LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Germar Rudolf Since 1992, German scholar Germar Rudolf has been giving lectures to various mainstream audiences all over the world. His topic is very controversial: the Holocaust in the light of new forensic and historical findings. Initially his listeners think they know exactly what "the Holo- caust" is all about, but their world view is completely turned upside down after the evidence is presented. Even though Rudolf presents nothing short of full-fledged Holocaust revisionism, his arguments fall on fertile soil, because they are presented in a very pedagogically sensitive and scholarly way. This book is the literary version of Rudolf's lectures, enriched with the most recent findings of historiography to a topic regulated by penal law in many countries. The book's style is as unique as its topic: It is a dialogue between the lecturer on the one hand and the reactions of actual audience members on the other. Germar Rudolf introduces the reader to the most important arguments and counter arguments of Holocaust revisionism. The audience reacts with supportive, skeptical, and also hostile comments, questions, and asser- tions. The Lectures read like a vivid and exciting real-life exchange between persons of various points of view. This book is a compilation of Frequently Asked Questions on the Holocaust and its critical re-examination. The usual moral, political, and pseudo-scientific arguments against revisionism are all addressed and refuted. With more than 1,300 references to sources and a vast bibliogra- phy, this easy-to-understand book is the best introduction into this taboo topic for both readers unfamiliar with revisionism and for those wanting to know more. HOLOCAUST HANDBOOKS Series, Vol. 15:Germar Rudolf Lectures on the Holocaust. Controversial Issues Cross Examined Translated by Regina Belser, James Damon, Henry Gardner, Carlos Porter, and Fredrick Toben Chicago (Illinois): Theses & Dissertations Press, August 2005 Imprint of Castle Hill Publishers ISBN: 1-59148-001-9 ISSN: 1529-7748 Original German edition: Vorlesungen über den Holocaust. Strittige Fragen im Kreuzverhör Hastings (East Sussex): Castle Hill Publishers, February 2005 ISBN: 1-902619-07-2 © 2005 Germar Rudolf Distribution Australia/Asia: Peace Books, PO Box 3300, Norwood, 5067, Australia Distribution Rest of Welt: Castle Hill Publishers UK: PO Box 118, Hastings TN34 3ZQ USA: PO Box 257768, Chicago, IL 60625 Set in Times New Roman. www.vho.org www.tadp.org If these sites are being censored, try it with www.anonymizer.com Cover illustrations: top: Dr. Robert Faurisson; left: Germar Rudolf; right: Jürgen Graf; bottom: Dr. Arthur Butz; all during the 13th International Revisionist Con- ference of the Institute for Historical Review in California in May 2000. 5 Table of Contents Introduction........................................................................................................... 9 First Lecture: Food for Thought ....................................................................... 15 1.1. An Honest Error? .................................................................................... 15 1.2. What is the Holocaust? ........................................................................... 18 1.3. Since When Do We Know about the Holocaust? ................................... 18 1.4. Wartime Propaganda, Then and Now ..................................................... 27 1.5. One Person Killed is One Person Too Many .......................................... 30 1.6. Are Six Million Missing?.......................................................................... 31 1.7. Holocaust Survivors................................................................................ 40 1.8. No Permanent Truths .............................................................................. 45 1.9. Appendix................................................................................................. 55 Second Lecture: Public Controversies .............................................................. 61 2.1. Communists Step Forward! ..................................................................... 61 2.2. Gas Chambers in the German Reich Proper............................................ 64 2.3. No Gas Chamber in Sachsenhausen........................................................ 68 2.4. Clarity about Dachau .............................................................................. 72 2.5. The Invisible Elephant in the Basement.................................................... 80 2.6. Because What Should Not Exist, Cannot Exist......................................... 85 2.7. Führer Command ­ German Judges Will Obey!......................................... 88 2.8. The Executed Execution Expert................................................................ 91 2.9. Jewish Soap, Lamp Shades, and Shrunken Heads .................................. 96 2.10. Ivan the Wrong Guy.............................................................................. 103 2.11. Freedom of Speech in the USA............................................................. 111 2.12. Anti-Fascist Lies ................................................................................... 116 2.13. The Wannsee Debacle........................................................................... 121 2.14. Austrians to the Fore ............................................................................. 127 2.15. German Historians ­ Subdued, but not Mute........................................... 132 2.16. Scandal in France .................................................................................. 144 2.17. The End of Taboos................................................................................ 151 2.18. Worldwide Attention............................................................................. 152 2.19. "The Holocaust Never Happened"........................................................ 159 2.20. The Holocaust Industry......................................................................... 161 2.21. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall.................................................................... 164 2.22. Professor Maser's "Falsifications and Lies" ......................................... 167 2.23. Growing Confusion............................................................................... 173 2.24. Appendix............................................................................................... 185 Third Lecture: Material and Documentary Evidence ...................................... 189 3.1. Defining Evidence................................................................................. 189 3.2. Types and Hierarchy of Evidence ......................................................... 190 3.3. The "Final Solution" of the Jewish Question........................................ 193 3.4. Auschwitz ............................................................................................. 