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2023-02-20 12:58:34 -05:00
THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST
BY RICHARD HARWOOD
Introduction
In the following chapters the author has, he believes,
brought together irrefutable evidence that the allegation that 6
million Jews died during the Second World War, as a direct
result of official German policy of extermination, is utterly
unfounded. This conclusion, admittedly an unpopular one,
resulted from an inquiry which was begun with no pre-conceived
opinions, beyond a general notion that the statistical
possibility of such huge casualties was perhaps open to doubt,
as well as an awareness that political capital was being made
from the implications of this alleged atrocity. A great deal of
careful research into this question, however, has now convinced
me beyond any doubt that the allegation is not merely an
exaggeration but an invention of post-war propaganda.
Of course, atrocity propaganda is nothing new. It has
accompanied every conflict of the 20th century and doubtless
will continue to do so. During the first World War, the Germans
were actually accused of eating Belgian babies, as well as
delighting to throw them into the air and transfix them on
bayonets. The British also alleged that the German forces were
operating a "Corpse Factory", in which they boiled down the
bodies of their own dead in order to obtain glycerine and other
commodities, a calculated insult to the honor of an Imperial
army. After the war, however, came the retractions; indeed, a
public statement was made by the Foreign Secretary in the House
of Commons apologizing for the insults to German honor, which
were admitted to be war-time propaganda.
No such statements have been made after the Second World War.
In fact, rather than diminish with the passage of years, the
atrocity propaganda concerning the German occupation, and in
particular their treatment of the Jews, has done nothing but
increase its virulence and elaborate its catalog of horrors.
Gruesome paperback books with lurid covers continue to roll from
the presses, adding continuously to a growing mythology of the
concentration camps and especially to the story that no less
than Six Million Jews were exterminated in them. The ensuing
pages will reveal this claim to be the most colossal piece of
fiction and the most successful of deceptions; but here an
attempt may be made to answer an important question: What has
rendered the atrocities stories of the Second World War so
uniquely different from those of the First? Why were the latter
retracted while the former are reiterated louder than ever? Is
it possible that the story of the Six Million Jews is serving a
political purpose, even that it is a form of political
blackmail?
So far as the Jewish people themselves are concerned, the
deception has been an incalculable benefit. Every conceivable
race and nationality had its share of suffering in the Second
World War, but none has so successfully elaborated it and turned
it to such great advantage. The alleged extent of their
persecution quickly aroused sympathy for the Jewish homeland
they had sought for so long; after the War the British
Government did little to prevent Jewish emigration to Palestine
which they had declared illegal, and it was not long afterwards
that the Zionists wrested from the Government the land of
Palestine and created their haven from persecution, the State of
Israel. Indeed, it is a remarkable fact that the Jewish people
emerged from the Second World War as nothing less than a
triumphant minority. Dr. Max Nussbaum, the former chief rabbi of
the Jewish community in Berlin, stated on April 11, 1953: "The
position the Jewish people occupy today in the world -- despite
the enormous losses -- is ten times stronger than what it was
twenty years ago." It should be added, if one is to be honest,
that this strength has been much consolidated financially by the
supposed massacre of the Six Million, undoubtedly the most
profitable atrocity allegation of all time. To date, the
staggering figure of six thousand million pounds has been paid
out in compensation by the Federal Government of West Germany,
mostly to the State of Israel (which did not even exist during
the Second World War), as well as to individual Jewish
claimants.
DISCOURAGEMENT OF NATIONALISM
In terms of political blackmail, however, the allegation that
Six Million Jews died during the Second World War has much more
far-reaching implications for the people of Britain and Europe
than simply the advantages it has gained for the Jewish nation.
And here one comes to the crux of the question: Why the Big Lie?
What is its purpose? In the first place, it has been used quite
unscrupulously to discourage any form of nationalism. Should the
people of Britain or any other European country attempt to
assert their patriotism and preserve their national integrity in
an age when the very existence of nation-states is threatened,
they are immediately branded as "neo-Nazis". Because, of course,
Nazism was nationalism, and we know what happened then -- Six
Million Jews were exterminated! So long as the myth is
perpetuated, peoples everywhere will remain in bondage to it;
the need for international tolerance and understanding will be
hammered home by the United Nations until nationhood itself; the
very guarantee of freedom, is abolished.
A classic example of the use of the 'Six Million' as an anti-
national weapon appears in Manvell and Frankl's book, The
Incomparable Crime (London, 1967), which deals with 'Genocide in
the Twentieth Century'. Anyone with a pride in being British
will be somewhat supersede by the vicious attack made on the
British Empire in this book. The authors quote Pandit Nehru, who
wrote the following while in a British prison in India: "Since
Hitler emerged from obscurity and became the Fuhrer of Germany,
we have heard a great deal about racialism and the Nazi theory
of the "Herrenvolk"...But we in India have known racialism in
all its forms ever since the commitment of British rule. The
whole idealogy of this rule was that of the "Herrenvolk" and the
master race...India as a nation and Indians as individuals were
subjected to insult, humiliation and contemptuous treatment.
The English were an imperial race, we were told, with the God-
given right to govern us and keep us in subjection; if we
protested we were reminded of the 'tiger qualities of an
imperial race'." The authors Manvell and Frankl then go on to
make the point perfectly clear to us: "The white races of Europe
and America." they write, "have become used during the centuries
to regarding themselves as a "Herrenvolk". The twentieth
century, the century of Auschwitz, has also achieved the first
stage in the recognition of multi-racial partnership" (ibid, p.
14).
