Auschwitz - Myths &
Facts By
Mark Weber IHR.org 1-29-5
- 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.
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- 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.
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- The Auschwitz Camps
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Four Million Victims?
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- 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]
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- 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]
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- Bizarre Tales
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- 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]
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- 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.
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- The Höss 'Confession'
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- 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]
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- 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.
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- 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]
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- No Documentary Evidence
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- 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.
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- Many Jewish Inmates Unable to Work
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- 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.
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- 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]
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- 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]
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- These two documents simply cannot be reconciled with
the Auschwitz extermination story.
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- 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]
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- 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]
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- Anne Frank
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Allied Propaganda
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- 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.
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- 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]
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- Survivor Testimony
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- Former inmates have confirmed that they saw no
evidence of extermination at Auschwitz.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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]
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- 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]
Part two
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