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<xml><p>only one Jewish witness, a certain Dr. Bendel, and his is the
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only testimony to the occurrence (Reitlinger, ibid., p. 457).
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This situation is generally typical. When it comes down to hard
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evidence, it is strangely elusive; the building was
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"demolished", the document was "lost", the order was "verbal".
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At Auschwitz today, visitors are shown a small furnace and here
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they are told that millions of people were exterminated. The
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Soviet State Commission which "investigated" the camp announced
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on May 12th, 1945 that "Using rectified coefficients....the
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technical expert commission has ascertained that during the time
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that the Auschwitz camp existed, the German butchers
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exterminated in this camp not less than four million
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citizens..." Reitlinger's surprisingly frank comment on this is
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perfectly adequate" "The world has grown mistrustful of
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'rectified coefficients' and the figure of four millions has
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become ridiculous" (ibid. p. 460).
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Finally, the account of Mr. Christopherson draws attention to
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a very curious circumstance. The only defendant who did not
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appear at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial in 1963 was Richard
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Baer, the successor of Rudolf Hoess as commandant of Auschwitz.
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Though in perfect health, he died suddenly in prison before the
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trial had begun, "in a highly mysterious way" according to the
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newspaper Deutsche Wochenzietung (July 27th, 1973). Baer's
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sudden demise before giving evidence is especially strange,
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since the Paris newspaper Rivarol recorded his insistence that
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"during the whole time in which he governed Auschwitz, he never
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saw any gas chambers nor believed that such things existed," and
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from this statement nothing would dissuade him. In short, the
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Christopherson account adds to a mounting collection of evidence
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demonstrating that the giant industrial complex of Auschwitz
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(compromising thirty separate installations and divided by
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the main Vienna-Cracow railway line) was nothing but a vast war
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production center, which, while admittedly employing the
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compulsory labor of detainees, was certainly not a place of
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"mass extermination".</p>
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<p> THE WARSAW GHETTO</p>
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<p> In terms of numbers, polish Jewry is supposed to have
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suffered most of all from extermination, not only at Auschwitz,
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but at an endless list of newly-discovered "death camps" such as
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Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Maidanek, Chelmno and at many more
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obscure places which seem suddenly to have gained prominence. At
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the center of the alleged extermination of the Polish Jews is
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the dramatic uprising in April 1943 of the Warsaw Ghetto. This
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is often represented as a revolt against being deported to gas
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ovens; presumably the alleged subject of Hitler and Himmler's
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"secret discussions" had leaked out and gained wide publicity in
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Warsaw. The case of the Warsaw Ghetto is an instructive insight
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into the creation of the extermination legend itself. Indeed,
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its evacuation by the Germans in 1943 is often referred to as
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the "extermination of the Polish Jews" although it was nothing
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of the kind, and layers of mythology have tended to surround it
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after the publication of sensational novels like John Hersey's
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The Wall and Leon Uris' Exodus.
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When the Germans first occupied Poland, they confined the
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Jews, not in detention camps but in ghettos for reasons of
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security. The interior administration of the ghettos was in the
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hands of Jewish councils elected by themselves, and they were
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policed by an independent Jewish police force. Special currency
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notes were introduced into the Ghettos to prevent speculation.
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Whether this system was right or wrong, it was understandable in
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time of war, and although the ghetto is perhaps an unpleasant
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social establishment, it is by no means barbaric. And it is
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certainly not an organization for the destruction of a race.
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But, of course, it is frequently said that this is what the
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ghettos were really for. A recent publication on the Warsaw
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Ghetto made the brazen assertion that concentration camps "were
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a substitute for the practice of cramming the Jews into
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overcrowded ghettos and starving them to death." It seems that
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whatever security system the Germans used, and to whatever
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lengths they went to preserve a semblance of community for the
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Jews, they can never escape the charge of "extermination".
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It has been established already that the 1931 Jewish
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population census for Poland placed the number of Jews at
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2,732,600, and that after emigration and flight to the Soviet
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Union, no more than 1,100,000 were under German control. These
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incontrovertible facts, however, do not prevent Manvell and
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Frankl asserting that "there had been over three million Jews in
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Poland when Germany began the invasion" and that in 1942 "some
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two million still awaited death" (ibid, p. 140). In reality, of
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the million or so Jews in Poland, almost half, about 400,000
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were eventually concentrated in the ghetto of Warsaw, an area of
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about two and a half square miles around the old mediaeval
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ghetto. The remainder had already been moved to the Polish
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Government-General by September 1940. In the summer of 1942,
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Himmler ordered the resettlement of all Polish Jews in detention
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camps in order to obtain their labor, part of the system of
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general concentration for labor assignment in the Government-
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General. Thus between July and October 1942, over three quarters
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of the Warsaw Ghetto's inhabitants were peacefully evacuated and
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transported, supervised to camps is alleged to have ended in
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"extermination", but there is absolutely no doubt from the
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evidence available that it involved only the effective
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procurement of labor and the prevention of unrest. In the first
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place, Himmler discovered on a suprise visit to Warsaw in
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January 1943 that 24,000 Jews registered as armaments workers
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were in fact working illegally as tailors and furriers (Manvell
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and Frankl, ibid, p. 140); the Ghetto was also being used as a
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base for subversive forays into the main area of Warsaw.