THE RACE PROBLEM SUPPRESSED
One could scarcely miss the object of this diatribe, with its
insidious hint about "multi-racial partnership". Thus the
accusation of the Six Million is not only used to undermine the
principle of nationhood and national pride, but it threatens the
survival of the Race itself. It is wielded over the heads of the
populace, rather as the threat of hellfire and damnation was in
the Middle Ages. Many countries of the Anglo-Saxon world,
notably Britain and America, are today facing the gravest danger
in their history, the danger posed by the alien races in their
midst. Unless something is done in Britain to halt the
immigration and assimilation of Africans and Asians into our
country, we are faced in the near future, quite apart from the
bloodshed of racial conflict, with the biological alteration and
destruction of the British people as they have existed since the
coming of the Saxons. In short, we are threatened with the
irrecoverable loss of our European culture and racial heritage.
But what happens if a man dares to speak of the race problem, of
its biological and political implications? He is branded as that
most heinous of creatures, a "racialist". And what is racialism.
of course, but the very hallmark of a Nazi! They so everyone is
told, anyway) murdered Six Million Jews because of racialism, so
it must be a very evil thing indeed. When Enoch Powell drew
attention to the dangers posed by coloring immigration into
Britain in one of his early speeches, a certain prominent
Socialist raised the specter of Dachau and Auschwitz to silence
his presumption.
Thus any rational discussion of the problems of Race and the
effort to preserve racial integrity is effectively discouraged.
No one could have sought to preserve their race through so many
centuries, and continue to do so today. In this effort they have
frankly been assisted by the story of the Six Million, which,
almost like a religious myth, and stressed the need for greater
Jewish racial solidarity. Unfortunately, it has worked in quite
the opposite way for all other peoples, rendering them impotent
in the struggle for self-preservation.
The aim in the following is quite simply to tell the Truth.
The distinguished American historian Harry Elmer Barnes once
wrote that "An attempt to make a competent, objective and
truthful investigation of the extermination question...is surely
the most precarious venture that an historian or demographer
could undertake today." In attempting this precarious task, it
is hoped to make some contribution, not only to historical
truth, but towards lifting the burden of a Lie from our own
shoulders, so that we may freely confront the dangers that
threaten us all.
Richard E. Harwood
1) GERMAN POLICY TOWARDS THE JEWS PRIOR TO THE WAR
Rightly or wrongly, the Germany of Adolf Hitler considered
the Jews to be a disloyal and avaricious element within the
national community, as well as a force of decadence in Germany's
cultural life. This was held to be particularly unhealthy since,
during the Weimar period, the Jews had risen to a position of
remarkable strength and influence in the nation, particularly in
law, finance and the mass media, even though they constituted
only 5 per cent of the population. The fact that Karl Marx was a
Jew and that Jews such as Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht
were disproportionately prominent in the leadership of
revolutionary movements in Germany, also tended to convince the
Nazis of the powerful internationalist and Communist tendencies
of the Jewish people themselves.
It is no part of the discussion here to argue whether the
German attitude to the Jews was right or not, or to judge
whether its legislative measures against them were just or
unjust. Our concern is simply the fact that, believing of the
Jews as the did, the Nazis' solution to the problem was to
deprive them of their influence within the nation by various
legislative acts, and most important of all, to encourage their
emigration from the country altogether. By 1939, the great
majority of German Jews had emigrated, all of them with a
sizable proportion of their assets. Never at any time had the
Nazi leadership even contemplated a policy of genocide towards
them.
JEWS CALLED EMIGRATION 'EXTERMINATION'
It is very significant, however, that certain Jews were quick
to interpret these policies of internal discrimination as
equivalent to extermination itself. A 1936 anti-German
propaganda book by Leon Feuchtwanger and others entitles Der
Gelbe Fleck: Die Ausrotung von 500,000 duetschen Juden (The
Yellow Spot: The Extermination of 500,000 German Jews, Paris,
1936), presents a typical example. Despite its baselessness in
fact, the annihilation of the Jews is discussed from the first
pages -- straightforward emigration being regarded as physical
"extermination" of German Jewry. The Nazi concentration camps
for political prisoners are also seen as potential instruments
of genocide, and special reference is made to the 100 Jews still
detained in Dachau in 1936, of whom 60 had been there since
1933. A further example was the sensational book by the German-
Jewish Communist, Hans Beimler, called Four Weeks in the Hands
of Hitler's Hell-Hounds: The Nazi Murder Camp at Dachau, which
was published in New York as early as 1933. Detained for his
Marxist affiliations, he claimed that Dachau was a death camp,
though by his own admission he was released after only a month
there. The present regime in East Germany now issues a Hans
Beimler Award for services to Communism.
The fact that anti-Nazi genocide propaganda was being
disseminated as this early date, therefore, by people biased on
racial or political grounds, should suggest extreme caution to
the independent-minded observer when approaching similar stories
of the war period.
The encouragement of Jewish emigration should not be confused
with the purpose of concentration camps in pre-war Germany.
These were used for the detention of political opponents and
subversives -- principally liberals, Social Democrats and
Communists of all kinds, of whom a proportion were Jews such as
Hans Beimler. Unlike the millions enslaved in the Soviet Union,
the German concentration camp population was always small;
Reitlinger admits that between 1934 and 1938 it seldom exceeded
20,000 throughout the whole of Germany, and the number of Jews
was never more than 3,000. (The S.S.: Alibi of a Nation, London,
1956, p. 253)
ZIONIST POLICY STUDIED
The Nazi view of Jewish emigration was not limited to a
negative policy of simple expulsion, but was founded along the
lines of modern Zionism. Theodore Herzl, in his work The Jewish
State had originally conceived of Madagascar as a national
homeland for the Jews, and this possibility was seriously
studied by the party in pamphlet form. This stated that the
revival of Israel as a Jewish state was much less acceptable
since it would result in perpetual war and disruption in the
Arab world, which has indeed been the case. The Germans were not
original in proposing Jewish emigration to Madagascar; the
Polish Government had already considered the scheme in respect
of their own Jewish population, and in 1937 they sent the
Michael Lepecki expedition to Madagascar, accompanied by Jewish
representatives to investigate the problems involved.
