison, but they are surmountable.
For one thing, there is a lack of complete and formal documentation of
“ordinary” deaths at Auschwitz, despite the widely publicized release three
years ago by Soviet authorities of the Auschwitz “death books.” Coincidentally,
in a review published in 1989, I gave figures that had been given to me
by the International Tracing Service in Arolsen during my visit there in 1977:
45,575 recorded deaths in 1942, and 36,960 in 1943, with death books missing
for 1940, 1941, 1944, and January 1945 (when the camp was evacuated).571
Although my information was not complete, it is – as we shall see – satisfactory
for the present purpose. Another problem is the significance of the
69,000 deaths recorded in the death certificates of the (incomplete) “death
books” announced by the Soviets in 1989. Fortunately, this is not important
for the present purpose. I continue to maintain that the total number of “ordinary”
deaths at Auschwitz from 1940 through January 1945 is “in the range
100,000-150,000, probably closer to the former, because the camp population
was small in 1940-1941 and by 1944 the Germans had made some progress
against typhus.”572 As we shall see, this total is not the crucial point.
The totals for Buchenwald and Dachau, camps in Germany rather than Poland,
are fairly well established. The International Tracing Service report of
571 The Auschwitz Death Registers show roughly 44,309 deaths for 1942, and roughly 36,499
deaths for 1943. -Ed.
572 The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Fall 1989), pp. 369f. (My review of Arno
Mayer’s book, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?)
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
452
1977 specified 36,550 for Buchenwald and 31,951 for Dachau. In each case,
though, the figure does not include an undetermined number of “persons who
died shortly before the liberation and during the evacuation transports.”573
The cremation facilities at the two camps are also fairly well known. Buchenwald
had a six-muffle crematory, installed in 1942, and perhaps two additional
muffles installed earlier. Moreover, Buchenwald had access to the civilian
crematories that existed in nearby Weimar. Dachau had a two-muffle crematory
before 1942, when a four-muffle crematory was constructed.574 We
may therefore assume that Buchenwald and Dachau had at least six muffles
each.
At first it may appear that, by comparison, Auschwitz had an excessive
number of muffles: while the number of “ordinary” deaths at Auschwitz was
about three to four times those at Buchenwald and Dachau, there were about
eight times as many muffles. However when the calculation is done correctly
it can be seen that Auschwitz in fact had less relative cremation capacity.
The figures for total deaths at the two camps in Germany have entirely different
interpretations from those for Auschwitz. The latter was evacuated under
generally orderly conditions in January 1945. Consequently, the Auschwitz
total, whatever it is, does not include “ordinary” deaths during the complete
chaos of spring 1945. The worst period for Auschwitz was not 1945, but
1942, when its crematory construction project was defined.
By contrast, most of the deaths in the camps in Germany proper were in
1944 and the chaotic first four months of 1945, during the disintegration and
final collapse of German industry. Concentration camp personnel knew that
any plans for fundamental expansion of cremation capabilities that might have
been drawn up in 1944 stood little chance of being implemented. Indeed, such
construction was scant in 1944 and 1945. All significant and effective decisions
about crematory construction were in fact made before 1944, and could
have been determined only by conditions existing prior to 1944. Consequently,
in order to judge German intentions regarding the construction of
crematories, we must look to the 1942-1943 period. Therefore, the incomplete
figures cited here for Auschwitz are all that are required for the present purpose.
Available figures of “ordinary” deaths in the three camps break down as
shown in Table 18 (it being noted that the figure for Buchenwald is only for
the first three months of 1945):575
573 A. de Cocatrix, “The number of victims of the National Socialist persecution,” Arolsen: International
Tracing Service, April 1977.
574 See Chapter 4; see also Pressac, pp. 94f, 106.
575 Nuremberg document 2171-PS, published in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1946-1948), Vol. 4, pp. 800-835; P. Berben, Dachau 1933-1945:
The Official History (London: Norfolk Press, 1975 ed.), p. 281. I have not used Mauthausen
in this comparison because, although the recorded deaths are fairly well known (see, for exSupplement
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453
Table 18: Recorded deaths in the Auschwitz,
Buchenwald and Dachau camps
YEAR AUSCHWITZ BUCHENWALD DACHAU
1940 ? 1,772 1,515
1941 ? 1,522 2,576
1942 45,575 2,898 2,470
1943 36,960 3,516 1,100
1944 ? 8,644 4,794
1945 ? 13,056 15,384
TOTALS ? 31,408 27,839
TOTALS? 125,000? 37,000? 32,000?
The crucial years are 1942 and 1943 because those are the latest years that
could be considered to have determined German decisions about the construction
of crematories in the camps.
The ratio of projected muffles to “ordinary” deaths is presented in Table
19. I have assumed 52 muffles for Auschwitz (46 for Birkenau and six for the
Stammlager (Auschwitz I camp)), not because Auschwitz ever in fact had 52
operational muffles, but because the purpose of this calculation is to help interpret
intentions in building the crematories rather than capabilities actually
attained. We see, in fact, that the ratio of cremation muffles to deaths somewhat
disfavors Auschwitz: that is, it was decided that Auschwitz would be less
well equipped with crematories than Buchenwald and Dachau (two camps
that, by universal agreement, were not extermination camps). Perhaps budgetary
constraints excluded more crematories for Auschwitz.
Table 19: Number of projected muffles per thousand
recorded deaths
YEAR AUSCHWITZ BUCHENWALD DACHAU
MUFFLES 52 6 6
1942 1.14 2.07 2.43
1943 1.41 1.71 5.45
On page 184 of his book, Pressac readily interprets the summer 1942 decision
to provide 46 cremation muffles in Birkenau as a phase of an extermination
program. In doing so, however, he ignores the figures of ordinary or recorded
deaths (given here), which contradict his interpretation. The decision
to shut down Crematory I, with its six muffles, in the Auschwitz main camp
ample, Hans Marsálek, Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Mauthausen, Vienna,
1974), the extent of cremation means is uncertain. Mauthausen was more decentralized than
the other camps; for example, the satellite camp Gusen experienced about as many deaths as
the main camp, and it and other satellite camps had their own crematoria of uncertain extent
(See: Pressac, pp. 108-114, and, Marsálek, p. 157). In addition, Mauthausen on occasion
used ordinary municipal crematoria, such as the one in Steyr.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
454
(Stammlager) is, therefore, from Pressac’s point of view, inexplicable.
Actually, the entire story was unraveled at its beginning by Heinrich
Himmler, who stated on April 21, 1945:576
“In order to put a stop to the epidemics, we were forced to burn the
bodies of incalculable numbers of people who had been destroyed by disease.
We were therefore forced to build crematoria, and on this account
they are knotting a noose for us.”
Unfortunately Himmler did not live to say this at the Nuremberg trials. It is
scandalous that it still has to be said today.
With regard to Pressac’s exertions to find a homicidal gas chamber in
(Birkenau) Crematory II, I refer the reader to Faurisson’s critique. In his effort
to prove a thesis, the falsehood of which is (or should be) obvious at the outset,
Pressac in fact plays down or simply ignores the decisive facts. Nevertheless,
he claims that it is we who are “maniacs who spend their lives trying to
demonstrate that something never existed.”577
The ‘Vergasungskeller’ (gassing cellar)
Earlier, I considered a widely-cited document dated January 29, 1943, in
which Karl Bischoff, head of the Auschwitz construction department, reported
to Hans Kammler, head of the SS engineering office in Berlin, on the operational
status of Crematory II:578
“The Crematorium II has been completed – save for some minor constructional
work – by the use of all the forces available, in spite of unspeakable
difficulties, the severe cold, and in 24 hour shifts. The fires were
started in the ovens in the presence of Senior Engineer Prüfer, representative
of the contractors of the firm of Topf and Sons, Erfurt, and they are
working most satisfactorily. The formwork for the reinforced concrete ceiling
of the mortuary cellar [Leichenkeller] could not yet be removed on account
of the frost. This is, however, unimportant, as the gassing cellar
[Vergasungskeller] can be used for this purpose […]”
In his book, Pressac wrote that my interpretation of the term Vergasungskeller
“though perfect in its literary form, was technically worthless.”579 He interprets
the term Vergasungskeller in this 1943 document to mean a homicidal
gas chamber, and made this number one in his list of 39 “criminal traces” of
extermination gassings at Auschwitz.580
576 See Chapter 7; see also Moment (Jewish monthly published in Boston), Vol. 11, No. 1,
(Dec. 1985), p. 51.
577 Pressac, p. 216.
578 See Chapter 4; see also Pressac, p. 211. [This 1943 communication is Nuremberg document
NO-4473. Original German-language text is given in: E. Kogon, et al., Nationalsozialistische
Massentötungen durch Giftgas (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1986), p. 220.]
579 Pressac, p. 548.
580 Pressac, p. 432.
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
455
I would now say that although my translation of the term was technically
correct, Pressac showed that, in this case, my interpretation was not correct.
However, Pressac’s interpretation is also incorrect, as shown by the evidence
he himself reproduces. It is necessary to consider this matter in detail.581
The two important German words in this regard are Begasung, treatment
with a gas, and Vergasung, gasification or conversion of something into a gas,
even in the loose sense; for example, the German word for carburetion is Vergasung.
Thus, although “fumigation” should normally be “Begasung,” for no
clear reason German often allows “Vergasung” to substitute for “Begasung.”
Thus, gas attacks in World War I were referred to as Vergasung, and professional
fumigators often speak of their operations as Vergasung rather than
Begasung. However it appears that Begasung never substitutes for Vergasung,
and that a fumigation or delousing gas chamber is normally a “Gaskammer,”
not a “Vergasungskammer” or “Vergasungskeller.” Accordingly, the delousing
gas chambers at Auschwitz were called “Gaskammern.”582 These are the
sorts of arbitrary conventions of usage, not deducible from a dictionary, that
occur in any language.
Despite all this, the normal meaning of Vergasung, in a technical context,
is gasification, gas generation, or carburetion. In view of that, and knowing
that some cremation ovens were of a design requiring a combustible gas-air
mixture to be introduced by blowers located outside, I interpreted the Vergasungskeller
mentioned in the 1943 document as a place where coke or coal
was converted into a combustible gas, mixed with air, and then introduced under
pressure into the cremation ovens.
While this interpretation is not “technically worthless,” Pressac shows that
it is not correct in this instance. His proof consists of (1) many engineering
drawings of Crematory II, in various stages of design, which show no such facility,
and (2) engineering drawings of, and other technical data on, typical
Topf company crematory ovens, which show that they were not of the design I
assumed, and which used as fuel coke supplied directly behind the ovens.583
On the basis of a newly discovered document, Pressac shows that the
basement morgue (Leichenkeller), which was not available, due to the frost,
was Leichenkeller 2. He thus concludes that the Vergasungskeller must be
Leichenkeller 1, and that it was designated a “Vergasungskeller” in this
document as a result of an “enormous gaff [sic…] the first of the ‘slips’ that
581 Compare with Faurisson’s discussion of this point in The Journal of Historical Review, Vol.
11, No. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 55ff.
582 Pressac, pp. 27f, 31. H. Breymesser and E. Bernfus, eds., Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr,
(Berlin: Reichsarbeitsblatt, 1943) normally uses “Gaskammer” but “Begasungskammer”
is also used.
583 Pressac, pp. 106-113, 222-225. Early in 1989 Faurisson also told me that my interpretation
of the Vergasungskeller was not correct, but as far as I can recollect he did not raise the matter
of the design of the ovens. Thus I was not convinced at that time.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
456
SS and civilians could not help making” in the alleged preferred policy of not
committing incriminating words to paper.584 While it is true that the normal
German term for a homicidal or delousing gas chamber would be “Gaskammer,”
“Vergasungskeller” is linguistically possible.
As noted by others, Pressac is in the strange position of claiming that a
room consistently designated Leichenkeller 1 on all engineering drawings was
to be used only temporarily as a Leichenkeller, either instead of normally as a
gas chamber, or simultaneously as a gas chamber and a morgue. In the latter
case the unsuspecting victims must presumably stand on the corpses. In the
former case (the only interpretation worth considering), the implied delay in
the use of the building for extermination was “unimportant,” a major contradiction
if one claims, as Pressac does, that the primary role of the building was
for mass gassing.
Because this document confirms that in January 1943 the Germans were
working, under great pressure, to make this installation operational as an ordinary
crematory, I regard it as further evidence against the claim that it had
been decided in the summer of 1942 that the primary purpose of these crematories
was extermination by lethal gassing.
The use of the Vergasungskeller as a morgue not only did not interfere
with bringing Crematorium II into operational status, it advanced it. Here I am
arguing, in passing, for a focus on what the document says rather than on the
term Vergasungskeller mentioned in it. I suspect that the realization of what
the document really says is the basis for Hilberg’s failure to make more than a
hurried and superficial reference to it.585 Pressac, in effect, would have us ignore
what the document says.
In any case, Pressac’s logic in interpreting the Vergasungskeller as a gas
chamber depends entirely on the assumption that there was a gas chamber in
Crematory II. Without that assumption we have the following situation:
1. One (and apparently only one) document concerned exclusively with
the operational status of Crematory II makes reference to a Vergasungskeller
to be temporarily used, in support of the crematory, as a morgue
and not for its intended or normal function,
2. In the many engineering drawings of the crematories that Pressac has
examined, there is no mention of a Vergasungskeller, Gaskammer, or
anything similar,586 and
3. Nothing in those engineering drawings implies or calls for something
describable as a Vergasungskeller. For example the cremation ovens
have been shown to be of a design not calling for such a facility.
The appropriate conclusion, I believe, is that the Vergasungskeller was not
584 Pressac, p. 217.
585 R. Hilberg (1985), p. 885, n. 67. (1961: p. 566, n. 52.)
586 Pressac, p. 429.
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
457
in Crematory II at all. I assume that it was somewhere in the vicinity, but in
the light of current knowledge the only basis for inferring that it was in the
crematory building is an assumption that there was a gas chamber there. In the
absence of the massive documentation presented by Pressac, it seemed logical
to assume that the Vergasungskeller was located in Crematory II. I made just
that assumption in writing my book, and the assumption seemed confirmed for
me by the observation that crematory technology could call for such a facility.
However Pressac has shown, without realizing it, that the Vergasungskeller
was not in Crematory II because it does not appear on the many engineering
plans, and is not implied or called for by anything that appears on those plans.
Only an unfounded or arbitrary prior assumption can place it there.
If the Vergasungskeller was not in Crematory II, then the questions of what
and where it was are only of limited importance. It suffices, I believe, to show
that the term could have applied to operations that transpired, or may have
transpired, elsewhere in the camp.
To give my favored interpretation first, it is unlikely that the town of
Auschwitz had preexisting means for production and/or distribution of fuel or
town gas sufficient for the needs of the huge complex of camps we call
“Auschwitz.” Such needs could have been for cooking, heating, or incineration
of waste, and so forth. On account of the paucity of natural gas, but abundance
of coal in Europe, the Germans had extensively developed the gasification
of coal.587 In the Auschwitz region coal was particularly abundant, so
processes of coal or coke gasification were suited for the conditions there.
In offering my earlier interpretation of the Vergasungskeller as a fuel gas
generator for the crematory ovens I wrote on p. 136??? (Chapter 4): “The two
most common methods of producing fuel gases from coal or coke are, first, by
passing air through a bed of burning coke to produce ‘coke oven gas’ and second,
by passing steam through the coke to produce ‘water gas’.”588 I now offer
almost the same interpretation, but modified so that the specific location of the
Vergasungskeller is no longer known, and the gas generated is for general application
and not specifically for cremation. This seems entirely justified by
the engineering plans that indicate no Vergasungskeller in the crematories, by
the great likelihood that the camp required fuel gas, and in view of the easy
availability of coal there.589 Incidentally it is unimportant, from the present
587 John F. Foster and Richard J. Lund, eds., Economics of Fuel Gas from Coal (NY: McGraw
Hill, 1950), pp. 68-97.
588 The remark on the method of generation of coke oven gas can be improved. See: Foster &
Lund (1950), cited above, p. 41. In any case the German processes were sufficiently advanced
that they did not necessarily fall into classic categories. See: Foster & Lund (1950),
pp. 68f.
589 A summary of various gas generation processes is given in Hermann Franke, ed., Lueger.
Lexikon der Technik (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1960-1972), Vol. 7 (1965), pp.
484+. Gasification of oil, or Ölvergasung), as contrasted to gasification of solid fuels, or
Vergasung fester Brennstoffe, had also been practiced in Germany since the late nineteenth
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
458
point of view, if such a Vergasungskeller were operational or only in a state of
construction; only the possibility of its temporary use as a morgue is relevant.
So much the better if such a facility was not yet operational, because then
nothing would interfere with use as a morgue.
As I say, this is my “favored” or preferred interpretation, but there are a
few other possibilities that are worth noting.
It has already been remarked that fuel gas generated in the camp could
have been used, among other things, in waste incineration. That is, the fuel gas
could have served as the auxiliary fuel. There is also a second sense in which
“Vergasung” can apply to waste incineration, because the technology views
the waste as a combustible fuel being turned into gases. Incineration (or Verbrennung)
is actually a special case of gasification (or Vergasung) in which all
combustibles are oxidized to the highest degree possible, for example, producing
carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of carbon monoxide (CO, a combustible gas,
in which case it would be said that Vergasung had taken place). Since perfect
incineration does not exist in this sense, the line between Verbrennung and
Vergasung can be blurred. What is termed waste gasification, or Müllvergasung
in ordinary technical German, was developed as a practical process only
after the war.590 It appears that during the war Vergasung could have been
used in the waste incineration context only in the sense of one of many specific
processes taking place inside a plant viewed as performing Müllverbrennung.