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After six months of peaceful evacuation, when only about
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60,000 Jews remained in the residential ghetto, the Germans met
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with an armed rebellion on 18th January, 1943. Manvell and
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Frankl admit that "The Jews involved in planned resistance had
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for a long time been engaged in smuggling arms from the outside
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world, and combat groups fired on and killed S.S. men and
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militia in charge of a column of deportees." The terrorists in
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the Ghetto uprising were also assisted by the Polish Home Army
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and the PPR--Polish Partia Robotnicza, the Communist Polish
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Workers Party. It was under these circumstances of a revolt
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aided by partisans and communists that the occupying forces, as
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any army would in a similar situation, moved in to suppress the
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terrorists, if necessary by destroying the residential area
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itself. It should be remembered that the whole process of
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evacuation would have continued had not extremists among the
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inhabitants planned an armed rebellion which in the end was
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bound to fail. When S.S. Lieutenant-General Stroop entered the
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Ghetto with armored cars on 19th April, he immediately came
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under fire and lost twelve men; German and Polish casualties in
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the battle, which lasted four weeks, totaled 101 men killed and
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wounded. Stubborn resistance by the Jewish Combat Organization
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in the face of impossible odds led to an estimated 12,000 Jewish
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casualties, the majority by remaining in burning buildings and
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dug-outs. A total, however, of 56,065 inhabitants were captured
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and peacefully resettled in the area of the Government-General.
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Many Jews within the Ghetto had resented the terror imposed on
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them by the Combat Organization, and had attempted to inform on
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their headquarters to the German authorities.</p>
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<p> SUDDEN SURVIVORS</p>
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<p> The circumstances surrounding the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, as
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well as the deportations to eastern labor camps such as
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Auschwitz, has led to the most colorful tales concerning the
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fate of Polish Jews, the largest bloc of Jewry in Europe. The
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Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, in figures prepared by them
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for the Nuremberg Trials, stated that in 1945 there were only
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80,000 Jews remaining in Poland. They also alleged that there
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were no Polish-Jewish displaced persons left in Germany or
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Austria, a claim that was at some variance with the number of
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Polish Jews arrested by the British and Americans for black
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market activities. However, the new Communist regime in Poland
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was unable to prevent a major anti-Jewish pogrom at Kielce on
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July 4th, 1946, and more than 150,000 Polish Jews suddenly fled
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into Western Germany. Their appearance was somewhat
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embarrassing, and their emigration to Palestine and the United
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States was carried out in record time. Subsequently, the number
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of Polish Jewish survivors underwent considerable revision; in
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the American-Jewish Yearbook 1948-1949 it was placed at 390,000,
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quite an advance on the original 80,000. We may expect further
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revisions in the future.</p>
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<p> 7. SOME CONCENTRATION CAMP MEMOIRS</p>
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<p> The most influential agency in the propagation of the
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extermination legend has been the paper-back book and magazine
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industry, and it is through their sensational publications,
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produced for commercial gain, that the average person is made
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acquainted with a myth of an entirely political character and
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purpose. The hey-day of these hate-Germany books were in the
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1950's, when virulent Germanophobia found a ready market, but
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the industry continues to flourish and is experiencing another
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boom today. The industry's products consist generally of so-
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called "memoirs" and these fall into two basic categories; those
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which are supposedly by former S.S. men, camp commandants and
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the like, and those bloodcurdling reminiscences allegedly by
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former concentration camp inmates.</p>
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<p> COMMUNIST ORIGINS</p>
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<p> Of the first kind, the most outstanding example is Commandant
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of Auschwitz by Rudolf Hoess (London 1960) which was originally
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published in the Polish language as Wspomnienia by the
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Communist Government. Hoess, a young man who took over at
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Auschwitz in 1940, was first arrested by the British and
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detained at Flensburg, but he was soon handed over to
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the Polish Communist authorities who condemned him to death in
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1947 and executed him almost immediately. The so-called Hoess
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memoirs are undoubtedly a forgery produced under Communist
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auspices, as we shall demonstrate, though the Communists
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themselves claim that Hoess was "ordered to write the story of
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his life" and a hand-written original supposedly exists, but no
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one has ever seen it. Hoess was subjected to torture and brain-
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washing techniques by the Communists during the period of his
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arrest, and his testimony at Nuremberg was delivered in a
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mindless monotone as he stared blankly into space. Even
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Reitlinger rejects this testimony as hopelessly untrustworthy.
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It is indeed remarkable how so much "evidence" regarding the Six
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Million stems from Communist sources; this included the major
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documents such as the Wisliceny statement and the Hoess
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"memoirs", which are undoubted the two most quoted items in
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extermination literature, as well as all the information on the
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so-called "death camps" such as Auschwitz. This information
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comes from the Jewish Historical Commission of Poland; the
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central Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes, Warsaw;
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and the Russian State War Crimes Commission, Moscow.
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Reitlinger acknowledges that the Hoess testimony at Nuremberg
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was a catalogue of wild exaggerations, such as that Auschwitz
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was disposing of 16,000 people a day, which would mean a total
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at the end of the war of over 13 million. Instead of exposing
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such estimates for the Soviet-inspired frauds they obviously
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are, Reitlinger and others prefer to think that such ridiculous
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exaggerations were due to "pride" in doing a professional job.
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Ironically, this is completely irreconcilable with the
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supposedly authentic Hoess memoirs, which make a clever attempt
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at plausibility by suggesting the opposite picture of distaste
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for the job. Hoess is supposedly to have "confessed" to a total
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of three million people exterminated at Auschwitz, though at his
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own trial in Warsaw the prosecution reduced the number to
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1,135,000. However, we have already noted that the Soviet
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Government announced an official figure of 4 million after their
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"investigation" of the camp in 1945. This kind of casual
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juggling with millions of people does not appear to worry the
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writers of extermination literature.
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A review of the Hoess "memoirs" in all their horrid detail
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would be tedious. We may confine ourselves to those aspects of
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the extermination legend which are designed with the obvious
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purpose of forestalling any proof of its falsity. Such, for
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example, is the manner in which the alleged extermination of
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Jews is described. This was supposed to have been carried out by
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a "special detachment" of Jewish prisoners. They took charge of
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the newly arrived contingents at the camp, led them into the
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enormous "gas chambers" and disposed of the bodies afterwards.