The first Nazi proposals for a Madagascar solution were made
in association with the Schacht Plan of 1938. On the advice of
Goering, Hitler agreed to send the President of the Reichbank,
Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, to London for discussions with Jewish
representatives Lord Bearsted and Mr. Rublee of New York (cf.
Reitlinger, The Final Solution, London, 1953, p. 20). The plan
was that German Jewish assets would be frozen as security for an
international loan to finance Jewish emigration to Palestine,
and Schacht reported on these negotiations to Hitler at
Berchtesgaden on January 2, 1939. The plan,. which failed due to
British refusal to accept the financial terms, was first put
forward on November 12, 1938 at a conference convened by
Goering, who revealed that Hitler was already considering the
emigration of Jews to a settlement in Madagascar (ibid., p. 21).
Later, in December, Ribbentrop was told by M. George Bonnet, the
French Foreign Secretary, that the French Government itself was
planning the evacuation of 10,000 Jews to Madagascar.
Prior to the Schacht Palestine proposals of 1938, which were
essentially a protraction of discussions that had begun as early
as 1935, numerous attempts had been made to secure Jewish
emigration in the Evian Conference of July, 1938. However, by
1939 the scheme of Jewish emigration to Madagascar had gained
the most favor in German circles. It is true that in London
Helmuth Wohltat of the German Foreign Office discussed limited
Jewish emigration to Rhodesia and British Guiana as late as
April 1939; but by January 24th, when Goering wrote to Interior
Minister Frick ordering the creation of a Central Emigration
Office for Jews, and commissioned Heydrich of the Reich Security
Head Office to solve the Jewish problem "by means of emigration
and evacuation", the Madagascar Plan was being studied in
earnest.
By 1939, the consistent efforts of the German Government to
secure the departure of Jews from the Reich had resulted in the
emigration of 400,000 German Jews from a total population of
about 600,000, and an additional 480,000 emigrants from Austria
and Czechoslovakia, which constituted almost their entire Jewish
populations. This was accomplished through the Offices of Jewish
Emigration in Berlin, Vienna and Prague established by Adolf
Eichmann, the head of the Jewish Investigative Office of the
Gestapo. So eager were the Germans to secure this emigration
that Eichmann even established a training center in Austria,
where young Jews could learn farming in anticipation of being
smuggled illegally into Palestine (Manvell & Frankl, S.S. and
Gestapo, p. 60). Had Hitler cherished any intention of
exterminating the Jews, it in inconceivable that he would have
allowed more than 800,000 to leave Reich territory with the bulk
of their wealth, much less considered plans for mass emigration
to Palestine or Madagascar. What is more, we shall see that the
policy of emigration from Europe was still under consideration
well into the war period, notably the Madagascar Plan, which
Eichmann discussed in 1940 with French Colonial Office experts
after the defeat of France had made the surrender of the colony
a practical proposition.
2) GERMAN POLICY TOWARDS THE JEWS AFTER THE OUTBREAK OF WAR
With the coming of the war, the situation regarding the Jews
altered drastically. It is not widely known that world Jewry
declared itself to be a belligerent party in the Second World
War, and therefore there was ample basis under international law
for the Germans to intern the Jewish population as a hostile
force. On September 5, 1939 Chaim Weizmann, the principle
Zionist leader, had declared war against Germany on behalf of
the world's Jews, stating that "Jews stand by Great Britain and
will fight on the side of the democracies...The Jewish Agency is
ready to enter into immediate arrangements for utilizing Jewish
manpower, technical ability, resources ect..." (Jewish Chronicle
September 8, 1939)
DETENTION OF ENEMY ALIENS
All Jews had thus been declared agents willing to prosecute a
war against the German Reich, and as a consequence, Himmler and
Heydrich were eventually to begin the policy of internment. It
is worth noting that the United states and Britain had already
interned all Japanese aliens and citizens of Japanese descent in
detention camps before the Germans applied the same security
measures against the Jews of Europe. Moreover, there had been no
such evidence or declaration of disloyalty by these Japanese
Americans as had been given by Weizmann. The British, too,
during the Boer War, interned all the women and children of the
population and thousands died as a result, yet in no sense could
the British be charged with wanting to exterminate the Boers.
The detention of the Jews in the occupied territories of
Europe served two essential purposes from the German viewpoint.
The first was to prevent unrest and subversion; Himmler had
informed Mussolini on October 11th, 1042, that German policy
towards the Jews had altered during wartime entirely for reasons
of military security. He complained that thousands of Jews in
the occupied regions were conducting partisan warfare, sabotage
and espionage, a view confirmed by official Soviet information
given to Raymond Arthur Davis that no less than 35,000 European
Jews were waging partisan war under Tito in Yugoslavia. As a
result, Jews were to be transported to restricted areas and
detention camps, both in Germany, and especially after March
1942, in the Government-General of Poland.
As the war proceeded, the policy developed of using Jewish
detainees for labor in the war-effort. The question of labor is
fundamental when considering the alleged plan of genocide
against the Jews, for on the grounds of logic alone the latter
would entail the most senseless waste of manpower, time and
energy while prosecuting a war for survival on two fronts.
Certainly after the attack on Russia, the idea of compulsory
labor had taken precedence over German plans for Jewish
emigration. The protocol of a conversation between Hitler and
the Hungarian regent Horthy on April 17th, 1943, reveals that
the German leader personally requested Horthy to release 100,000
Hungarian Jews for work in the "pursuit-plane program" of the
Luftwaffe at a time when the aerial bombardment of Germany
was increasing (Reitlinger, Die Endlosung, Berlin, 1956, p.
478). This took place at a time when, supposedly, the Germans
were already seeking to exterminate the Jews, but Hitler's
request clearly demonstrates the priority aim of expanding his
labor force.