591 Thus this second sense of application of “Vergasung” to waste incineration
does not seem to apply, and it is very unlikely that at Auschwitz any
waste incinerator would have been spoken of as performing Vergasung.
This possibility is nevertheless worth mentioning. There was a waste incinerator
in what I would call the chimney housing behind the cremation ovens in
Crematory II. The effluent gases from this incinerator combined with the effluent
of the ovens in sharing the chimney and the suction type forced draft
system.592 I do not believe that the “Vergasungskeller” was this chimney housing
because, apart from the reasons already given, it was not referred to as
such on the drawings, and seems to have had insufficient free space to serve as
a plausible temporary substitute for the huge Leichenkeller 2.593 All the same,
it is at least worth noting that “Vergasung” could apply as an inclusive description
for the two processes (cremation and waste incineration) involved
there. However I do not consider a waste incineration interpretation of the
Vergasungskeller a likely possibility.
century. See: H. Franke, ed., Lueger (Stuttgart: 1960-1972), Vol. 4, p. 390.
590 H. Franke, ed., Lueger (cited above), Vol. 16, p. 337.
591 H. Franke, ed., Lueger (cited above), Vol. 7, p. 89.
592 Pressac, pp. 277, 281ff, 287, 306.
593 Such objections also apply against the hypothesis that one room of the small Leichenkeller
3 (Pressac, pp. 285, 295) was the Vergasungskeller. See R. Faurisson, The Journal of Historical
Review, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 55ff.
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
459
In the vicinity of the crematories at Birkenau there were three sewage
treatment plants (Kläranlagen) in various stages of completion.594 Sewage
treatment amounts basically to the acceleration of the natural processes in
which bacteria metabolize solid waste into gasses and inoffensive solids
(sludge), and to the disposal or use of these products. There are several senses
in which Vergasung could arise. A short outline is helpful:
1. Aeration (Belüftung)
2. Chlorination
3. Methane production
4. Prevention of sewer gasification (Kanalvergasung)
5. Sludge incineration (Schlammverbrennung)
Sludge gasification (Schlammvergasung) was a postwar development and
is not relevant here.
In the technical literature, aeration of sewage is classified as one form of
“gas transfer”595 because a specific biochemical effect of the oxygen is sought;
the specific purpose of the aeration is to make the aerobic bacteria more vigorous.
This biochemical motivation is so emphatic that I have seen the word
“Begasung“ used to designate Belüftung.596 In this connection I have also seen
the terms “Belüftungskammer” (aeration chamber) and “Belüftungsschacht”
(aeration shaft).597
Chlorination is normally accomplished by converting stored liquid chlorine
to the gaseous form, that is, Vergasung,598 and then injecting the gas into the
sewage or effluent, that is, Begasung.
In the anaerobic digestion of sewage a number of gases are produced
(sludge gas or Faulgas), especially methane, which has various uses as a
source of energy. This gas production is normally referred to, however, as
Gaserzeugung rather than Vergasung. Moreover since the gas is produced at
the top of a digestion tank, it is not likely that the process could be viewed as
taking place in any sort of “Keller.” However, the process of useful gas production
does not end there and there are sufficient complications to allow
various combinations and hence appearances of diverse technical terms. After
the digestion the removal of impurities, especially hydrogen sulfide, is required
if the methane is to have practical use. The removal was normally via
dry scrubbing in a “Raseneisenerzfilter,”599 that is, filtering in iron oxide, as
was common in the gas industry.
As already remarked, sewage treatment consists of the acceleration of natural
processes, so gas production also occurs spontaneously in the very sewers
594 See Pressac, pp. 51, 165-170, 420f, 542f, for limited data.
595 Metcalf and Eddy, Inc., Wastewater Engineering (3rd ed., 1991), p. 276.
596 H. Kretzschmar, Technische Mikrobiologie (Berlin and Hamburg, 1968), p. 217.
597 J. Brix, H. Heyd and E. Gerlach, Die Wasserversorgung (1963), pp. 323, 329.
598 H. Kittner, W. Starke and D. Wissel, Wasserversorgung (Berlin, 1964), p. 424.
599 K. Imhoff, Taschenbuch der Stadtentwässerung (Munich and Berlin, 1943, 10th ed.), p. 207.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
460
before the sewage reaches a treatment plant. This process is called “Kanalvergasung”
and was studied in Germany before the war. For example, there was a
1933 doctoral dissertation on the subject.600
Ventilation is often adequate to prevent unwanted effects, such as explosions,
but in the event ventilation does not suffice there is the Gerlach device,
which removes gases by suction and has both mobile and stationary versions.
601 In this case the role of the plant is not to perform Vergasung but to
counter it, that is, it does Entgasung because of the undesired Vergasung.
Sludge incineration was practiced in Germany since early in the century,
but greater interest in this method of sludge disposal was aroused when large
and economic plants were built in the US during the Thirties.602 In this case
“Vergasung” arises in the same way it did at the outset of this discussion, that
is, in fuel gas generation, because the sludge cannot be burned without the application
of some auxiliary fuel, at least for preheating. Indeed sludge gas is a
highly convenient energy source in such a process.603 A postwar development
was incineration using oil as fuel, in an “Ölvergasungsbrenner.”604
I have not located the Vergasungskeller in the sewage plants. Rather, I
have listed five senses in which generation of, or treatment with, a gas comes
up in sewage technology. I have not found the term “Vergasungskeller” or
“Vergasungskammer” in the German literature on wastewater treatment, but
that is not necessary. The document in question was not written by a sewage
engineer; it was written by a construction engineer for the information of another
construction engineer, and the author never imagined that half a century
later people would be poring over his hurried note. Nevertheless, I still favor
the first interpretation offered, namely, that the Vergasungskeller was a generator
of fuel or town gas intended for general use.
Only the study of complete engineering plans for the camp could settle this
question. Alas, that may be difficult. Some of the documentation provided to
Pressac by the Auschwitz State Museum (the Panstwowe Muzeum Oswieçim,
or “PMO,” whose help Pressac copiously acknowledges) had earlier been provided
to the Auschwitz State Museum by the Israelis.605 I assume the Israelis
600 K. Dau, Über Kanalvergasungen und ihre Verhütung (Würzburg: Dissertationsdruckerei
und Verlag Konrad Triltsch, 1935).
601 H. Franke, ed., Lueger (cited above), Vol. 10, p. 693.; F. Gerlach, “Die Beseitigung von explosiven
und gesundheitsschädlichen Gasen aus Kanalisationsbauwerken,” Gesundheits-
Ingenieur, Vol. 52, No. 8 (1929), pp. 118-122.;. K. Dau, Über Kanalvergasungen (Würzburg:
1935), cited above, p. 61.
602 K. Imhoff, “Schlammverbrennung,” Gesundheits-Ingenieur, Vol. 59, No. 40 (1936), pp.
583-587.
603 K. Imhoff (1943), cited above, pp. 218f.
604 H. Wulf, “Die Verbrennung von Schlämmen mit Ölvergasungsbrennern,” Brennst.-Wärme-
Kraft, vol. 16, No. 8 (August 1964), pp. 397ff.; O. Pallasch and W. Triebel, eds., Lehr- und
Handbuch der Abwassertechnik (Berlin and Munich, 1969), vol. 3, p. 193.
605 Pressac, p. 331.; R. Faurisson, The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Summer
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
461
also have some documents they will not part with. In response to my inquiry
for more information about the sewage treatment plants, the Museum replied
to me, on August 26, 1991, that it “has several construction plans” of the
plants, one of which is reproduced in Pressac’s book, but that “abundant
documentation on the construction of the sewage treatment plants in Birkenau
you will find in the Central State Archives in Moscow.” Thus, precisely locating
the Vergasungskeller may be a big job.606 At this point the only thing that
seems assured is that the Vergasungskeller was not in the crematory building.
The War Refugee Board Report
On April 7, 1944, two Slovakian Jews, Walter Rosenberg and Alfred
Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz-Birkenau after two years’ captivity there.
Their escape was reported on April 9 in a Gestapo telegram to Berlin and
elsewhere.607
Rosenberg and Wetzler are said to be the principal authors of the document
on Auschwitz that was published by the US War Refugee Board in November
1944. Supplements to the report are said to have been contributed by two Jews
(Czeslaw Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin) who escaped on May 27, 1944, and
by a non-Jewish Polish major who also escaped. In writing this book, I
thought the document, which I call the WRB report, was important to the subject
because it marked the first major commitment of an Allied power to the
Auschwitz extermination claim.
A booklet published in New York in March 1944 with the endorsement of
the US government’s Office of War Information and the National CIO War
Relief Committee, and purporting to be a compilation of reports about
Auschwitz received through the Polish underground, illustrates what was being
said about Auschwitz at the time. The camp is portrayed as a “camp of
death” but not as a site of mass exterminations of Jews. Such exterminations
are claimed, but only as taking place at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.608 This
is an example of the failure of the Allies to claim that Auschwitz was an extermination
camp even two years after its alleged attainment of that status, despite
its being a huge and not at all secret operation. (The great extent of involvement
by non-SS personnel ruled out secrecy for whatever transpired
1991), p. 156.
606 In his Introduction to the new American edition of Hitler’s War, David Irving says that “the
diaries of Himmler have vanished – partly said to be in Moscow, and partly known to be in
Tel Aviv, Israel; Chaim Rosenthal, a former attaché of the Israeli Consulate in New York,
obtained the Himmler diaries by the most questionable means.” See The Journal of Historical
Review, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter 1990-1991), p. 402. [See also the IHR Newsletter, No.
83, November 1991, pp. 2-3.]
607 T. Iwaszko, “Häftlingsfluchten aus dem Konzentrationslager Auschwitz,” Hefte von Auschwitz,
Vol. 7, 1964, p. 67.; E. Kulka, “Five Escapes from Auschwitz,” in Suhl, p. 205.
608 Oswiecim. Camp of Death (New York: Poland Fights, 1944), esp. pp. 45f.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
462
there.)
A chapter of Pressac’s book is devoted to arguing the essential accuracy of
the WRB report, despite various errors and contradictions that he notes
(mainly the number and arrangement of the crematorium ovens at Birkenau).
The authorship of the WRB report remains a problem, but not an important
one. What is indisputable is that it came from the circle of Rabbi Michael Dov
Ber Weissmandel in Slovakia, whose members claimed to have received the
story from the escaped Jews. The five escapees allegedly did a lot of name
changing. According to an article by Erich Kulka in a book published in
1967,609 in order to live under cover after escape, Rosenberg became Rudolf
Vrba, Wetzler became Josef Lánik, Mordowicz became Petr Podulka, and
Rosin became Jan Rohác. Rosenberg remained Vrba after the war, and at present
is on the Faculty of Pharmacology at the University of British Columbia
in Canada. The other three Jews might have dropped their aliases, although
Wetzler retained Lánik as a literary pseudonym.
In his 1967 article, Kulka did not mention the Polish major, who is sometimes
identified as a Pole named Jerzy Wesolowski who escaped and changed
his name to Jerzy Tabeau. In a 1964 article, Auschwitz State Museum (PMO)
official T. Iwaszko mentioned Wesolowski/Tabeau, reporting that he was registered
as prisoner No. 27273 on March 26, 1942, escaped from the camp on
November 19, 1943, and made some contributions to underground literature,
but Iwaszko did not quite make him the Polish major.610 In 1979 John S. Conway
wrote that the Polish major’s “identity has not been revealed thus far. It is
also not known by what route this last section of the report fell into the hands
of the Jewish leadership in Geneva.”611 In his 1981 book, Auschwitz and the
Allies, Martin Gilbert mentions that the report of the “Polish major” was appended
in June 1944 to the reports of the Jews by Richard Lichtheim of the
Geneva office of the Jewish Agency.612 Oddly, in a television documentary
based on Gilbert’s book that was made a few years after its publication, we
see the Polish major’s face but do not learn his name. In a 1985 article mainly
about Rosenberg and Wetzler, Kulka mentioned Tabeau only as an escapee
from the gypsy (sic) camp at Auschwitz613 and then, in a 1986 article very
similar to the 1985 one, Kulka identified the Polish major as Wesolowski-
Tabeau.614
609 E. Kulka, in Suhl..
610 T. Iwaszko in Hefte von Auschwitz (1964), cited above, pp. 7f, 38.
611 J. S. Conway, “Frühe Augenzeugenberichte aus Auschwitz. Glaubwürdigkeit und Wirkungsgeschichte,”
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 27, No. 2 (April 1979), p. 269.
612 M. Gilbert, p. 234.
613 E. Kulka, “Attempts by Jewish escapees to stop mass extermination,” Jewish Social Studies,
Vol. 47, Fall 1985, p. 296.
614 E. Kulka, “Kampf der jüdischen Häftlinge gegen die Endlösung in Auschwitz,” Zeitgeschichte,
vol. 13, 1986, pp. 381-396 (note 53).
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
463
The WRB report contains a major contradiction of Pressac’s version of the
extermination thesis. Not surprisingly, Pressac ignores this contradiction. According
to the Report, there were no gassings at the Stammlager [main camp]
(identified as “Auschwitz,” as distinct from “Birkenau”). This is not stated explicitly
in the WRB report, but it is clearly implicit.615 Gassings are portrayed
as taking place only at Birkenau or in the birchwood (“Brezinsky”) or the
“bunkers” near Birkenau.
Wetzler’s part of the WRB report says he was sent to Birkenau immediately
on arrival on April 13, 1944.616 However, Vrba and the part of the WRB
report attributed to him say he was quartered at the Stammlager from arrival
on June 30, 1942, even while working at the Buna plant (Monowitz or
Auschwitz III), until he was transferred to Birkenau in December 1942.617 In
his postwar book, Vrba presents himself as being deeply involved in resistance
activity and says that Wetzler’s “knowledge of the camp was deep and
wide,” on account of his great popularity.618 Although I would be the last to
believe Vrba, the point here is that the authors of the Report had extensive and
detailed information about the camp. There is much in the Report that confirms
this, such as the mention of the quarantine order of July 23, 1942,619 the
general layout of the camp, and a rough correspondence of the listed transports
and registration numbers with the presumed correct ones.620 As I wrote
on p. 101??? (Chapter 3), “One must assume that much of the material in the
report is true […] there is no question of the competence of the authors of the
report.” The authors were acquainted with the interior of the camp (although
not, as Pressac acknowledges, with the interior of the crematories at Birkenau).
Thus Pressac should confront a major contradiction here. Pressac notes
various contradictions in the testimonies of the usual alleged eye witnesses
(such as Commandant Höss), but continues to believe that they were at least
speaking of real events. However, if he is to accept the WRB report then he
must throw out (I won’t say “we” because I did so long ago) the testimonies of
the alleged eyewitnesses Höss, Fajnzylberg (Jankowski), Müller and Broad, as
they claimed to have witnessed mass gassings at the Stammlager, and, according
to Pressac the lack of documents and “the present state of the premises”
make their testimonies the only “evidence to establish the reality of homicidal
615 US-WRB, esp. pp. 8ff, 12, 14, 29-32, 40, and pp. 11ff, 17ff from the story of the “Polish
major,” who does speak of “mass executions” at the Stammlager, but only by shooting. He
also states explicitly that Crematory I was not employed to dispose of the bodies of gassed
Jews.
616 US-WRB report, pp. 1, 6.
617 US-WRB report, pp. 29, 32; R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1964), pp. 77, 106ff, 113, 167fff.
618 R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1964), p. 218.
619 US-WRB report, p. 30.
620 Compare with: D. Czech, “Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-
Birkenau,” Hefte von Auschwitz, No. 3 (1960), No. 4 (1961), and No. 7 (1964).
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
464
gassings at the Stammlager.”621 This is not a contradiction of detail. By this I
mean that one can no longer continue to hold that they were at least speaking
of real events. Because they are so unreliable, their testimony on mass exterminations
in other parts of the camp complex must be rejected. But because
that testimony is no less reliable than the others, Pressac ought to reject all alleged
eyewitness testimony. Thus, Pressac has a mass extermination program
that was witnessed by no credible person.
As I said, we are dealing here with a “cornucopia of absurdities,” and it is
easy to overlook the significance of this point, for which the question of the
authorship of the WRB report is unimportant. The sole objective of the well
informed authors, in composing and propagating the Report, was to claim that
Jews were being exterminated en masse at Auschwitz. It is a piece of war
propaganda, and there is no obligation to believe such claims. Nevertheless
there is no way that Pressac, or anybody else, may deny that if there had in
fact been mass gassings in the Stammlager, then they would have been spoken
of in the WRB report. Therefore there were none. And yet the testimonies for
the Stammlager are equivalent, in terms of credibility and the circumstances
under which they were delivered, to the testimonies of mass gassings in other
parts of the camp complex.
In contemporary exploitation of the affair of the WRB report, Vrba is
really the star. Since he first publicly identified himself as Rosenberg (probably
in 1958), he has published a book (in 1964) about his wartime experiences,
I Cannot Forgive, testified at the first Zündel trial in Toronto in 1985,
and appeared on various television documentaries.622
Vrba is obviously lying about experiences at Auschwitz. This can be seen
by examining his book and by considering his 1985 testimony in Toronto that
his book is only “an artistic picture […] not a document for a court.”623 I have
621 Pressac, p. 123. Pressac writes on p. 132 that the Stammlager “gas chamber was used sporadically
from the end of 1941 to 1942.” In view of the testimonies he cites, he should say
rather “from the end of 1941 to at least through 1942.” For example, the Fajnzylberg testimony
cited by Pressac on p. 124 speaks of a gassing of “400 Jews brought from Birkenau”
on a date not earlier than November 1942, when he was assigned to the Sonderkommando
of Crematorium I. The other testimonies – in Jadwiga Bezwinska, ed., KL Auschwitz Seen
by the SS (NY: Howard Fertig, 1984), pp. 114ff, 174fff, and in Filip Müller, Eyewitness
Auschwitz (NY: Stein and Day, 1979), pp. 31-49 – also claim not merely gassings, but mass
gassings of Jews, in the mortuary of Crematorium I during much of 1942. One of the many
contradictions in Pressac’s work is that on p. 133 he also asserts, on the basis of logic that I
can’t see at all, that from the data given in the Leuchter report we can infer “use as a homicidal
gas chamber” for Crematorium I. Another contradiction I noticed is that on p. 106 he
contrasts the oil-fired ovens of Buchenwald with the coke-fired ovens of Auschwitz, but on
p. 259 he says they were “identical.” Faurisson reviews additional contradictions: See The
Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring 1991), and No. 2 (Summer 1991).