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The S.S., therefore, did very little, so that most of the S.S.
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personnel at the camp could be left in complete ignorance of the
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"extermination program". Of course, no Jew would ever be found
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who claimed to have been a member of this gruesome "special
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detachment", so that the whole issue is left conveniently
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unprovable. it is worth repeating that no living, authentic eye-
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witness of these events has ever been produced.
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Conclusive evidence that the Hoess memoirs are a forgery lies
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in an incredible slip by the Communist editors. Hoess is
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supposed to say that the Jehovah's Witnesses at Auschwitz
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approved of murdering the Jews because the Jews were the enemies
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of Christ. It is well known that in Soviet Russia today and in
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all her satellite countries of eastern Europe, the Communist
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conduct a bitter campaign of suppression against the Jehovah's
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Witnesses, whom they regard as the religious sect most dangerous
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to Communist beliefs. That this sect is deliberately and grossly
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defamed in the Hoess memoirs proves the document's Communist
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origins beyond any doubt.</p>
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<p> INCRIMINATING REMINISCENCES</p>
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<p> Certainly the most bogus "memoirs" yet published are those of
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Adolf Eichmann. Before his illegal kidnapping by the Israelis in
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May, 1960, and the attendant blaze of international publicity,
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few people had ever heard of him. He was indeed a relatively
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unimportant person, the head of Office A4b in Department IV (the
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Gestapo) of the Reich Security Head Ofice. His office supervised
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the transportation to detention camps of a particular section of
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enemy aliens, the Jews. A positive flood of unadulterated
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rubbish about Eichmann showered the world in 1960, of which we
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may cite as an example Comer Clarke's Eichmann: The Savage
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Truth. ("The orgies often went on until six in the morning, a
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few hours before consigning the next batch of victims to death,"
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says Clarke in his chapter "Streamlined Death and Wild Sex
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Orgies," p. 124).
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Strangely enough, the alleged "memoirs" of Adolf Eichmann
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suddenly appeared at the time of his abduction to Israel. They
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were uncritically published by the American Life magazine
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(November 28th, December 5th, 1060), and were supposed to have
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been given by Eichmann to a journalist in the Argentine shortly
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before his capture--an amazing coincidence. Other sources,
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however, gave an entirely different account of their origin,
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claiming that they were a record based on Eichmann's comments to
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an "associate" in 1955, though no one even bothered to identify
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this person. By an equally extraordinary coincidence, war crimes
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investigators claimed shortly afterwards to have just "found" in
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the archives of the U.S. Library of Congress, more than fifteen
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years after the war, the "complete file" of Eichmann's
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department. So far as the "memoirs" themselves are concerned,
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they are made to be as horribly incriminating as possible
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without stretching too far into the realms of purest fantasy,
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and depict Eichmann speaking with enormous relish about "the
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physical annihilation of the Jews". Their fraudulence is also
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attested to by various factual errors, such as that Himmler was
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already in command of the reserve Army by April of 1944, instead
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of after the July plot against Hitler's life, a fact which
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Eichmann would certainly have known. The appearance of the
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"memoirs" at precisely the right moment raises no doubt that
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their object was to present a pre-trial propaganda picture of
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the archetypical "unregenerate Nazi" and fiend in human shape.
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The circumstances of the Eichmann trial in Israel do not
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concern us here; the documents of Soviet origin which were used
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as evidence, such as the Wisliceny statement, have been examined
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already, and for an account of the third-degree methods used on
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Eichmann during his captivity to render him "co-operative" the
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reader is referred to the London Jewish Chronicle, September
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2nd, 1960. More relevant to the literature of the extermination
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legend are the contents of a letter which Eichmann is supposed
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to have written voluntarily and handed over to his captors in
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Buenos Aries. It need hardly be added that its Israeli
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authorship is transparently obvious. Nothing in it stretches
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human credulity further than the phrase "I am submitting this
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declaration of my own free will"; but the most hollow and
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revealing statement of all is his alleged willingness to appear
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before a court in Israel, "so that a true picture may be
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transmitted to future generations."</p>
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<p> TREBLINKA FABRICATIONS</p>
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<p> The latest reminiscences to appear in print are those of
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Franz Stangl, the former commandant of the camp at Treblinka in
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Poland who was sentenced to life imprisonment in December 1970.
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These were published in an article by the London Daily Telegraph
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Magazine, October 8th, 1971, and were supposed to derive from a
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series of interviews with Stangl in prison. He died a few days
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after the interviews were concluded. These alleged reminiscences
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are certainly the goriest and most bizarre yet published, though
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one is grateful for a few admissions by the writer of the
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article, such as that "the evidence presented in the course of
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his trial did not prove Stangl himself to have committed
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specific acts of murder" and that the account of Stangl's
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beginnings in Poland "was in part fabrication."
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A typical example of this fabrication was the description of
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Stangl's first visit to Treblinka. As he drew into the railway
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station there, he was supposed to have seen "thousands of
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bodies" just strewn around next to the tracks, "hundreds, no,
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thousands of bodies everywhere, putrefying, decomposing." And,
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"in the station was a train full of Jews, some dead, some still
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alive...it looked as it had been there for days." The account
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reaches the heights of absurdity when Stangl is alleged to have
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got out of his car and "stepped knee deep in money; I didn't
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know which way to turn, which way to go. I waded in papernotes,
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currency, precious stones, jewelry, and clothes. They were
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everywhere, strewn all over the square." The scene is completed
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by "whores from Warsaw weaving drunk, dancing, singing, playing
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music," who were on the other side of the barbed wire fences. To
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literally believe this account of sinking "kneedeep" in Jewish
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banknotes and precious stones amid thousands of putrefying
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corpses and lurching, singing prostitutes would require the most
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phenomenal degree of gullibility, and in any circumstances other
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than the Six Million legend it would be dismissed as the most
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outrageous nonsense.
