'SIX MILLION' FALSEHOOD REJECTED As for the fearful propaganda
figure of the Six Million, Professor Rassinier rejects it on the basis of an
extremely detailed statistical analysis. He shows that the number has been
falsely established, on the one hand through inflation of the pre-war Jewish
population by ignoring all emigration and evacuation, and on the other by a
corresponding deflation of the number of survivors after 1945. This was the
method used by the World Jewish Congress. Rassinier also rejects any written or
oral testimony to the Six Million given by the kind of "witnesses" cited above,
since they are full of contradictions, exaggerations and falsehoods. He gives
the example of Dachau casualties, noting that in 1946, Pastor Niemöller
reiterated Auerbach's fraudulent "238,000" deaths there, while in 1962 Bishop
Neuhäusseler of Munich stated in a speech at Dachau that only 30,000 people died
"of the 200,000 persons from thirty-eight nations who were interned there" (Le
Drame des Juifs européen, p . 12). Today, the estimate has been reduced by
several more thousands, and so it goes on. Rassinier concludes, too, that
testimony in support of the Six Million given by accused men such as Hoess,
Hoettl, Wisliceny and Hoellriegel, who were faced with the prospect of being
condemned to death or with the hope of obtaining a reprieve, and who were
frequently tortured during their detention, is completely untrustworthy.
Rassinier finds it very significant that the figure of Six Million was not
mentioned in court during the Eichmann trial. "The prosecution at the Jerusalem
trial was considerably weakened by its central motif, the six million European
Jews alleged to have been exterminated in gas chambers. It was an argument that
easily won conviction the day after the war ended, amidst the general state of
spiritual and material chaos. Today, many documents have been published which
were not available at the time of the Nuremberg trials, and which tend to prove
that if the Jewish nationals were wronged and persecuted by the Hitler regime,
there could not possibly have been six millions victims" (ibid, p. 125). With
the help of one hundred pages of cross-checked statistics, Professor Rassinier
concludes in Le Drame des Juifs européen that the number of Jewish casualties
during the Second World War could not have exceeded 1,200,000, and he notes that
this has finally been accepted as valid by the World Centre of Contemporary
Jewish Documentation at Paris. However, he regards such a figure as a maximum
limit, and refers to the lower estimate of 896,892 casualties in a study of the
same problem by the Jewish statistician Raul Hilberg. Rassinier points out that
the State of Israel nevertheless continues to claim compensation for six million
dead, each one representing an indemnity of 5,000
marks.
EMIGRATION: THE FINAL SOLUTION Prof. Rassinier is
emphatic in stating that the German Government never had any policy other than
the emigration of Jews overseas. He shows that after the promulgation of the
Nuremberg Race Laws in September 1935, the Germans negotiated with the British
for the transfer of German Jews to Palestine on the basis of the Balfour
Declaration. When this failed, they asked other countries to take charge of
them, but these refused (ibid, p. 20). The Palestine project was revived in
1938, but broke down because Germany could not negotiate their departure on the
basis of 3,000,000 marks, as demanded by Britain, without some agreement for
compensation. Despite these difficulties, Germany did manage to secure the
emigration of the majority of their Jews, mostly to the United States. Rassinier
also refers to the French refusal of Germany's Madagascar plan at the end of
1940. "In a report of the 21st August, 1942, the Secretary of State for the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Third Reich, Luther, decided that it would be
possible to negotiate with France in this direction and described conversations
which had taken place between July and December 1940, and which were brought to
a halt following the interview with Montoire on 13th December 1940 by
Pierre-Etienne Flandin, Laval's successor. During the whole of 1941 the Germans
hoped that they would be able to re-open these negotiations and bring them to a
happy conclusion" (ibid, p . 108). After the outbreak of war, the Jews, who, as
Rassinier reminds us, had declared economic and financial war on Germany as
early as 1933, were interned in concentration camps, "which is the way countries
all over the world treat enemy aliens in time of war . . . It was decided to
regroup them and put them to work in one immense ghetto which, after the
successful invasion of Russia, was situated towards the end of 1941 in the
so-called Eastern territories near the former frontier between Russia and
Poland: at Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Maidanek, Treblinka etc . . . There they
were to wait until the end of the war for the re-opening of international
discussions which would decide their future" (Le Véritable Proces Eichmann, p.
20). The order for this concentration in the eastern ghetto was given by Goering
to Heydrich, as noted earlier, and it was regarded as a prelude to "the desired
final solution," their emigration overseas after the war had
ended.