622 In the documentary based on M. Gilbert’s book, Vrba says that in May-June 1944 Hungarian
Jewesses were arriving at Auschwitz in mink coats. At that time, he is supposed to have
been hiding in Slovakia.
623 Toronto Sun, Jan. 24, 1985, p. 52.
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
465
previously noted the major factual errors of his book:624 his belief that there
were virtually no escapes from Auschwitz before April 1944,625 and his claim
that there was an air raid on Auschwitz when he escaped in April. Actually,
the first air raid was on August 20, 1944.626
I also remarked that “the general tone of [Vrba’s] book and his description
of how various people behaved” further demolish his credibility, if that were
possible. I did not give the best examples in my book out of fear that I might
not be believed, but here I will mention some of these fantasies. Vrba claims,
for example, that at the Novaky camp the Slovakian guards would hold a rifle
muzzle on the tummy of a poor persecuted Jew when he was sitting on the
potty, while at Auschwitz he had “seen twenty dollar bills used as toilet paper.”
627 He means US twenty dollar notes, not German mark notes. Poetic license
permits a dramatist of the john at Auschwitz to depict a pistol being
held against the head by a Gestapo colonel, who would politely hand the Jew a
twenty when done – which is no more incredible than what Vrba actually
wrote. (Incidentally, scatological fantasies are also a striking feature of the
Talmud.)628
On the other hand, Vrba’s description of the rackets run by the SS and inmates
in charge of the “Kanada“ section, “the commercial heart of Auschwitz”
629 where inmates’ possessions were stored, seems unusually candid to
me, however embellished with inanity.
I note with gratitude that the Wetzler/Lánik book about Auschwitz is
frankly acknowledged to be a novel.630
Because I focused on Vrba in Chapter 3, in 1979 John S. Conway, a historian
and colleague of Vrba at the University of British Columbia, published an
article on the WRB report.631 In 1981 Conway also published a German text of
the WRB report, and, in 1984, he published an article relating to the WRB report
(and particularly to Rudolf Vrba) and Hungary.632
624 See Chapter 3 and 5.
625 R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1964), pp. 217, 220.; E. Kulka in Jewish Social Studies (Fall 1985),
cited above, p. 295, specifies 55 successful escapes until the end of 1942, 154 in 1943, and
167 in 1944. E. Kulka in Suhl, p. 201, gave lower figures, but the 1985 paper used the figures
given by the Auschwitz State Museum (PMO) in 1964 (T. Iwaszko in Hefte von
Auschwitz, 1964, cited above, p. 49).
626 See p. 171???; see also R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1964), p. 233.
627 R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1964), pp. 35, 209.
628 To learn what the Talmud says happened to Jesus, read Gittin 57a in the Soncino Press edition
(London, 1936, p. 261 with note referring to the Munich codex) or the Jüdischer Verlag
edition (Berlin, 1932, p. 368).
629 R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1964), p. 127.
630 J. Länik, Was Dante nicht sah (Vienna: Die Buchgemeinde, 1964). Translation of the Slovakian
language original Co Dante nevidel (Bratislava, 1964).
631 J. S. Conway in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (April 1979), cited above.
632 “Der Auschwitz-Bericht von April 1944,” Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 8, 1981, pp. 413-442.; “Der
Holocaust in Ungarn. Neue Kontroversen und Überlegungen,” Vierteljahrshefte für ZeitArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
466
Conway was overdue for criticism. In his 1967 article, Kulka had not criticized
Vrba’s 1964 book, but by 1985 Holocaust revisionism was in full vigor.
Kulka scolded Conway for being willing “to accept uncritically and as fact
Vrba’s distorted statements“ and complained that Vrba’s “contradictory and
problematic statements [have been] misused […] to prove that the [WRB] report
was a distortion and that the description of the gas chambers in Auschwitz
were simply a figment of the imagination.”633
I would have thought that, as a result of his admission in 1985 that his
book was not true, Vrba would have been finished as a player in the traveling
Auschwitz show. However, it is a sad commentary on the present state of public
controversy that the silly thing was actually reissued in 1989, with certain
supplements, under the title 44070: The Conspiracy of the Twentieth Century.
634 It appears that the original text, with all its inanities, was reproduced in
this new edition. There were also additions as appendices. The part of the
WRB report attributed to Wetzler and Rosenberg is reproduced, there is an
appendix on “trials of Auschwitz SS-officers,” there is an essay by Vrba on
the economic aspects of the German persecutions of the Jews, a short vita of
Vrba (not mentioning “Rosenberg“), and an essay by Conway, drawing from
and supplementing his 1979 article.
Nowhere in the new edition is there an attempt to correct, explain or
apologize for the inanities and factual errors in the original edition of the
book, or for Vrba’s 1985 admission that the book was only “an artistic picture,”
that is, not true. Conway does not hint at any problems, or at any of the
criticism he received for his gullibility with respect to Vrba. He does not
apologize for his implicit endorsement of a book that all sides, including Vrba,
have told him is not true. It seems that he will not or cannot learn. Nor will the
publishers of “Holocaust” literature learn; there seems to be an assumption
among them that critical examination of this literature is unnecessary. They
seem quite willing to slap between covers almost anything as long as criticism
is confined to relatively esoteric writings.
In 1990 Vrba was squabbling with Raul Hilberg, Shmuel Krakowski of
Yad Vashem, and Yehuda Bauer over numbers exterminated.635
Conclusion
To return to Pressac, his blindness to the implications of the WRB report is
the rule for his whole work. I have heard revisionists speak as though Pressac’s
work is a respectable historical effort. The basis for this is easy to see.
geschichte, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1984, pp. 179-212.
633 E. Kulka in Jewish Social Studies (Fall 1985), cited above, pp. 304, 306 (note 45).
634 R. Vrba and A. Bestic (1989).
635 IHR Newsletter, No. 74, July-August 1990, p. 3. [Source cited: JTA dispatch in Jewish
World (Broward, Florida), March 9-16.]
Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
467
Having the support of influential people eager to help, Pressac was able to
make available to the public documents, mainly of an engineering nature, that
had previously been in the category of extreme esoterica, either unknown or
known only to a few researchers.
We are better off on account of the book, but the gain is comparable to,
say, the publication of an index or bibliography. The value is purely in the factual
information. The analytical part of the book is a transparent charade by an
actor who is confident in advance that the people he is serving will cooperate
in the sham, and will not call attention to the obvious disguise that renders
him, in fact, a clown in the eyes of his targets. How else can we react to a man
who insists on treating as irrelevant, at a time when it was decided to build
large crematories, the fact that there was a documented catastrophic death
rate? Even Pressac’s formal sin on this point, of presuming that which he is
trying to prove in order to find “traces” of it, is minor compared to the comedy
of his ungainly pirouetting around and away from the central points.
I began this paper with a promise to show how Pressac seeks to have his
reader focus entirely on local matters while ignoring the context of the
Auschwitz concentration camp in its full dimensions. I have shown three specific
important senses in which this is true.
First, in his treatment of the decisions to build crematories at Auschwitz he
fails to acknowledge the relevance of the catastrophic typhus epidemics that
prevailed at the time of the decisions. Second, his “criminal trace” number one
is a highly questionable interpretation of a single word occurring in a document
that disproves, or at least renders implausible, his major claim. Third, his
discussion of the WRB report disregards the account given there, and consequently
the decisive consequences of that account in evaluating the reliability
of the so-called witnesses, in favor of a focus on a very picayune detail.
One should ask: how are such procedures possible in a work as replete with
documentary detail as this bulky tome? That is what the notorious disorganization
of the book contributes; it is a means of avoiding a focus on the simple
essentials. The disorganization is there not because of the bad style of the author,
but because of the bad logic applied by the author and desired of the
reader.
It is fair to say that one message of Pressac’s book is that, yes, the revisionists
and particularly Faurisson are right in their rejections of the traditional or
accepted evidence for homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz. He does not put
it that bluntly, but it is there. He then claims that he, almost half a century after
the alleged events, has finally gotten the evidence right. The procedure is
the usual one; flip through the mountains of documents, rejecting all clearly
exculpatory material as the result of deceptive German practices in keeping
written records and then, when something that can be given an incriminating
interpretation is found, declare it an “enormous gaff(e)” of an unintended confession.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
468
I think I could do the equivalent for any establishment or agency that generates
voluminous written records. In these days of “affirmative action” in
employment, perhaps I should look for Northwestern University’s gas chambers
for white males, while taking the precaution of developing an explanation
why I survived. Likewise, a future Pressac can concede that our Pressac is
wrong, but that he has finally gotten it right. Thus this game can go on forever;
it represents the future, if there is one, of the legend, and remains the
only kind of anti-revisionist essay possible.
469
Supplement 4: Zyklon B and Gas Detectors in Birkenau
Crematorium II
The main content of this supplement first appeared in print in the Journal
of Historical Review, vol. 16, no. 5, Sept.-Oct. 1997, pp. 24+.
Zyklon B
In The Hoax of the Twentieth Century I remarked that typhus was a great
killer for the Germans in World War I, giving a reference published shortly after
that war.636 The typhus of World War I, like that of World War II, was carried
by lice. In response to this specific problem, the German company DEGESCH
(Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung – German Pest
Control Co.) developed the Zyklon B pesticide637 and made it available for
commercial use in 1923.
Zyklon B, referred to here merely as Zyklon, is a very effective pesticide
consisting of liquid hydrogen cyanide (HCN, an acid) absorbed into some inert
material such as wood pulp, with an irritant added to warn bystanders of its
presence. HCN is also called “prussic acid” and in German “Blausäure” (blue
acid), because HCN tends to leave blue stains in the presence of iron compounds
like rust; the resulting insoluble and non-toxic iron salt of HCN, Iron
Blue, is commonly used in blue dyes.
In its gaseous or liquid form, HCN is very deadly and is used in American
execution gas chambers, where it is traditionally generated by mixing an acid
(normally sulfuric acid) with potassium cyanide or sodium cyanide, resulting
in rapid release of HCN in its gaseous form.
HCN is useless as a battlefield gas because it is a true gas, slightly lighter
than air, and disperses too rapidly for that application. World War I battlefield
gases were actually dusts that hovered about the target area.
The pesticide Zyklon works somewhat differently. It is supplied in a very
tightly sealed container. When a space (e.g. a barracks or building) is to be
treated with it, that space is tightly sealed and trained personnel empty cans of
Zyklon on the floor, preferably spreading the Zyklon out as much as possible.
They then leave the space, close it, and wait the time required for the liquid
HCN to pass into the gaseous form by evaporation, fill the space, and kill the
target pests. Then the space is opened and ventilated.
636 Ch. 5, citing the Encyclopedia Britannica, 12 ed., vol. 32, (1922 – third volume supplementing
the 11th edition), p. 157.
637 Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present, W.W. Norton, NY,
1996, p. 219.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
470
This is a very time consuming process because the evaporation is slow and
for safety reasons the time required for ventilation is lengthy. The boiling
point of HCN is 25.6°C (78°F). That does not mean the space must have that
ambient temperature in order for the gas to be released; water does not have to
be brought to its boiling point in order to evaporate. However the process is
slow at any lower temperature and especially slow in winter temperatures.
An information booklet for Zyklon638 gives typical times of 2-72 hours for
the gassing process and at least 10 hours for ventilation; the former depends
very much on the temperature and the target pests and the latter on the physical
properties of the space and its contents. For example, clothing and bedding
should be beaten even after ventilation.
Another step recommended at the end of a Zyklon gassing and ventilation
process is the test for residual HCN gas. The typical test uses a mixture of
copper acetate and benzidene acetate and test paper which turns dark blue if
the HCN level is dangerously high. A temperature of at least 15 C (60 F) is
required to perform this test, so there are many circumstances under which it
cannot be performed.639
Use of Zyklon is inherently dangerous and during the war there existed a
German regulation that it could be used only by, or under license from, DEGESCH,
which was officially responsible for training all operators using it.640
There have also been gas chambers designed specifically to use Zyklon to
disinfest articles such as clothing with HCN, especially in Germany.641 With
few exceptions the interiors of these gas chambers are heated, in order to accelerate
the development of the gaseous HCN from the liquid form, and for
other reasons. Gaseous HCN is water soluble, so high temperature is desired
to reduce moisture in the gas chamber. Also, lice and some other pests are easier
to kill at higher temperatures, because their metabolism rates are higher.
Desired temperatures are in the range 25 – 35 C (77 – 95 F).
638 Booklet Zyklon for Pest Control, published by DEGESCH, apparently during the 70s. Similar
information is also given in a German document that appeared at the Nuremberg trials as
document NI-9912, and is presented in English translation by J.-C. Pressac, Auschwitz:
Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, NY, 1989, pp.
18-20. The reader should understand that the title of this book is misleading, as the only real
“gas chambers” whose “technique and operation” are discussed are fumigation gas chambers.
The homicidal gas chambers are only imagined, based on alleged “criminal traces”. It
is common to refer to this book in discussion of Auschwitz because it is the greatest single
published source of reproductions of original documents and photographs for the camp.
639 F. Puntigam, H. Breymesser and E. Bernfus, Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr,
Reichsarbeitsblatt (special publication), Reichsarbeitsministerium, Berlin, 1943, p. 21. DEGESCH
booklet (op. cit., pp. 7,24).
640 R.P. Tew, Pest Control in Germany during the period 1939-1945, H.M. Stationery Office,
London, 1951, pp. 57,96. No. 32 in the surveys of the British Intelligence Objectives Sub-
Committee.
641 On these gas chambers see mainly the book by F. Puntigam et. al. (1943), pp. 9-68. There is
also information in the aforementioned DEGESCH booklet.
Supplement 4: Zyklon B and Gas Detectors in Birkenau Crematorium II
471
In such gas chambers the air – gaseous HCN mixture is expelled from the
top when the gassing process is completed, for safety reasons and perhaps because
fresh air that enters during the ventilation is cool and the warmer air –
HCN gas mixture tends to the top of the chamber (as already mentioned gaseous
HCN, by itself, is only slightly lighter than air).
A related point is that the standard German Zyklon gas chamber of the time
used a circulatory system developed by DEGESCH. In this system the air –
HCN mixture is continually recirculated, i.e. it continually exits and re-enters
the gas chamber. Circulation greatly reduces the length of time required to
generate the gas from the Zyklon and work on the target pests. At the conclusion
of the gassing, expulsion of the gas and the introduction of fresh air are
accomplished by opening and closing the relevant ports in this circulatory system.
Overall, a gas chamber with circulation is about three times more effective
than one without, i.e. can do about three times more work.642 The practical
minimum time required to kill lice (among the most difficult and resistant
creatures) with Zyklon is about 3/4 of an hour. In a heated gas chamber with
circulation a total time of about an hour, for gas generation and killing of the
lice, followed by a ventilation period of about 20 minutes, is attainable under
practical operational conditions.643
The best material for a gas chamber using HCN is steel. If bricks or concrete
are used, then the interiors must be coated with a sealant to prevent retention
of the gas in the walls of the gas chamber.644
Gas Detectors
The extermination legend claims that the pesticide Zyklon B was used to
exterminate Jews in a “gas chamber” within Auschwitz Crematorium II at
Birkenau (see Fig. 33), specifically, in Leichenkeller 1 (morgue cellar 1),
whose alleged real purpose was concealed by being so designated.
In his 1989 book Pressac645 remarked on a telegram of 26 Feb. 1943, from
the Auschwitz construction department to the furnace maker Topf. At that
date, the construction of Crematorium II was nearing completion. The telegram
requested delivery of 10 gas detectors for Crematorium II, as had been
earlier discussed. The specific gas to be detected was not stated but, by a
process of tortured reasoning, Pressac concluded that the detectors were for
HCN gas, rather than for “the products of combustion, such as CO or CO2, in
the furnace room”, and classified this document as one of his so-called
“criminal traces”. Robert Faurisson wrote, in reply, that Pressac himself had
solved this problem, and that there was no reason to believe the detectors were
642 Puntigam et. al. (1943), p. 33.
643 Puntigam et. al. (1943), pp. 31f,60f.
644 DEGESCH booklet, op. cit., p. 25.
645 Pressac (1989), pp. 371, 432f.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
472
for HCN.646
Pressac did more research and published a new book in 1993, in which he
produced a document newly discovered in the recently opened Moscow archives.
647 It is a letter dated 2 March 1943, from the Topf company (by Senior
Engineer Prüfer and a Topf colleague) to the Auschwitz construction department,
and it shows that HCN was indeed the specific gas to be detected by the
detectors. It reads:
“We confirm receipt of your telegram specifying ‘Immediately send 10
gas detectors as agreed, price quote to follow.’
We hereby inform you that two weeks ago we inquired, of five different
companies, concerning the residual HCN detection devices sought by you.
We have received negative responses from 3 companies and 2 have not yet
answered.
If [Wenn] we receive information on this matter, we shall immediately
contact you, in order to put you in touch with a company that makes these
devices.”