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The statement which certainly robs the Stangl memoirs of any
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vestige of authenticity is his alleged reply when asked why he
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thought the Jews were being exterminated: "They wanted the Jews'
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money," is the answer. "That racial business was just
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secondary." The series of interviews are supposed to have ended
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on a highly dubious note indeed. When asked whether he thought
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there had been "any conceivable sense in this horror," the
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former Nazi commandant supposedly replied with enthusiasm: "Yes,
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I am sure there was. Perhaps the Jews were meant to have this
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enormous jolt to pull together; to create a people; to identify
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themselves with each other." One could scarcely imagine a more
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perfect answer had it been invented.</p>
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<p> BEST-SELLER A HOAX</p>
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<p> Of the variety of memoirs, those which present a picture of
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frail Jewry caught in the vice of Nazism, the most celebrated is
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undoubtedly The Diary of Anne Frank and the truth concerning
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this book is only one appalling insight into the fabrication of
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a propaganda legend. First published in 1952, The Dairy of Anne
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Frank became an immediate best-seller; since then it has been
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republished in paper-back, going through 40 impressions, and was
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made into a successful Hollywood film. In royalties alone, Otto
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Frank, the girl's father, has made a fortune from the sale of
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the book, which purports to represent the real-life tragedy of
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his daughter. With its direct appeal to the emotions, the book
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and the film have influenced literally millions of people,
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certainly more through the world than any other story of its
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kind. And yet only seven years after its initial publication, a
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New York Supreme Court case established that the book was a
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hoax.
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The Diary of Anne Frank has been sold to the public as the
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actual diary of a young Jewish girl from Amsterdam, which she
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wrote at the age of 12 while her family and four other Jews were
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hiding in the back room of a house during the German occupation.
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Eventually, they were arrested and detained in a concentration
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camp. where Anne Frank supposedly died when she was 14. When
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Otto Frank was liberated from the camp at the end of the war, he
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returned to the Amsterdam house and "found" his daughter's diary
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concealed in the rafters.
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The truth bout the Anne Frank Diary was first revealed in
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1959 by the Swedish journal Fria Ord. It established that the
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Jewish novelist Meyer Levin had written the dialogue of the
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"diary" and was demanding payment for his work in a court action
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against Otto Frank. A condensation of the Swedish articles
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appeared in the American Economic Council Letter, April 15th,
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1959, as follows:</p>
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<p> "History has many examples of myths that live a longer
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and richer life than truth, and may become more effective
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than truth.</p>
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<p> "The Western World has for some years been made aware
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of a Jewish girl through the medium of what purports to
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be her personally written story, Anne Frank's Diary.
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Any informed literary inspection of this book would shown
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it to have been impossible as a work of a teenager.</p>
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<p> "A noteworthy decision of the New York Supreme Court
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confirms this point of view, in that the well known
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American Jewish writer, Meyer Levin, has been awarded
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$50,000 to be paid by the father of Anne Frank as an
|
||
honorarium for Levin's work on the Anne Frank Diary.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> "Mr. Frank, in Switzerland, and promised to pay to his
|
||
race kin, Meyer Levin, not less than $50,000 because he
|
||
had used the dialogue of Author Levin just as it was and
|
||
"implanted" it in the dairy as being his daughter's
|
||
intellectual work."</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> Further inquiries brought a reply on May 7th, 1962 from a
|
||
firm of New York Lawyers, which stated:</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> "I was attorney for Meyer Levin in his action against Otto
|
||
Frank, and others. It is true that a jury awarded Mr. Levin
|
||
$50,000 in damages, as indicated in your letter. That award was
|
||
later set aside by the trial justice, Hon. Samuel C. Coleman, on
|
||
the ground that the damages had not been proved in the manner
|
||
required by law. The action was subsequently settled while an
|
||
appeal from Judge Coleman's decision was pending.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> I am afraid that the case is not officially reported, so far
|
||
as the trial itself. or even Judge Coleman's decision, is
|
||
concerned. Certain procedural matters were reported in 141 New
|
||
York Supplement, Second Series 170, and in 5 Second Series 181.
|
||
The correct file number in the New York County Clerk's office is
|
||
2241-1956 and the file is probably a large and full one..."</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> Here, then, is just one more fraud in a whole series of fraud
|
||
perpetrated in support of the "Holocaust" [Holohoax] legend and
|
||
the saga of the Six Million. Of course, the court case bearing
|
||
directly on the authenticity of the Anne Frank Diary was "not
|
||
officially reported."
|
||
A brief reference may also be made to another "diary"
|
||
published not long after that of Anne Frank and entitled: Notes
|
||
from the Warsaw Ghetto: the Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum (New
|
||
York, 1958). Ringelblum had been a leader in the campaign of
|
||
sabotage against the Germans in Poland, as well as the revolt of
|
||
the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, before he was eventually arrested and
|
||
executed in 1944. The Ringelblum journal, which speaks of the
|
||
usual "rumors" allegedly circulating about the extermination of
|
||
the Jews in Poland, appeared exactly under the same Communist
|
||
auspices as the so-called Hoess memoirs. McGraw-Hill, the
|
||
publishers of the American edition, admit they were denied
|
||
access to the uncensored original manuscript in Warsaw, and
|
||
instead faithfully followed the expurgated volume published by
|
||
the Communist Government in Warsaw in 1952. All the "proofs" of
|
||
the Holocaust [Holohoax] issuing from Communist sources of this
|
||
kind are worthless as historical documents.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> ACCUMULATING MYTHS</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> Since the war, there has been an abundant growth of
|
||
sensational concentration camp literature, the majority of it
|
||
Jewish, each book piling horror upon horror, blending fragments
|
||
of truth with the most grotesque of fantasies and impostures,
|
||
relentlessly creating an edifice of mythology in which any
|
||
relation to historical fact has long since disappeared. We have
|
||
referred to the type already--Olga Lengyel's absurd Five
|
||
Chimneys ("24,000 corpses handles every day"), Doctor at
|
||
Auschwitz by Milkos Nyiszli, apparently a mythical and invented
|
||
person, This was Auschwitz: The Story of a Murder Camp by
|
||
Phillip Friedman, and so on ad nauseam.
