- Nearly everyone has heard of Auschwitz, the German wartime
concentration camp where many prisoners -- most of them Jewish -- were
reportedly exterminated, especially in gas chambers. Auschwitz is widely
regarded as the most terrible Nazi extermination center. The camp's horrific
reputation cannot, however, be reconciled with the facts.
-
- Scholars Challenge Holocaust Story
-
- Astonishing as it may seem, more and more historians
and engineers have been challenging the widely accepted Auschwitz story.
These "revisionist" scholars do not dispute the fact that large
numbers of Jews were deported to the camp, or that many died there, particularly
of typhus and other diseases. But the compelling evidence they present
shows that Auschwitz was not an extermination center and that the story
of mass killings in "gas chambers" is a myth.
-
- The Auschwitz Camps
-
- The Auschwitz camp complex was set up in 1940 in what
is now south-central Poland. Large numbers of Jews were deported there
between 1942 and mid-1944.
-
- The main camp was known as Auschwitz I. Birkenau, or
Auschwitz II, was supposedly the main extermination center, and Monowitz,
or Auschwitz III, was a large industrial center where gasoline was produced
from coal. In addition there were dozens of smaller satellite camps devoted
to the war economy.
-
- Four Million Victims?
-
- At the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal, the Allies charged
that the Germans exterminated four million people at Auschwitz. This figure,
which was invented by the Soviets, was uncritically accepted for many years.
It often appeared in major American newspapers and magazines, for example.
[1]
-
- Today no reputable historian, not even those who generally
accept the extermination story, believes this figure. Israeli Holocaust
historian Yehuda Bauer said in 1989 that it is time to finally acknowledge
the familiar four million figure is a deliberate myth. In July 1990 the
Auschwitz State Museum in Poland, along with Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust
Center, suddenly announced that altogether perhaps one million people (both
Jews and non-Jews) died there. Neither institution would say how many of
these people were killed, nor were any estimates given of the numbers of
those supposedly gassed. [2] One prominent Holocaust historian, Gerald
Reitlinger, has estimated that perhaps 700,000 or so Jews perished at Auschwitz.
More recently, Holocaust historian Jean-Claude Pressac has estimated that
about 800,000 persons -- of whom 630,000 were Jewish -- perished at Auschwitz.
While even such lower figures are incorrect, they show how the Auschwitz
story has changed drastically over the years. [3]
-
- Bizarre Tales
-
- At one time it was seriously claimed that Jews were systematically
electrocuted at Auschwitz. American newspapers, citing a Soviet eyewitness
report from liberated Auschwitz, told readers in February 1945 that the
methodical Germans had killed Jews there using an "electric conveyor
belt on which hundreds of persons could be electrocuted simultaneously
[and] then moved on into furnaces. They were burned almost instantly, producing
fertilizer for nearby cabbage fields." [4]
-
- And at the Nuremberg Tribunal, chief U.S. prosecutor
Robert Jackson charged that the Germans used a "newly invented"
device to instantaneously "vaporize" 20,000 Jews near Auschwitz
"in such a way that there was no trace left of them." [5] No
reputable historian now accepts either of these fanciful tales.
-
- The Höss 'Confession'
-
- A key Holocaust document is the "confession"
of former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss of April 5, 1946, which
was submitted by the U.S. prosecution at the main Nuremberg trial. [6]
-
- Although it is still widely cited as solid proof for
the Auschwitz extermination story, it is actually a false statement that
was obtained by torture.
-
- Many years after the war, British military intelligence
sergeant Bernard Clarke described how he and five other British soldiers
tortured the former commandant to obtain his "confession." Höss
himself privately explained his ordeal in these words: "Certainly,
I signed a statement that I killed two and half million Jews. I could just
as well have said that it was five million Jews. There are certain methods
by which any confession can be obtained, whether it is true or not."
[7]
-
- Even historians who generally accept the Holocaust extermination
story now acknowledge that many of the specific statements made in the
Höss "affidavit" are simply not true. For one thing, no
serious scholar now claims that anything like two and a half or three million
people perished in Auschwitz.