201 3.4.1. The Industrial Region of Auschwitz ............................................ 201 3.4.2. Mass Murder Scenes ................................................................. 207 3.4.3. Air Photo Evidence ................................................................... 210 3.4.4. Crematories ............................................................................... 219 3.4.5. Incinerations in Open Trenches ................................................ 224 3.4.6. Chemical Analyses.................................................................... 227 3.4.7. Those Pesky Zyklon Holes ....................................................... 241 3.4.8. Documentary Evidence ............................................................. 257 3.5. Treblinka ............................................................................................ 274 3.5.1. Scenes of Mass Murder............................................................. 274 3.5.2. The Murder Weapon ................................................................. 276 3.5.3. How Poisonous are Diesel Engines?......................................... 278 3.5.4. Burning Corpses without a Trace.............................................. 284 3.5.5. The Search for Traces ............................................................... 289 3.5.6. Documentary Evidence ............................................................. 290 3.6. Belzec and Sobibor ............................................................................... 291 3.7. Majdanek, the "Auxiliary Extermination Camp"....................................... 298 3.8. Chelmno and the Gas Vans................................................................... 304 3.9. Mountains of Corpses ........................................................................... 306 3.10. Babi Yar and the Murders by the Einsatzgruppen ................................ 317 3.11. Homosexual and Gypsies...................................................................... 326 3.12. Appendix............................................................................................... 329 Fourth Lecture: Witness Testimonies and Confessions................................. 335 4.1. Confessions of NS Leaders During the War ......................................... 335 4.2. A Thousand Reasons for False Testimonies ......................................... 345 4.2.1. Rumors, Misunderstandings, and Hearsay................................ 345 4.2.2. Manipulating the Human Memory............................................ 348 4.2.3. The Phantom Disease................................................................ 359 4.2.4. Deliberate Exaggerations and Lies............................................ 360 4.2.5. Pressure, Fear, Threats, Brainwashing, Torture ........................ 372 4.3. Testimonies Before Courts.................................................................... 385 4.3.1. American Trials ........................................................................ 386 4.3.2. British and Soviet Trials ........................................................... 392 4.3.3. The IMT and Subsequent NMT Trials...................................... 392 4.3.4. Trials in "Nations under the Rule of Law" ............................... 397 4.4. Testimonies in Literature and Media .................................................... 424 4.5. Critique of Testimonies, Part 1: Implausible Statements ............................ 435 4.5.1. Collection of Lies...................................................................... 435 4.5.2. Kurt Gerstein............................................................................. 439 4.5.3. Johann Paul Kremer .................................................................. 440 4.5.4. Rudolf Höß................................................................................ 443 4.5.5. Pery S. Broad ............................................................................ 444 4.5.6. Richard Böck ............................................................................ 446 4.5.7. Rudolf Vrba, Alfred Wetzler .................................................... 449 4.5.8. Henryk Tauber .......................................................................... 451 4.5.9. David Olère............................................................................... 456 7 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 4.5.10. Miklos Nyiszli........................................................................... 459 4.5.11. Filip Müller ............................................................................... 460 4.5.12. Michal Kula .............................................................................. 465 4.5.13. Adolf Rögner ............................................................................ 465 4.5.14. E. Rosenberg, J.-F. Steiner, Y. Wiernick et al. ......................... 466 4.5.15. Elie Wiesel ................................................................................ 469 4.6. Critique of Testimonies, Part 2: Plausible Statements .......................... 471 4.6.1. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi ...................................................... 471 4.6.2. "Opera During the Holocaust" .................................................. 474 4.6.3. Statement Excerpts from the Auschwitz Files .......................... 479 Fifth Lecture: On Science and Freedom......................................................... 487 5.1. Pseudo Science...................................................................................... 487 5.2. Violence ................................................................................................ 495 5.3. Censorship............................................................................................. 500 5.4. Common Knowledge ............................................................................ 511 5.5. Possible Solutions ................................................................................. 517 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................. 529 Appendix............................................................................................................ 531 SS Ranks and U.S. Army Equivalents............................................................ 531 Abbreviations.................................................................................................. 532 Bibliography ................................................................................................... 534 Monographs and Anthologies ............................................................... 534 Periodical Articles................................................................................. 545 Newspapers, News Magazines, Press Agency Releases ....................... 552 Movies and TV ..................................................................................... 555 Court Cases ........................................................................................... 556 Index of Names............................................................................................... 