Notes
The phrase is Olga Wormser-Migot’s (Le Système concentrationnaire nazi, P.U.F. thesis, 1968; page 541.
Keine Vergasung in Dachau, by Dr. Martin Broszat, director of the Munich Institute of Contemporary History (Die Zeit, 19 August 1960, page 16).
On the one hand, photos in the Auschwitz museum (neg. 519 and 6228); on the other, Nuremberg documents (NI-9098 and NI-9912).
I.C.R.C., Documents on the activity of the International Committee of the Red Cross on behalf of civilian prisoners in the concentration camps in Germany (1939-1945), second edition, Geneva, June 1946, series II, No. 1, reproducing in part document No. 9925 (I have a copy of the entire confidential text): Visite au commandant du camp d'Auschwitz d'un délégué du C.I.C.-R. (September 1944), pages 91 and 92. Three words have been cleverly cut from a key sentence of this document in Marc Hillel’s book, Les Archives de l'espoir, Fayard 1977, page 257, and the most important sentence ("The prisoners themselves did not speak of them") has been cut.
Among the twenty some authors who deny the existence of the “gas chambers,” I mention Paul Rassinier, a former deportee (Le Véritable Procès Eichmann, les Sept Couleurs, 1962, distributed by M. Bardèche, 5, rue Rataud, Paris 5e), and, above all, the American A. R. Butz for his remarkable book on The Hoax of the 20th Century, 1976, distributed by Historical Review Press, 23 Ellerker Gardens, Richmond, Surrey, TWIO 6AA (Great Britain).70
Represented to the tourists as being the original.
Taking my inspiration from what Arthur R. Butz had said in the matter, I wrote apropos of Vergasungskeller that the term designated “the basement room where the “gas” mixture is made that supplies the crematory furnace.” For my new hypothesis — in the absence of detailed plans of the crematories — see below, page 000.71
In “Zyklon B,” the “B” is not the first letter of “Blausäure;” there were various kinds of Zyklon A, B, (C,D).
Auschwitz vu par les S.S., Oswiecim Museum edition, 1974, page 238, n. 85.
A soccer field “was located close to the crematories of Birkenau” (Tadeus Borowski, according to H. Langbein, Hommes et femmes à Auschwitz. Fayard; 1975; page 129).
French regulations concerning the use of hydrocyanic acid are just as draconian as the German: see Ministry of Public Health ordinance 50-1290 of 18 October 1950.
Kommandant in Auschwitz. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt; 1958; pages 126 and 166.
Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Amsterdam: University Press; v. XIII (1975), pages 134f.
Public credulity is easily satisfied: let them show us a door equipped with a peephole and swinging bolts (espagnolette system) and presto … a “gas chamber.”
These physical impossibilities are illustrated by the following passage from a technical manual of the French army on The Gas Mask (page 55):
One should likewise remember that a man can lose consciousness from the absorption of gaseous hydrocyanic acid through the skin; a concentration of 2% hydrocyanic acid is sufficient to cause one to lose consciousness within ten minutes. Consequently, even when wearing a gas mask, exposure to concentrations of gaseous hydrocyanic acid equal to or higher than 1% in volume may be tolerated only in case of necessity and for a duration of no longer than 1 minute. In general, premises where the gas is to be found should be aired, and the concentration of gaseous hydrocyanic acid thereby reduced to a very low percentage, before anyone enters, even wearing a gas mask. (The Gas Mask, Technical Manual no. 3-205, translated from U.S. manual TM 3-205 (1-2), War Department, Washington, 22 September 1943, published under the direction of the Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943, 154 pages)
Every army in the world has gas chambers (in German, Gasraum or Gaskammer); these are rather rudimentary buildings where young recruits are trained in the wearing of gas masks; the gases used do not by any means have the toxicity of hydrocyanic acid and are easily dispersed by natural ventilation. There could be no question of employing hydrocyanic acid in such an arrangement where, moreover, airtightness is quite relative.
Serge Thion, Vérité historique our vérité politique? La Vieille Taupe; 1980; pages 301-309.
Kommandant in Auschwitz/Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen (Commandant of Auschwitz/Autobiographical Notes) by Rudolf Höss, introduction and commentary by Martin Broszat. Stuttgart: Verlagsanstalt; 1958. It is on page 166 of this book, in the part of the confession which Höss had drawn up in November 1946, where the following passage is found: Eine halbe Stunde nach den Einwurf des Gasses wurde die Tür geöffnet und die Entlüftungsanlage eingeschaltet. Es wurde sofort mit dem Herausziehen der Leichen begonnen. ("Half an hour after the gas had been thrown in, the door was opened and the ventilating apparatus switched on. The removal of the bodies was begun immediately.") And it is on page 126 of the book, in the excerpt dated February 1947, that it is said that the squad charged with the responsibility of removing the corpses from the “gas chambers” did this labor mit einer stumpfer Gleichmütigkeit ("with a gloomy indifference") as if it were a matter of some kind of everyday chore (als wenn es irgend etwas Alltägliches wäre). Höss is supposed to have added: Beim Leichenschleppen assen sie oder rauchten. That is to say: “While pulling out [the cadavers] they used to eat or smoke.” For Höss, moreover, they would not cease eating. They would eat when pulling the cadavers out of the chambers, when extracting the gold teeth, when cutting off the hair, when dragging them toward the furnace or the pits. Höss even adds this outrageous remark: “At the pits they used to keep the fire going. They would pour accumulated molten fat over the new cadavers, and they would poke around in the mountains of burning bodies to create a flue.”
Höss does not reveal to us how the fat managed not to be burnt itself (corpses cannot be spit-roasted as if they were chickens, but they are reduced to bones and ashes in heaps piled up on the ground or in the form of pyres). He does not tell us how the men could approach these formidable pyres to collect the streams of fat (!), neither does he tell us how they could get close enough to poke around in these mountains of bodies to effect a flue. The absurdity of this “pouring accumulated fat” (das Übergiessen des angesammelten Fettes) is moreover so evident that the French translator of the book presented by Martin Broszat has quite discreetly omitted to translate these five German words (Rudolf Höss, Le Commandant d'Auschwitz parle (The Commandant of Auschwitz Speaks), translated from the German to the French by Constantin de Grunwald, Paris, Julliard, 1959, printing of 15 March 1970, page 212. Filip Müller has written Sonderbehandlung, translated as Eyewitness Auschwitz/Three Years in the Gas Chambers. New York: Stein & Day; 1979; XIV-180 pages. From page 132 to 142 he accumulates the most astonishing stories about boiling human fat running like water, collecting pans for the fat, sizzling fat scooped out with buckets on a long curved rod and poured all over the pit, the SS guard Moll flinging live babies into the boiling human fat, and so on.
For the various trials generally called “Nuremberg Trials” the Americans have perused many technical documents concerning Zyklon B. If they had read these documents carefully, and if they had — as I did myself — continued further research in certain technical tomes in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., they would have become aware of the incredible number of technical impossibilities contained in the German “gas chamber” evidence. One day I will devote a study to four specific documents which, in my opinion, completely destroy the legend of the “gas chambers.” Those four documents are: first, two documents recorded by the Americans for the Nuremberg Trials, and then, two technical studies signed by Gerhard Peters; all of which one may consult at the Library of Congress. I recall Gerhard Peters was, during the war, the temporary director of the firm DEGESCH (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Schädlingsbekämpfung: German Company for Pest Control) which controlled in particular the distribution of Zyklon B. After the war, Gerhard Peters was to be brought before the courts many times by his own compatriots. He said he had never heard during the war about any homicidal use of Zyklon B.
Nuremberg documents (documents with the prefix NI, which means Nuremberg, Industrialists):
a) NI-9098, recorded only on 25 July 1947: a brochure entitled Acht Vorträge aus dem Arbeitsgebiet der DEGESCH (Eight lectures on aspects of DEGESCH’s Field of Operation) and printed in 1942 for private usage. At the end of this brochure, page 47, there appears a descriptive table on each of the eight gases distributed by the firm. At point number 7 of the description one reads for Zyklon B: Lüftbarkeitwegen starken Haftvermogens des Gases an Oberflächen erschwert und langwierig. ("Ventilation Properties: complicated and long to ventilate because the gas adheres strongly to surfaces.")
b) NI-9912, recorded only on 21 August 1947: a public notice entitled Richtlinien für die Anwendung von Blausäure (Zyklon) zur Ungeziefervertilgung (Entwesung) [Directives for the use of Prussic Acid (Zyklon) for the Destruction of Vermin (Disinfestation)]. This document is of capital importance. Better than any other it shows at what point the handling of Zyklon B can only be done by trained personnel. The time required for the product to destroy vermin ranges from 6 hours in hot times to 32 hours during cold periods. The normal duration is 16 hours. This long duration is explained undoubtedly by the composition of Zyklon B. Zyklon is prussic acid, or hydrocyanic acid, absorbed by a carrier of diatomite. The gas is released slowly because of the nature of its carrier. This slowness is such that one cannot understand how on earth the Germans could have chosen a gas such as Zyklon B in order to liquidate masses of human beings. It would have been easier for them to have utilized hydrocyanic acid in its liquid form. They had at their disposal significant quantities of this acid in the laboratories of the I. G. Farben plant at Auschwitz, where they tried to make synthetic rubber. It is from document NI-9912 that I draw the information concerning the employment of Zyklon B for the fumigation of a barracks, the duration of aeration (at least 21 hours), et cetera.
Documents of the Library of Congress. These concern two technical studies written by Gerhard Peters.Both were published in Sammlung Chemische & Chemisch-technischer Vorträge,the first in 1933 in Neue Folge, Heft 20, and the other in Neue Folge, Heft 47a in 1942, (review edited by Ferdinand Enke at Stuttgart). Here are the titles, followed by the Library of Congress reference:
a) Blausäure zur Schädlings bekämpfung (QD1, S2, n.f., hft.20, 1933), 75 pages
b) Die hochwirksamen Gase und Dämpfe in der Schädlingsbekämpfung (QD1, S2, n.f., hft. 47a, 1942), 143 pages It should be said in passing that it is admirable that this review which was published during the war in Germany should have arrived safely also during the war at the Library of Congress in Washington! The 1942 issue bears the Washington registration date of 1 April 1944!
French regulations concerning the use of hydrocyanic acid are as strict as the German. See the decree 50-1290 of 18 October 1950 from the Ministry of Public Health, Paris.
The plan which allows us to give these dimensions to the nearest centimeter is found in the State Archives of the State Museum of Oswiecim (Auschwitz). The reference number of this photo of the plan is Neg. 519. The plans of Kremas IV and V are even more interesting than those of Kremas II and III. They prove, in effect, that the three structures abusively described as “gas chambers” were in fact inoffensive premises, complete with ordinary doors and windows. The sole means for the SS to “throw in the Zyklon” into these places “from the exterior” would have been the following scenario: The SS would have had to have requested their victims — piled up in hundreds or thousands in a space of 236 m 2 — to open the windows for them to “throw in the Zyklon” after which the victims would carefully close the windows again, and abstain from smashing the window panes, until death ensued. It is perfectly easy to understand why the Polish Communist authorities are so reluctant to display these plans; they prefer to rely on the Höss “confessions” with no supporting topographical data.
These interesting remains of the crematories can be seen behind a large glass in the back room which, in the exhibition block No. 24, is devoted to the Kremas.
There details of the first execution by toxic gas were published in the Belgian Le Soir of 9 February 1974, under the rubric “50 Years Ago:” a reprint of an article from the 9 February 1924 edition of the same paper.
The summary which I give here of an execution by hydrocyanic acid is inspired by an inquiry which an American lawyer kindly conducted for me on six penitentiaries and on a firm manufacturing gas chambers. The penitentiaries are as follows: San Quentin, California; Jefferson City, Missouri; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Raleigh, North Carolina; Baltimore, Maryland; and Florence, Arizona. The firm is Eaton Metal Products Company of Denver, Colorado. It is obvious that there are variations in the method from one penitentiary to another. I have personally obtained authorization to visit one of these gas chambers, in Baltimore. The “Gas Chamber Procedure Sheet” reveals that the simple preparation of the chamber for an execution demands two days' work for two employees, occupying eight hours of work per day each. Once the chamber is ready, the operation itself goes through 47 stages. This procedure sheet comes nowhere near describing the complications of each of the 47 tasks. Let us take an example: “Empty Chamber (Body Removed).” In actuality, these words signify the following: the doctor and his two assistants must, after waiting the stipulated time, enter the room wearing gas masks, rubber aprons and rubber gloves; the doctor must tousle the hair of the dead man to expel the molecules of hydrocyanic acid which may have remained there; the two assistants must carefully wash the body with a hose; they must in particular wash the mouth and all the other apertures of the body; they must not forget to carefully wash the bend of the elbows and the bend of the knees. Just a glance at one of these small gas chambers, constructed in order to kill a single condemned man, renders ridiculous those premises of stone, wood and plaster which are represented as being former German “gas chambers.” If the American gas chambers are made exclusively of steel and glass, then it is for reasons of good sense and for reasons more specifically technical. The first reason is that the acid has a tendency to adhere to the surface and even to penetrate certain materials, so therefore it is necessary to avoid such materials. The second reason is that, when the ventilators empty the chamber of air, there is a risk of implosion, so therefore the structure has remarkably thick walls of steel and glass. The very heavy steel door can only be closed with a handwheel.