ENORMOUS FRAUD Of great concern to Professor
Rassinier is the way in which the extermination legend is deliberately exploited
for political and financial advantage, and in this he finds Israel and the
Soviet Union to be in concert. He notes how, after 1950, an avalanche of
fabricated extermination literature appeared under the stamp of two
organisations, so remarkably synchronised in their activities that one might
well believe them to have been contrived in partnership. One was the "Committee
for the Investigation of War Crimes and Criminals" established under Communist
auspices at Warsaw, and the other, the "World Centre of Contemporary Jewish
Documentation" at Paris and Tel-Aviv. Their publications seem to appear at
favourable moments in the political climate, and for the Soviet Union their
purpose is simply to maintain the threat of Nazism as a manoeuvre to divert
attention from their own activities. As for Israel, Rassinier sees the myth of
the Six Million as inspired by a purely material problem. In Le Drame des Juifs
européen (P. 31, 39). he writes: " . . . It is simply a question of justifying
by a proportionate number of corpses the enormous subsidies which Germany has
been paying annually since the end of the war to the State of Israel by way of
reparation for injuries which moreover she cannot be held to have caused her
either morally or legally, since there was no State of Israel at the time the
alleged deeds took place; thus it is a purely and contemptibly material problem.
"Perhaps I may be allowed to recall here that the State of Israel was only
founded in May 1948 and that the Jews were nationals of all states with the
exception of Israel, in order to underline the dimensions of a fraud which
defies description in any language; on the one hand Germany pays to Israel sums
which are calculated on six million dead, and on the other, since at least
four-fifths of these six million were decidedly alive at the end of the war, she
is paying substantial sums by way of reparation to the victims of Hitler's
Germany to those who are still alive in countries all over the world other than
Israel and to the rightful claimants of those who have since deceased, which
means that for the former (i.e. the six million), or in other words, for the
vast majority, she is paying twice."
CONCLUSION Here we
may briefly summarise the data on Jewish war- time casualties. Contrary to the
figure of over 9 million Jews in German- occupied territory put forward at the
Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, it has already been estabhshed that after
extensive emigration, approximately 3 million were living in Europe, excluding
the Soviet Union. Even when the Jews of German-occupied Russia are included (the
majority of Russian Jews were evacuated beyond German control), the overall
number probably does not exceed four million. Himmler's statistician, Dr.
Richard Korherr and the World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation put
the number respectively at 5,550,000 and 5,294,000 when German- occupied
territory was at its widest, but both these figures include the two million Jews
of the Baltic and western Russia without paying any attention to the large
number of these who were evacuated. However, it is at least an admission from
the latter organisation that there were not even six million Jews in Europe and
western Russia combined. Nothing better illustrates the declining plausibility
of the Six Million legend than the fact that the prosecution at the Eichmann
trial deliberately avoided mentioning the figure. Moreover, official Jewish
estimates of the casualties are being quietly revised downwards. Our analysis of
the population and emigration statistics, as well as the studies by the Swiss
Baseler Nachrichten and Professor Rassinier, demonstrate that it would have been
simply impossible for the number of Jewish casualties to have exceeded a limit
of one and a half million. It is very significant, therefore, that the World
Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Paris now states that only
1,485,292 Jews died from all causes during the Second World War, and although
this figure is certainly too high, at least it bears no resemblance at all to
the legendary Six Million. As has been noted earlier, the Jewish statistician
Raul Hilberg estimates an even lower figure of 896,892. This is beginning to
approach a realistic figure, and the process of revision is certain to continue.
Doubtless, several thousand Jewish persons did die in the course of the Second
World War, but this must be seen in the context of a war that cost many millions
of innocent victims on all sides. To put the matter in perspective, for example,
we may point out that 700,000 Russian civilians died during the siege of
Leningrad, and a total of 2,05O,OOO German civilians were killed in Allied air
raids and forced repatriation after the war. In 1955, another neutral Swiss
source, Die Tat of Zurich (January 19th, 1955), in a survey of all Second World
War casualties based on figures of the lnternational Red Cross, put the "Loss of
victims of persecution because of politics, race or religion who died in prisons
and concentration camps between 1939 and 1945" at 300,000, not all of whom were
Jews, and this figure seems the most accurate
assessment.