-
- The Höss "affidavit" further alleges that
Jews were already being exterminated by gas in the summer of 1941 at three
other camps: Belzec, Treblinka and Wolzek. The "Wolzek" camp
mentioned by Höss is a total invention. No such camp existed, and
the name is no longer mentioned in Holocaust literature. Moreover, the
story these days by those who believe in the Holocaust legend is that gassings
of Jews did not begin at Auschwitz, Treblinka, or Belzec until sometime
in 1942.
-
- No Documentary Evidence
-
- Many thousands of secret German documents dealing with
Auschwitz were confiscated after the war by the Allies. Not a single one
refers to a policy or program of extermination. In fact, the extermination
story cannot be reconciled with the documentary evidence.
-
- Many Jewish Inmates Unable to Work
-
- For example, it is often claimed that all Jews at Auschwitz
who were unable to work were immediately killed. Jews who were too old,
young, sick, or weak were supposedly gassed on arrival, and only those
who could be worked to death were temporarily kept alive.
-
- But the evidence shows that, in fact, a very high percentage
of the Jewish inmates were not able to work, and were nevertheless not
killed. For example, an internal German telex message dated Sept. 4, 1943,
from the chief of the Labor Allocation department of the SS Economic and
Administrative Main Office (WVHA), reported that of 25,000 Jewish inmates
in Auschwitz, only 3,581 were able to work, and that all of the remaining
Jewish inmates -- some 21,500, or about 86 percent -- were unable to work.
[8]
-
- This is also confirmed in a secret report dated April
5, 1944, on "security measures in Auschwitz" by Oswald Pohl,
head of the SS concentration camp system, to SS chief Heinrich Himmler.
Pohl reported that there was a total of 67,000 inmates in the entire Auschwitz
camp complex, of whom 18,000 were hospitalized or disabled. In the Auschwitz
II camp (Birkenau), supposedly the main extermination center, there were
36,000 inmates, mostly female, of whom "approximately 15,000 are unable
to work." [9]
-
- These two documents simply cannot be reconciled with
the Auschwitz extermination story.
-
- The evidence shows that Auschwitz-Birkenau was established
primarily as a camp for Jews who were not able to work, including the sick
and elderly, as well as for those who were temporarily awaiting assignment
to other camps. That's the considered view of Dr. Arthur Butz of Northwestern
University, who also says that this was the reason for the unusually high
death rate there. [10]
-
- Princeton University history professor Arno Mayer, who
is Jewish, acknowledges in a recent book about the "final solution"
that more Jews perished at Auschwitz as a result of typhus and other "natural"
causes than were executed. [11]
-
- Anne Frank
-
- Perhaps the best known Auschwitz inmate was Anne Frank,
who is known around the world for her famous diary. But few people know
that thousands of Jews, including Anne and her father, Otto Frank, "survived"
Auschwitz.
-
- The 15-year-old girl and her father were deported from
the Netherlands to Auschwitz in September 1944. Several weeks later, in
the face of the advancing Soviet army, Anne was evacuated along with many
other Jews to the Bergen-Belsen camp, where she died of typhus in March
1945.
-
- Her father came down with typhus in Auschwitz and was
sent to the camp hospital to recover. He was one of thousands of sick and
feeble Jews who were left behind when the Germans abandoned the camp in
January 1945, shortly before it was overrun by the Soviets. He died in
Switzerland in 1980.
-
- If the German policy had been to kill Anne Frank and
her father, they would not have survived Auschwitz. Their fate, tragic
though it was, cannot be reconciled with the extermination story.
-
- Allied Propaganda
-
- The Auschwitz gassing story is based in large part on
the hearsay statements of former Jewish inmates who did not personally
see any evidence of extermination. Their beliefs are understandable, because
rumors about gassings at Auschwitz were widespread.
-
- Allied planes dropped large numbers of leaflets, written
in Polish and German, on Auschwitz and the surrounding areas which claimed
that people were being gassed in the camp. The Auschwitz gassing story,
which was an important part of the Allied wartime propaganda effort, was
also broadcast to Europe by Allied radio stations. [12]
-
- Survivor Testimony
-
- Former inmates have confirmed that they saw no evidence
of extermination at Auschwitz.