The Polish Communists themselves recognize that the tattooing had as its aim the hindering of flight, and the facilitating of identifying captured escapees. See: Contribution à l'histoire du KL-Auschwitz, Musée d'Etat d'Auschwitz, 1968, page 16 and page 99.
Louis De Jong, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, 1969, Heft 1, pages 1-16: “Die Niederlande und Auschwitz” (The Netherlands & Auschwitz). Sensitive to the delicate nature of these kinds of revelations, the director of the review, H. Rothfels, explains in a foreword the reason why he has consented to publish this study. The reason is that Louis De Jong, not being a German, could not possibly be suspected of being an apologist for National Socialism; on the contrary, as director of an official institute such as that in Amsterdam, he had given all desirable pledges of his seriousness. This preface gives some idea of the situation in which German historians find themselves. There are certain truths which they cannot utter without being suspected of being apologists for Nazism. It is also important to note that Mr. Louis De Jong is even less suspect because he is of Jewish origin.
There aerial photographs have been revealed to the general public by Dino A. Brugioni and Robert G. Poirier in a pamphlet entitled The Holocaust Revisited. Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service, Washington DC, ST 79-10001, 19 pages. The booklet is somewhat curious in that it was researched in the authors' free time, not during CIA time, and this is the reason why the authors cannot enter into any correspondence regarding the contents! The two authors offer an interesting example of blindness. They attempt at all costs to adapt the photographic reality with what they believe to have been the reality of Auschwitz, according to three Exterminationist works. There is a spectacular contradiction between the photos and the commentaries which they attach.
Regarding the great number of vicious and insulting articles, there is a study by Hermann Langbein which appeared in Le Monde Juif (The Jewish World), April/June 1975. The title is “Coup d'oeil sur la littérature néo-nazie,” ("A Glimpse at Neo-Nazi Literature"), pages 8-20. Hermann Langbein was an inmate in Auschwitz. He testified at countless trials. He holds an important position in the circles of former concentration camp inmates. One of his most recent works is entitled: Hommes et Femmes à Auschwitz (Men and Women of Auschwitz), Paris, Fayard, 1975, VIII-529 pages (Translated from Menschen in Auschwitz, Vienna, 1974.) Not one of the 30 chapters, not one of the 268 sections of this book is devoted to the “gas chambers"! Rather, one constantly sees expressions such as “selection for the gas chambers” etc. There is also a study by Georges Wellers which appeared in Le Monde Juif (op. cit.) April/June 1977. The title is “La 'Solution finale', de la question juive et la mythomanie néo-nazie” ("The “Final Solution” and Neo-Nazi Mythomania,"), pages 41-84. There is also a study by Ino Arndt and Wolfgang Scheffler in Viertelsjahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Quarterly Review for Contemporary History), which is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. The Institute’s director is currently Dr. Martin Broszat. This study was published in the issue of April 1976. The title is: “Organisierter Massenmord an Juden in NS-Vernichtungslagern” (Organized Mass-Murder of Jews in Nazi Extermination Camps), pages 105-135.
The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1979.72
Prison et Déportation (Prison and Deportation). Paris: Spes; 1947; page 77.
Broszat’s letter is reproduced in facsimile (with its English translation) in The Journal of Historical Review, May/June 1993, page 12.
The famed Simon Wiesenthal has also admitted that “there were no extermination camps on German soil” in a letter to the editor of Books and Bookmen, page 5, April 1975. Although he later wrote in a letter dated 12 May 1986 to Professor John George of Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma, that he “could never have said such a thing,” Wiesenthal reconfirmed his earlier statement in a letter to the editor published on page 14 of the European editor of Stars and Stripes dated 24 January 1993. This letter is reproduced in facsimile in The Journal for Historical Review, May/June 1993, page 10.
See the opinion expressed by the forensic pathologist as it is reported by the Exterminationist Pierre Joffroy in his book about Kurt Gerstein: L'Espion de Dieu/La Passion de Kurt Gerstein (The Spy of God/The Passion of Kurt Gerstein), Paris, Grasset, 1969, page 262.
Kommandant in Auschwitz/Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen (Commandant of Auschwitz/Autobiographical Memoirs) by Rudolf Höss, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,1958,184p; introduction and commentary by Dr. Martin Broszat. Concerning “gassing,” see pages 126 and 166. The entry of the work crew into the “gas chamber” is supposed to happen “sofort” ("immediately") as it is written on page 166.
These two extensive documents which are of great importance were apparently not used at the trials of Gerhard Peters, former director of Degesch. They were registered as documents NI-9098 and NI-9912. They irrevocably reduce to nothing the “eyewitness testimony” of Höss regarding the “gas chambers.”
Photographs Neg. 6228 and following.
Case of Wilhelm Stäglich, for example. See Stäglich in the Index Nominum of Butz’s book (op. cit.).
Die Auschwitz-Lüge (The Auschwitz Lie), #23 of Kritik (2341 Kälberhagen, Post Mohrkirch, West Germany), 1974. This booklet was followed by Der Auschwitz-Betrug/Das Echo auf die Auschwitz-Lüge (The Auschwitz Fraud/The Echo of the Auschwitz Lie.).
This absurd legend (consult an anatomist, a chemist, any kind of specialist about it) has been revived but without any great success, in the course of the Second World War. Gitta Sereny makes mention of it in her book Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder. London: Andre Deutsch; 1974; 380 pages She says in a footnote on page 141 “The universally accepted story that the corpses were used to make soap and fertilizer is finally refuted by the generally very reliable Ludwigsburg Central Authority for Investigation into Nazi Crimes.” She adds: “The authority has found after considerable research that only one experiment was made, with a few corpses from a concentration camp. When it proved impractical, the idea was apparently abandoned.” The authority she talks about is “die Zentralle Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltangen zur Aufklärung NS-Verbrechen.” It operates at Ludwigsburg under the direction of Adalbert Rückerl, a convinced Exterminationist. It would be interesting to get proof of that “only one experiment.” Most of the time, when a big lie is revealed, the liars or their sympathizers say that there was only a mistake, and they then put forward to us a little lie. I suppose that “only one experiment” could be one of these little lies.
In the Journal of Historical Review of Summer 1980, Ditlieb Felderer makes some interesting remarks about “human soap.” He says: “Immediately after the liberation of Polticeni, a Romanian town, the district Rabbi ordered all soaps to be collected which had the letters RIF written on them. With much weeping and wailing, while the Rabbi muttered his Kaddisch prayer, the soaps were then buried in the cemetary. The news report about this incident was later published in the Polish press, and was picked up in books such as F.C. Weisskopf’s Elend und Grösse unserer Tage, 1950. The letters RIF actually stand for “Reichstelle für Industrielle Fettsversorgung,” a German government outlet that oversaw the production of soap and detergent products. These letters were, however, twisted by the Exterminationists to mean 'Clean Jewish Fat' (Rein Jüdisches Fett).” The article was previously printed in Auschwitz Exit, which is obtainable from Ditlieb Felderer, Marknadsvägen 289, S-183, 34 Täby, Sweden.
If one must believe Pierre Joffroy, “bars of Jewish soap” are today found buried in the Jewish cemetary at Haifa, Israel. Pierre Joffroy, in an article about Anne Frank, stated:
these four bars of “Jewish soap” manufactured from corpses in the extermination camps and which, discovered in Germany, were wrapped in a shroud, in 1948, and piously buried according to the rites in a corner of the Haifa cemetary (Israel) (Paris-Match,No. 395, 3 November 1956, page 93.)
In 1943, representatives of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (founded in Moscow in 1942) toured the United States in order to raise political, and — above all — material aid from the USA for the USSR. The two-month trip raised more than two million dollars. Big meetings were held in many American cities. “At each of the meetings, (Solomon) Mikhoels [who was a prodigious actor] showed the public a bar of soap made out of Jewish flesh, and taken from a concentration camp.” ("A chacun des réunions qui se tenaient, Mikhoels [qui était un prodigieux acteur] montrait au public une savonette faite avec de la chair humaine juive et ramenée d'un camp de concentration"; Gèrard Israel, Jid/Les Juifs en URSS. Paris: Editions Spéciale (Jean-Claude Lattès); 1971; page 203). I am grateful to Mark Weber for presenting me with this information.
Study this U.S. Army photo which has been spread all over the world and which Arthur R. Butz reproduces on page 191 of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Institute for Historical Review, 1979.
"… fur die Degesch vom 20. Juni 1922 ab vom Reichspatentamt patentiert.” (Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Amsterdam, University Press, vol. XIII (1975), page 137).
"Un gaz contre les renards” ("A gas against foxes"), Le Quotidien de Paris, 2 September 1977. See also a review devoted to hunting: Le Saint-Hubert, April 1979, pages 180-181, “Methodes de réduction de la population vulpine” ("Methods of reducing the fox population").
This expression seems to have been created by the Swedish research group based at Täby and headed by Ditlieb Felderer. See note 1 on their work and on the lie of Auschwitz entitled Auschwitz Exit.
Among deceptive titles one can cite that of Pierre-Serge Choumoff, Les Chambres à gaz de Mauthausen (The Gas Chambers of Mauthausen), Amiciale des Déportés et Familles de Disparus du Camp de Concentration de Mauthausen (Association of Mauthausen Victims), 31 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris 5e, 1971, 96 pages
Georges Wellers, “La 'Solution Finale' de la Question Juive et la mythomanie néo-nazie” (The 'Final Solution' of the Jewish Question and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania), Le Monde Juif, No. 86 April-June 1977, pp 41-84. Translated into English, this article carries the title “Reply to the Neo-Nazi Falsification of Historical Facts Concerning the Holocaust"; it is reproduced on pages 105-162 of a work published in 1978 by the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation of New York, with the title: The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania, XVIII-215 pages
The camp at Auschwitz had three successive commandants: Rudolf Höss, Arthur Liebehenschel, and Richard Baer. The first had been interrogated by the British, and then by the Poles, who executed him. The second was executed by the Poles. The third died suddenly in prison when the famous “Auschwitz Trial” at Frankfurt (1963-65) was in preparation. On their own, the Poles seem to have interrogated and passed judgment on 617 persons (Nazis or allies of the Nazis) in connection with the question of Auschwitz. This figure is given by Hermann Langbein on page 993 of Der Auschwitz Prozess (The Auschwitz Trial). Vienna: Europa Verlag; 1965; 2 vols. On their part, the French, the British, and the Americans have often interrogated or passed judgment on former Auschwitz guards. It is surprising that there has emanated such a derisory amount of information on the pretended massacres in “gas chambers” from such an enormous number of interrogations and trials. To my knowledge there has been no mention of “admissions,” or even any kind of information, on the part of Liebehenschel or Baer on the “gas chambers.” The true “Gas Chambers Trial” of Auschwitz has been — one can never repeat it enough — that of architects Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl at Vienna (Austria) in 1972. This trial, launched by Simon Wiesenthal and presented as a sensational affair, very quickly became a fiasco for the prosecution. The two men having been charged with having “constructed and repaired gas chambers and crematorium ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau,” revealed, I suppose, as established technicians, that even if they had constructed or had had constructed the crematoria ovens, they most certainly had not designed plans of “gas chambers” but only for the morgues which flanked these crematoria ovens. The two architects were acquitted.
Article 19 of the Statute of the International Military Tribunal states: “The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence…” Article 21 states: “The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof…”
Prison et déportation, Paris, Spes, 1947, page 77.
The alleged “gas chamber” of Dachau today bears the following inscription worded in five languages (German, English, French, Italian, Russian):
gaskammer getarnt als “Brausbad” — war nicht in Betrieb
gas chamber disguised as a “shower room” — never used
chambre à gaz “chambre de douche” camouflée — ne fut jamais utilisée.
I have asked Frau Barbara Distel, director of the Dachau Museum, and Dr. Guerisse, president of the International Committee of Dachau, headquartered at Brussels, what induced them to describe an incomplete premises as a “gas chamber;” because one wonders how it is possible to know that an unfinished building is due to become, once achieved, something no one has seen in his life! Equally, I wished to ascertain if expert technical, scientific, forensic, or legal opinions were consulted about these premises. On this second point the reply was in the negative. On the first point I received no reply at all. Does not every visitor to Dachau have the right to clarification there and then? Has not every German the right to demand proof from his accusers, in support of their terrible accusation? For it is indeed a terrible accusation to suggest that such and such a person had constructed an abominable instrument with the intention of killing human beings in a sort of human abattoir.