|
||
The latest in this vein is For Those I love by Martin Gray
|
||
(Bodley Head, 1973), which purports to be an account of his
|
||
experiences at Treblinka camp in Poland. Gray specialized in
|
||
selling fake antiques to America before turning to concentration
|
||
camp memoirs. The circumstances surrounding the publication of
|
||
his book, however, have been unique, because for the first time
|
||
with works of this kind, serious doubt was cast on the
|
||
authenticity of its contents. Even Jews, alarmed at the damage
|
||
it might cause, denounced his book as fraudulent and questioned
|
||
whether he had ever been at Treblinka at all, while the B.B.C.
|
||
radio pressed him as to why he had waited 28 years before
|
||
writing of his experiences.
|
||
It was interesting to observe that the "Personal Opinion"
|
||
column of the London Jewish Chronicle, March 30th, 1973,
|
||
although it roundly condemned Gray's book, nevertheless made
|
||
grandiose additions to the myth of the Six Million. It stated
|
||
that: "Nearly a million people were murdered at Treblinka in the
|
||
course of a year. 18,000 were fed into the gas chambers every
|
||
day." It is a pity that so many people read and accept this kind
|
||
of nonsense without exercising their minds. If 18,000 were
|
||
murdered every day, the figure of one million would be reached
|
||
in a mere 56 days, not "in the course of a year." This gigantic
|
||
achievement would leave the 10 remaining months of the year a
|
||
total blank. 18,000 every day would in fact mean a total of
|
||
6,480,000 "in the course of a year." Does this mean that the Six
|
||
Million died in twelve months at Treblinka? What about the
|
||
alleged three or four million at Auschwitz? This kind of thing
|
||
simply shows that, once the preposterous compromise figure of
|
||
Six Million has scored a resounding success and become
|
||
internationally accepted, any number of impossible permutations
|
||
can be made and no one would even think to criticize them. In
|
||
its review of Gray's book, the Jewish Chronicle column also
|
||
provides a revealing insight into the fraudulent allegations
|
||
concerning gas-chambers: "Gray recalls that the floors of the
|
||
gas chambers sloped, whereas another survivor who helped build
|
||
them , maintains that they were at a level..."
|
||
Occasionally, books by former concentration camp inmates
|
||
appear which present a totally different picture of the
|
||
conditions prevailing in them. Such is Under Two Dictators
|
||
(London, 1959) by Margarete Buber. She was a German-Jewish woman
|
||
who had experienced several years in the brutal and primitive
|
||
conditions of a Russian prison camp before being sent to
|
||
Ravensbruck, the German camp for women detainees, in August
|
||
1940. She noted that she was the only Jewish person in her
|
||
contingent of deportees from Russia who was not straight away
|
||
released by the Gestapo. Her book presents a striking contrast
|
||
between the camps of Soviet Russia and Germany; compared to the
|
||
squalor, disorder and starvation of the Russian camp, she found
|
||
Ravensbruck to be clean, civilized and well-administered.
|
||
Regular baths and clean linen seemed a luxury after her earlier
|
||
experiences, and her first meal of white bread, sausage, sweet
|
||
porridge and dried fruit prompted her to inquire of another camp
|
||
inmate whether August 3rd, 1940 was some sort of holiday or
|
||
special occasion. She observed, too, that the barracks at
|
||
Ravensbruck were remarkably spacious compared to the crowded mud
|
||
hut of the Soviet camp. In the final months of 1945, she
|
||
experienced the progressive decline of camp conditions, the
|
||
causes we shall examine later.
|
||
Another account which is at total variance with popular
|
||
propaganda is Die Gestapo Lasst Bitten (The Gestapo Invites You)
|
||
by Charlotte Bormann, a Communist political prisoner who was
|
||
also interred at Ravensbruck. Undoubtedly its most important
|
||
revelation is the author's statement that rumors of gas chambers
|
||
were deliberate and malicious inventions circulated among the
|
||
prisoners by the Communists. This latter group did not accept
|
||
Margarete Buber because of her imprisonment in Soviet Russia. A
|
||
further shocking reflection on the post-war trials is the fact
|
||
that Charlotte Bormann was not permitted to testify in the
|
||
French occupation zone, the usual fate of those who denied the
|
||
extermination legend.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> 8. THE NATURE AND CONDITION OF WAR-TIME CONCENTRATION CAMPS</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> In his recent book Adolf Hitler (London, 1973), Colin Cross,
|
||
who brings more intelligence than is usual to many problems of
|
||
this period, observes astutely that "The shuffling of millions
|
||
of Jews around Europe and murdering them in a time of desperate
|
||
war emergency, was useless from any rational point of view" (p.