Faurisson’s reply was that Zyklon B was used for delousing operations
throughout the camp and of course in Crematorium II. Naturally HCN gas detectors
would have been required in such operations, in which they are standard
equipment.648
A Problem
In both cases Faurisson gave the simple, obvious replies that I would have
given under the circumstances. However I believe this interpretation is wrong,
for reasons that may be seen by examining the document. The main obstacle
to interpreting this letter in terms of Zyklon B is the roles of Topf and Prüfer.
Zyklon was a product of the DEGESCH company; Zyklon and associated
equipment such as gas detectors and gas mask filters were also manufactured
by other companies such as Tesch & Stabenow and Drägerwerke. At Auschwitz
delousing operations with Zyklon were such major and continuous tasks
that there existed a special department, the Referat für Schädlingsbekämpfung
(Pest Control Office) that conducted them. This department on occasion even
communicated directly with DEGESCH.649
646 R. Faurisson, “Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers,” Journal of Historical
Review, vol. 11, no. 1, Spring 1991, p. 59.
647 Jean-Claude Pressac, Les crématoires d’Auschwitz: la machinerie du meurtre de masse,
CNRS Éditions, Paris, 1993. The document is reproduced, together with an English translation,
by J.-C. Pressac and Robert-Jan Van Pelt in their article in Anatomy of the Auschwitz
Death Camp, Y. Gutman and M. Berenbaum, eds., Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, 1994,
pp. 230f.
648 R. Faurisson, “Jean-Claude Pressac’s New Auschwitz Book,” Journal of Historical Review,
vol. 14, no. 1, Jan./Feb. 1994, p. 23.
649 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 571 in the 1961 Quadrangle edition;
Supplement 4: Zyklon B and Gas Detectors in Birkenau Crematorium II
473
Topf was a furnace maker with crematorium ovens as a sideline, and was
the principal civilian contractor in the construction of crematoria at Auschwitz.
Prüfer was the main Topf contact of the Auschwitz construction department
and of course was not associated with the special SS delousing squads
that regularly worked with Zyklon B. Why should Prüfer have been searching,
indeed with great difficulty, for devices that were standard equipment for the
delousing squads, and were readily available from the DEGESCH and other
companies, which had developed and supplied Zyklon? The standard DEGESCH
detector for HCN required exposing a test paper and observing the
color assumed. The Prüfer letter even implies that he does not know whether
the desired devices exist, was confronting this specific need for the first time,
and does not know very much about it, inferences that are very important in
interpreting the letter. I do not believe the letter had anything to do with Zyklon.
There may however have been one connection between Topf and Zyklon.
Robert Faurisson has brought to my attention an anti-revisionist, Pressac supporting
book published in France in early 1997. A footnote declares:650
“The study of the history of the Topf and Sons company of Erfurt would
be essential to show the progression to mass crime. Topf made, in the
Twenties, crematoria but also grain silos. In the after sale services and
maintenance for these silos, Topf also involved itself in HCN disinfection
and furnished all necessary material. Thus the two branches of activity of
the firm converge in a striking manner toward the crematoria – gas chambers
of Birkenau. On this particular sort of study, the works of Pressac are
of the greatest utility and it is in this way that they should be used.”
The author gives no sources but I think the claim of such Topf involvement
with HCN, presumably via Zyklon, is quite plausible. Under conditions where
Topf would have been the only company that a farmer dealt with in constructing
his silo, it would have been natural for Topf to serve as retailer of supporting
materials and equipment made by DEGESCH and other companies. However
such a Topf role had no bearing on conditions at Auschwitz in 1941-
1945, where a special department regularly conducted operations with Zyklon.
Their personnel would have been responsible for declaring when a treated facility
was again safe to use. Is it plausible that Prüfer could have been involved
in this when, as his letter shows, he didn’t know very much about it?
There remains one possibility. Perhaps some unusual feature of the cremation
process, not understood by the Zyklon delousing personnel, raised a novel
problem with the Zyklon that Prüfer was asked to solve. I can’t imagine such a
feature, since cremation with coke seems basically like any other use of coke.
vol. 3, p. 892 in the 1985 Holmes & Meier edition. Hilberg cites a letter from the Referat to
DEGESCH.
650 Jean-François Forges, Éduquer contre Auschwitz, ESF, Paris, 1997, p. 28.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
474
However if such an unusual feature existed, would it not have come up earlier
in the six muffle crematorium, also supplied by Topf, that existed in the
Stammlager or Auschwitz I? In 1942 this sole crematorium was working at
capacity, and the disastrous typhus epidemics were being fought with Zyklon.
However the February to March 1943 correspondence marked the first confrontation
of Prüfer with the problem involved. Some novel feature of Crematorium
II had to be the problem.
It is also clear that the letter has nothing to do with gas detectors as defenses
against chemical warfare. The German chemical warfare services were
highly competent and organized, and would not have sent a furnace maker on
a quest for such equipment.
From one point of view the problem raised has little to do with the “extermination”
allegations. If the Zyklon were being used to kill people, rather than
lice, then presumably the same specially trained squads would have been used
or at least consulted, and the usual HCN gas detectors would have been used
in the last stages of gassing operations. There would have been no problems in
acquiring such standard equipment. Those who believe Zyklon was used for
homicidal purposes should be as puzzled by this document as I was.
From another point of view this problem is very relevant to the claim of
“extermination”, as explained below.
An Alternative Interpretation
The Topf letter of 2 March 1943 is strange and for a while I suspected its
authenticity. However I have found an interpretation which may be correct
and the main purpose of this article is to propose it. After I have done that I
shall return to the question of the relevance of this problem to the “extermination”
allegations.
“HCN” is of course a compound of hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen and
may be generated whenever materials containing these elements are burned.
For example the fuel used for the crematorium ovens was coke and it is well
known that HCN gas is a possible by-product in the process of making coke
from coal. However there is apparently no danger of HCN release when coke,
of whatever grade, is burned as a fuel; otherwise it would not be in such
common use. HCN gas could not have been thus generated in the crematorium.
A remaining possibility is that HCN release was possible in the waste incinerator,
which shared the chimney with the cremation ovens. Many materials
may release HCN when burned. Among these are many fabrics, a highly
relevant observation because the waste incinerator was most likely used to incinerate
used camp fabrics (e.g. inmate uniforms and bed linen and mattresses).
For example, silk and wool can release HCN when burned, a fact that
has been known since the Thirties.
Supplement 4: Zyklon B and Gas Detectors in Birkenau Crematorium II
475
As shown in Fig. 34, the chimney of Crematorium II was divided into three
ducts. Six furnaces used this chimney, namely the waste incinerator and the
five cremation furnaces (each with three muffles). The waste incinerator was
on the opposite side of the chimney in relation to the cremation furnaces.
These six furnaces used the three ducts on the basis of two per duct; thus the
waste incinerator shared one of the three ducts with one of the cremation furnaces
(the flues leading from the furnaces to the chimney were underground).
651 The waste incinerator was also supplied by Topf,652 and it could
have been Prüfer’s responsibility to take into account any HCN danger arising
from it. Also, a gas detector differing from that used in the Zyklon delousing
operations would seem fitting; perhaps a detector generating an audible alarm
was desired.
While a concern for HCN release in combustion is routine today, it would
have been novel in 1943, a fact that could explain the novelty, for Prüfer, of
the desire for an HCN detector. Another thing that could account for this novelty
is that the waste incinerator design was itself novel. I have no expertise in
the field but, intuitively, I would think that a waste incinerator design sharing
a chimney with other equipment, at which people are working, is dangerous.
The question of the quantities of HCN released in the burning of materials
is complicated and depends on “the chemical nature of the material, temperature,
oxygen availability, and burning time.” Since HCN is itself combustible,
it makes a difference whether the combustion is “static” or “dynamic”, an example
of the latter being when there is forced air blowing and the HCN is
swept away from the hot zone before it can itself be decomposed in any way.
However, HCN can be released under either condition. Another complication
is that HCN can be released in the smoldering after a fire has been extinguished.
653
The term “residual” that appears in the letter in question could apply to either
released HCN that, ideally, would have been consumed during the incineration
process but wasn’t, or to HCN released after incineration, during
smoldering. The chimney of Crematorium II used, as of 29 January 1943, a
651 Pressac (1989), pp. 284-287 (drawings of 23 Jan. 1942, on which Fig. 2 is based); pp. 306-
312 (drawings of 19 March 1943, showing the same duct arrangement as in earlier drawings).
Pressac (1989), p. 288 also reproduces a profile drawing for this arrangement; this
profile drawing is also reproduced by Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945,
Henry Holt, NY, 1990, p. 193. The “Ofen” is a cremation oven; if the reader uses a magnifying
glass and squints hard the badly lettered word “Müllverbrennungsofen” (waste incinerator)
can be seen.
652 Pressac (1989), p. 217.
653 Bryan Ballantyne, “Hydrogen cyanide as a product of combustion and a factor in morbidity
and mortality from fires,” in Clinical and Experimental Toxicology of Cyanides, Bryan Ballantyne
& Timothy C. Marrs, eds., Wright, Bristol, 1987, pp. 248-291. Yoshio Tsuchiya,
“Significance of HCN generation in fire gas toxicity,” Journal of Combustion Toxicology,
vol. 4, August 1977, pp. 271-282.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
476
forced draft system based on suction, but on 25 March 1943 Topf ordered this
system removed due to overheating of its motors.654
A Specific Possibility
It remains to suggest a specific potential source for HCN development in
the waste incinerator. In wartime Germany many articles had to be ersatz (artificial
or synthetic), because of shortages of materials normally imported. Cotton
was in very short supply and little was used for fabrics. Wool was available
but not in normal quantities. In fact Germany relied heavily on the manufacture
of rayon, and during the war army uniforms contained as much as 65%
rayon. One must assume concentration camp uniforms, and other fabrics used
in the camps, had high rayon content. Could the incineration of such rayon
have produced HCN gas? It may seem not, because rayon has no nitrogen in
its chemical composition. In making these statements, I am using the word
“rayon” in the normally accepted sense; rayon is regenerated cellulose made
from natural cellulose extracted from materials such as cotton linters or wood
pulp. Cotton was scarce in wartime Germany so almost all rayon was made
from wood pulp.655
The burning of rayon can generate HCN gas if the rayon is impregnated
with, but not chemically bound to, compounds of ammonia, which supply the
necessary nitrogen. This was established some years ago by T. Morikawa,
who conducted experiments that established that ammonia and its compounds,
combined with “cellulosic materials”, can indeed result in the evolution of
HCN when burned. The general conclusion was that such evolution was about
the same as for substances having nitrogen in their chemical compositions in
comparable amounts.656 It is of great relevance, for this discussion, that Morikawa’s
study of this point was motivated by the fact that ammonium compounds
are added to many fabrics to make them flame retardant (this is sometimes
called “fireproofing”, but that cannot be done literally with ordinary fabrics).
Thus Morikawa’s experiments used, as the source of nitrogen, diammonium
phosphate, a common flame retardant for fabrics.
During World War II diammonium phosphate was commonly used in
Germany to make fabrics, particularly rayon, flame retardant. Two such products
were marketed by I.G. Farben under the trade names Akaustan N and
Akaustan N 1139. Another product, Akaustan K, used other ammonium compounds
as the flame retardant.657 A disadvantage of such flame retardants is
654 Pressac (1989), 214,230,306-310,488. Pressac and Van Pelt (1994), pp. 232f.
655 A.R. Urquhart, The German Rayon Industry During the Period 1939-1945, H.M. Stationery
Office, London, 1952, pp. 13-16,275. This work was no. 33 in a series of British postwar
studies of intelligence objectives.
656 Tokio Morikawa, “Evolution of hydrogen cyanide during combustion and pyrolysis,” Journal
of Combustion Toxicology, vol. 5, pp. 315-330, August 1978.
657 Urquhart (1952), p. 272.
Supplement 4: Zyklon B and Gas Detectors in Birkenau Crematorium II
477
that they are water soluble and gradually “leach” out when the fabrics are
washed. Thus such soluble flame retardants “are applied with the idea of periodic
reprocessing in order to maintain the desired properties (by) simple immersion
in aqueous solutions” of the retardant.658 That is, washing is followed
by immersion in a solution of the flame retardant substance, then drying out.
Another defense against leaching, employed by the Germans, used sulfamide
(strictly speaking sulfuryl amide, SO2(NH2)2) in conjunction with a standard
waterproofing agent, thus making reprocessing unnecessary.659 Sulfamide is
obtained by treating sulfuryl chloride with ammonia and one gets the impression
from Morikawa that one could also expect evolution of HCN in burning
of cellulose impregnated with it.
While I do not have a document that says so, I consider it very plausible
that many concentration camp fabrics were treated with flame retardants for
security reasons, i.e. to limit the effects of fires started by inmates. This would
have been particularly the case with bed linens and mattress fillings. Thus I
am proposing the possibility that fabrics used in the camps, destined to be disposed
of by incineration, were known to present a danger of evolution of HCN
in such incineration.
The favored German process for rayon manufacture was the viscose, which
is also the favored process today. However two German factories used the
older and simpler cuprammonium process. That the cuprammonium process
involved a solution of ammonia does not appear relevant to the present problem.
What may be relevant is that a price of its simplicity was that the cuprammonium
process required celluloses of a high degree of purity. Thus cotton
linters were considered the standard cellulose source for cuprammonium
rayon but, on account of wartime shortages, the two German cuprammonium
factories used wood pulp instead. This resulted in an inferior quality rayon.
Much of the cuprammonium rayon was used for army uniforms, but there
were other uses, for example military upholstery, mattress fillings, and parachutes.
I have no source saying that it was used in concentration camp fabrics
but, in view of its inferior quality, this is a very admissible conjecture. One
version of the cuprammonium rayon used for mattress fillings was impregnated
with urea and formaldehyde, with ammonium nitrate as a catalyst, in order
to impart springiness to it.660 It is known that urea can cause some ammonium
based flame retardants to react with cellulose, thus giving a fabric so
treated resistance to leaching.661
658 Robert W. Little, Flameproofing Textile Fabrics, Reinhold, NY, 1947, pp. 167-170.
659 Urquhart (1952), p. 272.
660 Urquhart (1952), pp. 15ff, 28, 150-159, 273ff.
661 McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 7th edition (1992), vol. 7, pp. 139f
(article on “Flameproofing”).
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
478
Summary
In summary I am saying
– It is certain the Topf letter has nothing to do with Zyklon.
– It is almost certain that the HCN danger referred to arose from the waste
incinerator. I would be astonished if it were shown that such was not the
case.
– It is probable that the HCN detectors were wanted because of a potential
danger of HCN development in the incineration of fabrics, particularly
rayons treated with flame retardants. However I am far from certain on
this, and I will not be astonished if other materials, consumed in the
waste incinerator, were shown to have been suspected by the Auschwitz
management as potential sources of HCN development.
Observations
Above I promised to return to the question of the relevance of the problem
treated here to the “extermination” allegations. The mass of documents shows
that Auschwitz was a large concentration camp with a disastrous death rate,
due mainly to typhus carried by lice. In response to such problems, the Germans
made great use of the pesticide Zyklon B and constructed large crematoria.
There are no records showing that Jews were “gassed” or “exterminated”.
That is clear and it ought not be necessary to argue that such was not the case.
The documentation is immense, and the physical facts concerning the camp
are conclusive. For more detail, see the remarks I delivered at the 1992 IHR
Convention on the death rates and the crematoria capacities at Auschwitz and
other camps.662
Another approach uses the normal historical method; you study what the
people of the time were doing. Elsewhere663 I have discussed the trap that the
historian Walter Laqueur got himself into by applying this normal historical
method to Auschwitz. For a more general and introductory discussion, see
Faurisson’s tutorial.664
For practical purposes, the entire “extermination” legend rests on the claim
that Auschwitz was an “extermination camp” where about a million Jews were
gassed with Zyklon B in otherwise designated rooms within the crematorium
buildings. Since that is emphatically not what the historical record says the
promoters of the legend are highly selective in choosing documents, which
Pressac calls “criminal traces” which, it is claimed, prove their thesis. The
662 A.R. Butz, “Some Thoughts on Pressac’s Opus”, Journal of Historical Review, vol. 13, no.
3, May/June 1993, pp. 23-37. Supplement 3 here.
663 A.R. Butz, “Context and Perspective in the ‘Holocaust’ Controversy”, Journal of Historical
Review, vol. 3, no. 4, Winter 1982, pp. 371-405. Supplement 2 here.
664 R. Faurisson, “Auschwitz: Facts and legend,” Journal of Historical Review, vol. 16, no. 4,
July-Aug. 1997, pp. 14+.
Supplement 4: Zyklon B and Gas Detectors in Birkenau Crematorium II
479
HCN gas detectors are one of the “criminal traces” on Pressac’s pathetically
short list.665
In historiography there is an alternative, and more commonplace, description
of Pressac’s procedure with “criminal traces”. It is bad historiography of
the simplest sort: tendentious selection of a very small part of the data, resulting
in grossly distorted history.
Normally one cannot get away with this. But today a Pressac, waving aside
historical reasoning and the mountain of documentary evidence, comes rushing
forward waving some document and saying, in effect, “but how about
this?”, and he is respected instead of being ignored or laughed at.666 He is
credited by some with finally proving the extermination allegation as it relates
to Auschwitz, although it had for years been claimed that it had been proven
and that there was nothing to argue about.
Thus to the person who objects that here I have treated petty details incommensurate
with the scale of the historical claim involved I reply: you are
right but it isn’t my fault! Ordinary historical reasoning observes that nobody
acted, during the war, as though “extermination” was going on, and that the
Jews were still there at war’s end.667 However a lot of influential people won’t
accept ordinary historical reasoning and the debate, to the extent that it exists,
has revolved around the petty details.