See “Réflexions sur l'étude de la déportation” (Reflections on the Study of Deportation) by Germaine Tillion, in the special issue entitled “Le Système concentrationnaire allemand 1940-1944” ("The German Concentration Camp System 1940-1944") of the Revue d'Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale (Review of WW II History) of July 1954. Consult pages 16, 17, 20, 21, 24, 26, and especially note 2 of page 17, note 2 of page 18 and note 1 of page 20.
Document of Nuremberg “Paris/Storey” PS-3870: declaration under oath of policeman Hans Marsalek. According to the policeman, the conditions under which Ziereis had admitted to the existence and functioning of a “gas chamber” at Mauthausen ought to be reflected on. The “interrogation” was in fact a pure and simple torture session which lasted from six to eight hours until Ziereis gave up the ghost. The policeman himself stated that he had conducted the interrogation of the commandant for six to eight hours during the night of 22/23 May 1945. He said that Franz Ziereis was gravely wounded: that three bullets had passed through his body and that he knew he was going to die. Today in the museum of Mauthausen one can see a photo taken by flash and which shows Ziereis still alive, while seated near him in an internee listens to his words. There are other people in the photo at the bedside of the dying man: possibly General Seibel, commander of the 11th American armored division, and the former doctor of the internees, the deportee Dr. Koscinski, were there, as the policeman affirmed. That a divisional general and a professional doctor have admitted to participating in this torture session reflects greatly on the mentality of those who prized having a “Nazi” in their hands; a “Nazi” is not a man, but a sort of malevolent beast. One can be sure that all the commandants of the camps were thus regarded. Therefore, the “admissions” which they made or are said to have made are not astonishing. Most of these “admissions” are “Depositions Under Oath” or “Statements” written in English, signed by an Allied officer, who adds: “I hereby certify that I have accurately translated this deposition from English into German to the said deponent ____ [here the name of the German interrogatee is inserted] and that he [the German] fully agrees with the contents thereof.” See Document D-746(a), D-746(b), etc.
"Keine Vergasung in Dachau” (No Gassing in Dachau), letter by Dr. Martin Broszat, Die Zeit, 19 August 1960, page 16 (in the German edition). In the USA edition: 26 August 1960, page 14.
See the words, which I quote above, in my note See Kommandant in Auschwitz/Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen (Commandant of Auschwitz/Autobiographical Notes) by Rudolf Höss, introduction and commentary by Martin Broszat. Stuttgart: Verlagsanstalt; 1958. It is on page 166 of this book, in the part of the confession which Höss had drawn up in November 1946, where the following passage is found: Eine halbe Stunde nach den Einwurf des Gasses wurde die Tür geöffnet und die Entlüftungsanlage eingeschaltet. Es wurde sofort mit dem Herausziehen der Leichen begonnen. ("Half an hour after the gas had been thrown in, the door was opened and the ventilating apparatus switched on. The removal of the bodies was begun immediately.") And it is on page 126 of the book, in the excerpt dated February 1947, that it is said that the squad charged with the responsibility of removing the corpses from the “gas chambers” did this labor mit einer stumpfer Gleichmütigkeit ("with a gloomy indifference") as if it were a matter of some kind of everyday chore (als wenn es irgend etwas Alltägliches wäre). Höss is supposed to have added: Beim Leichenschleppen assen sie oder rauchten. That is to say: “While pulling out [the cadavers] they used to eat or smoke.” For Höss, moreover, they would not cease eating. They would eat when pulling the cadavers out of the chambers, when extracting the gold teeth, when cutting off the hair, when dragging them toward the furnace or the pits. Höss even adds this outrageous remark: “At the pits they used to keep the fire going. They would pour accumulated molten fat over the new cadavers, and they would poke around in the mountains of burning bodies to create a flue.". Dr. Martin Broszat explains in note 1 of page 167 of his book why he does not give the continuation of Höss' text. He says that, in this sequence, Höss delivers to us “completely confused data” (völlig abwegige Angaben), that he passes off information “which definitely could not be taken seriously” (müssen diese Mitteilungen als gänzlich unzuverlässig gelten). Dr. Broszat gives an example of one of these aberrations, but he is careful to chose one of the least distorted of them. Fifteen years after the publication of his book, the Poles, in their turn, gave what is convenient to call the text of Höss’s confessions. And it is here that, for once, one perceives that the “aberrations” were multiplied under the pen name of Höss. In order to get some idea, one must refer to the following work: KL-Auschwitz in den Augen der SS (Auschwitz Concentration Camp As Seen By the SS), Auschwitz Museum, Cracow, 1973, pages 135-136. Broszat has been disqualified in the eyes of all serious historians by his publishing the “Höss Confessions.” With just a little attention and honesty, Broszat ought to have concluded that this “confession” is a mass of absurdities and aberrations, which can only have been dictated to Höss by his Polish Stalinist jailers.
The expression employed by Broszat is “above all” (vor allem). This rather embarrassed expression seems to me to have been used because Broszat did not wish to make pronouncements on the authenticity or otherwise of the “gas chambers” which are neither in Poland nor in the Old Reich, i.e. Mauthausen in Austria, and Struthof in Alsace.
In an all too familiar fashion regarding this subject matter, Broszat looked perhaps as if he had attempted to back-pedal on his original courageous statement of 19 August 1960. He has written, or has had written by his Institute staff, letters or articles where he appears on the surface to retract his Die Zeit statement. In reality, in studying the texts closely, one get the impression that Broszat is merely paying lip service to any retraction, and is still sticking to what he wrote in 1960. See the following texts:
a) Reply of Frau Dr. S. Noller on 26 October 1967 to Paris-Match journalist Pierre Joffroy. This reply is published in part in the book by Pierre-Serge Choumoff (pages 73-74) which I mentioned in note See Among deceptive titles one can cite that of Pierre-Serge Choumoff, Les Chambres à gaz de Mauthausen (The Gas Chambers of Mauthausen), Amiciale des Déportés et Familles de Disparus du Camp de Concentration de Mauthausen (Association of Mauthausen Victims), 31 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris 5e, 1971, 96 pages.
b) Preface by Dr. Broszat to a study by Frau Dr. Ino Arndt and Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler which appeared in Vierteljahresheft für Zeitgeschichte April 1976 and entitled: “Oganisierter Massenmord an Juden in NS-Vernichtungslagern” ("Organized Mass Murder of Jews in Nazi Extermination Camps"), pages 105-135; preface: pages 105-112).
c) Reply of Frau Dr. Into Arndt on 25 November 1977 to Professor Egon G. L. Rieder. This reply was published by MUT-Verlag, January 1979. (Address: 3901 Asendorf, West Germany.)
On Treblinka, as well as on Belzec, Sobibor, and Chelmno, see NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse (Nazi Extermination Camps As Reflected in German Courts), by Adalbert Rückerl, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, original edition 1977. Adalbert Rückerl and the Exterminationists are not lucky with Treblinka. They say that in Treblinka there were “gas chambers.” Many books give some details about them. As a matter of fact, all those people forget the Nuremberg document PS-3311: according to this “certificate” of 5 December 1945, the mass killing was done by suffocation in steam-filled chambers!
Le Système concentrationnaire nazi (1933-1945) (The Nazi Concentration Camp System (1933-1945),thesis. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; 1968; pages 541-544.
O. Wormser-Migot says also that Auschwitz I was “without gas chamber” (page 157 ). In her typewritten “complementary thesis,” Essai sur les sources de l'histoire concentrationnaire nazie/ 1933-1945, she clearly states: “We have attempted in our 'principal thesis' to demonstrate that there were no gas chambers at Mauthausen” (page 99, n. 2 ).
Höss had been tortured. It is from the Poles themselves that we know this. They authorized him to say this in his confession. There might have been several motives for this authorization on the part of instructing judge Jan Sehn. As Höss indulged in praises of the kindness of his jailers at Cracow, it may well be that Sehn wished to give us the idea that, if Höss had previously come out with absurdities because of his torture by the British, then on this occasion, in the Cracow prison, he was expressing himself with complete freedom. In his “ingenuousness” in admitting everything they wanted to his British torturers, Höss had gone so far as to speak of the “extermination camp” of “Wolzek near to Lublin.” However, Wolzek never existed, neither near Lublin nor anywhere in Poland. Höss, however, cited this mythical camp in document NO-1210 of 14 March 1946, then in document PS-3868 of 5 April 1946, and also in document NI-034 of 20 May 1946. Out of terrible embarrassment, an attempt has been made to pretend that Belzec is this “Wolzec camp,” which is in itself absurd, because in document PS-3868 Höss precisely states that there were “three other extermination camps in the General Government: Belzek (sic), Treblinka, and Wolzek” (drei weitere Vernichtungslager im General-gouvernment: Belzek, Treblinka, und Wolzek). This absurd solution ("Wolzek is Belzec"!) has been imposed by the “Bible” of the Exterminationists' research: The Holocaust/The Nuremberg Evidence (Part One: Documents) edited by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and at the YIVO institute in New York, 1976 (see page 544). A solution even less acceptable has been proposed by the attorney Adalbert Rückerl in note 5 of pages 37/38 of the work which I quote above in my note See On Treblinka, as well as on Belzec, Sobibor, and Chelmno, see NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse (Nazi Extermination Camps As Reflected in German Courts), by Adalbert Rückerl, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, original edition 1977. Adalbert Rückerl and the Exterminationists are not lucky with Treblinka. They say that in Treblinka there were “gas chambers.” Many books give some details about them. As a matter of fact, all those people forget the Nuremberg document PS-3311: according to this “certificate” of 5 December 1945, the mass killing was done by suffocation in steam-filled chambers! . This lawyer has no qualms about saying that Wolzek is in reality Sobibor! It would be endless work here to quote all the aberrations contained in the papers that the British military justice made Höss sign. To take only one other example here, Höss said that there was situated at Treblinka an installation for gassing by “gasmobiles” (mobile gas-trucks, or gas-vans) which he later sited at Chelmno! The British made him say “Treblinka” (NO-1210 & PS-3868), whereas the Poles made him say “Culmhof” (NO-4498-B). However, the distance as the crow flies is nearly 250 km between Treblinka, which is to the east of Warsaw, and Kulmhof (or Culmhof or Chelmno-on-Ner), which is to the northwest of Warsaw. Therefore, Jan Sehn authorized his prisoner to enlighten us at the manner in which he had been treated before enjoying the comforts of Cracow prison. The British seriously mishandled him, Höss says, even up to the point where he was forced to sign a statement, the contents of which he did not understand. He begins by writing this in his confession to the Poles at Cracow: Es wurde mir übel zugesetzt durch die Field Security Police) ("I was ill-treated by the Field Security Police"). And then he adds: Unter schlagenden Beweisen kam meine erste Vernehmung zustande. Was in dem Protokoll drin steht, weiss ich nicht, obwohl ich es unterschrieben habe. Doch Alkohol und Peitsche waren auch fur mich zuviel. ("My first interrogation took place under duress. I do not know what was recorded in the statement, even though I signed it. Because alcohol and the whip were too much, even for me.")
Höss adds that, after being transferred some days later to Minden-on-Weser to the main interrogation center in the British zone, he was subjected to even more brutal treatment on the part of the British attorney: a major. (Dort wurde mir noch mehr zugesetzt durch den I. englischen Staatsanwalt; einem Major.) He said that the regime of the prison corresponded to the attitude of the major. For three weeks he was not allowed to wash or shave. For three weeks he was kept in handcuffs. After transfer to Nuremberg, his stay under house arrest had the effect upon him of a stay in a sanitarium; an ideal stay in comparison with what he had experienced. But the interrogations, conducted exclusively by Jews, were terrible, not from a physical, but from a psychological, aspect. His interrogators left him in no doubt as to the fate which awaited him, namely in eastern Europe. After his transfer to Poland, he experienced anew more terrible trials, but suddenly the attorney appeared and henceforth Höss was treated with suprisingly kind attention ("anständig und entgegendkommend.") All these details can be found on pages 143-147 of Kommandant in Auschwitz (see my note See Kommandant in Auschwitz/Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen (Commandant of Auschwitz/Autobiographical Notes) by Rudolf Höss, introduction and commentary by Martin Broszat. Stuttgart: Verlagsanstalt; 1958. It is on page 166 of this book, in the part of the confession which Höss had drawn up in November 1946, where the following passage is found: Eine halbe Stunde nach den Einwurf des Gasses wurde die Tür geöffnet und die Entlüftungsanlage eingeschaltet. Es wurde sofort mit dem Herausziehen der Leichen begonnen. ("Half an hour after the gas had been thrown in, the door was opened and the ventilating apparatus switched on. The removal of the bodies was begun immediately.") And it is on page 126 of the book, in the excerpt dated February 1947, that it is said that the squad charged with the responsibility of removing the corpses from the “gas chambers” did this labor mit einer stumpfer Gleichmütigkeit ("with a gloomy indifference") as if it were a matter of some kind of everyday chore (als wenn es irgend etwas Alltägliches wäre). Höss is supposed to have added: Beim Leichenschleppen assen sie oder rauchten. That is to say: “While pulling out [the cadavers] they used to eat or smoke.” For Höss, moreover, they would not cease eating. They would eat when pulling the cadavers out of the chambers, when extracting the gold teeth, when cutting off the hair, when dragging them toward the furnace or the pits. Höss even adds this outrageous remark: “At the pits they used to keep the fire going. They would pour accumulated molten fat over the new cadavers, and they would poke around in the mountains of burning bodies to create a flue.” What Höss has not mentioned is the result of these physical and spiritual tortures undergone before his delivery to the Poles. On 5 April 1946, ten days before his appearance at the Nuremberg trial, a stupefying affidavit had been extracted from him, which he had signed even though it was not in his mother tongue, but in English! It is document PS-3868. Before the Tribunal, on 15 April 1946, American attorney Amen read out the text of the affidavit, in front of Höss. The declarations regarding Auschwitz made a sensation. As for Höss himself, he impressed everyone by his “apathy” (sic). His responses were for the most part restricted to a “yes” when Colonel Amen asked him if everything that he had read was accurate. This “apathy” was described by the observers as “schizoid” or an approximation thereof. These observers — all of them antipathetic to Höss — could not imagine how much the adjective “schizoid,” which in their mind was insulting, was in fact accurate and reflected a terrible reality, for Höss was in a dual condition; he was “two men at one time,” slandered, stupified, divided into two or nearly so: “schizoid” is an accurate adjective as one could find to describe a man tortured physically and psychologically, and whom, as he said in his confession, himself wondered why on earth he had been brought before this formidable tribunal. It is necessary to read the text of the dialog between Colonel Amen and the witness Höss dated 15 April 1946, in volume XI page 425ff of the main trial at Nuremberg (IMT). References are to the French edition.