|
||
307). Quite so, and at this point we may well question the
|
||
likelihood of this irrationalism, and whether it was even
|
||
possible. It is likely, that at the height of the war, when the
|
||
Germans were fighting a desperate battle for survival on two
|
||
fronts, they would have conveyed millions of Jews for miles to
|
||
supposedly elaborate and costly slaughter houses? To have
|
||
conveyed three or four million Jews to Auschwitz alone (even
|
||
supposing that such an inflated number existed in Europe, which
|
||
it did not), would have placed an insuperable burden upon German
|
||
transportation facilities which were strained to the limit in
|
||
supporting the far flung Russian front. To have transported the
|
||
mythical six million Jews and countless numbers of other
|
||
nationalities to internment camps, and to have housed, clothed
|
||
and fed them there, would simply have paralyzed their military
|
||
operations. There is no reason to suppose that the efficient
|
||
Germans would have put their military fortunes at such risk.
|
||
On the other hand, the transportation of a reasonable 363,000
|
||
prisoners to Auschwitz in the course of the war (the number we
|
||
know to have been registered there) at least makes sense in
|
||
terms of the compulsory labor they supplied. In fact, of the 3
|
||
million Jews living in Europe, it is certain that no more than
|
||
two million were ever interned at one time, and it is probable
|
||
that the number was much closer to 1,500,000. We shall see
|
||
later, in the Report of the Red Cross, that whole Jewish
|
||
populations such as that of Slovakia avoided detention camps,
|
||
while others were placed in community ghettos like
|
||
Theresienstadt. Moreover, from western Europe deportations were
|
||
far fewer. The estimate of Reitlinger that only 50,000 French
|
||
Jews from a total population of 320,000 were deported and
|
||
interned has been noted already.
|
||
The question must also be asked as to whether it could have
|
||
been physically possible to destroy the millions of Jews that
|
||
are alleged. Had the Germans enough time for it? It is likely
|
||
that they would have cremated people by the million when they
|
||
were so short of manpower and required all prisoners of war for
|
||
purposes of war production? Would it have been possible to
|
||
destroy and remove all trace of a million people in six months?
|
||
Could such enormous gatherings of Jews and executions on such a
|
||
vast scale have been kept secret? These are the kind of
|
||
questions that the critical, thinking person should ask. And he
|
||
will soon discover that not only the statistical and documentary
|
||
evidence given here, but simple logistics combine to discredit
|
||
the legend of the six million.
|
||
Although it was impossible for millions to have been murdered
|
||
in them, the nature and conditions of Germany's concentration
|
||
camps have been vastly exaggerated to make the claim plausible.
|
||
William Shirer, in a typically reckless passage, states that:
|
||
"All of the thirty odd principal Nazi concentration camps were
|
||
death camps" (ibid, p. 1150). This is totally untrue, and is not
|
||
even accepted now by the principal propagators of the
|
||
extermination legend. Shirer also quotes Eugen Kogon's The
|
||
Theory and Practice of Hell (New York, 1950, p. 227) which puts
|
||
the total number of deaths in all of them at the ridiculous
|
||
figure of 7,125,000, though Shirer admits in a footnote that
|
||
this "undoubtedly too high."</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> "DEATH CAMPS" BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> It is true that in 1945, Allied propaganda did claim that all
|
||
the concentration camps, particularly those in Germany itself,
|
||
were "death camps", but not for long. On this question, the
|
||
eminent American historian Harry Elmer Barnes wrote: "These
|
||
camps were first presented as those in Germany, such as Dachau,
|
||
Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Dora, but it was soon
|
||
demonstrated that there had been no systematic extermination in
|
||
those camps. Attention was then moved to Auschwitz, Treblinka,
|
||
Belzec, Chelmno, Jonowska, Tarnow, Ravensbruck, Mauthausen,
|
||
Brezeznia and Birkenau, which does not exhaust the list that
|
||
appears to have been extended as needed" (Rampart Journal,
|
||
Summer 1967). What had happened was that certain honest
|
||
observers among the American and British occupation forces in
|
||
Germany, while admitting that many inmates had died of disease
|
||
and starvation in the final months of the war, had found no
|
||
evidence after all of "gas chambers." As a result, eastern camps
|
||
in the Russian zone of occupation such as Auschwitz and
|
||
Treblinka gradually came to the fore as horrific centers of
|
||
extermination (though no one was permitted to see them), and
|
||
this tendency has lasted to the present day. Here in these camps
|
||
it was all supposed to have happened, but with the Iron Curtain
|
||
brought down firmly over them, no one has ever been able to
|
||
verify such charges. The Communists claimed that four million
|
||
people died at Auschwitz in gigantic gas chambers accommodating
|
||
2,000 people--and no one could argue to the contrary.
|
||
What is the truth about the so-called "gas chambers"? Stephen
|
||
F. Pinter, who served as a lawyer for the United States War
|
||
Department in the occupation force in Germany and Austria for
|
||
six years after the war made the following statement in the
|
||
widely read Catholic Magazine Our Sunday Visitor, June 14th,
|
||
1959: "I was in Dachau for 17 months after the war, as a U.S.
|
||
War Department Attorney, and can state that there was no gas
|
||
chamber at Dachau. What was shown to visitors and sightseer
|
||
there and erroneously describes as a gas chamber was a
|
||
crematory. Nor was there a gas chamber in any of the other
|
||
concentration camps in Germany. We were told that there was a
|
||
gas chamber at Auschwitz, but since that was in the Russian zone
|
||
of occupation, we were not permitted to investigate since the
|
||
Russians would not allow it. From what I was able to determine
|
||
during this six postwar years in Germany and Austria, there were
|
||
a number of Jews killed, but the figure of a million was
|
||
certainly never reached. I interviewed thousands of Jews, former
|
||
inmates of concentration camps in Germany and Austria, and
|
||
consider myself as well qualified as any man on this subject."
