A KGB novelist: Gerald Fleming
Gerald Fleming, emeritus reader in German, University of Surrey (GB) is, if I may say so, a KGB novelist. He is more a novelist than an historian. He was appreciated by the Soviet authorities and the Soviet publications. Even recently, after the Soviet Union disappeared, he kept paying tribute to the outstanding talent of the Red Army in interrogating German prisoners and extracting from them the desired confessions that the American Army had not been able to obtain.
In 1984, in a review of his book: Hitler and the Final Solution, a subservient journalist had to concede:
“His sometimes flamboyant writing and the structure of his book as a kind of thriller will annoy some historians.”
The New York Times, December 28, 1984, p. c-23
According to a Jewish fellow, “His book has been favourably reviewed in Riga and Moscow publications, and he believed that Soviet authorities would grant him permission for a visit to the Red Army archives,” he said. (The Jewish Chronicle, October 12, 1984, p.4).
Hitler and the Final Solution ( University of California, 1984) is a translation from his Hitler und die Endlösung ( Munich, Limes Verlag, 1982). The book was supposed to answer David Irving’s challenge for a single document showing that Hitler knew before the end of 1943 that there was an extermination of the Jews going on. Of course, Fleming was unable to provide such a document. So he should have refrained from presenting his book as an answer to such question, and he should have avoided writing that D. Irving’s thesis ( that there was no Hitler order to liquidate the European Jews) amounted to “eine Fiktion” (p.37, footnote 56).
It was a nonsense to write a book about the existence of a document that could not be found and shown. But Fleming thought he could bring us another document, perhaps as sensational, a document proving that there was an extermination program of the Jews by the Nazis. This is how he dared to publish A Resettlement Action Report, now nearly forgotten but revealed at that time — 1982 — as an extraordinary discovery. It was a fraud. Even a layman, not intoxicated by the Holocaust propaganda, could have seen at first glance that this so-called Report with no date and no signature was full of preposterous details about Auschwitz.
Anyone interested in the matter should read an excellent analysis written by a young Canadian revisionist, Brian A Renk; see The Franke-Gricksch A Resettlement Action Report: Anatomy of a Fabrication, Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1991, p.261-279.)
Readers who wish to get, as quickly and as soon as possible, an idea of G. Fleming as an historian could look at some photos in his book. On one and the same page appear two photos coming from the Archiv des [Kommunist] Polnischen Justiz-ministeriums. One is supposed to show a Gaswagen to asphyxiate people and the other one two German prisoners holding Zyklon B cans as they were supposed to do when they asphyxiated inmates in Majdanek. In fact, the Gaswagen is an ordinary Magirus truck with nothing suspicious about it and the prisoners ( obviously afraid) are holding Zyklon B cans which were used for disinfestation.
In 1993, the media trumpeted all over the world that Fleming had discovered in the Soviet files the proof that execution gas chambers had been built and used in Auschwitz. He wrote a long and sensational article under the title Engineers of Death ( See The New York Times, July 18, 1993, p. E19; see also Protokolle des Todes, Der Spiegel, 40/1993 [4 October 1993], pp. 151, 156, 158, 160, 162).
In fact, Fleming had not found any such document but only minutes of the Soviet military police interrogation of four German engineers who had, during the war, participated in the building of Auschwitz-Birkenau crematories for Topf and Shne company and who, after the war, were still working in the same company in Erfurt.
The American army had interrogated these engineers and had released them. When Erfurt was handed over to the Soviet Army, the Soviets arrested the engineers, questioned them and.got the confessions they expected.
The most important of those engineers were Fritz Sander and Kurt Prüfer. The first died from a heart attack right at the beginning of his interrogation. The second died from a cerebral haemorrhage in 1952; we have a photo of K. Prüfer when he was a free man and a photo of the same when he was in the Soviets' hands; the difference speaks volumes and I would say that K. Prüfer’s face photographed by the Soviets is terrifying (See: Der Spiegel, p. 160).
The confessions were extremely vague and in the style of; I heard I was told I saw from the outside (Ja, ich sah die Gaskammer — von aussen) (Der Spiegel, same page). And it happens that the very rare precise responses do not fit with the details of the story as given today, nor with what we can see today in Auschwitz. For instance, one of the confessed said: In der Decke (of the Krema II “gas chamber") waren quadratische Öffnungen (25 by 25 zentimeter) (Der Spiegel p.162. The trouble is that even today you can see that not one square opening exists in the ceiling. [This fact gave rise to Faurisson’s now famous quip: No Holes, no Holocaust!. Ed.]
In 1994, G. Fleming was the author with the collaboration of architect Robert Jan van Pelt of the film [Auschwitz] Blueprints of Genocide. (BBC, May 9, 1994). The climax in this film was reached with a document introduced by the following words:
“It says very clearly, You will be able to kill and you will be able to burn simultaneously in this building.” (Crematorium II).
But, first, in the film the document is surreptitiously shown and in such a way that nobody can see the German words. Second, the document in fact does not say anything of that kind. It is a simple Aktenvermerk of January 29,1943, aboutelectricity supply. It has not even the very common Secret stamp. In reality, it mentions Verbrennung mit gleichzeitiger Sonderbehandlung, which means cremation with simultaneous special treatment. Note that the swindlers translated special treatment into to kill and that they went so far as to change the word order putting first to kill and afterwards to burn. The German text, even with such a translation, could never have designated a criminal activity consisting first in gassing people and, afterwards, burning the bodies of the gassed people. The word “Sonderbehandlung” could mean, by its place in the phrase, anything except to kill because this special treatment was simultaneous with burning.
It is obvious that, if Fleming and Van Pelt had discovered any German text which says very clearly what the Holocaust historians had been trying to find for such a long time, that very text would have been published, shown and commented on in every newspaper, film, book and Holocaust Museum. R. Hilberg, E. Wiesel, S. Wiesenthal, S. Klarsfeld would have celebrated the discovery of the century. Instead, they did not say one word.
At the end of that film, G. Fleming totally misquoted what the German engineers had confessed to the Soviets. This film contains nothing on the technique and operation of the Nazi gas chambers and there is nothing about the alleged quadratische Offnungen in the roof of the Krema II gas chamber.
On January 28, 1995, Jan Taylor announced in The Sydney Morning Herald that Van Pelt was due to construct a computer model of the [Auschwitz] camp. We are still waiting for the result.
I, for one, would be interested to see if he dares to show the four special openings in the roof of that gas chamber through which, we are told, the Zyklon B pellets were dumped.
People interested in the transcript of [Auschwitz] Blueprints of Genocide have the choice between the British and the American versions. The British version gives a text adapted from the programme transmitted on 9 May 1994; the German document appears on p.20 with a deceitful comment in English (1). The American transcript is more faithful although we are told: This transcript has not been proof-read against the videotape. (2)
Therefore, G. Fleming is in fact not only a KGB novelist; he is a fraud.
Footnotes
- Horizon, Blueprints of Genocide, Text adapted from the programme transmitted 9 May 1994, 26 pages + 6 pages. See Mariette Jackson, Acting Publishing Manager, Broadcasting Support Service, 252 Western Avenue, London W3 6XJ UK.
- Nova Show # 2204. Air Date: February 7, 1995, 8 pages (2 columns), WGBH Educational Foundation. Journal Graphics, Box 2222, South Easton, MA 02375 (USA).