Concerning the tortures systematically inflicted by the Americans on their German prisoners, one would do well to refer to the book by A.R. Butz (The Hoax of the Twentieth Century) in the passages concerning Justice Gordon Simpson or Judge Charles F. Wennersturm. I also recommend one of the finest books ever written in favor of the rights of man: Manstein, His Campaign and his Trial (London: Collins; 1951) by Sir Reginald Paget, and endowed with an outstanding preface by Lord Hankey. On page 109 the author mentions that the American Simpson/Van Roden/Laurenzen commission of inquiry had revealed “among other things, that of the 139 cases they had investigated, 137 (German soldiers and officers) had had their testicles permanently destroyed by kicks received from the American War Crimes Investigation team.”
Dr. Engineer Dürrfeld was the temporary director of the Buna factory at Auschwitz. In document NI-034 Höss was attributed with saying that Dr. Dürrfeld was aware of the gassing of human beings at Birkenau and that he had spoken of it to his colleagues. However, in document NI-11046, Dr. Dürrfeld replied: “It is a sorry fact that I heard [of these gassings] first through the radio and through the newspaper reports. I must say that it is a brand of infamy for the German people, that I must say.” See also document NI-9542 for Otto Ambros or document NI-11631 for Kurt Rosenbaum. These men confirmed that they had never known anything about the “gassings” despite the fact that they were well placed in order to know everything which took place at Auschwitz. Inmates also had the courage to write that they had never seen any “gas chambers” at Auschwitz or Birkenau. although they were located close to the place where these “chambers” were supposed to be. This is the case for Benedikt Kautsky, the Austrian Social Democrat, of Jewish origin. He lived in various concentration camps, as well as Auschwitz, for nearly seven years. His mother died at Birkenau on 8 December 1944 at the age of 80. In Teufel und Verdammte (Devil and Damned) Vienna, Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung (Vienna People’s Press), 1948, he writes (page 136), that he has not personally seen those “gas chambers” in the camp. However, this admission does not prevent him from later providing a kind of description of that which he had never seen! He does that on the word of those who “have seen.”
I make allusion here to certain of the defendants at the Frankfurt Trial (1963-1965); a trial which Hermann Langbein purports to give an account of in his Der Auschwitz Prozess, a book which I previously cited in note See The camp at Auschwitz had three successive commandants: Rudolf Höss, Arthur Liebehenschel, and Richard Baer. The first had been interrogated by the British, and then by the Poles, who executed him. The second was executed by the Poles. The third died suddenly in prison when the famous “Auschwitz Trial” at Frankfurt (1963-65) was in preparation. On their own, the Poles seem to have interrogated and passed judgment on 617 persons (Nazis or allies of the Nazis) in connection with the question of Auschwitz. This figure is given by Hermann Langbein on page 993 of Der Auschwitz Prozess (The Auschwitz Trial). Vienna: Europa Verlag; 1965; 2 vols. On their part, the French, the British, and the Americans have often interrogated or passed judgment on former Auschwitz guards. It is surprising that there has emanated such a derisory amount of information on the pretended massacres in “gas chambers” from such an enormous number of interrogations and trials. To my knowledge there has been no mention of “admissions,” or even any kind of information, on the part of Liebehenschel or Baer on the “gas chambers.” The true “Gas Chambers Trial” of Auschwitz has been — one can never repeat it enough — that of architects Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl at Vienna (Austria) in 1972. This trial, launched by Simon Wiesenthal and presented as a sensational affair, very quickly became a fiasco for the prosecution. The two men having been charged with having “constructed and repaired gas chambers and crematorium ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau,” revealed, I suppose, as established technicians, that even if they had constructed or had had constructed the crematoria ovens, they most certainly had not designed plans of “gas chambers” but only for the morgues which flanked these crematoria ovens. The two architects were acquitted. Franz Hofmann would have employed the expression “assisting to push"; but curiously he employed the plural: “we have … pushed together” (haben wir … mitgeschoben) (page 241). Hans Stark is supposed to have helped a hospital attendant to discharge gas through an aperture in the roof of the “gas chamber"; but Stark is confused, very vague, and the president of the court gives the impression before all of making Stark recite a text (page 349).
One ought to devote the greatest possible attention to volume 42, which is the last of the volumes of the documents of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. This volume opens with the very long document (153 pages) PS-862. It is a summary presented by the British colonel Airey Neave (who was eventually himself assassinated in 1979 by the Irish Republican Army). Neave had been charged with summarizing a host of investigations carried out in Allied prisoner of war camps. He states what is also reported in the document “Politische Leiter 54” (page 348); the 26,674 former political leaders interrogated have declared that it was only after the capitulation in May 1945 that they first heard of the extermination of the Jews in the camps termed (by the Allies) “extermination camps.” (Sie von einer Vernichtung von Juden in sog. Vernichtungslagern erst nach der Kapitulation in Mai 1945 Kenntnis erhielten.)
In private correspondence, Dr. Robert Servatius, who was a defense lawyer at the Nuremberg IMT (1945-1946) and who defended Adolf Eichmann at the “Trial in Jerusalem” (1961), has written to me of “the persons pretended to have been gassed” (der in Auschwitz angeblich vergasteten Personen) in his letter dated 21 June 1974 and of “the alleged gassing” (der behaupten Vergasung) in his letter dated 22 February 1975. This world-famous lawyer summarizes in one succinct phrase the reason why German defense counsel take great care not to raise the question of the “gas chambers” before a tribunal; it seems, he says, “that for the defense, the problem of the existence of the gas chambers faded into the background, compared with the question of the participation of their clients in the alleged gassings.” (Anscheinend ist die Frage der Existens von Gaskammern für die verteidiger züruckgetreten, gegenüber der Frage der Beteilung ihrer Mandaten an der behaupteten Vergasung.) It cannot be put better. In response to one of my questions about Eichmann the lawyer specified that Eichmann had declared (to whom? the response is not clear on this point) that he had never seen a gas chamber and that he had never been told of any. (Letter of 22 February 1975.) The stenographic transcripts of the trial (which can be consulted in several languages at the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris) prove that Eichmann had apparently known nothing about these “gas chambers” except what he had read of them in prison in Höss' “confession” (see the session of 19 April 1961, pages JI-MJ 02-RM).
It was on French television that Albert Naud, visibly moved, made this impromptu declaration (Channel 2, “L'huile sur le feu” (Oil on the fire), broadcast by Phillippe Bouvard, October 1976).
This complacent lawyer was Anton Reiners of Frankfurt-am-Main.
Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1961 & 1967; Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, 2nd edition, London, Vallentine-Mitchell, 1968; H.G. Adler, Der Verwaltete Mensch, Tübingen, Mohr (Siebeck), 1974; Hermann Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, Vienna, Europa Verlag, 1974; Olga Wormser-Migot, Le Système Concentrationnaire nazi (1933-1945), Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1968; Serge Klarsfeld, Le Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France, Klarsfeld Foundation, BP 136-17,73 75763 Paris Cedex 16, 1978.
Extract from what the Germas call the “Bormann Diaries” (Bormann Vermercke). The final part of these “Bormann Diaries” has been published in France under the title of Le Testament politique de Hitler (The Political Testament of Hitler), French version and preface by Francois Genoud. Paris: Arthème Fayard; 1959. pages 71-72.
"Dass sie deshalb [ihre Konfession] verfolgt worden waren, wie ich glaubte, liess manchmal meine Abneigung gegenüber ungünstigen Äusserungen über sie Fast zum Abschau werden” (Mein Kampf [My Struggle], Munich, NSDAP, 1942, page 55). “Die grossen Meister der Lüge” ("The great masters of the lie"): these are Schopenhauer’s words, revived by Hitler (Ibid., page 253).
In fact, president of the World Zionist Organization (see ).
Declaration published in the Jewish Chronicle, London of 8 September 1939, page 1 .
Daily Express, London, 24 March 1933, page 1 .
Nach Beendigung des Krieges werde er [Hitler] sich rigorös auf den Standpunkt stellen, dass er Stadt für Stadt zusammenschlage, wenn die Drecksjuden rauskamen und nach Madagaskar oder einem sonstigen jüdischen Nationalstaat abwanderten. ("After the end of the war, he [Hitler] would rigorously adopt the standpoint that he would demolish town after town, if the Jewish dregs did not decamp and emigrate to Madagascar or some other national Jewish homeland.") See Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche in Fuhrerhauptquartier (Hitler’s Table Talks at the Führer’s HQ), published by Percy Henry74 Schramm …, Stuttgart, 1963, page 471.
Texts and facts abound which prove that the German authorities forbade and punished these excesses, even when Jews were the victims. I will quote only one text and two facts. This text is of General von Roques dated 29 July 1944, on the Russian front (document NOKW-1620). As to the facts, they are reported in document NOKW-501. Here is the first fact: in the spring of 1944, at Budapest, a lieutenant killed a Jewess who wished to denounce him for having stolen some of her property, along with some of his men. A German military tribunal condemned the officer to death and he was executed, while several of his men and NCOs were condemned to long terms in prison. Here is the second fact: near to Rostov, USSR, two soldiers were condemned to death by a German military tribunal (and executed?) for having killed the only Jewish inhabitant of a village. One finds these examples and many other facts of the same kind in the 42nd and final volume of the IMT Nuremberg transcripts. Unfortunately, this volume is ignored by just about everyone. It is particularly ignored by the judiciary who permit the invoking of “what happened at Nuremberg” but do not, however, pay sufficient attention to the re-reading of the actual documentation produced by the conquerors passing judgment on the vanquished. The historians can allow this superficiality even less when he realizes that these same conquerors have committed two very grave injustices:
1. They were the ones who sorted the captured German documents, without allowing any access by the defense;
2. When they published the 42 volumes, they chose only from among their own selectioned documents without including some of the documentary evidence deposited by the defense.
It is vitally important to realize that even today — 35 years after the war — the Allies still maintain in secret an impressive quantity of German documents, out of which they have already selected those items which, in their eyes, could show Germany in a bad light. Imagine the mountain of “war crimes” which could be adjucated with such procedures by an “International Military Tribunal” if it was the conquered being able to judge their conquerors!
But to return to the question of “excesses” or of “war crimes,” I would suggest that the German army, and in particular the Waffen-SS, were certainly very tough both in combat and in “mopping-up” operations against the partisans, but they showed themselves to be in a certain way much less threatening toward civilian non-combatants than other armies. In principle, the more disciplined and controlled an army is, the less the civilian population ought to fear excesses of all kinds. Using this rule of thumb, it would follow that bands of partisans—whatever sympathy can be felt for their cause—are nearly always more of a threat to the civilians.
This was described as “Operation Keelhaul.” See Julius Epstein, Operation Keelhaul, Devin-Adair, 1973; Nikolai Tolstoy, The Secret Betrayal of 1944-1947, Scribners, 1977; Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, IHR, 1979, pages 248-249. The term “keelhaul” speaks for itself; this English verb signifies “inflicting the punishment of hauling the victim from one side to the other of a ship, by causing him to pass under the keel.”
I must mention that during the same period, and without any military necessity, our American and South African allies rigorously applied segregation against Blacks (which was denounced sometimes in French “collaborationist” newspapers).