In harmony with this program, concentration camps became, in
fact, industrial complexes. At every camp where Jews and other
nationalities were detained, there were large industrial plants
and factories supplying material for the German war-effort --
the Buna rubber factory at Bergen-Belsen, for example, Buna and
I. G. Farben Industry at Auschwitz, and the electrical firm of
Siemens at Ravensbruck. In many cases, special concentration
camp money notes were issued as payment for labor, enabling
prisoners to buy extra rations from camp shops. The Germans were
determined to obtain the maximum economic return from the
concentration camp system, an object wholly at variance with any
plan to exterminate millions of people in them. It was the
function of the S.S. Economy and Administration Office, headed
by Oswald Pohl, to see that the concentration camps became major
industrial producers.
EMIGRATION STILL FAVORED
It is a remarkable fact, however, that well into the war
period, the Germans continued to implement the policy of Jewish
emigration. The fall of France in 1940 enabled the German
Government to open serious negotiations with the French for the
transfer of European Jews to Madagascar. A memorandum of August,
1942 from Luther, Secretary-of-State in the German Foreign
Office, reveals that he had conducted these negotiations between
July and December 1940, when they were terminated by the French.
A circular from Luther's department dated August 15th, 1940
shows that the details of the German play had been worked out by
Eichmann, for it is signed by his assistant, Dannecker. Eichmann
had in fact been commissioned in August to draw up a detailed
Madagascar Plan, and Dannecker was employed in research on
Madagascar at the French Colonial Office (Reitlinger, The Final
Solution, p. 77). The proposals of August 15th were that an
inter-European bank was to finance the emigration of four
million Jews throughout a phased program. Luther's 1942
memorandum shows that Heydrich had obtained Himmler's approval
of this plan before the end of August and has also submitted it
to Goering. It certainly met with Hitler's approval, for as
early as June 17th his interpreter, Schmidt, recalls Hitler
observing to Mussolini that "One could found a State of Israel
in Madagascar" (Schmidt, Hitler's Interpreter, London, 1951, p.
178).
Although the French terminated the Madagascar negotiations
in December, 1940, Poliakov, the director of the Centre of
Jewish Documentation in Paris, admits that the Germans
nevertheless pursued the scheme, and the Eichmann was still busy
with it throughout 1941. Eventually, however, it was rendered
impractical by the progress of the war, in particular by the
situation after the invasion of Russia, and on February 10th,
1942, the Foreign Office was informed that the plan had been
temporarily shelved. This ruling, sent to the Foreign Office by
Luther's assistant, Rademacher, is of great importance, because
it demonstrates conclusively that the term "Final Solution"
meant only the emigration of Jews, and also that transportation
to the eastern ghettos and concentration camps such as Auschwitz
constituted nothing but an alternative plan of evacuation. The
directive reads: "The was with the Soviet Union has in the
meantime created the possibility of disposing of other
territories for the Final Solution. In consequence the Fuhrer
has decided that the Jews should be evacuated not to Madagascar
but to the East. Madagascar need no longer therefore be
considered in connection with the Final Solution" (Reitlinger,
ibid. p. 79). The details of this evacuation has been discussed
a month earlier at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, which we
shall examine below.
Reitlinger and Poliakov both make the entirely unfounded
supposition that because the Madagascar Plan had been shelved,
the Germans must necessarily have been thinking of
"extermination". Only a month later, however, on March 7th,
1942, Goebbels wrote a memorandum in favor of the Madagascar
Plan as a "final solution" of the Jewish question (Manvell &
Frankl, Dr. Goebbels, London, 1960, p. 165). In the meantime he
approved of the Jews being "concentrated in the East". Later
Goebbels memoranda also stress deportation to the East (i.e. the
Government-General of Poland) and lay emphasis on the need for
compulsory labour there; once the policy of evacuation to the
East had been inaugurated, the us of Jewish labour became a
fundamental part of the operations. It is perfectly clear from
the foregoing that the term "Final Solution" was applied both
to Madagascar and to the Eastern territories, and that therefore
it meant only the deportation of the Jews.
Even as late as may 1944, the Germans were prepared to allow
the emigration of one million European Jews from Europe. An
account of this proposal is given by Alexander Weissberg, a
purges, in his book Die Geschichte von Joel Brand (Cologne,
1956). Weissberg, who spent the war in Cracow though he expected
the Germans to intern him in a concentration camp, explains that
on the personal authorization of Himmler, Eichmann had sent the
Budapest Jewish leader Joel Brand to Istanbul with an offer to
the Allies to permit the transfer of one million European Jews
in the midst of the war. (If the 'extermination' writers are to
be believed, there were scarcely one million Jews left by May,
1944). The Gestapo admitted that the transportation involved
would greatly inconvenience the German war-effort, but were
prepared to allow it in exchange for 10,000 trucks to be used
exclusively on the Russian front. Unfortunately, the plan came
to nothing; the British concluded that Brand must be a dangerous
Nazi agent and immediately imprisoned him in Cairo, while the
Press denounced the offer as a Nazi trick. Winston Churchill,
though orating to the effect that the treatment of the Hungarian
Jews was probably "the biggest and most horrible crime ever
committed in the whole history of the world", nevertheless told
Chaim Weizmann that acceptance of the Brand offer was
impossible, since it would be a betrayal of this Russian Allies.
Although the plan was fruitless, it well illustrates that no one
allegedly carrying out "thorough" extermination would permit the
emigration of a million Jews, and it demonstrates, too, the
prime importance placed by the Germans on the war-effort.
3) POPULATION AND EMIGRATION
Statistics relating to Jewish populations are not everywhere
known in precise detail, approximation for various countries
differing widely, and it is also unknown exactly how many Jews
were deported and interned at any one time between the years
1939-1945. In general, however, what reliable statistics there
are, especially those relating to emigration, are sufficient to
show that not a fraction of six million Jews could have been
exterminated.