|
||
This tells a very different story from the customary
|
||
propaganda. Pinter, of course, is very astute on the question of
|
||
the crematory being represented as a gas chamber. This is a
|
||
frequent ploy because no such thing as a gas chamber has ever
|
||
been shown to exist in these camps, hence the deliberately
|
||
misleading term a "gas oven", aimed at confusing a gas chamber
|
||
with a crematorium. The latter, usually a single furnace and
|
||
similar to the kind of thing employed today, were used quite
|
||
simply for the cremation of those persons who had died from
|
||
various natural causes within the camp, particularly infectious
|
||
diseases. This fact was conclusively proved by the German
|
||
archbishop, Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich. He informed the
|
||
Americans that during the Allied air raids on Munich in
|
||
September 1944, 30,000 people were killed. The archbishop
|
||
requested the authorities at the time to cremate the bodies of
|
||
the victims in the crematorium at Dachau. But he was told that,
|
||
unfortunately, this plan could not be carried out; the
|
||
crematorium, having only one furnace, was not able to cope with
|
||
the bodies of the air raid victims. Clearly, therefore, it could
|
||
not have coped with the 238,000 Jewish bodies which were
|
||
allegedly cremated there. In order to do so, the crematorium
|
||
would have to be kept going for 326 years without stopping and
|
||
530 tons of ashes would have been recovered.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> CASUALTY FIGURES REDUCED</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> The figures of Dachau casualties are typical of the kind of
|
||
exaggerations that have since had to be drastically revised. In
|
||
1946, a memorial plaque was unveiled at Dachau by Philip
|
||
Auerbach, the Jewish State-Secretary in the Barvarian Government
|
||
who was convicted for embezzling money which he claimed as
|
||
compensation for nonexistent Jews. The plaque read; "This area
|
||
is being retained as a shrine to the 238,000 individuals who
|
||
were cremated here." Since then, the official casualty figures
|
||
have had to be steadily revised downwards, and now stand at only
|
||
20,600, the majority from typhus and starvation only at the end
|
||
of the war. This deflation, to ten per cent of the original
|
||
figure, will doubtless continue, and one day will be applied to
|
||
the legendary figure of six million as a whole.
|
||
Another example of drastic revision is the present estimate
|
||
of Auschwitz casualties. The absurd allegations of three or four
|
||
million deaths there are no longer plausible even to Reitlinger.
|
||
He now puts the number of casualties at only 600,000; and
|
||
although this figure is still exaggerated in the extreme, it is
|
||
a significant reduction on four million and further progress is
|
||
to be expected. Shirer himself quotes Reitlinger's latest
|
||
estimate, but he fails to reconcile this with his earlier
|
||
statement that half of that figure, about 300,000 Hungarian Jews
|
||
were supposedly "done to death in fourty-six days"--a supreme
|
||
example of the kind of irresponsible nonsense that is written on
|
||
this subject.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> HUMANE CONDITIONS</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> That several thousand camp inmates did die in the chaotic
|
||
final months of the war brings us to the question of their war-
|
||
time conditions. These have been deliberately falsified in
|
||
innumerable books of an extremely lurid and unpleasant kind. The
|
||
Red Cross Report, examined below, demonstrates conclusively
|
||
that throughout the war the camps were well administered. The
|
||
working inmates received a daily ration even throughout 1943 and
|
||
1944 of not less than 2,750 calories, which was more than double
|
||
the average citizen ration in occupied Germany in the years
|
||
after 1945. The internees were under regular medical care, and
|
||
those who became seriously ill were transferred to the hospital.
|
||
All internees, unlike those in the Soviet camps, could receive
|
||
parcels of food, clothing and pharmaceutical supplies from the
|
||
Special Relief Division of the Red Cross. The Office of the
|
||
Public Prosecutor conducted thorough investigations into each
|
||
case of criminal arrest, and those found innocent were released;
|
||
those found guilty, as well as those deportees convicted of
|
||
major crimes, were sentenced by military courts and executed. In
|
||
the Federal Archives of Koblenz there is a directive of January
|
||
1943 from Himmler regarding such executions, stressing that "no
|
||
brutality is to be allowed" (Manvell and Frankl, ibid, p. 312).
|
||
Occasionally there was brutality, but such cases were
|
||
immediately scrutinized by S.S. Judge Dr. Konrad Morgen of the
|
||
Reich Criminal Police Office, whose job was to investigate
|
||
irregularities at the various camps. Morgen himself prosecuted
|
||
commander Koch of Buchenwald in 1943 for excesses at his camp, a
|
||
trial to which the German public were invited. It is significant
|
||
that Oswald Pohl, the administrator of the concentration camp
|
||
system who was dealt with so harshly at Nuremberg, was in favor
|
||
of the death penalty for Koch. In fact, the S.S. court did
|
||
sentence Koch to death, but he was given the option of serving
|
||
on the Russian front. Before he could do this, however, Prince
|
||
Waldeck, the leader of the S.S. in the district, carried out his
|
||
execution. This case is ample proof of the seriousness with
|
||
which the S.S. regarded unnecessary brutality. Several S.S.
|
||
court actions of this kind were conducted in the camps during
|
||
the war to prevent excesses, and more than 800 cases were
|
||
investigated before 1945. Morgen testified at Nuremberg that he
|
||
discussed confidentially with hundreds of inmates the prevailing
|
||
conditions in the camps. he found that few that were
|
||
undernourished except in the hospitals, and noted that the pace
|
||
and achievement in compulsory labor by inmates was far lower
|
||
than among German civilian workers.