-
- An Austrian woman, Maria Vanherwaarden, testified about
her camp experiences in a Toronto District Court in March 1988. She was
interned in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942 for having sexual relations with
a Polish forced laborer. On the train trip to the camp, a Gypsy woman told
her and the others that they would all be gassed at Auschwitz.
-
- Upon arrival, Maria and the other women were ordered
to undress and go into a large concrete room without windows to take a
shower. The terrified women were sure that they were about to die. But
then, instead of gas, water came out of the shower heads.
-
- Auschwitz was no vacation center, Maria confirmed. She
witnessed the death of many fellow inmates by disease, particularly typhus,
and quite a few committed suicide. But she saw no evidence at all of mass
killings, gassings, or of any extermination program. [13]
-
- A Jewish woman named Marika Frank arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau
from Hungary in July 1944, when 25,000 Jews were supposedly gassed and
cremated daily. She likewise testified after the war that she heard and
saw nothing of "gas chambers" during the time she was interned
there. She heard the gassing stories only later. [14]
-
- Inmates Released
-
- Auschwitz internees who had served their sentences were
released and returned to their home countries. If Auschwitz had actually
been a top secret extermination center, the Germans would certainly not
have released inmates who "knew" what was happening in the camp.
[15]
-
- Himmler Orders Death Rate Reduced
-
- In response to the deaths of many inmates due to disease,
especially typhus, the German authorities responsible for the camps ordered
firm counter-measures.
-
- The head of the SS camp administration office sent a
directive dated Dec. 28, 1942, to Auschwitz and the other concentration
camps. It sharply criticized the high death rate of inmates due to disease,
and ordered that "camp physicians must use all means at their disposal
to significantly reduce the death rate in the various camps." Furthermore,
it ordered:
-
-
- The camp doctors must supervise more often than in the
past the nutrition of the prisoners and, in cooperation with the administration,
submit improvement recommendations to the camp commandants ... The camp
doctors are to see to it that the working conditions at the various labor
places are improved as much as possible.
-
-
- Finally, the directive stressed that "the Reichsfhrer
SS [Heinrich Himmler] has ordered that the death rate absolutely must be
reduced." [16]
-
- German Camp Regulations
-
- Official German camp regulations make clear that Auschwitz
was not an extermination center. They ordered: [17]
-
-
- New arrivals in the camp are to be given a thorough medical
examination, and if there is any doubt [about their health], they must
be sent to quarantine for observation.
-
- Prisoners who report sick must be examined that same
day by the camp physician. If necessary, the physician must transfer the
prisoners to a hospital for professional treatment.
-
- The camp physician must regularly inspect the kitchen
regarding the preparation of the food and the quality of the food supply.
Any deficiencies that may arise must be reported to the camp commandant.
-
- Special care should be given in the treatment of accidents,
in order not to impair the full productivity of the prisoners.
-
- Prisoners who are to be released or transfered must first
be brought before the camp physician for medical examination.
-
- Telltale Aerial Photos
-
- Detailed aerial reconnaissance photographs taken of Auschwitz-Birkenau
on several random days in 1944 (during the height of the alleged extermination
period there) were made public by the CIA in 1979. These photos show no
trace of piles of corpses, smoking crematory chimneys or masses of Jews
awaiting death, things that have been repeatedly alleged, and all of which
would have been clearly visible if Auschwitz had been the extermination
center it is said to have been. [18]
-
- Absurd Cremation Claims
-
- Cremation specialists have confirmed that thousands of
corpses could not possibly have been cremated every day throughout the
spring and summer of 1944 at Auschwitz, as commonly alleged.
-
- For example, Mr. Ivan Lagace, manager of a large crematory
in Calgary, Canada, testified in court in April 1988 that the Auschwitz
cremation story is technically impossible. The allegation that 10,000 or
even 20,000 corpses were burned every day at Auschwitz in the summer of
1944 in crematories and open pits is simply "preposterous" and
"beyond the realm of reality," he declared under oath. [19]
-
- Gassing Expert Refutes Extermination Story
-
- America's leading gas chamber expert, Boston engineer
Fred A. Leuchter, carefully examined the supposed "gas chambers"
in Poland and concluded that the Auschwitz gassing story is absurd and
technically impossible.