Speech made at Posen on 6 October 1943, published on page 169 of Discours secrets de Heinrich Himmler, Paris, Gallimard, 1978. This is the French translation of “secret” talks from 1933-1945, together with other speeches. The German edition is: Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen,Propylaen Verlag. This work should be approached with caution, particularly its French edition.
The text of the “Madagaskar Projekt” is little known. It can however be found at the CDJC in Paris. It bears number 172 of the Israeli Police (General Headquarters, 6th bureau). It seems that this document was only brought to light in 1961 on the occasion of the Eichmann Trial. It is composed of a letter from Theodore Dannecker, dated 15 August 1940, addressed to Legation Secretary Rademacher, and of the report itself which seems to be, moreover, a draft unsigned and undated. The reference number at the CDJC is DXII-172.
See the letter of reference of Rademacher to ambassador Bielefeld dated 10 February 1942 (document NG-5770).
"Total Solution” (Gesamtlösing) and “Final Solution” (Endlösung) are two interchangeable terms employed by Göring in his famous letter of 31 July 1941 addressed to Reinhard Heydrich. The Exterminationists have expatiated interminably upon this very short letter (document PS-710) and, in particular, upon these two words used by Göring. They have all the more speculated on this text because they have — at least for some of them — cynically cut short the first half of his phrase where a clear and neat explanation is provided of the sense which Göring wished to give these words. These words in fact imply emigration or evacuation ("Auswanderung oder Evakuierung"); Gerald Reitlinger indulges himself in quoting in full the little letter except for the beginning of it where the reader finds three suspension points instead of “Auswanderung oder Evakuierung"! The reader of Reitlinger thus sees that the beginning of the phrase is missing and he therefore believes that there is certainly nothing important about the absent fragment! It is indeed difficult to act more dishonestly than Reitlinger (see Gerhard Reitlinger, Die Endlösung (The Final Solution), translated from English into German by J.W. Brugel, 4th edition revised and corrected, Berlin, Colloquium Verlag, 1961, page 92). One will find the text, unmutilated, on page 12 of the remarkable work by Wilhelm Stäglich: Der Auschwitz Mythos / Legende oder Wirklichkeit (The Auschwitz Myth / Legend or Truth), Tübingen, Grabert Verlag, 1979. Wilhelm Stäglich is a former judge at Hamburg who has suffered incessant persecutions since 1973 because of his Revisionist convictions.
Mention is made of these births in the “Kalendarium” of Hefte von Auschwitz, edited by the State Museum at Oswiecim (Auschwitz), in particular in volumes 7 and 8. The Germans maintained a register of all births, including Jews. They kept a record of everything. Every surgical operation, for example, was noted, with the name of the inmate, his registration number, the object and the result of the operation (in Latin), the date, and the signature of the surgeon. At the crematories, the extraction of a tooth from a corpse was made the object of a report (Meldung). This last point, on its own, renders absurd the legend of large scale massacres with extraction of teeth on a quasi-industrial scale.
I have personally made a thorough inquiry regarding the summary executions carried out by the Resistance in a small region of France. I was surprised to find that the gypsy community has paid a heavy tribute in dead; not as a result of deeds by the Germans, but by the Resistance. This inquiry cannot actually be published in France.
On the existence of a vocational school for masons, see for example the evidence of Franz Hofmann in Hermann Langbein’s work Der Auschwitz Prozess, page 236. Concerning the team of apprentices ("Lehrlings-Kommandos") see the evidence of detainee Curt Posner in document NI-9808.
Georges Wellers, l'Etoile jaune à l'heure de Vichy / De Drancy à Auschwitz (The Yellow Star under the Vichy Era / From Drancy [transit camp] to Auschwitz). Paris: Fayard; 1973; pages v, 4, 5, 7.
The distance from Drancy (near Paris) to Auschwitz (1,250 km) was covered, in general, in two days.
I can only refer here to the cases of Maurice Bardèche, Paul Rassinier, Manfred Roeder, Thies Christophersen, Wilhelm Stäglich, J.G. Burg (a Jew), Hellmut Diwald, Udo Walendy, Arthur R. Butz, and to my own case. No persecution is overlooked: imprisonment, physical violence, fines, arson, careers destroyed, incredibly unjust legal decisions, pure lies, enforced exile. Not one association defending freedom of speech, not one single group of writers, has raised the least protest at the stupefying actions of the Springer Group in regard to either David Irving or to the university professor Hellmut Diwald. In this field of persecution, Germany is incontestably in the fore. France occupies second place, and South Africa is not far behind.
This decision dates from 17 May 1979 (Bundestelle für jugendgefährende Schriften [Federal Office for Writings Dangerous to Youth] decision No. 2765). The expert selected was the attorney Adalbert Rückerl (the man who said that when one reads “Wolzek” one must understand “Sobibor;” see my footnote See Höss had been tortured. It is from the Poles themselves that we know this. They authorized him to say this in his confession. There might have been several motives for this authorization on the part of instructing judge Jan Sehn. As Höss indulged in praises of the kindness of his jailers at Cracow, it may well be that Sehn wished to give us the idea that, if Höss had previously come out with absurdities because of his torture by the British, then on this occasion, in the Cracow prison, he was expressing himself with complete freedom. In his “ingenuousness” in admitting everything they wanted to his British torturers, Höss had gone so far as to speak of the “extermination camp” of “Wolzek near to Lublin.” However, Wolzek never existed, neither near Lublin nor anywhere in Poland. Höss, however, cited this mythical camp in document NO-1210 of 14 March 1946, then in document PS-3868 of 5 April 1946, and also in document NI-034 of 20 May 1946. Out of terrible embarrassment, an attempt has been made to pretend that Belzec is this “Wolzec camp,” which is in itself absurd, because in document PS-3868 Höss precisely states that there were “three other extermination camps in the General Government: Belzek (sic), Treblinka, and Wolzek” (drei weitere Vernichtungslager im General-gouvernment: Belzek, Treblinka, und Wolzek). This absurd solution ("Wolzek is Belzec"!) has been imposed by the “Bible” of the Exterminationists' research: The Holocaust/The Nuremberg Evidence (Part One: Documents) edited by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and at the YIVO institute in New York, 1976 (see page 544). A solution even less acceptable has been proposed by the attorney Adalbert Rückerl in note 5 of pages 37/38 of the work which I quote above in my note 18. This lawyer has no qualms about saying that Wolzek is in reality Sobibor! It would be endless work here to quote all the aberrations contained in the papers that the British military justice made Höss sign. To take only one other example here, Höss said that there was situated at Treblinka an installation for gassing by “gasmobiles” (mobile gas-trucks, or gas-vans) which he later sited at Chelmno! The British made him say “Treblinka” (NO-1210 & PS-3868), whereas the Poles made him say “Culmhof” (NO-4498-B). However, the distance as the crow flies is nearly 250 km between Treblinka, which is to the east of Warsaw, and Kulmhof (or Culmhof or Chelmno-on-Ner), which is to the northwest of Warsaw. Therefore, Jan Sehn authorized his prisoner to enlighten us at the manner in which he had been treated before enjoying the comforts of Cracow prison. The British seriously mishandled him, Höss says, even up to the point where he was forced to sign a statement, the contents of which he did not understand. He begins by writing this in his confession to the Poles at Cracow: Es wurde mir übel zugesetzt durch die Field Security Police) ("I was ill-treated by the Field Security Police"). And then he adds: Unter schlagenden Beweisen kam meine erste Vernehmung zustande. Was in dem Protokoll drin steht, weiss ich nicht, obwohl ich es unterschrieben habe. Doch Alkohol und Peitsche waren auch fur mich zuviel. ("My first interrogation took place under duress. I do not know what was recorded in the statement, even though I signed it. Because alcohol and the whip were too much, even for me."). The latter was both judge and judged, because he has devoted his life and certain of his works to defending a thesis (that of Exterminationism) which Dr. Butz considers, like myself, to be erroneous. The text of the judgment is 55 pages long. Within a few years this text may well emerge as a monument to historical inconsistency. The president of the tribunal was Rudolf Stefen. Professor Konrad Jentsch represented Art (Kunst); the writer Bernhard Ohsam. Literature; Gunther Roland, the teachers (Lehrerschaft); the prelate Dr. Hermann the Church; etc.
La Guerre Sociale (Class War), No. 3, June 1979, pages 9-31; BP 88, 75623 Paris Cedex 13. In charge of publication: J. Benhamou.
This was my case on 29 January 1978 at the national discussion on “Churches and Christians in France during WWII.”
Among the 42 columns of the (truncated) accounts of the IMT at Nuremberg, see vol. III, pages 574-575 of the French edition, and read document PS-2738 (affadavit of Wilhelm Höttl).
Pages 120-122, 125, 128, 136, 141, 149, 157, under the title of “Nahum Goldmann: au nom d'Israël” (Nahum Goldmann: in the name of Israel). Nahumm Goldmann says that those colossal reparations “constituted an extraordinary innovation in the matter of international rights.” He dictated his conditions to Adenauer in 1950. He obtained DM 80 billion; that is 10 to 14 times more than the sum he first expected. He says, “Without the German reparations … the state of Israel would not have the half of its present infrastructure (1978); every train in Israel is German, the ships are German, as well as electricity, a big part of industry … without mentioning the individual pensions paid to the survivors … in certain years, the amount of money that Israel received from Germany would exceed the total amount of money collected from international Jewry — multiplying it by two or three times.” See Nahum Goldmann, Le Paradoxe juif, Stock, 1976, especially pages 152-167. In English: The Jewish Paradox, New York, Fred Jordan Books, 1978, especially pages 125-139.
The young German taxpayer of 1979, who has no responsibility in the war of 1933-1945, still pays “his share,” and will continue to do so until the year 2030.
Translator’s note: This and all subsequent page references to the Schnabel book refer to the English translation published by Barbrace Paperback Library, New York, 1958
To put this discrepancy into perspective, approximately 250 words can be typed on an average 8½-by-11-inch sheet of paper when the lines are double-spaced. Therefore, 1,570 words are roughly equivalent to six typewritten sheets. — Ed.
That estimate from 1978 does not have great meaning. The manipulations are endemic and to calculate the number of them is illusory. (Note for the present French edition of 1980.
Michel Bozwicz, Revue d'Histoire de la Deuxieme Guerre mondiale, January 1962, page 93.
With one exception. The original report contained an Appendix #3 that consisted of a statement from a French university professor who is highly regarded for his competence in the matter of textual criticism. The last phrase of the statement is the following: “It is certain that the customs of literary communication authorize Mr. Frank, or anyone else, to construct as many fictional characters of Anne Frank as he wants to, but on condition that he does not pretend that these fictional beings are identical with the character of his daughter.” That argument from authority, that is, the statement of an eminent academic on the quality of the work carried out, is itself presentable to a court, but it is not justified in a public debate. Furthermore, two other professors were preparing to reach the same conclusions, when suddenly the “Faurisson Affair” broke out in the press in November of 1978. Those professors prudently decided to abstain. As a consequence, we have decided not to name anyone. The debate having become public, it behooves each one to determine if he wishes to intervene publicly. Appendix #1 was constituted by the photographic evidence. Appendix #2 was confidential; it was a sealed envelope containing the names of my witness and of my companions mentioned on .
New Statesman, 17 July 1981, pages 16-19, “The Judgment of History": “Long-standing notions about academic freedom have been challenged by this month’s conviction of a French writer for 'falsifying history,'” Gitta Sereny Honeyman reports … Two Paris courts found Robert Faurisson … guilty of libel, provocation to hate, incitement to murder, and falsification of history … falsification of history” (page 16). “The 17-page judgment which finds that he 'falsified history'” (page 19). See also Searchlight, vol. X, 1981, “Revisionism — The Myths and the Lies": “As an MRAP spokesman put it, 'It is a simple fact that the Holocaust happened and that Faurisson is a falsifier of history.' The court agreed …” (page 12)
The words in brackets were a handwritten addition to the original printed text.
Compare with the Czechoslovakians described by Filip Müller: “[In the gas chamber] they sang first the Czechoslovak anthem and then the Hebrew song 'Hatikva'” Eyewitness Auschwitz, Stein and Day, 1979, xiv + 180 pages; page 110).
As Mark Weber told me, the right translation in English should probably be “Special Detail", i.e. “Garbage Collectors.” Kremas II and III in Birkenau had a Müllverbrennungsofen [furnace to burn garbage]. The people of the Sonderkommando were at the same time in charge of collecting and burning the garbage and the cadavers. Filip Müller was nothing more than a kind of garbage collector..
On 18 August 1981, the same Nahum Goldmann declared in regard to the “compensations” paid to Israel:
Those are astronomical sums from the point of view of Jewish history and were very important for the development of Israel. The Israel of today would have been impossible without the German reparations. ("Profil: Nahum Goldmann,” an interview of Nahum Goldmann by J. F. Chauvel, telecast by the first French television network from 10:00 to 10:52 PM on 18 August 1981.)