In the first place, this claim cannot remotely be upheld on
examination of the European Jewish population figures. According
to Chambers Encyclopedia the total number of Jews living in pre-
war Europe was 6,500,000. Quite clearly, this would mean that
almost the entire number was exterminated. But the Baseler
Nachrichten, a neutral Swiss publication employing available
Jewish statistical data, establishes that between 1933 and 1945,
1,500,000 Jews emigrated to Britain, Sweden, Spain, Portugal,
Australia, China, India, Palestine and the United States. This
is confirmed by the Jewish journalist Bruno Blau, who cites the
same figure in the New York Jewish paper Aufbau, August 13th,
1948. Of these emigrants, approximately 400,000 came from
Germany before September 1939. This is acknowledged by the World
Jewish Congress in its publication Unity in Dispersion (P. 3778)
which states that: "The majority of the German Jews succeeded in
leaving Germany before the war broke out." In addition to the
German Jews, 220,000 of the total 280,000 Austrian Jews had
emigrated by September, 1939, while from March 1939 onwards the
Institute for Jewish Emigration in Prague had secured the
emigration of 260,000 Jews from former Czechoslovakia. In all,
only 360,000 Jews remained in Germany, Austria, and
Czechoslovakia after September 1939. From Poland, an estimated
500,000 had emigrated prior to the outbreak of war. These
figures mean that the number of Jewish emigrants from other
European countries (France, the Netherlands, Italy, the
countries of Eastern Europe etc.) was approximately 120,000.
This exodus of Jews before and during hostilities, therefore,
reduces the number of Jews in Europe to approximately 5,000,000.
In addition to these emigrants, we must include the number of
Jews who fled to the Soviet Union after 1939, and who were later
evacuated beyond reach of the German invaders. It will be shown
below that the majority of these, about 1,250,000, were migrants
from Poland. But apart from Poland, Reitlinger admits that
300,000 other European Jews slipped into Soviet territory
between 1939 and 1941. This brings the total of Jewish emigrants
to the Soviet Union to about 1,500,000. In Colliers magazine,
June 9th, 1945, Freiling Foster, writing of the Jews in Russia,
explained that "22,222,000 have migrated to the Soviet Union
since 1939 to escape the Nazis," but our lower estimate is
probably more accurate.
Jewish migration to the Soviet Union, therefore, reduces the
number of Jews within the sphere of German occupation to around
31/2 million, approximately 3,450,000. From these should be
deducted those Jews living in neutral European countries who
escaped the consequences of the war. According to the 1942 World
Almanac (p. 594) the number of Jews living in Gibraltar,
Britain, Portugal, Spain, Sweden. Switzerland, Ireland and
Turkey was 413,128.
3 MILLION JEWS IN EUROPE
A figure consequently, of around 3 million Jews in German-
occupied Europe is as accurate as the available emigration
statistics will allow. Approximately the same number, however,
can be deduced in another way if we examine statistics for the
Jewish populations remaining in countries occupied by the Reich.
More than half of those Jews who migrated to the Soviet Union
after 1939 came from Poland. It is frequently claimed that the
war with Poland added some 3 million Jews to the German sphere
of influence and that almost the whole of this Polish Jewish
population was "exterminated." This is a major factual error.
The 1931 Jewish population census for Poland put the number of
Jews at 2,732,600 (Reitlinger, Die Endlosung, p. 36). Reitlinger
states that at least 1,170,000 of these were in the Russian zone
occupied in the autumn of 1939, about a million of whom were
evacuated to the Urals and south Siberia after the German
invasion of June 1941 (ibid, p. 50). As described above, an
estimated 500,000 Jews had emigrated from Poland prior to the
war. Moreover, the journalist Raymond Arthur Davis, who spent
the war in the Soviet Union, observed that approximately 250,000
had already fled from German-occupied Poland to Russia between
1939 and 1941 and were to be encountered in every Soviet
province (Odyssey through Hell, N.Y., 1946). Subtracting these
figures from the population of 2,732,600, therefore, and
allowing for the normal population increase, no more than
1,100,000 Polish Jews could have been under German rule at the
end of 1939. (Gutachen des Instituts fur Zeitgeschichte, Munich,
1956, p. 80)
To this number we may add the 360,000 Jews remaining in
Germany, Austria and former Czechoslovakia (Bohemia-Moravia and
Slavakia) after the extensive emigration from those countries
prior to the war described above. Of the 320,000 French Jews,
the Public Prosecutor representing that part of the indictment
relating to France at the Nuremberg Trials, stated that 120,000
Jews were deported, though Reitlinger estimates only about
50,000. Thus the total number of Jews under Nazi rule remains
below two million. Deportations from the Scandinavian countries
were few, and from Bulgaria, none at all. When the Jewish
populations of Holland (140,000), Belgium (40,000), Italy
(50,000), Yugoslavia (55,000), Hungary (380,000) and Romania
(725,000) are included, the figure does not much exceed 3
million. This excess is due to the fact that the latter figures
are pre-war estimates unaffected by emigration, which from these
countries accounted for about 120,000 (see above). This cross-
checking, therefore, confirms the estimate of approximately 3
million Jews under German occupation.
RUSSIAN JEWS EVACUATED
The precise figures concerning Russian Jews are unknown, and
have therefore been the subject of extreme exaggeration. The
Jewish statistician Jacob Leszczynski states that in 1939 there
were 2,100,000 Jews living in future German-occupied Russia,
i.e. western Russia. In addition, some 260,000 lived in the
Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Luthuania. According to
Louis Levine, President of the American Jewish Council for
Russian relief, who made a post-war tour of the Soviet Union and
submitted a report on the status of Jews there, the majority
of these numbers were evacuated east after the German armies
launched their invasion. In Chicago, on October 30th, 1946, he
declared that: "At the onset of the war, Jews were amongst the
first evacuated from the western regions threatened by the
Hitlerite invaders, and shipped to safety east of the Urals.