The promoters of the legend may get away with such practices, for a while,
in arguing the reality of physical exterminations of Jews during World War II.
There are two leading reasons for this. Most obvious is the fact of the entrenched
status of the legend. What ought to require proof has been allowed to
flourish unproved, and the revisionists have in effect been forced to try to argue
a negative. Another reason, less obvious but very simple, is that the revisionists
may not be able to immediately offer correct replies to the sallies of
the defenders of the legend. This appears to me to have been the case with the
Topf letter. I don’t believe Faurisson’s immediate replies (which I would also
have made) were correct. In fact nobody could be relied on to be correct under
the circumstances and in the time frame involved. A comparison: there is
much building activity at Northwestern University now. Does anybody believe
that, fifty years from now, perhaps after some cataclysm, anybody could
reliably interpret individual documents that were records of this construction?
665 Pressac (1989), pp. 432-457.
666 On Pressac’s 1989 book see e.g. the NY Times, 18 Dec. 1989. On his 1993 book, which reproduced
the Topf letter in question here, see (all 1993) l’Express, 23 Sept. pp. 76-87;
Libération, 24 Sept. pp. 28f; Le Monde, 26-27 Sept. p. 7; Die Welt, 27 Sept. p. 1; AP report
in the Denver Post, 2 Oct. p. 6A; Die Woche, 7 Oct. p. 8; NY Times, 28 Oct. p. A3 and 31
Oct. sec. 4, p. 2 and 8 Nov. p. A14; Chicago Tribune, 28 Nov. sec. 1, p. 25 and 13 Dec. sec.
5, p. 1.
667 Butz (1982). Supplement 2 here. For some Jewish demography see Chapters 1 and 7 herein.
Much more is to be found in Walter Sanning, The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry,
IHR, 1983.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
480
Of course not. Nobody could do that, and nobody could infallibly interpret
every Auschwitz document from the period 1941-1945. Indeed, the hypothesis
I have advanced here may be wrong, even though I have had a few years to
consider the solitary document in question.
Some years ago I warned of these dangers.668 It is not out of the question
that, some day, an authentic Auschwitz document might utterly confound the
revisionists, i.e. raise some apparently relevant question of detail which they
will be unable to answer. I can only urge that the context, that is, the massive
documentation and historical circumstance supporting the revisionist position,
be kept in mind in the event of such a development.
668 Butz (1982). Supplement 2 here.
481
Supplement 5: Vergasungskeller
An early version of this supplement appeared in the Journal of Historical
Review, vol. 16, no. 4, July-Aug. 1997, pp. 20+.
Veteran revisionists recognize that an outstanding small problem has been
the “Vergasungskeller” that was evidently in or near Crematorium II in the
Birkenau part of the Auschwitz camp.
Crematorium II (and its mirror image Crematorium III) had two huge underground
morgues, Leichenkeller 1 (LK 1) and LK 2, and a smaller morgue
LK 3. LK 1 and LK 2 were simple concrete morgues in which bodies were
simply laid on the floor. See Fig. 33. Essentially everything said here concerning
Crematorium II should be presumed to hold also for Crematorium III.
With one exception to be noted nothing said here applies to Crematorium I (in
the Stammlager part of the Auschwitz camp, rather than Birkenau, and taken
out of service in July 1943). Apart from remarks near the end about the work
of Samuel Crowell, nothing said here applies to Crematoria IV or V at Birkenau.
A letter to SS headquarters Berlin, from the Auschwitz construction department,
dated 29 January 1943, when the construction of Crematorium II
was nearing completion, reports that frost prohibits removal of the formwork
for the ceiling of the “Leichenkeller” (without specifying which of the three is
meant) but that this is unimportant, since the “Vergasungskeller” can be used
for that purpose, i.e. as a morgue. The document had the number NO-4473 at
the Nuremberg trials. Specifically, NO-4473 reads:
“The Crematorium II has been completed – save for some minor constructional
work – by the use of all the forces available, in spite of unspeakable
difficulties, the severe cold, and in 24 hour shifts. The fires were
started in the ovens in the presence of Senior Engineer Prüfer, representative
of the contractors of the firm of Topf and Sons, Erfurt, and they are
working most satisfactorily. The formwork for the reinforced concrete ceiling
of the Leichenkeller could not yet be removed on account of the frost.
This is, however, unimportant, as the Vergasungskeller can be used for this
purpose.
The firm of Topf and Sons was not, on account of the unavailability of
rail transport, able to deliver the aeration and ventilation equipment on
time, as had been requested by the Central Building Management. As soon
as the aeration and ventilation equipment arrive, the installing will start so
that the complete installation may be expected to be ready for use by 20
February 1943.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
482
A report of the inspecting engineer of the firm of Topf and Sons, Erfurt,
is enclosed.”
When NO-4473 is interpreted with the help of some documents reproduced
by Pressac,669 it is shown that the “Leichenkeller” is LK 2. Pressac believes
that the “Vergasungskeller” is LK 1 and that a “slip”, indeed “enormous gaff”
(sic), caused the author of the document to betray the true purpose of LK 1, referring
to it as a “gassing cellar” (although the usual German word for such a
concept is “Gaskammer”). On no known set of engineering drawings is a
“Vergasungskeller” indicated.670
Many of those who would have us believe that there were homicidal gas
chambers at Auschwitz insist on this interpretation. An interesting exception
has been the Austrian-born Raul Hilberg. He cites, and even quotes from, NO-
4473 in the “Killing Center Operations” chapter of The Destruction of the
European Jews, but he is silent on the “Vergasungskeller”.
In my 1976 book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century I offered that the
Vergasungskeller was a part of the crematorium building devoted to generating
a combustible gas for the ovens.671 This interpretation was linguistically
correct and could be technically correct, depending on the design of the ovens.
The primary meaning of “Vergasung” is gas generation or carburetion, i.e.
turning something into a gas (a “Vergaser” is a carburetor). A secondary
meaning is application of a gas as in fumigation or in gas warfare. It is also the
word Germans use to refer to the alleged gassing of Jews; however, they use
“Gaskammer” rather than “Vergasungskammer” or “Vergasungskeller” for the
facility imagined to have accomplished this. Such usage also applies in the literature
on fumigation.672
By 1989 Robert Faurisson realized that my original interpretation was
wrong and later in 1989 Pressac673 conclusively showed that it was wrong,
based on the design of the cremation ovens. In 1991 Faurisson offered a the-
669 J.-C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, Beate Klarsfeld
Foundation, NY, 1989, p 548. The reader should understand that the title of this book is misleading,
as the only real “gas chambers” whose “technique and operation” are discussed are
fumigation gas chambers. The homicidal gas chambers are only imagined, based on alleged
“criminal traces”, a few of which are dealt with here, directly or indirectly. It is common to
refer to this book in discussion of Auschwitz because it is the greatest single published
source of reproductions of original documents and photographs for the camp.
670 Pressac (1989) pp. 211,217,432,548.
671 Chapter 4 herein.
672 An example of the two usages is in one paragraph in Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungslager
im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, Adalbert Rückerl, ed., Deutscher Taschenbuch
Verlag, Munich, 1977, p. 12, where we are told that “Judenvergasung” (Jew gassing) took
place in “Gaskammern”. About the same distinction in usage held in the fumigation field, as
can be inferred from F. Puntigam et. al., Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr,
Berlin, 1943.
673 Pressac (1989) pp. 106-113,222-225,548.
Supplement 5: Vergasungskeller
483
ory674 that the Vergasungskeller was a storage area, for fumigation supplies,
within LK 3.
In 1992 I showed that there were many ways “Vergasung” can come up in
sewage treatment technology, and offered that the Vergasungskeller might be
found in the sewage treatment plant next to the crematorium. However I favored
the interpretation that the Vergasungskeller was simply a facility for
generating fuel gas for the camp.675 NO-4473 suggests, but does not require,
that the Vergasungskeller was located within the crematorium building.
The purpose of this note is to offer another interpretation which I now believe
is more plausible than any earlier offered by me or anybody else. Before
I do that I should remark that the problem here is what the Vergasungskeller
was, not whether it was a homicidal gas chamber. Those who claim it was a
homicidal gas chamber focus their attention entirely on that one word in the
document. If they would instead focus on what the document says, they would
realize that it is impossible to make that interpretation work. The document
shows that in January 1943 the Germans were in a great rush to use the building
as an ordinary crematorium.
As Faurisson discussed earlier,676 during World War II the combatants paid
great heed that new structures be considered, if possible, as air raid shelters.
There were two principal dangers that such shelters were to provide protection
against: bombs and gas attacks. On account of World War I experiences, the
possibilities of the latter were taken very seriously. Indeed many simply assumed
that gas would be used, despite treaties outlawing its use. Typically, a
gas shelter was conceived of as a bomb shelter, preferably underground and
very strong structurally, with some features added to make it secure against
gas; a gas shelter had to be gas tight but allow people to breathe. Since in
many cases it was not economic to provide such structures for at most only
occasional use, it was recognized that such shelters could exist in the form of
embellishments to structures that exist for other purposes. However the number
of suitable such structures was limited. For example, the typical underground
cellar belongs to a building with several stories; the collapse of these
in an air raid could prevent people from leaving the cellar .677
Germany started its air raid gas shelter program early with a 10 October
1933 decree of the Ministry of Finance providing financial incentives for the
construction of shelters. The decree was followed by the Luftschutzgesetz (Air
Defense Law) of 26 June 1935. Three German decrees in May 1937, in application
of the Luftschutzgesetz, alarmed the British Chargé d’Affaires in Berlin,
who compared the earnest German attitudes on air defenses to British apathy.
674 R. Faurisson, Journal of Historical Review, vol. 11, no. 1, Spring 1991, pp. 55ff.
675 A.R. Butz, Journal of Historical Review, vol. 13, no. 3, May/June 1993, pp. 27-31.
676 Faurisson, op. cit., pp. 52f.
677 A.M. Prentiss, Chemicals in War, Mc-Graw-Hill, NY, 1937. G. Woker, Der kommende Giftund
Brandkrieg, Oldenburg, Leipzig, 1932.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
484
The provision of shelters advanced far in Germany before the war, and of
course was accelerated with the outbreak of war. On defense against gas,
Germany was deeply committed to the shelter approach in its civil defense
program, in contrast to the British, who put more emphasis on distribution of
gas masks. However it should be stressed that in World War II thinking, bomb
and gas defenses went together, and provision of the one was unlikely without
the other.678
Since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Israel has had a law requiring that every
newly constructed domicile have a room equipped as a gas shelter.679
My proposal is that the Vergasungskeller was a gas shelter. It need not
have been located within Crematorium II but I believe it most likely was, on
account of the fact that Crematoria II and III, with their large concrete cellars,
were obviously ideal for adaptation as air raid shelters. Indeed when this problem
is looked at from the point of view of defense against air raids it seems
there was no better choice at Auschwitz. The German authorities responsible
for providing air raid shelters would have insisted that the necessary embellishments
be made to these structures which were far more suited to such purposes
than, e.g., Crematorium I at the Stammlager, which despite being above
ground was converted to an air raid shelter after it was taken out of service as
a crematorium in July 1943.680 My reading of some of the relevant chemical
warfare literature convinces me that Crematoria II and III were conceived of
by the Germans as having this additional role.
I have never seen the word “Vergasungskeller” in a lexicon; indeed I have
seen it only in discussions of NO-4473!681 I have seen two German-Russian
dictionaries, one a military dictionary, that say “Gaskeller” means “gas shelter”.
682 However we should not consider ourselves bound to dictionaries on
this. If one asks the question: In a World War II military context, what might
678 Alden H. Watt, Gas Warfare, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, NY, 1942, p. 252. Terence H.
O’Brien, Civil Defence, H.M. Stationery Office and Longmans, London, 1955, pp. 102ff,
329. Stephen E. Ambrose, ed., Handbook On German Military Forces, Louisiana State
Univ. Press, Baton Rouge, 1990, p. 518. The last is a reproduction of a book issued in
March 1945 by the U.S. Army.
679 Chicago Tribune, 7 Sept. 1996, sec. 1, p. 2.
680 Pressac (1989), pp. 132f,144,156f. The engineering drawings Pressac reproduces are dated
21 & 24 September 1944, but I do not know the actual date of the conversion. Pressac erroneously
places the first Allied air raid on 13 September 1944; it was on 20 August 1944.
681 Dictionaries are somewhat politicized, so do not assume that “Vergasungskeller” will never
appear in one that defines it as equivalent to “Gaskammer”. For example my Deutsches
Wörterbuch, G. Wahrig, ed., Bertelsmann Lexikon-Verlag,1973, defines “Gaskammer” only
as something for killing people in concentration camps with poison gas, although the word
was used in the fumigation field long before World War II. The justification that would be
claimed for defining “Vergasungskeller” thus is that it was used that way in NO-4473! Orwell,
anyone?
682 L.F. Parparov, ed., Nemetsko-Russkii Voennyi Slovar, Voenizdat, Moscow, 1964. A.A.
Lepinga and N.P. Strakhovoi, eds., Nemetsko-Russkii Slovar, Sov. Entsiklopediia, Moscow,
1968.
Supplement 5: Vergasungskeller
485
“Vergasungskeller” and/or “Gaskeller” mean?, I think that “gas shelter” is the
answer that comes naturally to mind, and that other meanings are somewhat
strained. Of course other meanings come naturally to mind in non-military
contexts.
As a personal example, I can report that I have been unable to find the term
“control lab” (or “control laboratory”, “controls lab”, “controls laboratory”) in
my IEEE Standard Dictionary of Electrical and Electronics Terms (edition of
1972), although every university Dept. of Electrical Engineering in the USA
has a “control lab” and that is how we normally refer to such a place. I have
also been unable to find the term in an unabridged Webster’s, in an on-line
version of the Oxford English Dictionary, and in several other dictionaries I
have.
If this interpretation of the Vergasungskeller of NO-4473 is correct then we
should view all three cellars in Crematorium II as air raid shelters, with only
one being provided with the additional measures to make it effective as a gas
shelter. That could only be LK 1, since NO-4473 implies it is not LK 2, LK 3
was very small and, conclusively, because LK 1 was the only one of the three
provided with a gas-tight door.683 Moreover while all parts of the building had
motor driven air extraction systems, it appears that only LK 1 had a motor
driven air intake system.684
The extermination legend claims that homicidal gas chambers existed at
Auschwitz, and employed the pesticide Zyklon B, which releases HCN (hydrogen
cyanide) gas. Pressac also believes the Vergasungskeller was LK 1,
but he interprets it as a gas chamber employing Zyklon B. Under my theory he
is then right on location but wrong on function. LK 1 had the basic features of
a gas shelter.
Pressac admits that the air exhaust (at the bottom) and air intake (near the
top) systems of LK 1 were misplaced for a gas chamber employing HCN.685
Although HCN is only slightly lighter than air, there are various practical reasons
why gas chambers employing it normally expel the gas from the top
when the gassing process is completed.686 Carbon dioxide is much heavier
than air and is most naturally expelled from the bottom of the relevant space.
Moreover preferred German practice of the time used a circulatory system for
disinfestation gas chambers that employed Zyklon B, rather than a simple system
of intake – exhaust. Another feature of any serious Zyklon gas chamber,
lacked by LK 1, was a heating system, required to accelerate the development
of HCN gas from the Zyklon crystals. LK 1 had whatever temperature the
elements gave it,687 a tolerable situation for an air raid – gas shelter. For ex-
683 Pressac (1989), 223,231.
684 Pressac (1989), 284ff,290f,355-374.
685 Pressac (1989), 224,274,289ff,322,338.
686 Puntigam, op. cit..
687 Pressac (1989), pp. 221,223,230, notes that at one point consideration was given to “preArthur
R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
486
planations, see Supplement 4. The construction of LK 1 was exactly that of a
gas shelter. One must stand on one’s head to interpret it as a gas chamber.
The reader should understand that here I am only considering the physical
details of the construction of LK 1 that oblige us to interpret it as a gas shelter
rather than gas chamber. There is much more evidence that LK 1 was not a
gas chamber. The purpose of this note is only to interpret the word “Vergasungskeller”
as used in one document.
Why would the author of NO-4473 not refer to a Leichenkeller as a Leichenkeller?
I don’t think a slip is involved. We normally do not consider ourselves
bound to use only formal designations. More commonly, we refer to
things according to their function or in any case the function that happens to
be in mind at the time. The gas shelter features of LK 1 were its principal
structural distinction from LK 2 and those features were being taken into account
in the construction at the time. It was natural that LK 1 might be referred
to as the gas shelter.
As another example of a use of terminology suggested by function, the engineers
Jährling and Messing referred to LK 2 of Crematoria II and III, during
construction, via the terms “Auskleideraum” and “Auskleidekeller” (undressing
room or cellar), another one of what Pressac considers “slips” that betrayed
a criminal purpose.688 This has been another point raised by those who
would put a homicidal interpretation on Crematoria II and III; the victims
would according to this theory undress themselves in LK 2 and then be gassed
in LK 1.
It seems hard to believe these were “slips” because they were so frequently
committed. Jährling used this designation in a document of 6 March 1943, and
then Messing used it in three documents later in March. If these were “slips”,
it would seem that by this time the bosses would have told them to clean up
their language. They evidently didn’t, because Messing used the designation
in two more documents in April.689
The truth about the undressing is much more prosaic. Pressac believes that,
when the Germans viewed Crematoria II and III as ordinary crematoria, then
the sequence of processing bodies was contemplated to be LK 3 to LK 2 to
LK 1, but that LK 3 was eventually eliminated from the regular sequence.690
However that may be, if the dead bodies were contemplated to start in LK 2
heating” LK 1, but the idea was dropped 3 weeks later. LK 1 was not heated. I have an idea
on the purpose imagined for the pre-heating, but it would be premature to present it. In any
case, heat was not considered vital to the function of LK 1. The notion that a crowd of people
in LK 1 would provide the necessary heat for efficient gassing is a fig leaf that doesn’t
work, because they would not generate that much heat, and because according to the legend
the Zyklon would have been strewn about the floor, thus assuming a temperature close to
that of the floor.