In response to point 10 I wrote: “… concentration camps are a modern invention that we owe not to the British in their war against the Boers, but to the Americans during their Civil War” and I went on the mention “the horrors of Andersonville.” Recently Mr. Mitchell A. Abidor (from Brooklyn, NY), reading the French version, noticed my mistake and reminded me that Andersonville had not been a “concentration camp” but a camp for prisoners of war. He is right. I should have mentioned instead Mark Weber’s article: “The Civil War Concentration Camps,” Journal of Historical Review, Summer, 1981, pages 137-153 in which we read inter alia:
In addition to camps for captured soldiers, the North also established concentration camps for civilian populations considered hostile to the Federal government. Union General Thomas Ewing issued his infamous Order Number 11 in August 1863, whereby large numbers of civilians in Missouri were relocated into what were called “posts.”
In Plain Speaking, “An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman,” the former president tells what happened:
Everybody, almost the entire population of Jackson County and Vernon and Cass and Bates counties, all of them were depopulated, and the people had to stay in posts.
They called them posts, but they were concentration camps. And most of the people were moved in such a hurry that they had to leave all their goods and their chattels in their houses. Then the Federal soldiers came in and took everything that was left and set fire to the houses.
That didn’t go down with the people in these parts; putting people in concentration camps in particular didn’t. (pages 78-79)
President Truman’s grandmother loaded what belongings she could into an oxcart and, with six of her children, among them the President’s mother, made a journey to a “post” in Kansas City. Martha Ellen Truman vividly remembered the trek until she died at the age of 94 [page 143].
In my introduction and in response 13 I mentioned Ms. Nadine Fresco and her attempt to answer the Revisionists' arguments. Recently, in December 1985, she was quoted by Michael May in an article against the Revisionists: “Denying the Holocaust/The Background, methods and motives of the ‘revisionists,’” Index on Censorship (London), December 1985, pages 29-33. Below is what Michael May said against me and what I answered him.
Nadine Fresco in her admirable article “The Denial of the Dead” (Dissent, Fall, 1981) relates the following discovery about perhaps the most meticulous and dedicated of the 'revisionists,' Robert Faurisson, in his treatment of the diary of the Auschwitz doctor Kremer, an important document.
'In his letter to Le Monde Juif on January 16, 1979, Faurisson cites the diary that Johann-Paul Kremer, SS doctor, kept during his tenure at Auschwitz. Kremer recounts, on October 18, 1942, that, for the eleventh time, he was present at a “special action” (Sonderaktion). Faurisson, who can’t be had and who, like no one else, knows how to decipher a text, decides that this “special action", which the exterminationists [the deniers' name for the established historians] insist on taking for a mass gassing, refers very simply to the executions of those condemned to death. He writes, “Among those condemned are three women who arrived in a convoy from Holland; they are shot". This sentence is accompanied by a very impressive note that indicates the seriousness of Faurisson’s work. The note consists of a biographical reference: “'Auschwitz as Seen by the SS', published by the museum of Oswiecim [the Polish name for Auschwitz], 1974, page 238, note 85".
'Can one imagine a more scrupulous concern for reference, precision, and scientific rigor? But then perhaps Faurisson thinks it would be rather surprising if readers of Le Monde had access to such a book, published so far from France and behind the Iron Curtain. Unfortunately for Faurisson, I have the book. And note 85 on page 238, which reports the official transcript of Kremer’s testimony in 1947, indeed indicates that three Dutch women were shot on that day. But the text of the note to which Faurisson refers reads: “At the time of the special action which I described in my diary in October 18, 1942, three Dutch women refused to enter the gas chamber [emphasis mine] and pleaded for their lives. They were young women, in good health, but despite this their prayer was not granted, and the SS who participated in the action shot them on the spot.'”
So there were gas chambers and people were put in them — and Faurisson relies on the very testimony which shows this. But he conceals all mention of gas chambers. The truth is not his goal …
At the time of the Faurisson affair, thirty-four of France’s leading historians issued a declaration in Le Monde attesting to the historical truth of the Holocaust and protesting the Nazi attempt to erase the past. They concluded:
'Everyone is free to interpret a phenomenon like the Hitlerite genocide according to his own philosophy. Everyone is free to compare it with other enterprises of murder committed earlier, at the same time, or later. Everyone is free to offer such or such kind of explanation; everyone is free, to the limit, to imagine or to dream that these monstrous deeds did not take place. Unfortunately they did take place and no one can deny their existence without committing an outrage on the truth. It is not necessary to ask how technically such a mass murder was possible. It was technically possible, seeing that it took place. That is the required point of departure of every historical inquiry on this subject. This truth it behooves us to remember in simple terms: there is not and there cannot be a debate about the existence of gas chambers.' (Le Monde, 21 February 1979)
My response:
Letter to the editor, Index on Censorship (for publication)
Subject: Michael May, “Denying the Holocaust” (Index on Censorship, December 1985, pages 29-33)
My name is Robert Faurisson. I am a professor at the University of Lyon-2, in France. I have said and I still maintain that there was never a single homicidal gas chamber in the German concentration camps prior to or during World War II. I have arrived at that conclusion, as have many Revisionists, at the end of a very long investigation and I have expressed that conclusion in books, articles, and one videotape presentation. In my response to Michael May’s article, I will refer only to two books: Serge Thion, Vérité historique ou vérité politique? (Le dossier de l'Affaire Faurisson, La question des chambres à gaz), Paris, La Vieille Taupe Publishing Company, April 1980, 352 pages; Robert Faurisson, Mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'Histoire (La Question des chambres à gaz), with a preface by Noam Chomsky, same publisher, November 1990, xxiv + 280 pages.
Michael May, on the other hand, believes that the gas chambers did exist. In his article he mentions a French woman, Madame Nadine Fresco, who had fought vigorously against the Revisionist thesis and, in particular, against my own publications in Le Monde ("Le problème des chambres à gaz/La rumeur d'Auschwitz,” 29 December 1978, page 8, and “Une lettre de M. Faurisson", 16 January 1979, page 13) as well as against Serge Thion’s book.
Nadine Fresco criticized us in a fierce and mocking way in a long article in Les Temps Modernes (the magazine of Jean-Paul Sartre and of Claude Lanzmann, famous later as the director of the film Shoah). Her article was entitled: “Les redresseurs de morts /Chambres à gaz: la bonne nouvelle/Comment on révise l'histoire” (Les Temps Modernes, June 1980, pages 2150-2211).
Michael May does not refer to that article but rather to an English text: “The Denial of the Dead” (Dissent, Fall 1981), which, judging from the excerpt that he has cited, could be either a translation or an adaptation of the Temps Modernes article. He describes that article as “admirable,” especially because Ms. Fresco supposedly shows what kind of trick I used to hide from Les Temps Modernes’s readers the existence of an “important document": the testimony of Professor Johann-Paul Kremer about the gassings at Auschwitz.
Unfortunately for Nadine Fresco and Michael May, I, far from having hidden that testimony from anyone, have often mentioned it and, noting the interest that has been shown in it by those who sued me for “falsification of history,” have devoted numerous pages to it for some time. Here I will limit myself to listing only the five occasions on which I talked about that testimony, a date approximately one year before Nadine Fresco in Dissent, in spite of so many warnings, went on to repeat and to persist in her initial serious mistake.
Here are the five dates on which I talked about the testimony that Johann-Paul Kremer made to his Polish Communist jailers:
1. On 16 January 1979, in the same latter to Le Monde in which Ms. Fresco said that I had concealed Kremer’s testimony from my readers, I expressly mentioned “'the testimony' (in quotes) after the war by J. P. Kremer” and the context clearly shows that it was testimony about the alleged gassings (that letter is reproduced in my Mémoire, pages 84-88);
2. On 26 February 1979, in a text sent to Le Monde in connection with my “right to reply” to Georges Wellers, I referred to the testimony and its content (that text is reproduced in my Mémoire, pages 96-100);
3. In April of 1980, Serge Thion announced on page 388 of his book that I was soon going to publish a Mémoire in which I would deal, among other items, with the question of Kremer’s testimony;
4. In June of 1980, Nadine Fresco published her article in Les Temps Modernes; it mentioned me 150 times. In accordance with my legal “right of reply,” I sent a response to her article. In it I pointed out, among other items, that it was wrong for Ms. Fresco, repeating Georges Wellers’s error, to reproach me for having been silent about the testimony of J. P. Kremer; I told her that Le Monde had refused to publish my response to Wellers and I made it clear that I was soon going to publish a Mémoire in which I would once more talk about J. P. Kremer (a photograph of Le Monde’s refusal letter is included in my Mémoire, page 101);
5. In November of 1980, the Mémoire that had twice been announced to Ms. Fresco appeared; in it I reproduced in facsimile 20 pages of the Communist publication in whose footnotes are found fragments of Kremer’s confession. And I had no trouble in showing the vagueness and the absurdity of that testimony, which is also quite typical of Stalinist trials.
I will therefore make the following remarks about the whole affair and about Michael May’s article:
1. It is astonishing that I have been accused in this way of hiding something that I had myself taken the initiative to point out. Georges Wellers was the first one to make this false accusation. The others have only reported what he said. They have been, first of all, the group of nine organizations which sued me; then Nadine Fresco, and today Michael May. They have not been able to respond to the scholarly arguments of the revisionists and instead have leaped at the first accusation that occurred to them. And, lacking anything better to say, they have persisted in their error;
2. Those who defend the thesis about the existence of the gas chambers are amateurish. We have an example of that amateurishness in Nadine Fresco: in my letter to Le Monde I said that three women coming from the Netherlands had been shot rather than gassed at Auschwitz; as my source I gave a classic book, a special issue of the Hefte von Auschwitz (Auschwitz Notebooks) published by the very official State Museum of Auschwitz; this special issue was also in French, and I gave the exact citation in the French version. What did Ms. Fresco do about that? She deduced from it that this was a trick on my part and that, having done that, I counted on the fact that no reader of Le Monde would take the trouble to verify the reference to a work “published so far from France and behind the Iron Curtain.” Could Ms. Fresco find anyone who, writing as a specialist about Auschwitz, would be unaware of the existence of the Hefte von Auschwitz?
3. Do we know of very many Communist-conducted trials that have not had the confessions of the accused?
4. Michael May wrote in his article in a publication called Index on Censorship. I therefore suppose that he is opposed to censorship. In this whole affair there have been two examples of censorship: first by Le Monde, then by Les Temps Modernes. In both cases they prevented me from reminding the public that I had indeed mentioned the Kremer testimony and that I even knew the subject very well. The result was that Nadine Fresco thought she could repeat a baseless accusation that is today coming back to haunt her. Therefore, it seems that it is, at least sometimes, unwise to censor things.
5. Michael May ends his article with the final excerpt from the declaration by 34 French historians who, in February 1979, published a text protesting against my “denial” of the existence of the gas chambers. He talks about “thirty-four of France’s leading historians.” He fails to mention that not one of these historians, except Léon Poliakov, was a specialist in the period under consideration; they included Egyptologists, Hellenists, specialists in the 16th or the 18th centuries, specialists in the study of customs or of societies, etc. In France today people still laugh at that declaration which seems to please Michael May; here is how it concluded:
“It is not necessary to ask how technically such a mass murder was possible. It was technically possible, seeing that it took place. That is the required point of departure of every inquiry on this subject. This truth it behooves us to remember in simple terms: there is not and there cannot be a debate about the existence of the gas chambers.” (Le Monde, 21 February 1979, page 23.)
This kind of reasoning is an example of a rhetorical construction known as a “tautology.” And it raises three questions: Apart from the alleged mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, what other mass murder in history could a historian research without having to ask how “technically” it was carried out?
You say that there cannot be any debate about the existence of the gas chambers; does that mean that if there is actually such a debate it is necessary to forbid it — for example, by means of censorship or law-suits?
Supposing for a moment that the gas chambers were actually nothing more than a wartime rumor turned into an historic lie, should we call it that or cover it up? In this case what, in your opinion, should a scholar do?
In response 28 I wrote: “A thesis is presently being prepared which will expose the Gerstein 'confessions' and what Léon Poliakov has made of them.” The viva voce of this thesis was on 15 June 1985. Its author, Mr. Henri Roques, received his Ph.D. (Doctorat d'Université) with distinction from the University of Nantes. This long and very technical thesis will be mimeographed in February, 1986. The conclusions are humiliating for Léon Poliakov. Quite recently, in November 1985, Carlo Mattogno published Il Rapporto Gerstein: Anatomia di un Falso/Il “campo di sterminio” di Belzec (The Gerstein Report: Anatomy of a Fraud/The “Extermination Camp” at Belzec), ed. Sentinella d'Italia (Via Buonarotti 4, Monfalcone, Italy), 243 pages, 15,000 lire. His findings are the same as Dr. Roques' findings.
These are some samples of the answers of Hilberg when cross-examined by D. Christie on Gerstein:
I would put Gerstein’s statement (PS-1553) as one that one must be most careful about. Parts are corroborated; others are pure nonsense (Transcripts, page 904.)