IMAGINARY SLAUGHTER The question most
pertinent to the extermination legend is, of course: how many of the 3 million
European Jews under German control survived after 1945? The Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee estimated the number of survivors in Europe to be only
one and a half million, but such a figure is now totally unacceptable. This is
proved by the growing number of Jews claiming compensation from the West German
Government for having allegedly suffered between 1939 and 1945. By 1965, the
number of these claimants registered with the West German Government had tripled
in ten years and reached 3,375,000 (Aufbau, June 30th, 1965). Nothing could be a
more devastating proof of the brazen fantasy of the Six Million. Most of these
claimants are Jews, so there can be no doubt that the majority of the 3 million
Jews who experienced the Nazi occupation of Europe are, in fact, very much
alive. It is a resounding confirmation of the fact that Jewish casualties during
the Second World War can only be estimated at a figure in thousands. Surely this
is enough grief for the Jewish people? Who has the right to compound it with
vast imaginary slaughter, marking with eternal shame a great European nation, as
well as wringing fraudulent monetary compensation from them? RICHARD HARWOOD is
a writer and specialist in political and diplomatic aspects of the Second World
War. At present he is with the University of London. Mr. Harwood turned to the
vexed subject of war crimes under the influence of Professor Paul Rassineir, to
whose monumental work this little volume is greatly indebted. The author is now
working on a sequel in this series on the Main Nuremberg Trial, 1945
-1946.
COMMENTS ABOUT DID SIX MILLION REALLY
DIE?
Dr. Kuang Fann, Professor of Philosophy at
York University of Canada, formerly China: "The whole pamphlet . . . obviously
should be classified as a political opinion . . ."
Ditlieb
Felderer, Historical Researcher, Writer, Sweden: ". . . the booklet has
proven to be more true as the years have gone by, and it is exterminationists
who are coming now to start arguing like Harwood did when the booklet was first
published, so the exterminationists are moving . . . toward the booklet more and
more."
Dr. Robert Faurisson, Expert of Ancient Texts and
Documents, Lyon University: "The thesis of the book is that it's not true that
six million Jews died, and it is not true that there was an extermination plan,
and it is not true that there were gas chambers. What I find right is, first,
the title. The title is good. Did Six Million Really Die?" That's really the
problem . . . This man, Richard Harwood, brought plenty of information for the
layman in '74. He said in '74 that there were no order(s) from Hitler to
exterminate the Jews. Three years after, when David Irving said it, it was an
uproar, so it was really new and true. We know it now in 1988 . . . this . . .
was so important that when it was published in France, the man who distributed
(it was) murdered . . . Francoise Duprat. We don't know who exactly did that,
but the interesting point is, first, that it has been done by people very clever
in those kind of bomb handling, and what was published in the journal Le Monde
after was interesting. This murder was revindicated by a so-called "Memory of
Auschwitz" organization. It was justified by a man called Patrick Chairoff -
saying that Francoise Duprat, in distributing this kind of pamphlet, had taken a
responsibility which kills."
David Irving,British
Historian, author of over 30 books on WW II and its aftermath: ". . . I read it
with great interest and I must say that I was surprised by the quality of the
arguments that it represented. It has obvious flaws. It uses sources that I
personally would not use. In fact, the entire body of sources is different. This
is based entirely on secondary literature, books by other people, including some
experts, whereas I use no books. I use just the archives. But independently, the
author of this came to conclusions and asked questions of a logical nature which
I had arrived at by an entirely different route, so to speak. . . And if I was
to ask what is the value of a brochure like this, I think it is that it provokes
people to ask questions, rather as my book on Hitler's War provoked the
historians. . . This is the kind of value which I found this brochure to have.
It was asking proper questions on the basis of an entirely different set of
sources."
Mark Weber, American Historian, Author: "I
believe that the thesis of the booklet is accurate. . . that there was no German
policy or program to exterminate the Jews during the Second World War. . . The
booklet is a journalistic or a polemic account that is designed to convince
people, and it does not purport to be a work that can be held up to the same
standards of rigid scrutiny that a scholarly work and a detailed work by someone
who is a historian normally would be. . its main value lies in encouraging
further discussion and thought and debate on the subject it
raises."
Colin Wilson, well known British author: ". . .
I received in the post a pamphlet. . . entitled Did Six Million Really Die? I
must admit that it has left me thoroughly bewildered. What Harwood says,
briefly, is that Hitler had no reason to murder Jews when he needed them for
forced labour. . . it is worth asking the question: Did the Nazis really
exterminate six million Jews? Or is this another sign of the emotional
historical distortion that makes nearly all the books on Hitler so far almost
worthless?. . . Is there, then, any reason why we should be afraid to dig down
until we get at the truth?"
WHAT'S WRONG WITH DID SIX MILLION
REALLY DIE? After 10 years of wrangling, what follows is the essence of
what was found wrong with the pamphlet by the prosecution witnesses. In italics
are the primary parts of the pamphlet disputed by the prosecution followed
followed by evidence given by expert witnesses on both sides. 1. By 1939, the
great majority of German Jews had emigrated, all of them with a sizeable
proportion of their assets. Never at any time had the Nazi leadership even
contemplated a policy of genocide towards them. . . Had Hitler cherished any
intention of exterminating the Jews, it is inconceivable that he would have
allowed more than 800,000 to leave Reich territory with the bulk of their wealth
. . . (p. 5,6)
Prosecution historian Christopher Browning's opinion was that slightly over half of German Jews emigrated by 1939. Browning testified that the figure 800,000 was an exaggeration; by 1941, the total of Jews who had left Germany, Austria and the Protectorates was 530,000. Because of measures taken against them, it was false to say they left with a "sizeable proportion" of their assets. Browning admitted under cross-examination, however, that he was not a demographer nor a statistition and that any population statistics concerning Jews could only be estimates. He also admitted that he could not give a precise percentage or even proportion of their assets Jews left with. He only knew that considerable efforts were made to prevent property getting out.