688 Pressac (1989), pp. 223,373.
689 Pressac (1989), pp. 431-435,438f.
690 Pressac (1989) 284ff. Of course revisionists hold that they always were ordinary crematoria.
Supplement 5: Vergasungskeller
487
they would then be undressed there.691 They would be stored in LK 1 while
awaiting cremation. Presumably LK 3 was only used when a body needed
some sort of special processing, e.g. dissection or the famous extraction of
gold fillings from teeth.
I am struck by the humorous simplicity of the theory offered here.
In March 1997 Samuel Crowell also proposed an interpretation of LK 1 as
a gas shelter that goes far beyond, and in some respects departs on secondary
levels from, the interpretations proposed here. Crowell’s theory is to be found
at the Web site of CODOH (Committee for Open Debate of the Holocaust).692
He went beyond my theory in two principal respects. First, he attributed to
Crematoria II and III a broader role within the air raid – gas shelter paradigm.
For example, showers and undressing are interpreted by him in terms of “decontamination”,
a feature of that paradigm. Second, he interpreted features of
Crematoria IV and V in terms of air raid and gas shelters, matters on which he
cites much contemporaneous German literature. Crowell has bitten off a big
piece and evaluation of his theories will take time. I believe he tends at points
to over-hasty interpretation in terms of air raid and gas shelters, without adequate
consideration of alternative interpretations, but my hunch is that he is
mostly right.
691 Faurisson op. cit. pp. 49f advanced this interpretation but only tentatively, because he had
not been able to verify that the word “Auskleideraum” is used that way in the special terminology
of morgues (that seems to be what Faurisson meant). I do not think the question is
important because there is no reason to assume that Jährling (a heating technician employed
by the SS) and Messing (a fitter employed by the Topf company that was providing the
crematorium ovens) cared very much about the special terminology of morgues. I have
spent many years with engineers and I know they tend to express themselves without great
concern for lexical standards, especially outside their own fields. Jährling and Messing
could never have suspected that their hasty words would be subject to such contentious
scrutiny half a century later!

489
Illustrations
Fig. 1: Europe before World War I.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
490
Fig. 2: Europe between the two World Wars.
Illustrations
491
Fig. 3: Nazi Dominated Europe.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
492
Fig. 4: Europe after World War I.
Illustrations
493
Fig. 5: Plan of the Auschwitz Region.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
494
Fig. 6: Interior of Disinfection Chamber at Dachau; left: DEGESCH Kreislaufanlage (circulation device); right: look
through the chamber. (This photo was taken by the author in 1973.)
Illustrations
495
Fig. 7: Bodies being cremated in open pits,
allegedly north of Krematorium V, Birkenau.1
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
496
Fig. 8: Scenes from the trial
of camp guards at Dachau.2
Illustrations
497
Fig. 9: Yard at Belsen after British capture of the Camp.3
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
498
Fig. 10: Mass Grave at Belsen; bottom: British liberators deliberately
exposed SS women to contagious diseases.4
Illustrations
499
Fig. 11: British Guard Post at entrance to Belsen Camp.5
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
500
Fig. 12: Women guards at Belsen, lined up after capture of the camp;
bottom right: Irma Grese, who was supposedly the most hated of all
guards.6
Illustrations
501
Fig. 13: Crematorium Building at Dachau; top two pictures: after the liberation; bottom
picture: in 1998. Editor’s note: Note the differences between those pictures:
a) today, a ramp allows access for persons in wheelchairs;
b) a shed (circle top two pictures) was removed; two openings (arrows lower picture)
are now visible at this spot, allegedly used to fill Zyklon B into the shower room – the
claimed gas chamber which, according to the Dachau Museum, was never used.7
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
502
Fig. 14: Delousing Senator Wherry after tour of Dachau.8
Illustrations
503
Fig. 15: Dead bodies found on train at Dachau.9
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
504
Fig. 16: Shower baths at Dachau; top: Members of US Congress inspecting it after
the war. From left to right: Sen. Wherry (NE), Sen. Brooks (IL), Rep. Vorhys (OH),
and Rep. Richards (SC); bottom: Dachau Museum 1998 with sign claiming that this
room was never used as a gas chamber (see inset).10
Illustrations
505
Fig. 17: Dachau Crematorium with four muffles, three of which are visible here; top:
US Representative Vorhys inspects it after the war; bottom: Museum Dachau 1998.11
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
506
Fig. 18: Crematorium at Buchenwald with sixs muffles; top: US Congressmen inspecting
it after the war; bottom: Buchenwald museum 1998.12
Illustrations
507
Fig. 19: Entrance to Dachau Shower Bath which was baptized “gas chamber” after the war.13
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
508
Fig. 20: Liberated Dachau inmates mistreat (top)
and murdered (bottom) camp guards14
Illustrations
509
Fig. 21: Liberation Day at Dachau; top: view from the main entrance tower; bottom
left: cheering prisoners; bottom right: camp guards are summarily executed.15
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
510
Fig. 22: Door of Disinfection Chamber at Dachau. The inscriptions on the
door specify that the chamber was last used from 7:30 to 10 in the morning.
The warning reads “Caution! Gas! Life danger! Do not open!” The U.S. Army
caption for this photograph declares: “Gas chambers, conveniently located
to the crematory, are examined by a soldier of the U.S. Seventh Army.
These chambers were used by Nazi guards for killing prisoners of the infamous
Dachau concentration camp.”16
Illustrations
511
Fig. 23: Some of the Principle German Camps. Theresienstadt was not really a camp, but a ghetto or village, as you wish.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
512
Fig. 24: Russian Soap "Evidence" at the IMT.17
Illustrations
513
Fig. 25: A page from Document 022-L, as reproduced in the 42nd volume record of the
International Military Tribunal.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
514
Fig. 26: Said to be a photograph of the furnace room of crematorium II at Auschwitz.18
Illustrations
515
Fig. 27: A can of Zyklon B.19The label days “POISON GAS!”
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
516
Fig. 28: Several cans of Zyklon B: top: In the camp Lublin-Majdanek as found by
the Red Army; bottom: from an advertisement of the DEGESCH firm.20
Illustrations
517
Fig. 29: Plan of Birkenau.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
518
Fig. 30: Document NG-2263 - Reproduced from Braham, The Destruction of Hungarian
Jewry.
Illustrations
519
Fig. 31: The Crematorium at Lublin-Majdanek camp. This crematorium had five muffles.
21
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
520
Fig. 32: A collection of medical specimens allegedly found at Buchenwald.22
Illustrations
521
Fig. 33: Plan of Auschwitz Crematorium II.
1. Leichenkeller 1. Below ground level morgue.
2. Leichenkeller 2. Below ground level morgue.
3. Leichenkeller 3. Below ground level morgue.
4. Furnace room. Ground level only. 15 cremation muffles.
5. Corpse elevator. Only the small central part of the building, where the furnace
room joined Leichenkeller 1 and 2, had two levels.
6. Corpse chute.
7. Cellar entrance.
8. Cellar entrance.
9. Ground level entrance.
10. Chimney and waste incinerator.
11. Supervisor’s office, worker rest room, toilet, shower, tools, urn storage, fuel
(coke) storage.
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
522
Fig. 34: Arrangement of flues and ducts for Auschwitz Crematorium II.23
Illustrations
523
Sources of Illustrations 1 Panstwowe Muzeum Oswieçim, neg. 278.
2 “Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust,” Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
originals are in the German Bundesarchiv.
3 Imperial War Museum, Horror 11 BU 3764.
4 Top: Imperial War Museum, Horror 9 BU 3744; bottom:
5 Imperial War Museum, Horror 8 BU 4092.
6 Top: National Archives, 306-NT-1338-1; bottom left & right:
7 Top: National Archives, 208-AA-129J-30; middle and bottom: “The Concentration Camps,”
picture collection on CD, taken in loco by various individuals in 1998.
8 US Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 204837.
9 US Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 206191.
10 Top: US Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 204838; bottom: “The Concentration Camps” CD.
11 Top: US Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 264013; bottom: “The Concentration Camps” CD.
12 Top: US Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 263997; bottom: “The Concentration Camps” CD.
13 “The Concentration Camps” CD.
14 Top: US Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 208766; bottom: “Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust,”
Memorial Museum).
15 Top: US Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 206311; bottom left:
www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/ DachauLiberation/LiberationDay.html; bottom
right: ~/SoldiersKilled.html (US Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 208705).
16 US Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 206194.
17 National Archives, 238-NT-270.
18 Panstwowe Muzeum Oswieçim, neg. 291.
19 Jürgen Kalthoff, Martin Werner, Die Händler des Zyklon B, VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1998,
cover.
20 Top left: “Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust,”
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/gallery2/50575.htm (originals from U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum); top right: National Archives, 208-AA-132H-2; bottom: G. Peters,
Blausäure zur Schädlingsbekämpfung, F. Enke, Stuttgart, 1933, p. 80.
21 National Archives, 208-AA-132H-1.
22 US Army Audio-Visual Agency SC 203584.
23 Panstwowe Muzeum Oswieçim, file BW 30/14, neg. 20946/1.

525
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528
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References
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1960.
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1972.
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Rolf Volgel, ed., The German Path to Israel, Oswald Wolff, London, 1969. Foreword by
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1971.
Harold Zink, American Military Government in Germany, Macmillan, New York, 1947.

533
Index
— A —
Abbé Pierre: 14
Abetz, Ambassador: 278, 282
Action Reinhardt: 291, 302
Adamovic, von: 214
air photos: 207
air raid shelter: 483, 484, 485
Alfonso of Aragon: 419
Allies
criticized for inaction: 24
Alstötter: 41
Altenburg: 215
American Jewish Committee:
32, 35, 110, 428
American Jewish Congress:
37, 90, 113, 114, 123
Antonescu, Mihai: 195, 196,
198, 283
Apenszlak, J.: 127
App, Austin J.: 31, 405
Arendt, Hannah: 250
Aretz, Emil: 31
Arndt: 344
Aronéanu, Eugène: 63
Asch, Sholem: 113
Aschenbrenner, Jupp: 267,
268
asphyxiation: 127, 267, 383,
429
Auschwitz
contemporaneous reports:
461
cremation capacity: 447,
449, 450, 451, 452
deaths at: 448
Jews from Theresienstadt:
103, 137, 156
recreational activities: 78
under quarantine: 448
Auschwitz State Museum:
460, 462
auschwitz trial: 253
Auschwitz trial: 138, 253
— B —
B’nai B’rith: 223, 306
Babi Yar (Kiev): 125
Bäck, Leo: 156, 431
Baer, Richard: 253
Baldwin, Hanson: 30, 32, 48
Balfour Declaration: 285, 311
Ball, John C.: 441
Baranowsky: 355
Bar-Kokhba: 326, 327
Barnes, Harry Elmer: 32, 99,
100, 329
Baronius: 419
Baruch, Bernard M.: 84, 85,
87, 88, 100, 183
Battle of the Bulge: 45
Bauer, Yehuda: 466
Bäuerle, Franz: 345
Beaty, John: 19, 435
Becher, Kurt: 210, 221
Becker, August: 267, 272
Begasung: 455, 459
Begin, Menachem: 422
Beineburg, GLt: 376
Beker, J. K.: 323, 324
Bellacita: 197
Belzec: 94, 113, 126, 127,
150
Belzec xe “camp: Belzec”
gassing at: 390
Benes, Edward: 301, 435
Ben-Gurion, David: 210
Bennett, John: 409
Bentley, Elisabeth: 97
Bergen-Belsen
trial: 42
trials: 355
Berger, Gottlob: 263, 264,
438
Bermuda: 96
Bermuda Conference: 116,
117, 119, 120, 121
Bernard Bernstein: 100
Bernays, Murray C.: 43, 44
Bestic, Alan: 138
Beth Jacob School: 113
Bethell, Nicholas: 329
Bethlen, Count: 214
Bettelheim, Bruno: 166
Beuchow: 66
Bickerbach, Prof.: 375
Biddle, Francis: 43, 223
Bird, Eugene K.: 330
Birkenau
crematory capacity: 447
Birobidzhan: 301
Bischoff, Karl
report to Kammler: 454
Bismarck, Otto von: 378
Bittkau: 345
Blaha, Franz: 72
Blomberg,: 57
blood poisoning: 113
Blum, John M.: 90
Boehm, Eric H.: 296, 443
Boer War: 180
Borgongini-Duca, Francesco:
383
Bormann, Martin: 44, 231
Boxer, Barbara: 14
Brack, Viktor: 237, 238, 268
Braham, Randolph L.: 233
Brand, Joel: 148, 234
Brandt: 162
Brandt, Karl: 41
Brandt, Willi: 322, 323, 324
Breitman, Richard: 11
Brescia, Arnold of: 418
Brezeznia: 100
Broad, Pery: 463
Bryce, Lord: 317
Buchholz: 344
Buck: 375
Buffarini, Guido: 383
Bund: 433
Bunker 1
start of gassings: 447
Burckhardt, Carl Jacob: 93,
229
Burg, J. G.: see Josef
Ginsburg
Burger, StF: 368
Burney, Christopher: 66, 67,
69
Burzio, Giuseppe: 141, 380,
381
Buss, Felix: 344
Butz,: 396, 399, 411, 414,
427
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
534
— C —
Calley: 231
Cambodia: 24
camp
Andersonville: 180
Beaune la Rolande: 351,
352
Belzec: 62, 100, 113, 127,
146, 202, 237, 291,
335, 338, 390, 429,
441, 461
Bergen-Belsen: 23, 61, 62,
65, 66, 69, 74, 100,
151, 175, 179, 234,
240, 241, 258, 340,
346, 349, 367, 368,
369, 370, 371, 372,
373, 374, 375, 376,
434, 444
Buchenwald: 8, 29, 45, 61,
62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69,
72, 100, 132, 164, 179,
181, 239, 245, 255,
340, 346, 404, 434,
444, 450, 451, 452, 453
Chelmno: 62, 94, 100,
113, 126, 127, 237,
272, 390
Dachau: 23, 45, 61, 62,
65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73,
74, 99, 145, 147, 153,
174, 179, 181, 223,
244, 340, 344, 346,
355, 356, 359, 382,
444, 450, 451, 452, 453
Douglas: 180
Drancy: 115, 351, 352,
353
Flossenbürg: 45, 132, 179
Gross-Rosen: 153, 179
Gusen: 132, 178, 179, 340
Herzogenbusch: 179
Kistarcea: 192
Kolo: 291
Majdanek: 62, 63, 89, 130,
153, 172, 179, 234,
237, 239, 288, 291,
302, 334, 335, 342
Marienka: 191
Mauthausen: 70, 100, 132,
146, 178, 179, 340,
346, 355, 356
Monowitz: 160, 170, 175,
176, 239, 349, 463
Natzweiler: 179, 242, 360,
364, 374
Oranienburg: 63, 131,
134, 149, 152, 334,
340, 345, 358, 359, 367
Pithiviers: 351, 352, 353
POW: 77, 180
Ravensbrück: 100, 179,
349
Rock Island: 180
Sachsenhausen: 78, 100,
132, 145, 179, 181,
355, 365
Sered: 190, 191
Sobibor: 237, 288, 291,
335, 349, 429, 441, 461
Struthof: 375
Stutthof: 179
Treblinka: 23, 62, 100,
123, 126, 127, 146,
150, 154, 237, 288,
298, 320, 335, 338,
394, 414, 415, 429,
441, 442, 461
Vittel: 189
Westerbork: 65, 175, 349,
350, 351, 352, 353, 354
Wolzek: 146
Canaris, Wilhelm: 57, 58, 86,
439
cannibalism: 372
Carter, Kit C.: 208
Cassius Dio: 325
Cavendish-Bentinck,
William: 435
Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA): 11, 134, 163, 409,
436
Central State Archives in
Moscow: 461
Centre de Documentation
juive contemporaine: 37,
38
Chamberlin, William Henry:
329
Chambers, Whittaker: 97
Christophersen, Thies: 8, 31,
170, 181, 182, 209, 404,
405
Churchill, Winston: 57, 90,
109, 121, 302, 426, 432,
435
Civil War USA: 180
Clark, Attorney General: 224
Clay, Lucius D.: 48, 68, 310
coal
abundant at Auschwitz:
457
CODOH: 487
Cohen, Elie A.: 157, 158,
159, 160, 167
Cohen, Meyer: 306
Colby, Benjamin: 103, 106
Colvin, Ian: 57, 119
Comité International
d’Auschwitz: 256
Compton, Karl T.: 84
Conant, James D.: 84
Constantine
Donation of: 396, 397,
417, 421
Constantine, Emperor: 24,
417, 418, 419
Conway, John S.: 462, 465,
466
Cramer, Myron C.: 45
Craven, Vesley F.: 208
cremation capacity: 447
crematory capacity: 447
Crematory I
shut down: 447
Crematory II
moved from Auschwitz to
Birkenau: 447
operational status in Jan.