Two million Jews were thus saved." This high number is confirmed
by the Jewish journalist David Bergelson, who wrote in the
Moscow Yiddish paper Ainikeit, December 5th, 1942, that "Thanks
to the evacuation, the majority (80%) of the Jews in the
Ukraine, White Russia, Lithuania and Latvia before the arrival
of the Germans were rescued." Reitlinger agrees with the Jewish
authority Joseph Schechtmann, who admits that huge numbers were
evacuated, though he estimates a slightly higher number of
Baltic and Russian Jews remaining in German territory, it will
be proved later that in the war in Russia no more than one
hundred thousand persons were killed by the German Action Groups
as partisans and Bolshevik commissars, not all of whom were
Jews. By contrast, the partisans themselves claimed to have
murdered five times that number of German troops.
"SIX MILLION" UNTRUE ACCORDING TO NEUTRAL SWISS
It is clear, therefore, that the Germans could not have
possibly have gained control over or exterminated anything like
six million Jews. Excluding the Soviet Union, the number of Jews
in Nazi-occupied Europe after emigration was scarcely more than
3 million, by no means all of whom were interned. To approach
the extermination of even half of six million would have meant
the liquidation of every Jew living in Europe. And yet it is
known that large numbers of Jews were alive in Europe after
1945. Philip Freidmann in Their Brother's Keepers (N.Y., 1957,
p. 13), states that "at least a million Jews survived in the
very crucible of the Nazi hell," while the official figure of
the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is 1,559,600. Thus, even
if one accepts the latter estimate, the number of possible
wartime Jewish deaths could not have exceeded a limit of one and
a half million. Precisely this conclusion was reached by the
reputable journal Baseler Nachrichten of neutral Switzerland. In
an article entitled "Wie hoch ist die Zahl der judischen Opfer?"
("How high is the number of Jewish victims?", June 13th, 1946),
it explained that purely on the basis of the population and
emigration figures described above, a maximum of only one and a
half million Jews could have been numbered as casualties. Later
on, however, it will be demonstrated conclusively that the
number was actually far less, for the Baseler Nachrichten
accepted the Joint Distribution Committee's figure of 1,559,600
survivors after the war, but we shall show that the numbers of
claims for compensation by Jewish survivors is more than
double that figure. This information was not available to the
Swiss in 1946.
IMPOSSIBLE BIRTH RATE
Indisputable evidence is also provided by the post-war world
Jewish population statistics. The World Almanac of 1938 gives
the number of Jews in the world as 16,588,259. But after the
war, the New York Times, February 22nd, 1948 placed the number
of Jews in the world at a minimum of 15,600,000 and a maximum of
18,700,000. Quite obviously, these figures make it impossible
for the number of Jewish war-time casualties to be measured in
anything but thousands. 15 1/2 million in 1939 minus the alleged
six million leaves nine million; the New York Times figures
would mean, therefore, that the world's Jews produced seven
million births, almost doubling their numbers, in the space of
ten years. This is patently ridiculous!
It would appear, therefore, that the great majority of the
missing "Six million" were in fact emigrants -- emigrants to
European countries, to the Soviet Union and the United States
before, during and after the war. And emigrants also, in vast
numbers to Palestine during and especially at the end of the
war. After 1945, boat-loads of these Jewish survivors entered
Palestine illegally from Europe, causing considerable
embarrassment to the British Government at the time; indeed, so
great were the numbers that the H.M. Stationary Office
publication No. 190 (November 5th, 1946) described them as
"almost amounting to a second Exodus." It was these emigrants to
all parts of the world who had swollen the world Jewish
population to between 15 and 18 millions by 1948, and probably
the greatest part of them were emigrants to the United States
who entered in violation of the quota laws.
On August 16th, 1963 David Ben Gurion, President of Israel,
stated that although the official Jewish population of America
was said to be 5,600,000, "the total number would not be
estimated too high at 9,000,000" (Dueutsche Wochenzeitung
November 23rd, 1963). The reason for his high figure is
underlined by Albert Maisal in his article "Our Newest
Americans" (Reader's Digest, January 1957), for he reveals that
"Soon after World War II, by Presidential decree, 90% of all
quota visas for central and eastern Europe were issued to the
uprooted."
Reprinted on this page [in the booklet] is just one extract
from hundreds that regularly appear in the obituary columns of
Aufbau, the Jewish American weekly published in New York (June
16th, 1972). It shows how Jewish emigrants to the United States
subsequently changer their names: their former names when in
Europe appear in bracket. For example, as below, Arthur Kingsley
(formerly Dr. Konigsberger of Frankfort). Could it be that some
or all of these people whose names are "deceased" were included
in the missing six million of Europe?
-----------------------
Am 30 Janur 1972 verschied mein herzensguter Mann, unser
geliebter Vater und Grossvater
ARTHUR KINGSLEY
(Fruher Dr. Konigsberger. Frankfort/Main)
drei Woohen vor seinem 90. Geburtstag.
In tiefer Trauer:
Alice Kingsley
700 Fort Washington Ave.
New York, N.Y.
Leo and Eve Lenin
geb. Kingsley
Apt 1110 South,
4800 Chicago Beach Drive,
Chicago, Ill 60615
Anne and Martin Kingsley
232 Sunset Drive
Wilmette Ill. 60691
Nina and Ronnie
[ad as it is reproduced in the article]
4) THE SIX MILLION: DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
From the foregoing it would seem certain that the figure of
six million murdered Jews amounts to nothing more than a vague
compromise between several quite baseless estimates; there is
not a shred of documentary evidence for it that is trustworthy.
Occasionally, writers narrow it down to give a disarming
appearance of authenticity. Lord Russell of Liverpool, for
example, in his The Scourge of the Swastika (London, 1964)
claimed that "not less than five million" Jews died in German
concentration camps, having satisfied himself that he was
somewhere between those who estimated 6 million and those who
preferred 4 million. But, he admitted, "the real number will
never be known." If so, it is difficult to know how he could
have asserted "not less than 5 million." The Joint Distribution
Committee favors 5,012,000, but the Jewish "expert" Reitlinger
suggests a novel figure of 4,192,000 "missing Jews" of whom an
estimated one third died of natural causes. This would reduce
the number deliberately "exterminated" to 2,796,000. However,
Dr. M. Perlzweig, the New York delegate to a World Jewish press
conference held at Geneva in 1948 stated: "The price of the
downfall of National Socialism and Facism is the fact that seven
million Jews lost their lives thanks to cruel Anti-Semitism." In
the Press and elsewhere, the figure is often casually lifted to
eight million or sometimes even nine million. As we have proved
in the previous chapter, none of these figures are in the
remotest degree plausible, indeed, they are ridiculous.