-
- Leuchter is the foremost specialist on the design and
installation of gas chambers used in the United States to execute convicted
criminals. For example, he designed a gas chamber facility for the Missouri
state penitentiary.
-
- In February 1988 he carried out a detailed onsite examination
of the "gas chambers" at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek in
Poland, which are either still standing or only partially in ruins. In
sworn testimony to a Toronto court and in a technical report, Leuchter
described every aspect of his investigation.
-
- He concluded by emphatically declaring that the alleged
gassing facilities could not possibly have been used to kill people. Among
other things, he pointed out that the so-called "gas chambers"
were not properly sealed or vented to kill human beings without also killing
German camp personnel. [20]
-
- Dr. William B. Lindsey, a research chemist employed for
33 years by the Dupont Corporation, likewise testified in a 1985 court
case that the Auschwitz gassing story is technically impossible. Based
on a careful on-site examination of the "gas chambers" at Auschwitz,
Birkenau and Majdanek, and on his years of experience, he declared: "I
have come to the conclusion that no one was willfully or purposefully killed
with Zyklon B [hydrocyanic acid gas] in this manner. I consider it absolutely
impossible." [21]
-
- Summary
-
- The Auschwitz extermination story originated as wartime
propaganda. Now, more than 60 years after the end of the Second World War,
it is time to take another, more objective look at this highly polemicized
chapter of history. The Auschwitz legend is the core of the Holocaust story.
If hundreds of thousands of Jews were not systematically killed there,
as alleged, one of the great myths of our time collapses.
-
- Artificially maintaining the hatreds and passions of
the past prevents genuine reconciliation and lasting peace. Revisionism
promotes historical awareness and international understanding. That is
why the work of the Institute for Historical Review is so important and
deserves your support.
-
- Notes
-
- 1. Nuremberg document 008-USSR. IMT blue series, Vol.
39, pp. 241, 261.; NC
- and A red series, vol. 1, p. 35.; C.L. Sulzberger, "Oswiecim
Killings Placed
- at 4,000,000," New York Times, May 8, 1945, and,
New York Times, Jan. 31, 1986,
- p. A4.
- 2. Y. Bauer, "Fighting the Distortions," Jerusalem
Post (Israel), Sept. 22,
- 1989; "Auschwitz Deaths Reduced to a Million,"
Daily Telegraph (London), July
- 17, 1990; "Poland Reduces Auschwitz Death Toll Estimate
to 1 Million," The
- Washington Times, July 17, 1990.
- 3. G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution (1971); J.-C. Pressac,
Le Crématoires
- d'Auschwitz: La Machinerie du meurtre de mass (Paris:
CNRS, 1993). On Pressac's
- estimates, see: L'Express (France), Sept. 30, 1993, p.
33.
- 4. Washington (DC) Daily News, Feb. 2, 1945, pp. 2, 35.
(United Press
- dispatch from Moscow).
- 5. IMT blue series, Vol. 16, p. 529-530. (June 21, 1946).
- 6. Nuremberg document 3868-PS (USA-819). IMT blue series,
Vol. 33, pp.
- 275-279.
- 7. Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp.
235; R. Faurisson,
- The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87, pp.
389-403.
- 8. Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw,
German document
- No. 128, in: H. Eschwege, ed., Kennzeichen J (East Berlin:
1966), p. 264.
- 9. Nuremberg document NO-021. NMT green series, Vol.
5. pp. 384-385.
- 10. Arthur Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Costa
Mesa, Calif.), p.
- 124.
- 11. Arno Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The
'Final Solution' in
- History (Pantheon, 1989), p. 365.
- 12. Nuremberg document NI-11696. NMT green series, Vol.
8, p. 606.
- 13. Testimony in Toronto District Court, March 28, 1988.
Toronto Star, March
- 29, 1988, p. A2.
- 14. Sylvia Rothchild, ed., Voices from the Holocaust
(New York: 1981), pp.
- 188-191.
- 15. Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret (Boston: 1981),
p. 169.
- 16. Nuremberg document PS-2171, Annex 2. NC&A red
series, Vol. 4, pp.
- 833-834.