Gerstein, apparently, was a very excitable person. He was capable of all kinds of statements which he, indeed, made not only in the affidavit but its context.
Q: He wasn’t totally sane?
A: I am not a judge of sanity, but I would be careful about what he said (page 905)…
He was capable, in his excitement, of adding imagination to fact. There is no question of that (page 906).
Q: And we know that [the statement that Hitler was there in Belzec] to be a totally false statement, right?
A: Exactly (page 907).
Well, [in the reproduction of his statements] I eliminated anything that seemed not plausible or credible, certainly (page 921).
[About another statement] Well, parts of it are true, and other parts of it are sheer exaggeration, manifest and obvious exaggeration […] Rhetoric…(page 923).
Gerstein was somewhat given to excitability (page 924).
I would not characterize him as totally rational, but that is of no value, because I am not an expert on rationality (page 925).
Q: A very strange mind prone to exaggeration?
A: Yes (page 928).
A far-out statement (page 934).
In the use of such affadavits, one must be extraordinarily careful (page 935).
[It should be noted that all these admissions were dragged from R. Hilberg before the publication of the works of Carlo Mattogno (Italy) and Henri Roques (France) about Gerstein].
At Ernst Zündel’s house, in those rare moments of relaxation, as a dozen or so of us were sitting around a table the conversation would turn to Hilberg and his theory of the “incredible meeting of minds.” We imagined how much better it would be to have a world in which the “incredible meeting of minds” would replace letters, telegrams, and the telephone, and in which, at the dinner table for example, there would be no need to ask someone to pass the salt of the water carafe because, by an “incredible meeting of minds,” the persons who had those things, practicing “consensus-mind-reading,” would in every case anticipate your expressed desires and would himself offer the salt shaker or the carafe at the right moment.
Here again, as at Zündel’s house, witness Vrba bouyed our spirits. We called him “the green duck.” For several days lawyer D. Christie had fired shots at him, each of which caused the imposter to lose some feathers, but none of which dealt him a mortal blow. It was Prosecuting Attorney Griffiths who delivered the coup de grace to his own witness. In a sense he had asked Christie to loan him his double-barreled shotgun and, with two shots, brought down the bird. We called Vrba a “green” duck because of the color the witness turned when his story collapsed.
See The Christian News, July 1987, page 9; also the JHR Newsletter, no. 51, August 1987.
After France changed its system for electing deputies to the Assembly from one based on proportional representation to direct election, the National Front’s number of seats declined to one.
On pages 31-32 of the December 1987 issue of the American magazine Instauration, from which I have borrowed this translation, one can find an interesting discussion of the difficulty of translating the phrase “point de détail.” Instauration rendered it as “footnote.”
The pamphlet “A Prominent False Witness: Elie Wiesel” is currently available from the Institute for Historical Review.
Wilhelm Stäglich’s The Auschwitz Myth is now available in English from the Institute for Historical Review. Enrique Aynat Eknes’s “Crematoriums II and III of Birkenau: A Critical Study” appeared in the Fall 1988 Journal of Historical Review (Vol. 8, No. 3). A review of Carlo Mattogno’s Il rapporto Gerstein, by Dr. Robert A. Hall, appeared in the Spring 1988 Journal of Historical Review (Vol. 7, No. 1).
A translation of the Michel de Boüard interview appeared in the Fall 1988 Journal of Historical Review (Vol. 8, No. 3).
In fact Hilberg refused to testify at the second trial of Zündel in Toronto.
Here are the two paragraphs as they appear at the bottom of page 7 and the top of page 8 of the transcript. I have italicized the words that people usually leave out or ignore:
Unter entsprechender Leitung sollen nun im Zuge der Endlösung die Juden in geeigneter Weise im Osten zum Arbeitseinsatz kommen. In grossen Arbeitskolonnen, unter Trennung der Geschlechter, werden die arbeitsfähigen Juden strassenbauend in diese Gebiete geführt, wobei zweifellos ein Grossteil durch natürliche Verminderung ausfallen wird.
Der allfällig endlich verbleibende Restbestand wird, da es sich bei diesem zweifellos um den widerstandsfähigsten Teil handelt, entsprechend behandelt werden müssen, da dieser, eine natürliche Auslese darstellend, bei Freilassung als Keimzelle eines neuen jüdischen Aufbaues anzusprechen ist. (Siehe die Erfahrung der Geschichte.)
[Under proper direction the Jews shall now, in the course of the final solution, be taken to the East and put to work in a suitable way. In big labor columns, with separation of the sexes, the Jews capable of work will be conducted to these areas, building roads, whereby, undoubtedly, a large part will be lost through natural decrease.
[The total remnant that finally in any case will remain — as this is undoubtedly the part with the strongest resistance — will have to be treated accordingly, because the latter, representing a natural selection, is to be regarded, upon release, as the nucleus of a new Jewish development. (See the lesson of history.)]
The “nod” theory makes no sense in itself and is not supported by the slightest documentation. It seems to have made its appearance with Browning in 1984, when he wrote (emphasis mine):
… Himmler and Heydrich needed little more than a nod from Hitler to perceive that the time had come to extend the killing process to the European Jews. ("A Reply to Martin Broszat Regarding the Origins of the Final Solution,” The Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, 1984, page 124).
In Fateful Months (New York: Holmes & Meier,1985), Browning uses this theory on at least two occasions: first on page 22,and then on page 36, where he writes:
If a nod from Hitler could set Himmler and Heydrich in motion, others eagerly looked for similar signs.
In 1987 Brown declared:
… it required not more than a nod of the head from Hitler to give the “green light” indicating that the mass murder should now be extended to the European Jews. This was not so much an explicit order as an act of incitement. Hitler was soliciting a “feasibility study,” he was commissioning the drawing-up of a genocide plan. How this was communicated, we do not and never will know. ("Historians, Hitler, and the Holocaust,” a paper given at Pacific University, Forest Grove, Oregon, in March 1987, page 24, thanks to Dr. Franklel of the Oregon Holocaust Resources Center).
We might point out to Browning that if we do not know and cannot know how “this” was communicated, it is impossible to say that “this” existed.
I remind readers that Allied officials never mentioned the existence of gas chambers during the war. On the international stage, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill very nearly did so in their famous 1 November 1943 declaration on the German atrocities; they refrained from mentioning gas chambers — as we are told — at the British Government’s suggestion (Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945, Institute of Jewish Affairs, London, 1979, page 29).
Several months before, the Americans had planned the publication of a “Declaration of German Crimes in Poland,” which they suggested the British and the Soviets publish on the same day as the American declaration. This declaration contained the following paragraph:
These German measures are being carried out with the utmost brutality. Many of the victims are killed on the spot. The rest are segregated. Men from 14 to 50 are taken away to work for Germany. Some children are killed on the spot, others are separated from their parents and either sent to Germany to be brought up as Germans or sold to German settlers or dispatched with the women and old men to concentration camps, where they are now being systematically put to death in gas chambers.
Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, sent the declaration to the British. He informed the U.S. ambassador in Moscow by a telegram of August 27, 1943. Three days later, he warned the ambassador that there had been a mistake and in a telegram of August 30, he explained:
At the suggestion of the British Government which says there is insufficient evidence to justify the statement regarding execution in gas chambers, it has been agreed to eliminate the last phrase in paragraph 2 of the “Declaration on German Crimes in Poland” beginning “Where” and ending “chambers” thus making the second paragraph end with “concentration camps.” Please inform the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the changes in text. (Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1943, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1968, Vol. 1, pages 416-417).
This is the way The New York Times published the declaration, under the headline “U.S. and Britain Warn Nazi Killers” (30 August 1943, page 3.). The Allied officials proved themselves to be prudent in their circumspection. Had they mentioned the alleged gas chambers in an official and worldwide declaration, world history would have been changed: the German authorities could have vigorously exposed this vile and ridiculous war canard that, then, would have plummeted to earth, because the Allies, challenged to prove their allegation, would have been confounded before the entire world. See also Arthur Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, page 356.
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi directs the Jewish and Israeli Studies Center at Columbia University in New York. He wrote in 1982:
The Holocaust has already engendered more historical research than any single event in Jewish history, but I have no doubt whatever that its image is being shaped, not at the historian’s anvil, but in the novelist’s crucible. Much has changed since the sixteenth century; one thing curiously remains. Now, as then, it would appear that even where Jews do not reject history out of hand, they are not prepared to confront it directly, but seem to await a new, meta-historical myth, for which the novel provides at least a temporary modern surrogate. (Zakhor, Jewish History and Jewish Memory, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1982, page 98).
At the time of my Institute for Historical Review paper in 1983, I paid tribute to the courage and the wisdom of one of my lawyers: Eric Delcroix. I want to repeat that tribute here. From 1979 until today, Delcroix had defended Revisionists in court and elsewhere, through his writings and even by his physical presence when there was some danger.
Our druggist is used to making blunders. In order to illustrate that, I recommend page 558. There he recounts how no one was willing to give credence to his first thesis (Krema IV and V were planned without criminal intent) but that fortunately one man came to his aid, a man who “launched” him and who allowed him to present his thesis at the Sorbonne Colloquium in 1982, a man who, he wants to confide, found his exposé “clear and remarkable.” This individual, who in 1982 supported a thesis whose exact opposite Pressac sustains today, was none other than Pierre Vidal-Naquet!
On page 500 he presents us with the “gas-tight” wooden shutters, the provenance of which he doesn’t indicate but that probably were part of the disinfection gas chamber. He points out that the fixing bar is “attached to the shutter by two nuts and bolts. The bolt heads are ON THE INSIDE and the nuts are ON THE OUTSIDE” [original emphasis]. And he adds: “an arrangement that calls for no further comment,” thus giving to understanding, without saying so expressly (Pressac makes frequent use of preterition), that these shutters were part of a homicidal gas chamber and that, had the bolts been “on the inside,” the victims would have unscrewed the fixing bar and made their escape!
In a bombing attack, the door to an air-raid shelter is supposed to guard against two effects, among others, caused by exploding bomb’s suction of the oxygen out of the shelter and penetration of CO into the same shelter.
This observation, which destroys his thesis, he makes three times. On page 224, he writes: “The ventilation system of Leichenkeller 1 [the homicidal gas chamber] had initially been designed for a morgue, with the fresh air entering near the ceiling and the cold unhealthy air being drawn out near the floor. Its use as a gas chamber really required the reverse situation, with fresh air coming in near the floor and warm air saturated with hydrocyanic acid being drawn out near the ceiling. But the SS [and engineer Prüfer] chose to maintain the original morgue ventilation system in the gas chamber, hoping that it would be efficient enough.” On page 289, he recalls this “technical reality” of a ventilation system “inappropriately designed for a gas chamber.” On page 489, he finally writes: “The levels of the air inlets above and extraction holes below prove that the system was designed for an underground morgue and not for a gas chamber, where the extraction of the WARM noxious air should be in the UPPER part:”
See Die Vergasung der Koks (coke gasification) in a technical study of the crematoria that appeared in 1907: Handbuch der Architektur (Heft III: Bestattungsanlagen), Stuttgart, Alfred Körner Verlag, 1907, page 239. In this work I found much information on Leichenkeller, Leichenkammer, Sezierraum (dissecting room), on hygienic rules, aeration, disinfection, on particular precautions for infected corpses [separate room with special aeration and lower temperature], on showers, on the doctor’s office, on the length of time for cremation. When all is said and done, Krema II and III were simply classic types.
Pressac is right to recall, regarding this practice (commonplace during wartime where “recovery of non-ferrous metals” is carried out everywhere) that the “recovery of gold from corpses is current practice, even though it may be considered repugnant” (page 294); medical students know that it isn’t an activity peculiar to the SS!
This order from Höss likewise confirms what I have said about the Höss “confessions” (interview in Storia Illustrata, reprinted in Serge Thion, Vérité historique ou vérité politique?, La Vieille Taupe, 1980, page 203, note 10). Höss “confessed” that the members of the Sonderkommando entered the “gas chambers” immediately after the “gassing” and pulled out the bodies, eating and smoking all the while—in other words, without wearing gas masks, something that would have been absolutely impossible. On 2 April 1946, in his jail cell at Nuremberg, Höss gave the following answers to his American interrogator, S. Jaari:
Q: But was it not quite dangerous work for these inmates to go into these chambers and work among the bodies and among the gas fumes?
A: No.
Q: Did they wear gas masks?
A: They had some, but they did not need them, as nothing ever happened. (John Mendelsohn, editor. The Holocaust. 1982, vol. 12, page 113; Pretrial Interrogation of R. Höss, 2 April 1946, page 17)
The order of 12 August 1942, signed by Höss and showing the considerable danger of a gassing operation, demonstrates that Höss, when he was interrogated by the Americans four years later at the Nuremberg jail, gave some clumsy answers; he had been broken, as I have also been able to show, by his initial jailers and interrogators: certain Jews from British military security who tortured him before sending him to Nuremberg. Höss feared more than anything being turned over to the Polish Communists (see ). When I wrote about the Höss confession in 1980, I was not aware of the pretrial interrogation of R. Höss as reproduced by John Mendelsohn. It was Mark Weber who discovered it in 1989 and sent it to me. I wish to take this opportunity to thank my friend M. Weber for this providential confirmation of what I had discovered myself in 1980.