FANTASTIC EXAGGERATIONS
So far as is known, the first accusation against the Germans
of mass murder of Jews in war-time Europe was made by the Polish
Jew Rafael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe,
published in New York in 1943. Somewhat coincidentally, Lemkin
was later to draw up the U.N. Genocide Convention, which seeks
to outlaw "racialism". His book claimed that the Nazis had
destroyed millions of Jews, perhaps as many as six millions.
This, by 1943, would have been remarkable indeed, since the
action was allegedly started only in the summer of 1942. At such
a rate, the entire world Jewish population would have been
exterminated by 1945.
After the war, propaganda estimates spiraled to heights even
more fantastic. Kurt Gerstein, an anti-Nazi who claimed to have
infiltrated the S.S., told the French interrogator Raymond
Cartier that he knew that no less than forty million
concentration camp internes had been gassed. In his first
signed memorandum of April 26th, 1945, he reduced the figure to
25 million, but even this was too bizarre for French
Intelligence and in his second memorandum, signed at Rottweil on
May 4th, 1945, he brought the figure closer to the six million
preferred at the Nuremberg Trials. Gerstein's sister was
congenitally insane and died by euthanasia, which may well
suggest a streak of mental instability in Gerstein himself. He
had, in fact, been convicted in 1936 of sending eccentric mail
through the post. After his two "confessions" he hanged himself
at Cherche Midi prison in Paris.
Gerstein alleged that during the war he passed on information
concerning the murder of Jews to the Swedish Government through
a German baron, but for some inexplicable reason his report was
"filed away and forgotten". He also claimed that in August 1942
he informed the Papal nuncio in Berlin about the whole
"extermination program", but the reverend person merely told him
to "Get out." The Gerstein statements abound with claims to have
witnessed the most gigantic mass executions (twelve thousand in
a single day at Belzec), while the second memorandum describes a
visit by Hitler to a concentration camp in Poland on June 6th,
1942 which is known never to have taken place.
Gerstein's fantastic exaggerations have done little but
discredit the whole notion of mass extermination. Indeed,
Evangelical Bishop Wilhelm Dibelius of Berlin denounced his
memoranda as "Untrustworthy" (H. Rothfels, "Augenzeugenbricht zu
den Massenvergasungen" in Viertelijahtshefte fur Zeitgeschichte,
April 1953). It is an incredible fact, however, that in spite of
this denunciation, the German Government in 1955 issued an
edition of the second Gerstein memorandum for distribution in
German schools (Dokumentation zur Massenvergasung, Bonn, 1955).
In it they stated that Dibelius placed his special confidence in
Gerstein and that the memoranda were "valid beyond any doubt."
This is a striking example of the way in which the baseless
charge of genocide by the Nazis is perpetuated in Germany, and
directed especially to the youth.
The story of the six million Jews exterminated during the war
was given final authority at the Nuremberg Trials by the
statement of Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl. He had been an assistant of
Eichmann's but was in fact a rather strange person in the
service of American Intelligence who had written several books
under the pseudonym of Walter Hagen. Hoettl also worked for
Soviet espionage, collaborating with two Jewish emigrants from
Vienna, Perger and Verber, who acted as U.S. officers during the
preliminary inquiries of the Nuremberg Trials. It is remarkable
that the testimony of this highly dubious person Hoettl is said
to constitute the only "Proof" regarding the murder of six
million Jews. In his affidavit of November 26th, 1945 he states,
not that he knew but that Eichmann had "told him" in August 1944
in Budapest that a total of 6 million Jews had been
exterminated. Needless to say, Eichmann never corroborated this
claim at his trial. Hoettl was working as an American spy during
the whole of the latter period of the war, and it is therefore
very odd indeed that he never gave the slightest hint to the
Americans of a policy to murder Jews, even though he worked
directly under Heydrich and Eichmann.
ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE
It should be emphasized straight away that there is not a
single document in existence which proves that the Germans
intended to, or carried out, the deliberate murder of Jews. In
Poliakov and Wulf's Das Dritte Reich und die Juden: Dokumente
und Aufsatze (Berlin 1955), the most that they can assemble are
statements extracted after the war from people like Hoettl,
Ohlendorf and Wisliceny, the latter under torture in a Soviet
prison. In the absence of any evidence, therefore, Poliakov is
forced to write: "The three or four people chiefly involved in
drawing up the plan for total extermination are dead, and no
documents survive." This seems very convenient. Quite obviously,
both the plan and the "three or four" people are nothing but
nebulous assumptions on the part of the writer, and are
entirely unprovable.
The documents which do survive, of course, make no mention at
all of extermination, so that writers like Poliakov and
Reitlinger again make the convenient assumption that such orders
were generally "verbal". Though lacking any documentary proof,
they assume that a plan to murder Jews must have originated in
1941. coinciding with the attack on Russia. Phase one of the
plan is alleged to have involved the massacre of Soviet Jews, a
claim we shall disprove later. The rest of the program is
supposed to have begun in March 1942, with the deportation and
concentration of European Jews in the eastern camps of the
Polish Government-General, such as the giant industrial complex
at Auschwitz near Cracow. The fantastic and quite groundless
assumption throughout is that transportation to the East,
supervised by Eichmann's department, actually meant immediate
extermination in ovens upon arrival.