|
||
The evidence of Pinter and Cardinal Faulhaber has been shown
|
||
to disprove the claims of extermination at Dachau, and we have
|
||
seen how the casualty figures of that camp have been
|
||
continuously revised downwards. The camp at Dachau near Munich,
|
||
in fact, may be taken as fairly typical of these places of
|
||
internment. Compulsory labor in the factories and plants was the
|
||
order of the day, but the Communist leader Ernst Ruff testified
|
||
in his Nuremberg affidavit of April 18th, 1947 that the
|
||
treatment of prisoners on the work details and in the camp of
|
||
Dachau remained humane. The Polish underground leader, Jan
|
||
Piechowiak, who was at Dachau from May 22nd, 1940 until April
|
||
29th, 1945 also testified on March 21st, 1946 that prisoners
|
||
there received good treatment, and that the S.S. personnel at
|
||
the camp were "well disciplined". Berta Schirotschin, who worked
|
||
in the food service at Dachau throughout the war, testified that
|
||
the working inmates, until the beginning of 1945 and despite
|
||
increasing privation in Germany, received their customary second
|
||
breakfast at 10 a.m. every morning.
|
||
In general, hundreds of affidavit from Nuremberg testify to
|
||
the humane conditions prevailing in concentration camps; but
|
||
emphasis was invariably laid on those which reflected badly on
|
||
the German administration and could be used for propaganda
|
||
purposes. A study of the documents also reveals that Jewish
|
||
witnesses tended to greatly exaggerate the rigors of their
|
||
condition, whereas other national interned for political
|
||
reasons, such as those cited above, generally presented a more
|
||
balanced picture. In many cases, prisoners such as Charlotte
|
||
Bormann, whose experiences did not accord with the picture
|
||
presented at Nuremberg, were not permitted to testify.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> UNAVOIDABLE CHAOS</p>
|
||
|
||
<p> The orderly situation in the German concentration camps
|
||
slowly broke down in the last fearful months of 1945. The Red
|
||
Cross Report of 1948 explains that the saturation bombing by the
|
||
Allies paralyzed the transport and communications system of the
|
||
Reich, no food reached the camps and starvation claimed an
|
||
increasing number of victims, both in the prison camps and among
|
||
the civilian population of Germany. This terrible situation was
|
||
compounded in the camps both by the great overcrowding and the
|
||
consequent outbreak of typhus epidemics. Overcrowding occurred
|
||
as a result of prisoners from the eastern camps such as
|
||
Auschwitz being evacuated westward before the Russian advance;
|
||
columns of such exhausted people arrived at several German camps
|
||
such as Belsen and Buchenwald which had themselves reached a
|
||
state of great hardship. Belsen camp near Bremen was in an
|
||
especially chaotic condition in these months and Himmler's
|
||
physician, Felix Kersten, an anti-Nazi, explains that its
|
||
unfortunate reputation as a "death camp" was due solely to the
|
||
ferocity of the typhus epidemic which broke out there in March
|
||
1945 (Memoirs 1940-1945, London, 1956). Undoubtedly these
|
||
fearful conditions cost several thousand lives, and it is these
|
||
conditions that re represented in the photographs of emaciated
|
||
human beings and heaps of corpses which the propagandists
|
||
delight in showing, claiming they are victims of
|
||
"extermination".
|
||
A surprisingly honest appraisal of the situation at Belsen in
|
||
1945 appeared in Purnell's History of the Second World War (Vol.
|
||
7, No. 15) by Russell Barton, now superintendent and consultant
|
||
psychiatrist at Severalls Hospital, Essex, who spent one month
|
||
at the camp as a medical student after the war. His account
|
||
vividly illustrates the true causes of the mortality that
|
||
occurred in such camps towards the war's end, and how such
|
||
extreme conditions came to prevail there. Dr. Barton explains
|
||
that Brigadier Glyn Hughes, the British Medical Officer who took
|
||
command of Belsen in 1945, "did not think there had been any
|
||
atrocities in the camp" despite discipline and hard work. "Most
|
||
people," writes Dr. Barton, "attributed the conditions of the
|
||
inmates to deliberate intention on the part of the
|
||
Germans...Inmates were eager to cite examples of brutality and
|
||
neglect, and visiting journalists from different countries
|
||
interpreted the situation according to the needs of propaganda
|
||
at home."
|
||
However. Dr. Barton makes it quite clear that the conditions
|
||
of starvation and disease were unavoidable in the circumstances,
|
||
and that they occurred only in the months of 1945. "From
|
||
discussions with prisoners it seemed that conditions in the camp
|
||
were not too bad until late 1944. The huts were set among pine
|
||
trees and each was provided with lavatories, wash basins,
|
||
showers and stoves for heating." The cause of food shortage is
|
||
also explained. "German medical officers told me that it had
|
||
been increasingly difficult to transport food to the camp for
|
||
some months. Anything that moved on the autobahns was likely to
|
||
be bombed...I was surprised to find records, going back daily
|
||
for two or three years, of large quantities of food cooked daily
|
||
for distribution. At that time I became convinced, contrary to
|
||
popular opinion that there had never been a policy of deliberate
|
||
starvation. This was confirmed by the large numbers of well-fed
|
||
inmates. Why then were so many people suffering from
|
||
malnutrition?....The major reasons for the state of Belsen were
|
||
disease, gross overcrowding by central authority, lack of law
|
||
and order within the huts, and inadequate supplies of food,
|
||
water and drugs." The lack of order, which led to riots over
|
||
food distribution, was quelled by British machine-gun fire and a
|
||
display of force when British tanks and armored cars toured the
|
||
camp.
|
||
Apart from the unavoidable deaths in these circumstances,
|
||
Glyn Hughes estimated that about "1000 were killed through the
|
||
kindness of English soldiers giving them their own rations and
|
||
chocolates." As a man who was at Belsen, Dr. Barton is obviously
|
||
very much alive to the falsehoods of concentration camp
|
||
mythology, and he concludes: "In trying to assess the causes of
|
||
the conditions found at Belsen one must be alerted to the
|
||
tremendous visual display, ripe for the purposes of propaganda,
|
||
that masses of starved corpses presented." To discuss such</p></xml> |