Hospitals continued to exist in German cities, but to a large extent they were “evacuated” to the countryside where they took the form of medical barracks on the model of those that were built in the concentration camps. On page 513 Pressac reproduces a plan of a hospital barracks at Auschwitz, giving as his source the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Paris. In fact, this is just another of the many documents he owes to me: it comes from the U.S. National Archives and bears the Nuremberg file number NO-4470.
The shame is that during the immediate postwar period this type of “imposed falsehood,” or imposture, became the law in the exact sense of the word; and today, once again, it carries the force of law for the French courts by virtue of the anti-Revisionist provisions of the Fabius-Gayssot law promulgated, under the signature of François Mitterand, in the Journal officiel de la République française on 14 July 1990.
Here Pressac forgets that, according to him, Nyiszli has also used divisors! And what is the meaning of “almost exactly"? Lending his imprimatur to Pressac’s number-cooking, Vidal-Naquet writes: “The fact that today it can be stated that the statistics given in so important a testimony must be divided by four is a scholarly finding that we would be very wrong to dismiss. One does not diminish the crimes of the Nazis by rejecting false figures. The question of the exact number of victims is not essential. Arno Mayer says this, repeats it, and on this point I can only agree with him.” (From Vidal-Naquet’s preface to the French edition of Arno Mayer’s Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: La “Solution finale” dans l'histoire, ed. La Découverte, 1990, pages viii-ix).
On the night of 3 October 1980 an explosion in front of a synagogue on the Rue de Copernic in Paris killed three persons and wounded a dozen more. On 9 May 1990 graves in a Jewish cemetery at Carpentras in the south of France were violated in a particularly lurid manner.
The French “far right” was accused of having perpetrated both attacks in each instance it was at length admitted that the rightists were blameless. In the Rue Copernic case, it is universally conceded that the attack was carried out by a member of a Palestinian faction. As to the Carpentras incident, numerous articles, even in the Jewish press, have subsequently described how the affair was distorted and blown out of proportion; all agree that the graves were desecrated, not by rightists, but by politically indifferent youths or by Jewish families desirous of “teaching a lesson” to the liberal Jews of Carpentras (the most serious violation was that of the corpse and grave of a Jew who had married a Catholic).
It was due precisely to the proximity of the water table that the Leichenkeller of Krema II and III, instead of being completely underground beneath the crematory room proper, were only half below ground, adjacent to the cemetery room.
Nevertheless, I can reveal here for the first time that the end of 1978 I considered abandoning all further efforts at publication when I witnessed the ferocity with which the entire press, the academy and the courts denied me so much as the right to carry on a normal life. The Conseil d'État went so far as to declare, in October 1978, that I was a university professor with no publications to his credit, and that I had even confessed as much! My isolation was complete. The situation has changed a lot since those heroic days…
This is the figure of the “traditional historians,” as Pressac calls them; Pressac himself gives no clear indications on the matter.
"The shift boss (Vorarbeiter) wrote in a notebook the number of corpses incinerated per charge and the head of the Kommando (Kommandoführer), an SS man, checked these entries” (the testimony of Henryk Tauber, according to Pressac, page 495).
The book opens with an impressive list of patrons, beginning with “the Commission of the European Communities; the Socialist Group of the European Parliament; Mrs. Simone Veil, former President of the European Parliament” (page 8), as well as political figures such as Jacques Delors.
As we have remarked, Pressac’s book constitutes a godsend for the Revisionists. The latter have already produced several reviews, and are working on more:
— Mark Weber, “Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, by Jean-Claude Pressac,” The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1990, pages 231-237;
— Jack Wikoff, “Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, by Jean-Claude Pressac,” Remarks (P.O. Box 234, Aurora, NY 13026), pages 1-9;
— Carlo Mattogno, “Jean-Claude Pressac and the War Refugee Board,” The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1990, pages 461-485;
— Enrique Aynat Eknes, “Neither Trace Nor Proof: the Seven Auschwitz 'Gassing' Sites,” The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991, page 177.
The magazine Instauration has announced its intention to publish an article on the Pressac book. I suppose that eventually Fritz Berg will publish his ideas. F. Berg is the author of three important technical studies all published in The Journal of Historical Review: “The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within a Myth” (Spring 1984, pages 15-46); “The German Delousing Chambers” (Spring 1986, pages 73-94); “Typhus and the Jews” (Winter 1988, pages 480-481). It is thanks to F. Berg’s savoir-faire that I was able to get a copy of Pressac’s book in January 1990.
Which, in plain English, means that this place could not have been a homicidal gas chamber because it did have a fanlight and because it lacked ventilation of any kind.
1) The Auschwitz Album/Lili Jacob’s Album, edited by Serge Klarsfeld, mimeographed, distributed “free of charge, to more than 1,000 libraries and Jewish organizations” (S. Klarsfeld, August 5, 1980). 2) The Auschwitz Album/A Book Based Upon an Album Discovered by a Concentration Camp Survivor, Lili Meier, text by Peter Hellman, New York, Random House, 1981.
Compare the report of Norbert Masur, an official of the Swedish branch of the World Jewish Congress, who met Himmler on 21 April 1945, a few days before the end of the war. They had a long conversation. Heinrich Himmler told Masur: “In order to contain the epidemics, we were forced to build crematoria where we could burn the corpses of countless people who passed away because of these diseases [typhus]. And now, they want to put a noose around our necks” (Norbert Masur, “My Meeting with Heinrich Himmler,” Moment [a Jewish monthly magazine published in Boston], December 1985, page 51, which is a partial translation from the Swedish book Ein Jude Talar med Himmler (A Jew Talks with Himmler), Stockholm, Albert Bonniers Vorlag, 1945).
In the entry, “Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: 1990), historian Israel Gutman writes: “The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the first instance in occupied Europe of an uprising by an urban population. Its unique feature was the fact that it was a general rebellion in which armed fighters took part together with masses of Jews hiding out in bunkers and refuges.” (Vol. 4, page 1631).
S. Birnbaum, JTA dispatch, Jewish Bulletin of Northern California (San Francisco), 23 April 1993, page 9.
Libération (Paris), 18 April 1988, page 27. In an interview published in the Austrian news magazine Profil, 19 April 1993, page 86, Edelman likewise referred to “our 200 fighters.”
Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer contends that altogether there were 750 Jewish ghetto fighters, organized in two combat organizations. See: Y. Bauer, A History of the Holocaust (New York: 1982), page 262.
According to Jewish Holocaust specialist Israel Gutman, “the total Jewish fighting forces in the ghetto numbered 700 to 750.” See: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York, 1990), Vol. 4, page 1628.
Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg likewise puts the “total armed strength” of the Jewish ghetto fighters at “about 750.” See: R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Holmes & Meier, 1985), page 512.
Richard Lukas, a specialist of Polish history, cites estimates of between 1,000 and 2,000 Jewish ghetto fighters, noting that the combatants were thus only about three to five percent of the ghetto’s population. See: Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944 (Lexington, Ky.: 1986), pages 172, 178, 267 (n. 106).
Jewish historian Ber Mark contends that there were perhaps a thousand “organized” Jewish fighters, with many others helping in the struggle. See: Ber Mark, Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto (New York: Schocken, 1975) page 15, and, Ber Mark, “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” in: Yuri Suhl, ed., They Fought Back (1967), page 93.
N. Weill, “L'Insurrection du ghetto de Varsovie,” Le Monde (Paris), 18-19 April 1993, page 2. Zuckerman (1915-1981), whose name is sometimes spelled “Cukierman,” was also known by his nom de guerre, “Antek.” His memoir was published in 1993 under the title A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Univ. of Calif. Press).
Forty survivors of the original group of 200 fighters, including Marek Edelman, succeeded in escaping from the ghetto, 8-10 May 1943. See: M. Edelman interview in Profil (Vienna), 19 April 1993, page 86.
Even though it had a wall around it, the Warsaw ghetto was largely “open.” In this sense, it deserved to be designated as a “residential district” or “quarter” rather than a “ghetto.”
See: Léon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate (New York: 1979), page 230.
Israel Gutman, “Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: 1990), page 1628.
Cited by Adam Rutkowski in an article reprinted in a special issue of the French periodical, Le Monde Juif, April-August 1993, page 162. The “Jewish Combat Organization” (JCO) or “Jewish Fighting Organization,” was known in Polish as the “Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa” (ZOB); details about the methods employed by the JCO are provided by Yisrael Gutman in his book, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (1982), pages 344-349.
These methods scarcely differed from those of the Mafia. The Germans knew that they faced strong opposition. They sought to convince the Jews to allow themselves to be transferred to the Lublin region, along with the factories and workshops that served the German war effort. In March 1943 a strange “poster war” took place between the Jewish Combat Organization (JCO) and Walter C. Többens, who was responsible for evacuating the Jews. The JCO’s notices called on the Jewish residents to refuse transfer to what it called the death camps. The Germans left these handbills in place, content to put up alongside them notices signed “Walter C. Többens,” in which the claims of the JCO were refuted point by point.
Gutman acknowledges: “Többens told the truth about these transports; they weren’t to death camps, and it is a fact that there were buildings for integrating the factories [in the Lublin region]. But at the time the resistance and the suspicions of the Jews were so strong that even the most ingenious tactics weren’t able to overcome them.” (pages 334-335) It was only after determining that methods of persuasion had been stymied that the Germans decided on their police operation.
On these points, as well as many others, see, notably:
The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt, by Yisrael Gutman, translated from the Hebrew by Ina Friedman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982, 487+xxii pages), and, Il y a 50 ans: le soulèvement du ghetto de Varsovie ("Fifty Years Ago: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising"), special edition of Le Monde Juif, April-August 1993, 336 pages.
The latter work includes a reprint of an article by Adam Rutkowski, published in 1969 under the title “Quelques documents sur la révolte du ghetto de Varsovie” ("Some Documents on the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt"), pages 160-169. On page 162 appear the “general directives for combat of the Jewish Combat Organization.”
The “Stroop Report,” dated 16 May 1943, is entitled “Es gibt keinen jüdischen Wohnbezirk in Warschau mehr!” ("The Jewish Residential District in Warsaw Is No More!"). Text published as Nuremberg document PS-1061 (USA-275) in: International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal ("blue series"), Vol. 26, pages 628-694, followed by a selection of 18 photographs (of 52). A purported facsimile edition of the German original of this report, including Stroop’s telex reports, along with an English-language translation, has been published in the U.S. as: The Stroop Report: The Jewish Quarter in Warsaw Is No More! (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), Translated from the German and annotated by Sybil Milton, Introduction by Andrzej Wirth.
In his telex report of 24 May 1943, General Stroop stated: “Of the total 56,065 Jews apprehended, about 7,000 were annihilated directly in the course of the large-scale operation in the former Jewish quarter. 6,929 Jews were destroyed through transport to T II [an apparent reference to the Treblinka II camp], making a total of 13,929 annihilated Jews. In addition to this figure of 56,065, an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 Jews were annihilated in explosions or fires.” See: The Stroop Report (New York: 1979), [pages not numbered].
In the entry, “Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (page 1630), Israel Gutman writes: “On May 16 Stroop announced that the fighting was over and that 'we succeeded in capturing altogether 56,065 Jews, that is, definitely destroying them.'” The words ascribed here to Stroop are not accurate. What he actually wrote in his report of May 16 is this: “The total number of Jews apprehended or confirmed destroyed is 56,065.”
"After the people had been taken out of the Ghetto — they numbered between 50,000 and 60,000 — they were brought to the railway station. The Security Police [Sicherheits-polizei] had complete supervision of these people and were in charge of the transport of these people to Lublin.” From an affidavit of Jürgen Stroop, which was quoted as document 3841-PS (USA-804) by American prosecutor Col. Amen at the Nuremberg Tribunal on 12 April 1946. Text published in: International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal ("blue series"), Vol. 11, pages 354-355.
"The terrible, exemplary, and apocalyptic revolt of the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto is at once an act of despair and of heroism.” See: D. Desthomas, La Montagne, 17 April 1993, page 12.
Exaggerations about “the Warsaw ghetto uprising” appear regularly in the media around the world. A comparison of exaggerations and inventions in the Brazilian press on this subject with the facts recently appeared in a revisionist periodical in Brazil. See: S.E. Castan, “Documento: A Verdadeira História do Levante do Gueto de Varsóvia,” Boletim-EP (Esclarcimento ao Pais), June 1993, pages 7-14. Address: Boletim-EP, Caixa Postal 11.011, Ag. Menino Deus, 90880-970 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.