According to Manvell and Frankl (Heinrich Himmler, London,
1965), the policy of genocide "seems to have been arrived at"
after "secret discussions" between Hitler and Himmler (p. 118),
though they fail to prove it. Reitlinger and Poliakov guess
along similar "verbal" lines, adding that no one else was
allowed to be present at these discussions, and no records were
ever kept of them. This is the purest invention, for there is
not a shred of evidence that even suggests such outlandish
meetings took place. William Shirer, in his generally wild and
irresponsible book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, is
similarly muted on the subject of documentary proof. He states
weakly that Hitler's supposed order for the murder of Jews
"apparently was never committed to paper - at least no copy of
it has ever been unearthed. It was probably given verbally to
Goering, Himmler and Heydrich, who passed it down..." (p. 1148).
A typical example of the kind of "proof" quoted in support
of the extermination legend is given by Manvell and Frankl. They
cite a memorandum of 31st July, 1941, sent by Goering to
Heydrich, who headed the Reich Security Head Office and was
Himmler's deputy. Significantly, the memorandum begins:
"Supplementing the task that was assigned to you on 24th January
1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of emigration and
evacuation in the best possible way according to present
conditions..." The supplementary task assigned in the memorandum
is a "total solution (Gesamtlosung) of the Jewish question
within the area of German influence in Europe," which authors
admit means concentration in the East, and it requests
preparations for the "organizational, financial and material
matters" involved. The memorandum then requests a future plan
for the "desired final solution (Endlosung), which clearly
refers to the ideal and ultimate scheme of emigration mentioned
at the beginning of the directive. No mention whatever is made
of murdering people, but Manvell and Frankl assure us that this
is what the memorandum is really about. Again, of course, the
"true nature" of the final as distinct from the total solution
"was made known to Heydrich by Goering verbally" (ibid p. 118).
The convenience of these "verbal" directives issuing back and
forth is obvious.
THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE
The final details of the plan to exterminate Jews were
supposedly to have been made at a conference at Gross Wannsee in
Berlin on 20th January 1942, presided over by Heydrich
(Poliakov, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden, p. 1220 ff.
Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 95 ff). Officials of all
German Ministries were present, and Muller and Eichmann
represented Gestapo Head Office. Reitlinger and Manvell and
Frankl consider the minutes of this conference to be their trump
card in proving the existence of a genocide plan, but the truth
is no such plan was even mentioned, and what is more, they
freely admit this. Manvell and Frankl explain it away rather
lamely by saying that "The minutes are shrouded in the form of
officialdom that cloaks the real significance of the words and
terminology used" (The Incomparable Crime, London, 1967, p. 46),
which really means that they intend to interpret them in their
own way. What Heydrich actually said was that, as in the
memorandum quoted above, he had been commissioned by Goering to
arrange a solution to the Jewish problem. He reviewed the
history of Jewish emigration, stated that the war had rendered
the Madagascar project impractical, and continued: "The
emigration program has been replaced now by the evacuation of
Jews to the east as a further solution in accordance with the
previous authorization of the Fuhrer." Here, he explained, their
labor was to be utilized. All this is supposed to be deeply
sinister, and pregnant with the hidden meaning that the Jews
were to be exterminated, though Prof. Paul Rassinier, a
Frenchman interned at Buchenwald who has done sterling work in
refuting the myth of the Six Million, explains that it means
precisely what it says, i.e. the concentration of the Jews for
labor in the immense eastern ghetto of the Polish Government-
General. "There they were to wait until the end of the war, for
the re-opening of internal discussions which would decide their
future. This decision was finally reached at the inter
ministerial Berlin-Wannsee conference...." (Rassinier, Le
Vertitable Proces Eichmann, p. 20). Manvell and Frankl, however,
remain undaunted by the complete lack of reference to
extermination. At the Wannsee conference, they write, "Direct
references to killing were avoided, Heydrich favoring the term
"Arbeitseinsatz in Osten" (labor assignment in the East)"
(Heinrich Himmler, p. 209). Why we should not accept labor
assignment in the East to mean labor assignment in the East is
not explained.
According to Reitlinger, and others, innumerable directives
actually specifying extermination then passed between Himmler,
Heydrich, Eichmann and Commandant Hoess in the subsequent months
of 1942, but of course, "none have survived".
TWISTED WORDS AND GROUNDLESS ASSUMPTIONS
The complete lack of documentary evidence to support the
existence of an extermination plan has led to the habit of re-
interpreting the documents that do survive. For example, it is
held that a document concerning deportation is not about
deportation at all, but a cunning way of talking about
extermination. Manvell and Frankl state that "various terms were
used to camouflage genocide. These included "Aussiedlung"
(desettlement) and "Abbeforderung" (removal)" (ibid, p. 265).
Thus, as we have seen already, words are no longer assumed to
mean what they say if they prove too inconvenient. This kind
of thing is taken to the most incredible extremes, such as their
interpretation of Heydrich's directive for labor assignment in
the east. Another example is a reference to Himmler's order for
sending deportees to the East, "that is, having them killed"
(ibid, p. 251). Reitlinger, equally at a loss for evidence, does
exactly the same, declaring that from the "circumlocutionary"
words of the Wannsee conference it is obvious that "the slow
murder of an entire race was intended" (ibid, p. 98).
A review of the documentary situation is important, because
it reveals the edifice of guesswork and baseless assumptions
upon which the extermination legend is built. The Germans had an
extraordinary propensity for recording everything on paper in
the most careful detail, yet among the thousands of captured
documents of the S.D. and Gestapo, the records of the Reich
Security Head Office, the files of Himmler's headquarters and
Hitler's own war directives there is not a single order for the
extermination of Jews or anyone else. It will be seen later that
this has, in fact, been admitted by the World Center of
Contemporary Jewish Documentation at Tel-Aviv. Attempts to find
"veiled allusions" to genocide in speeches like that of
Himmler's to his S.S. Obergruppenfuhrers at Posen in 1943 are
likewise hopeless. Nuremberg statements extracted after the war,
invariably under duress, are examined in the following chapter.