1943: 454
Crematory III
plan to build: 447
Crematory IV
plan to build: 447
Crematory V
plan to build: 447
Crotia
agreeable to the removal
of Jews: 281
Crowell, Samuel: 481, 487
Cusanus, Nikolaus von: 418,
419
— D —
Dachau
gas chamber: 74
Index
535
gassings at: 72
ICRC: 70
town: 71
trials: 45, 47, 48, 49, 68,
258, 330
War Crimes
Administration Branch:
47
Dante, Alighieri: 418
Darquier de Péllepoix, Louis:
408
Davidson, Eugene: 245
Davis, William R.: 224
Dawidowicz, Lucy: 28, 297,
298, 328, 390
D-Day: 89, 207, 234
DDT: 152
Deane, Ernest C.: 51
deaths
at Auschwitz: 448
DEGESCH: 150, 152, 153,
340, 345, 469, 470, 471,
472, 473
delousing: 23, 146, 163, 183,
446, 455, 456
deportations
Soviet: 23
Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke:
164, 173
Dibelius, Otto: 339, 343, 344,
345
Diesel engine: 127, 150, 335,
337, 338, 438
Diwald, Hellmut: 407, 408,
409
Dohnanyi, Hans von: 439
Donovan, William: 134, 135
Dora: 66, 100
Douglas-Hamilton, James:
330
Dr. Klein: 372
Drägerwerke: 472
Dresden: 24, 61, 274, 416
DuBois, Josiah: 53, 54, 55,
90, 97, 98, 99, 127, 128,
158, 169, 221
DuBost, Charles: 152
Dulles, Allen: 119
Dunant, George: 437
Duprat, François: 406
— E —
Eden, Anthony: 120, 205,
434
Eggleston, George T.: 224
Ehlers, Hermann: 344, 345
Eichmann trial: 29, 30, 49,
119, 249, 341
Eichmann, Karl Adolf: 28,
29, 60, 117, 124, 138, 148,
161, 162, 201, 210, 212,
213, 214, 215, 219, 220,
221, 230, 247, 249, 250,
251, 252, 253, 258, 264,
286, 295, 401, 406, 437
debut in wartime
propaganda: 124
Eike, Theodor: 356, 374
Eill: 359
Einsatzgruppen: 40, 41, 62,
117, 240, 266, 267, 268,
271, 272, 273, 274, 275,
288, 289, 315
Einstein: 47
Einstein Fund: 301
Einstein, Albert: 301
Eisenhower, Dwight D.: 135,
307, 308
Eiserle: 360, 361, 363
electrocution: 113, 127, 202,
429
Elias, Joseph: 136, 141
Ellrich: 66
Elowitz, Morris: 48
Elsing: 66
Elss, Ebbe: 344
Endlösung: 400
Entress, Friedrich: 154
Epstein, Julius: 329
Eskimos: 377, 424
Eusebius: 325
euthanasia: 40, 238, 239
Everett, Willis M.: 47
Every: 71, 72
extermination claims
exploited in contemporary
politics: 19
extermination claims
lack of action regarding:
24
lack of evidence for: 24
now considered
unchallengable: 19
reasons to believe: 24
— F —
Fadiman, Clifton: 104, 105,
106
Fajnzylberg: 463
Fanton, Dwight: 48
Farago, Ladislas: 231
Farben trial: 50, 54, 127, 136,
158, 170, 249
Farley, James A.: 224
Faschingbauer: 360
Faulhaber, Michael von: 238
Faurisson, Robert: 399, 402,
405, 408, 409, 412, 416,
423, 445, 454, 467, 471,
472, 473, 478, 479, 482,
483
target of Pressac: 445
Feingold, Henry L.: 90
Felderer, Ditlieb: 406
Final Solution: 41, 136, 277,
279, 284, 285, 286, 287,
290, 299, 403, 409, 411,
412
definition: 23
First Amendment: 14
Fischer, Ludwig: 125
flames, chimneys in
Auschwitz: 169
Flick: 41
flying saucers: 319
Flynn, John T.: 101
Foust, Hal: 51, 52, 307
Frahm, Herbert Ernst Karl:
see Brandt, Willi
Frank, Anne: 66
Frank, family: 66
Frank, Hans: 245
Frankfurter, Felix: 91, 435
Frankland: 208
Franz, August: 345
Freemasons: 258
Frericks, UStF: 369
Frick, Wilhelm: 222
Friedman, Filip: 210
Frumkin, Gregory
(Grzegorz): 37
Frydman, Szajko: 269
— G —
Gandersheim: 66
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
536
Garlinski, Jozef: 139, 141
Garner, John N.: 224
gas detectors: 471, 472, 474,
479
gas shelter: 483, 484, 485,
486, 487
gas truck: 62, 101, 127, 266,
267, 271, 272, 390
gasmobile: 62, 101, 127, 266,
271, 272, 390
Gaus, Friedrich: 226
Geiger: 212, 219
Gerstein, Kurt: 341, 342, 343,
344, 345, 346
Gerstein, Kurt: 8, 152, 153,
237, 239, 333, 377
Gestapo: 57, 58, 60, 115,
137, 145, 147, 160, 195,
247, 249, 264, 270, 311,
333, 334, 358, 359, 360,
363, 375, 461, 465
Gewecke: 270
Gilbert, G.M.: 242, 243, 244
Gilbert, Martin: 11, 426, 427,
428, 429, 462
Ginsburg, Josef: 30, 31, 315,
316, 385
Globocnik, Odilio: 335
Glücks, Richard: 59, 149,
154, 177, 211, 359, 360,
364, 367, 368, 374, 375
Goddard Arthur: 329
Goebbels, Joseph: 39, 56,
101, 102, 103, 104, 108,
109, 128, 265, 266, 339
Goedecker, Bernhard J.: 345
gold teeth: 337
Goldman, Nahum: 428
Goldstein, Israel: 111, 117
Göring, Hermann: 27, 39, 40,
41, 56, 223, 224, 229, 230,
242, 243, 244, 245, 246,
258, 264, 277, 279, 285,
286, 288, 290
Grafeneck: 334
Graham, Robert A.: 8, 379,
395, 396, 397
Grant, Michael: 325
Grayzel, Solomon: 290
Greifelt, Ulrich: 41, 60
Greiser, Artur: 162
Grenfell, Russell: 329
Grosch, Wolfgang: 173
Gross-Rosen: 132
Grundlach: 340
Guenther: 334, 339, 340, 345
Guenther, Hans F.K.: 339
Guggenheim, Paul: 90, 91, 93
Guillaume, Günter: 324
Gun, Nerin E.: 71, 72
gypsies: 37, 250, 267, 273,
296, 355, 416
gypsy camp: 183, 462
gypy camp: 175
— H —
Haas, StF: 369
Hadamar: 244, 334
Hadrian: 325, 327
Haensch, Walter: 273, 274
Häfliger: 226
Halberstadt: 66
Hamburg: 24, 104, 274
Hanke, Karl: 245
Harmense: 77, 79
Harrison, Leland: 90, 92, 93,
94, 97, 128, 307
Hartjenstein: 364, 367, 375
Harvard: 8, 43, 84, 223
Harwood, Richard: 32, 405,
408
Haueisen: 344
head, shrunken: 67
Heckenholt: 336, 337
Hemingway, Ernest: 105
Hencke, Andor: 213, 219
Hendrik: 344
Hertz, Rabbi: 114
Hess, Rudolf: 39, 330
Heydrich, Reinhard: 39, 41,
57, 58, 59, 145, 150, 161,
201, 247, 268, 270, 277,
278, 279, 285, 286, 287,
288, 289, 416
Hilberg, Raul: 10, 20, 28, 30,
38, 41, 92, 144, 151, 153,
171, 173, 177, 210, 220,
238, 239, 288, 289, 292,
317, 319, 320, 328, 423,
442, 443, 444, 456, 466,
482
credentials: 328
on Vergasungskeller: 456
Hildebrandt, Richard: 60,
295, 296
Hilldring, J. H.: 55
Hillel: 410, 411
Hilmer, OSF: 370
Himmler, Heinrich: 39, 41,
56, 57, 58, 59, 79, 132,
140, 149, 150, 154, 161,
162, 163, 177, 178, 184,
201, 210, 211, 221, 233,
241, 243, 245, 246, 247,
262, 263, 264, 265, 266,
268, 269, 270, 272, 289,
317, 335, 338, 340, 375,
437, 438, 439, 448, 454
on crematories: 317, 454
Posen speech: 262, 263,
264, 265, 269
visit to Auschwitz: 139
Hiroshima: 24, 274, 416
Hirschfeld, Hans: 323, 324
Hirt, Prof.: 375
Hiss, Alger: 97
Hiss, Donald: 97
Hitler, Adolf: 11, 24, 34, 39,
41, 56, 58, 75, 93, 96, 102,
103, 104, 105, 106, 108,
111, 112, 115, 119, 124,
153, 154, 191, 203, 228,
238, 241, 243, 245, 247,
258, 260, 261, 268, 271,
289, 323, 325, 335, 342,
357, 377, 383, 390, 416,
423, 437, 439
opposition: 439
opposition to: 24
proposed
excommunication: 390
testament: 261
Hochhuth, Rolf: 30, 152, 377,
395
Hofmann, Franz: 256
Hofmann, Otto: 60
Hoggan, David L.: 329
Holocaust revisionism: 23,
445, 466
introduction to: 23
Holocaust, NBC-TV
‘docudrama’: 13, 406
homosexuals: 340
Hoover, Herbert: 224
Horstmann, HStF: 372
Horthy, Miklós: 191, 192,
Index
537
200, 205, 206, 215, 217,
261
hospital, Auschwitz: 133,
157, 158, 159, 160, 358,
364, 365
hospital, Bergen-Belsen: 369
hospital, Buchenwald: 67
hospital, Dachau: 73, 359
hospital, Monowitz: 79, 160,
175, 349
hospital, Natzweiler: 361
Höss, Rudolf: 144, 147, 148,
149, 150, 154, 156, 163,
164, 168, 169, 171, 174,
182, 184, 211, 220, 237,
238, 242, 249, 253, 264,
274, 289, 357, 365, 366,
375, 442, 446, 448, 463
contradictions: 464
quarantines Auschwitz:
448
rejected by Pressac: 446
Höttl, Wilhelm: 117, 118,
119, 253
Howard, Frank A.: 81, 82,
84, 86
Huene, Baron von: 345
Huettig: 360
Hull, Cordell: 39, 90, 97, 205
Hüls: 76, 87
Hutton, J. Bernard: 330
Hyman, Joseph C.: 198
— I —
I.G. Farbenindustrie AG: 41,
50, 54, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79,
81, 82, 83, 86, 128, 133,
166, 170, 171, 176, 239,
249, 476
Immigration
migration to the US: 312
Institut für Zeitgeschichte:
74, 343
International Tracing Service:
141, 451
Iron Guard: 195
Irving, David: 423
Israel: 56, 137, 143, 210, 228,
230, 250, 252, 258, 294,
310, 311, 315, 322, 330,
331, 377, 403, 422, 428,
484
benefits from
extermination legend:
19
Israel, Fred L.: 90
Iwaszko, T.: 462
— J —
Jackson, Robert H.: 43, 44,
45, 49, 50, 230, 231, 243,
258
Jacob, Bruno: 48
Jadin: 375
Jährling, Rudolf: 486
Jankowski: 463
Jaross: 214
Jefferson, Thomas: 227
Jehovah’s Witnesses: 64
Jewish Agency: 111, 116,
135, 428, 431, 435, 462
Jewish Labor Committee:
127
Jewish leaders: 24, 134, 430,
431, 446, 462
Jewish response to
extermination claims: 24
Jewish soap: see soap
Jo’Pasztor Bizottsag: 136,
193
Joan of Arc: 256
Joffroy, Pierre: 343
John, Otto: 57
Johnson, Senator: 117
Joint Distribution Committee:
189, 198, 294, 297, 301,
303, 308, 428, 431, 433
Jones, Jesse H.: 82, 83, 84,
85
Jonowska: 100
Jung, Seth: 113
Jüttner: 150
— K —
Kallay, Nicholas von: 121
Kaltenbrunner, Ernst: 58, 59,
70, 93, 118, 144, 145, 146,
161, 169, 229, 243, 245,
246, 247, 248, 296, 401
Kammler, Hans: 163, 164,
454
report from Bischoff: 164
Kanada: 465
Karski, Jan: 429, 435
Kasche, Minister: 281
Kastner, Rudolf: 210
Katyn: 228, 229, 230, 269,
329, 392
Katzmann, Fritz: 162
Kaufman, Dr. Kurt: 169
Keitel, Wilhelm: 229
Kelley, Douglas M.: 40, 246
Kempner, Robert M. W.: 55,
221, 222, 223, 225, 226,
227, 228, 229, 230, 231,
232, 235, 264, 265, 323
Kennedy, John F.: 27, 58
Kharkov: 203
Killinger, Ambassador von:
283
Kirschbaum, Joseph: 47, 48
Kirschneck,: 165
Klieger, Ruth: 307
Klukowski: 291
Knobloch: 270
Knoll, Fritz: 363
Koch, Dr. Karl: 345
Koch, Erich: 66, 67, 239
Koch, Ilse: 67, 68, 69, 330
Koch, Karl: 345
Koehl, Robert L.: 290, 291,
298
Korherr Report: 162, 292,
298
Korherr Richard: 162
Korzen, Meir: 294, 300, 309,
315
Kosinski, Leszek A.: 36, 37
Krakowski, Shmuel: 466
Kramer, Josef: 62, 240, 241,
242, 248, 258, 259, 355,
367, 374
Krantz, Fritz: 340
Krasnodar: 272
Krauch, Karl: 41
Kremer, T.: 166
Krumey, Hermann: 161
Krupp: 41, 79, 148
Krupp, Alfred: 44
Krupp, Gustav: 41, 44
Kube, Wilhelm: 269, 270
Kubek, Anthony: 90
Kubovy, Aryeh Leon: 41
Kuckertz: 370
Kulka, Erich: 141, 462, 466
critical of Conway: 466
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
538
Kulmhof: see Chelmno
Kvaternik, Eugene: 380
— L —
Lademacher, USF: 370
Lagerfelt, Baron: 342
LaGuardia, Fiorello: 55, 303,
304, 306, 307
lampshades (human skin): 19,
67, 68, 69, 72
no basis in fact: 19
Langbein, Hermann: 42
Lánik, Josef: 462, 465
Laqueur, Walter: 11, 396,
397, 426, 427, 478
Laternser, Hans: 42
Law, Richard: 434
Lawrence, Charles: 48
Lawrence, W.H.: 125, 172
Laws, judge: 225
Leeb, Wilhelm von: 41
Lehman, Herbert: 303, 304,
306
Leibbrandt, Georg: 269
Lenz, Johann M.: 71
Lerman, Miles: 13
Lersner, Baron von: 392
Leuchter, Fred: 445
Leuchter, Fred A.: 14
Levi, Primo: 209
Levin, Nora: 28, 210, 328
Levy, Joseph M.: 204
Lewis, John L.: 224
Ley, Robert: 44, 120
Lichtheim, Richard: 428, 462
Lidice: 161, 203, 416
lime and chlorine: 429
Lincoln, Abraham: 58, 108
Linden: 72
Lindner, Herbert: 335
Linfield, H. S.: 33, 35
Linsmeier: 369
List, Wilhelm: 41
Lochner, Louis P.: 266
Lodz, Ghetto of: 116, 161,
162, 250, 251, 297, 298,
384
Lohse, Heinrich: 162, 237,
238, 268, 269, 270
Lolling, Dr.: 368, 372
Long, J. Breckenridge: 90,
94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 117
Lorenz, Werner: 60
Loritz: 355
Lubell, Sam: 84
Lublin: see Majdanek
Ludin: 215
Ludwigshafen: 75, 76, 80, 87
Luther, Martin: 277, 284,
294, 419
— M —
Madagascar: 277, 278, 285
Magee, Warren E.: 225, 226
Maglione, Luigi: 383
Maglione, Luigi Cardinal:
379, 380, 383, 386, 387,
391, 394
Malaria: 80
Malmédy: 45, 47, 48
Maloney, William P.: 223
Malvezzi: 380
Mann, Golo: 407
Mann, Thomas: 238
Marcone, Abbé: 380
Marcus, David: 53, 54, 55,
100, 143, 443
Marcuse, Herbert: 222, 323
Marie-Benoit: 394
Maritain, Jacques: 127
Maritza: 197
Markov, Marko: 229
Martin, James J.: 101, 106
Mary, Queen of Scots: 256
Mason, Frank E.: 265
Maurer: 368
Mayer, Saly: 428, 437
McClelland, R. D.: 136
McDonough, George A.: 46,
47
McGown, Harold D.: 48, 49
McHaney, James M.: 231
McNarney, Joseph T.: 309
Meader, George: 309, 310
Meer, Ter: 128
Meglio, Giuseppe Di: 383,
385, 391
Meier, Franz: 358
Meier, OStF: 361
Meisel, Yankel: 140
Mengele, Josef: 366, 367
Menne, Alex: 344
Menzel: 47
Messing, Heinrich: 486
Meyer: 357, 369
Meyer, Keith: 374
Mikolajczyk, Stanislaw: 124
Milch,: 41
Mildner, Rudolf: 147
Milka: 197
Minskoff: 158, 159, 249
Mirbach, von: 215, 219
MIT: 84
Mochalski: 344
Molotov, Vyacheslav M.:
272
Momigliano, Arnaldo: 8, 9
Mommsen: 9
Monowitz: 77, 78, 79, 133
Monsky, Henry: 306
Montini, Giovanni: 391
Morale Operations Branch
(MO): 135
Mordowicz, Czeslaw: 461
Mordowicz, Czezln: 141, 462
Morgan, Frederick E.: 305,
306, 307, 309
Morgen, Konrad: 67, 239,
240, 242
Morgenthau Plan: 100
Morgenthau Plan.: 90
Morgenthau, Henry jr.: 39,
90, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100,