- 17. "Rules and Regulations for the Concentration
Camps." Anthology, Inhuman
- Medicine, Vol. 1, Part 1 (Warsaw: International Auschwitz
Committee, 1970), pp.
- 149-151.; S. Paskuly, ed., Death Dealer: the Memoirs
of the SS Kommandant at
- Auschwitz (Buffalo: 1992), pp. 216-217.
- 18. Dino A. Brugioni and Robert C. Poirier, The Holocaust
Revisited
- (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1979).
- 19. Canadian Jewish News (Toronto), April 14, 1988, p.
6.
- 20. The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the
Alleged Execution Gas
- Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek (Toronto:
1988). Available for
- $17.00, postpaid, from the IHR.
- 21. The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Feb. 12, 1985, p. M3
- #2001
-
- About the Author
-
- Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical
Review. He studied
- history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the
University of Munich,
- Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A.,
1977). For nine years he
- served as editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review.
-
- http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/auschwitz.shtml
-
-
-
- Commentary
- From Ted Twietmeyer
- tedtw@frontiernet.net
- 1-30-5
-
- This article was well-written and researched. And it
also means that the Shindler's List film is fiction as well, which also
depicts countless people being gassed daily. As for the crematories, I
completely concur with the commentary in the article.
-
- The Facts: It takes about 70 minutes (according to one
furnace manufacturer's spec sheet, see
- [1] ) to cremate a body even today. This is a burner
of 400KW. If each crematory furnace were to cremate 20.6 bodies in every
24 hour period running 7 days a week, then to handle 20,000 bodies a day
would require more than 971 furnaces running non-stop, AND sufficient fuel
to keep them all operating. And all this, in a Germany that was always
short on fuel?
-
- Preposterous of historians to never look at the numbers!
-
- Ted Twietmeyer
-
- [1] - Furnace spec sheet with cycle time:
- http://www.ati-furnace.com/en/four_2/shema.htm
-
-
- Comment
- From William Purcell
- 1-31-5
-
- I haven't read the entirety of Mark Weber's essay yet
- but one fact that should ALWAYS be brought out - particularly in regard
to this so-called "60th" commemoration of the ... er ... the
... "liberation" of Auschwitz in January of 1945 by the Red Army
of the Communist Soviet Union is this fact: that camp in Poland - Auschwitz
- merely underwent a CHANGE IN MANAGEMENT at THAT time, ie from "Nazi"
to "Commie." It most definitely was NOT 'liberated' no matter
how one looks at it.
-
- That camp in Auschwitz was CONTINUED to be run as a concentration
camp up until the year 1951 (!!!!) by the Communist USSR under Stalin until
two years before Stalin's death when it was then converted (1951) into
an official Communist 'State Museum' (read: anti-German Propaganda Factory)
in then Communist Poland.
-
- From 1945 up until 1951 when it finally finished its
role as a functioning death camp - some 250,000 victims were put to death
there. Victims of the Commies this time. It point of actually documented
fact - this total of Stalinist victims actually exceeded the previous occupiers
' total by about three times : ie the ACTUAL number of persons who died
in Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945 when the Germans were running that place
was some 75,000 souls - 63,000 of whom were JEWISH - few if any of whom
ever died from any "gassing."
-
- Most died from the wartime typhus epidemic and severe
malnutrition-induced illness
-
- None of the 250,000 victims during the Stalinist period
(1945 up to 1951) ever died of any "gassing" there, either, for
that matter.
-
- Most died from either being worked to death as slave
laborers - or died of disease and starvation. A few died from firing squad
style executions.
-
- That's it.
-
- Those are the ACTUAL, REAL historical facts about the
real Auschwitz.
-
- All of the rest is Propaganda. It had originally been
claimed that "over 4.5 million" of the "six million Jews"
had been "gassed" there. This figure went through many, many
permutations and revisions by the JEWS THEMSELVES until about 1985, when
Dr. Francisek Piper - the very one whom the American Jew, David Cole, interviewed
in his now famous video - the one in which Piper admits that the "gas
chamber" that was always shown to the tourists there - was actually
built in 1947! - two years AFTER the war was over.
-
- see: www.codoh.com
- see: www.ihr.org
- see: www.vho.org
-
|