2. The founder of political Zionism in the 19th century, 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 Nazis. It had been a main plank of the National Socialist party platform before 1933 and was published by the party in pamphlet form. (p.5)
Browning testified it was not a plank of the Nazi Party platform before 1933 that the Jews go to Madagascar as a national homeland. The first time a Nazi leader mentioned Madagascar was 1938. The first time there was a plan for madagascar was 1940.
3. 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. (p.7)
Browning testified that there were no such negotiations with the French. The Madagascar Plan failed because of continuing British control of the high seas.
4. 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 favour 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 use of Jewish labour became a fundamental part of the operation. (p.7)
Browning said that Goebbels did not write a "memorandum", he wrote a "diary entry." Goebbels did not lay emphasis on the need for compulsory labour but said exactly the opposite; for example, on March 27, 1942, he wrote that 60% of the Jews will have to be liquidated and 40% used for forced labour. Browning admitted he had never checked the authenticity of the original Goebbels diaries but had accepted the commercial printed version. Historian Weber testified there was great doubt about the authenticity of the entire Goebbels diaries because they were typewritten. There was therefore no way to verify their authenticity. The U.S. Government itself indicated that it would take no responsibility for the accuracy of the diaries: the original clothbound edition contained a U.S. Government statement that it "neither warrants nor disclaims the authenticity of the manuscript". Browning relied on other documents such as the Seraphim report to show that the Germans did not put priority on using Jews for labour. Historian Weber disagreed with this opinion. In his view, the Jews were a valuable source of labour for the Germans; Himmler himself ordered that concentration camp inmates be used as extensively as possible in war production.
5. Statistics relating to Jewish populations are not everywhere known in precise detail, approximations 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. (p.7)
Browning testified that contemporary German statistical studies showed that there were enough Jews in Europe to exterminate 6 million of them. These studies were: (a) the Burgdörfer Study (estimated that there were about 10.72 million Jews in Europe); (b) Madagascar Plan (4 million Jews under German control in 1940); (c) Wannsee conference protocol (11 million Jews). In Browning's opinion, even the German studies done at the time showed in the area of 10 million Jews under German control in Europe. Therefore, 6 million could have been exterminated. He admitted, again, that he was not a demographer or a statistician and that the problem of changing borders and the various definitions of "Jew" made any conclusions in this area difficult to the point that they could only be estimates.
6. According to Chambers Encyclopaedia the total number of Jews living in pre-war Europe was 6,500,000. (p.7)
Chambers Encyclopedia dealt only with the total number of Jews living ont he continent of Europe apart from Russia, not the total number living in pre-war Europe as stated by the pamphlet.
7. 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. (p.7,8)
These numbers did not accord with the German studies done at the time, Browning testified. A comparison with the Wannsee Conference protocol statistics showed that 360,000 Jews had emigrated from Germany; 147,000 had emigrated from Austria; 30,000 had emigrated from the Protectorate. These figures were all much lower than Harwood's figures.
8. In addition to these emigrants, we must also 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 1,550,000. (p.8)
Browning testified that the reference to Reitlinger was a mis-cite; Reitlinger said that 300,000 Polish Jews in total fled to the Soviet Union, not "other European Jews" as stated by Harwood. The figure of 1,250,000 given by Harwood was therefore 5 times too high.
9. The 1931 Jewish population census for Poland put the number of Jews at 2,732,600 (Reitlinger, Die Endlösung, p. 36). (p.8)
Hilberg testified that this was wrong; in fact, the figure of 2,732,600 came from a census taken in the 1920s.
10. When the Jewish populations of Holland (140,000), Belgium (40,000), Italy (50,000), Yugoslavia (55,000), Hungary (380,000) and Roumania (725,000) are included, the figure does not much exceed 3 million. (p.8)
These statistics were not in accord with the Nazis' own statistics, said Browning. For example, the German statistics for 1942 listed the Jewish population of Hungary at 743,800. German records of the deportations from Hungary showed more Jews were deported than the number given by Harwood as the Jewish population of Hungary.
11. So far as is known, the first accusation against the Germans of the 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. (p.9)