135, 303, 435
Morikawa, T.: 476, 477
Morse, Arthur D.: 90
Moscow trials: 259
Mother Teresa: 14
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick:
330
Mueller, Robert: 208
Mulka, Robert K. L.: 253,
256, 415
Müller: 376
Müller, Filip: 138, 463
Müller, Heinrich, Gestapo:
57, 145
Müller, USF: 370
Münch, Hans: 158, 249
Mussolini, Benito: 222, 377
— N —
Nagasaki: 24, 274
Nanking: 203
Naumann, Bernd: 42
Naville, F.: 229
Index
539
Nebe, Arthur: 57, 267
Nebelthau: 344
Neumann, J. Oskar: 137, 287
New Deal: 303, 386
New York City: 24, 98, 113,
304, 314, 416
Niemöller, Martin: 152, 339,
341, 343, 344, 345, 346
Niemöller, Mrs.: 346
Nieuwenhuizen, Emil: 344
Nikitchenko, J.T.: 43
Northwestern University: 8,
13, 17, 406, 410, 468
Novaky: 465
Nuremberg trials: 9, 49, 52,
53, 141, 221, 230, 232,
237, 401, 443, 454
Nyiszli, Miklos: 166, 442
rejected by Pressac: 446
Nyiszli, N. Margareta: 166
— O —
Obermeyer: 338
Office of Strategic Services
(OSS): 92
Office of War Information
(OWI xe “Office of War
Information, OWI” ): 114
Office of War Information
(OWI): 158, 243, 461
Office of War Information,
OWI: 114, 135
Ohlendorf, Otto: 41, 267,
272, 273, 274
open air cremations: 88, 131,
132, 133, 163, 166, 206,
235
Operation Keelhau: 329
Organization Todt: 211, 212
Orsenigo, Cesare: 343, 378,
383, 389, 390, 391
Osborne, F. D’Arcy: 386,
387, 388
OSS: 119, 134, 135, 158,
222, 323, 383
Ossipova: 271
Oster, Hans: 24, 439
Otte: 266
Otter, Baron von: 339, 342,
343, 346
Oven, Wilfred von: 265, 266
Overmeyer: 335
— P —
Paassen, Pierre van: 119
Palmiry: 114
Panzinger: 57
Papen, Fritz von: 392, 393
Parkman, Francis: 8
partisans: 31, 77, 116, 266,
267, 270, 271, 273, 274,
293
Patek: 72
Patton, George S.: 307, 309
Pearl Harbor: 81, 83, 98, 224
Pearson, Drew: 224
Pehle, John: 97
Peiper, Joachim: 48, 49
Perl, Lieutenant: 48
Peter: 360, 361
Petersen: 263
Pfannenstiel, Wilhelm: 334,
335, 337, 338, 339, 341
phenol injections: 176, 177
Pickard: 360
Pinter, Stephen S.: 74
Piorkowski: 359
Pister, Hermann: 67
Ploesti: 207, 208, 209
Plorin: 357
Podulka, Petr: 141, 462
Pohl, Oswald: 41, 59, 145,
146, 149, 150, 154, 166,
177, 178, 181, 182, 241,
248, 249, 262, 264, 265,
360, 364, 367, 373, 374
Poliakov, Leon: 28, 60, 161,
328
Ponger, Kurt: 118
Pope John XXIII: 392
Pope Paul VI: 391
Pope Pius XI: 378
Pope Pius XII: 11, 162, 377,
378, 380, 381, 382, 383,
387, 389, 393, 395, 400
Pope Sylvester I: 417, 418
Popoff, Minister: 282, 283
population statistics
difficulties: 23, 35, 37,
302, 400, 410
Potau: 357
Powers, judge: 263
Pressac, J.-C.: 445, 446, 447,
448, 449, 450, 453, 454,
455, 456, 457, 460, 461,
463, 464, 466, 467, 468,
471, 472, 473, 478, 479,
482, 485, 486
book targets Faurisson:
445
on typhus epidemic: 448
rejects Höss: 446
rejects Nyiszli: 446
response to: 445
Preysing, Konrad Count von:
382, 387
Prokovieva, Anna: 271
Prüfer, Kurt: 165, 454, 472,
473, 474, 475, 481
Psychological Warfare
Branch (PWB): 135
Purvis, Melvin: 42
— Q —
quarantine: 155, 176, 178,
448, 463
— R —
Raczkiewicz, Wladislas: 380
Raisko: 77, 79, 170
Rang, UStF: 370
Rasch, Otto: 267
Rassinier, Paul: 8, 29, 30, 31,
32, 38, 49, 152, 166, 292,
315, 346, 404, 406, 440
Rauff, Walther: 267
Red Cross: 9, 17, 24, 70, 71,
78, 92, 93, 99, 110, 130,
147, 155, 156, 158, 159,
176, 179, 185, 186, 187,
188, 189, 190, 191, 192,
193, 194, 195, 196, 197,
198, 199, 200, 201, 202,
206, 208, 212, 218, 228,
229, 233, 234, 235, 246,
247, 266, 284, 285, 292,
293, 297, 316, 349, 374,
385, 400, 427, 436, 437,
441, 446
criticized for inaction: 24
Reddhaser, OStF: 369
Rehling: 344
Reichel: 215, 219
Reis, Lutz: 344
Reitlinger, Gerald: 10, 28, 30,
36, 37, 41, 60, 92, 115,
118, 121, 133, 134, 136,
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
540
137, 138, 140, 142, 144,
150, 151, 152, 153, 154,
155, 156, 166, 171, 175,
176, 177, 206, 210, 220,
238, 239, 250, 264, 269,
270, 288, 289, 292, 293,
301, 314, 317, 319, 320,
328, 349
credentials: 327
use of WRB report: 133
resettlement agencies
RKFDV: 60
RuSHA: 60
VoMi: 60
Rhodes, Anthony: 379, 381,
382, 388
Ribbentrop, Joachim von: 27,
39, 50, 211, 214, 215, 217,
219, 224, 226, 283
Richter: 283, 284
Riegner, Gerhard: 90, 91, 92,
93, 94, 96, 97, 138, 428,
435
Rifkind, Simon H.: 307
Ritter: 211, 212, 213, 233
RKFDV
involved in resettlement:
60
Röchling, Hermann: 49
Roden, Edward van: 48
Roeder, Manfred: 404, 405
Rogers: 122
Rogge, O. John: 223, 224,
225, 227
Rohác, Jan: 462
Rohác, Jan: 141
Röhm purge: 57, 148
Rommel, Erwin: 58
Roncalli, Angelo: 392, 393
Roosevelt, Franklin D.: 10,
39, 43, 84, 89, 90, 91, 94,
97, 109, 121, 125, 203,
208, 224, 302, 303, 379,
386, 434, 435
Roques, Henri: 333, 341, 344
Rosenberg, Alfred: 108, 237,
263, 264, 269, 291, 385
Rosenberg, Walter: 138, 139,
141, 461, 462, 464, 466
Rosenfeld, A. H.: 47, 48
Rosenman, Samuel: 43
Rosenthal, Walter: see
Rosin, Arnost: 141, 461, 462
Rothe, Wolf Dieter: 32, 288
Rothfels, Hans: 439
RSHA
construction approval for
Auschwitz: 449
Rudolf, Germar: 445
Ruppin, Arthur: 32, 35, 206
RuSHA
involved in resettlement:
60
— S —
Sachs: 226
Safran, Alexandru: 198
Sales, Raoul de Roussy de:
105, 106
Sapieha, Adam: 388
Sassen: 251, 252
sauna: 173
Saurer: 267
Scattolini, Virgilio: 383
Scavizzi, Pirro: 383, 388,
389, 390, 391
Schaaf, OStF: 369
Scharkowsky, Herbert: 344
Schellenberg, Walter: 57, 58
Schilling, Dr.: 214
Schkopau: 76, 87
Schlaeger: 345
Schmidt: 214
Schmidt, Helmut: 324
Schmidt, Paul Otto: 261
Schmidt-Leichner, Dr.: 226
Schnabel, Dr.: 369, 372
Schneider: 169
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim: 407
Schuette, Oswald F.: 99
Schulte, Eduard: 11
Schulz, Dorothea: 344
Schuschnigg: 346, 356
Schwartz, Joseph J.: 428
Schwarz: 160
SD, Sicherheitsdienst: 57, 58,
117, 118, 134, 146, 218,
247, 249, 266, 339, 340,
358, 364
Seaver, Richard: 166
Sereny, Gitta: 414, 415, 416,
425, 441, 444
Sforza, Count: 122
Shirer, William L.: 127
Siemens: 79
Silberschein, Abraham: 138,
428
Simpson, Gordon: 48
six million: 19, 20, 31, 38,
59, 324, 325, 327, 330,
399, 400, 407, 410, 436
six million figure: 319
six million figure, origin of:
113, 117, 118, 126, 246,
252
Smith, Howard K.: 105
soap, of human fat: 67, 92,
94, 126, 141, 327
Sobibor: 62
Soblen, R. A.: 323, 324
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.:
267, 329
Sommer, HStF: 368
Sonderbehandlung (special
treatment): 131, 158, 160,
161, 162, 163, 268, 269
Sonderkommando: 273
Soos, G.: 136, 141
Sorceresse: 257
Specter, Arlen: 14
Speer, Albert: 169, 211, 245,
246, 248
Spielberg, Steven: 14
Spiktor, Prof.: 316
Springer, Axel: 407
Squire, Paul C.: 90, 93
Stäglich, Wilhelm: 8, 31,
170, 181, 182, 209, 210,
323, 404, 405, 408
Stahlecker, Franz W.: 267,
268
Stahmer, Otto: 229
Stalin, Josef: 271, 302
Stalin, jr.: 346
Stalingrad: 162
Standard Oil: 81, 82, 83, 84,
87, 168
Stangl, Franz: 414, 415, 425,
442
steam baths: 123, 127, 151,
172, 173
Steengracht, Gustav: 213,
214, 217, 218, 234, 294,
295, 296
Steiner, Frank: 48
stench around Auschwitz:
Index
541
147, 168, 169, 170, 171,
184, 257, 271
Steuchus: 419
Stewart, Douglas
MacCollum: 224, 225,
226, 231
Stimson, Henry L.: 43, 97, 99
Stout, Rex: 104
Straub: 345
Strauch, R. R.: 268
Streckenbach, Bruno: 267
Streicher, Julius: 258
Strempel, Herbert von: 225
Stresse, OStF: 369
Struma: 197
Stumm, Baron von: 112, 128
Suhl, Yuri: 139, 141
synthetic rubber, Buna: 76,
77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85,
86, 87, 88, 128, 133, 148,
176, 463
Szeptyczkyi, André: 393
Sztojay, Doeme: 204
— T —
Tabeau, Jerzy: 462
Taft, Robert A.: 27
Talmud: 137, 298, 325, 326,
327
scatalogical fantasies: 465
Tardini, Domenico: 387
Tarnow: 100
Taylor, A.J.P: 329
Taylor, Myron: 379, 380
Taylor, Telford: 49, 50, 51,
52, 53, 54, 55, 231, 243
Terezin: see Theresienstadt
Tesch and Stabenow: 153,
472
Tesch, Bruno: 153
Theresienstadt: 64, 65, 103,
109, 110, 137, 155, 156,
157, 162, 166, 175, 187,
188, 201, 204, 205, 285,
287, 288, 296, 340, 349,
373, 431, 437
Jews sent to Auschwitz:
285
Jews transported to
Auschwitz: 137
Thompson, Dorothy: 105
Thomsen, Hans: 225
Thon, Harry W.: 48
Tiso, Dr.: 281
Tiso, Joseph: 190
Topf & Sons: 164, 165, 454,
455, 471, 472, 473, 474,
475, 476, 478, 479, 481,
482
Trajan: 325
Trampedach: 269
Treaty of Versailles: 34, 56
Treblinka: 122, 127
trial documents
011-L: 141
022-L: 136
2171-PS: 452
2738-PS: 117
NG-2586: 277
NG-4669: 282
NO-1247: 296
NO-1624: 296
NO-4473: 171, 172, 173
NO-5193: 162, 292
Truman, Harry S.: 43, 83,
312
Tuka, Voitsch: 281, 295
typhus: 23, 61, 62, 66, 73, 74,
80, 88, 133, 151, 176, 177,
180, 380, 382, 401, 447,
448, 449, 451, 467, 469,
474, 478
treatment by Pressac: 447
— U —
U.S. Congress: 13, 83, 84,
118, 223, 304, 310
U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum: 13
Ullmann, William L.: 98
UNRRA: 97, 301, 303, 304,
305, 306, 307, 308, 312,
316
US War Crimes Branch: 45,
53, 54, 55, 443
Utley, Freda: 329
Utting & Rogers: 171
— V —
Vaillant-Couturier, Marie
Claude: 148
Valla, Lorenzo: 418, 419,
420, 421, 422
Valpertz: 345
Vandenberg, Arthur: 310
Vatican: 8, 9, 91, 92, 93, 95,
141, 218, 339, 343, 377,
378, 379, 380, 381, 382,
383, 385, 386, 387, 388,
389, 390, 391, 392, 393,
394, 395, 396, 397, 400,
419, 436, 446
criticized for inaction: 24
false claims about
Constantine: 24
Veale, Frederick J. P.: 103,
329
Veesenmayer, Edmund: 211,
212, 213, 214, 215, 216,
217, 218, 232, 233
Vergasung: 171, 172, 455,
458, 459, 460
Vergasungskeller: 171, 172,
173, 320, 454, 455, 456,
457, 458, 460, 461, 481,
482, 483, 484, 485, 486
Hilberg reference: 456
Versailles: 378
Vichy: 110, 408
Vliet, John H. van: 230
Vogler, HStF: 369
Volkenrath: 374
VoMi
involved in resettlement:
60
von Fritsch: 57
von Richthofen, Manfred:
246
von Thadden, Eberhard: 211,
212, 213, 214, 215, 219,
220, 226, 231, 235, 295
Vrba, Rudolf: 138, 139, 140,
141, 208, 210, 442, 462,
463, 464, 465, 466
distorted statements: 466
obviously lying: 464
— W —
Waagenaar, Sam: 379, 388
Wagner, Horst: 212, 213,
214, 215, 217, 219, 220,
231, 235, 277
Wagner, HStF: 359
Walendy, Udo: 405
Wallace, Henry: 227
Wallenberg, Raoul: 134
Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
542
Walsh, Major: 136
Wannsee Conference: 277,
286, 288, 289
Wannsee Protocol: 286
War Refugee Board: 97, 98,
99, 134, 135, 136, 149,
158, 203, 213, 303, 304,
434, 461
War Refugee Board Report:
99, 100, 129, 130, 132,
133, 135, 136, 137, 138,
139, 140, 141, 142, 144,
148, 151, 155, 156, 166,
167, 168, 174, 176, 177,
205, 285, 354, 434, 461,
462, 463, 464, 465, 466,
467
article by Conway: 462
Pressac treatment: 462
use by Reitlinger: 133
Warsaw ghetto: 120, 393,
431
epidemics: 146
Washington, George: 418
Waterloo, Battle of: 24
Webster: 208
Wehr, Otto: 345
Weinbacher, Karl: 153
Weinemann, Erwin: 201
Weir, John M.: 42, 53
Weissmandel, Michael Dov
Ber: 137, 139, 141, 327,
462
Weizmann, Chaim: 115, 116,
306, 428, 432, 434
Weizsäcker, Ernst von: 41,
226, 279, 281
Welles, Sumner: 90, 91, 92,
94, 97, 110, 111
Wennerstrum, Charles F.: 50,
51, 52
Wesolowski, Jerzy: 462
Wetzel, Dr.: 237, 238, 268
Wetzler, Alfred: 138, 139,
140, 141, 461, 462, 463,
465, 466
Wheeler, Burton K.: 224
Whipp, C. W.: 106
White, Harry Dexter: 98,
135, 306
Wickert: 70, 72
Wiernik, Jankiel: 442
Wiesel, Elie: 429, 430
Wiesenthal, Simon: 410
Wilkie, Wendell: 115
Wille, USF: 370
Wilson, Colin: 32, 405
Winkelmann, Otto: 221
Winter, Dr.: 339
Wirth, Christian: 239, 336,
337, 338
Wise, Stephen S.: 68, 90, 91,
92, 94, 96, 97, 99, 109,
112, 113, 114, 306, 309,
327, 383, 428
Wisliceny, Dieter: 210
Wissberg: 212, 219
witchcraft: 27, 325
witchcraft trials: 9, 256, 257,
260
Witnesses
unreliable: 446
Wochner: 375
Wolfe, Prof.: 410
Wolff, Jeanette: 296, 443
Wolff, Karl: 438
World Jewish Congress: 11,
89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96,
98, 108, 109, 110, 112,
113, 114, 115, 117, 120,
123, 126, 135, 138, 205,
298, 303, 317, 390, 428,
431, 432, 435, 438
World War I: 34, 49, 56, 67,
75, 77, 84, 92, 95, 129,
137, 171, 180, 246, 293,
311, 317, 403, 455, 469,
483
WVHA
construction at Auschwitz:
449
— X —
xe: 179, 365
— Y —
Yad Vashem: 230, 322
Yadin, Yigael: 326
Yalta conference: 43, 302
Yemelyanov: 271
Yiddish Scientific Institute:
269, 270
Yom Kippur War: 331
— Z —
Ziereis, Franz: 70, 355
Zionism: 305, 310, 311, 330,
421, 428
Zündel, Ernst: 464
Zyklon B: 11, 23, 25, 42,
131, 146, 150, 151, 152,
153, 154, 155, 156, 164,
168, 173, 183, 234, 235,
256, 320, 328, 345, 346,
401, 422, 423, 438, 446,
469, 470, 471, 472, 473,
474, 475, 478, 485