557 "Responsibility for the Shoa [Holocaust] is part of the German identity." German Federal President Horst Köhler, 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz1 "This memory [of the Holocaust] is part of our [German] national identity." -- German Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz2 "Auschwitz is the symbol of the evil incarnate."3 -- Austrian Federal President Heinz Fischer, 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Introduction Is anyone today still interested in the Shoah, also-called the Holocaust? If there is, then how can such individuals continue to justify their interest in such an ugly topic? Or, dear reader, don't you think that the Holocaust is not an ugly topic? I still continue to hear from individuals who claim that it is a perversion to be rum- maging through last century's mountains of corpses ­ figuratively speaking, of course. So the refrain is: let the matter rest because there are far more urgent and pressing problems confronting us today. I can certainly understand such views, but because my parents moved several times during my school years, I encoun- tered the Holocaust three times in my history lessons. It was not fun having the mountain of corpses dished up that my grandparents' generation had allegedly created. Thus even if we ignore certain topics, some simply will not disappear. So it is with the Holocaust, and it is futile to adopt an unrealistic attitude and hope the Holocaust will simply go away. This is why it is important to realize what significance the Holocaust has as- sumed in western societies.4 The Holocaust is dealt with by countless: ­ museums ­ monuments ­ commemoration days ­ orations ­ books ­ periodicals ­ newspaper reports ­ speeches and conferences ­ university chairs 1 Speech in the Israeli parliament, acc to. German TV news Tagesschau, Feb. 2, 2005, 20:00 hrs. 2 German weekly Welt am Sonntag, Jan. 30, 2005, p. 2. 3 Press Release of the President, Jan 26, 2005 (www.hofburg.at/show_content2.php?s2id=152) 4 For the importance of the Holocaust for the U.S. society see in particular: Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, Boston, New York 1999. 10 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ documentary and entertainment films ­ criminal law, criminal proceedings, censorship ... And the above list is certainly incomplete. So, if I claim that the Holocaust is the most important of all historical topics, I am not saying that because it suits me personally or because I consider this importance to be appropriate. A factual analysis of the western value system enables us to conclude that the Holocaust is something like an absolute zero point of our moral value system, the ultimate evil. No doubt this is what former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Mu- seum in Washington, Michael Berenbaum, had in mind when in 2000 he said:5 "As I observe young people in relativistic societies seeking an absolute for morals and values, they now can view the Holocaust as the transcendental move away from the relativistic, and up into the absolute where the Holo- caust confronts absolute Evil [=Nazism] and thus find fundamental values." The lectures in this volume therefore deal with what today many view as the embodiment of "absolute evil." Naturally this characterization of the Holocaust confers upon the topic a theological dimension. Although the concept "evil" can be viewed from a non-theological perspective, for example through moral phi- losophy or evolutionary ethics, to define absolute evil is absolutist, fundamental- ist, dogmatic and as such places the topic beyond scientific analysis. Other aspects of the Holocaust indicate that the way the western world deals with it has now reached a religious dimension. A re-reading of the above list at- tests to that. For some time now the historic places and museums of the Holocaust have become places of pilgrimage where relics of all sorts are on display (hair, spectacles, suitcases, shoes, gastight doors, etc.). Don't the passionate orations on remembrance days remind you of a religious repentance service? Are there not everywhere the high priests who with raised index finger admonish us how to behave in matters Holocaust and all that is connected with it? They advise us how to treat the perpetrators, the victims, their descendants, their countries, their cus- toms, their demands, etc. They also advise us on how we are to think, to feel, to act, to remember, to live if we wish to be known as good human beings. In the following I shall not discuss whether the moral categorization of the Holocaust and the demands and norms of behavior that result from it are right or wrong. This is a moral question, which ultimately individuals have to work out for themselves. However, when I ask questions and seek answers I am not going to be intimidated by this quasi-religious and moral categorization of the Holocaust. In spite of holding different opinions on all sorts of topics, I hope that we can reach agreement on the following: One of the important characteristics of evil is that it forbids questioning and it taboos or criminalizes the candid search for answers. By prohibiting a person to ask questions and to search for answers it is denying that which makes us human. The capacity to doubt and to search for answers to pressing problems is one of the most important attributes that distinguishes hu- mans from animals. 5 Quotation taken from notes made by Dr. Robert H. Countess who attended the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, January 26-28, 2000, Workshop no. 6, "Holocaust and Testimony in Educa- tion," January 27, 2000, Room Ed 6, 16:30-18:00. 11 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST But before we turn our attention to this evil, permit me to make one further ob- servation. Now and again I have a bit of fun in public with "everyman" by asking what in his view the greatest taboo is in western societies. The average citizen is quick to respond with all sorts of answers: homosexuality, illegal immigration, race relationships, sex. I then probe further: No, I mean a taboo that is so powerful that no one dares mention in public that it is a taboo because one would thereby accuse the general public to be repressing dissenting thoughts; the respective ta- boo would thereby be damaged, which can give rise to persecution. I have repeat- edly experienced that the average citizen gives me an honest answer only if he feels safe and secure that he is not being observed, that no one else listens. That is particularly so in many western European countries and especially strong in the German speaking countries (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). What does this reveal about the state of current western societies? And what in your view is this taboo that cannot publicly be labeled a taboo? Instead of answering the question myself I would like to quote a professional person who has studies this topic. In an anthology, which has been dedicated to the late German historian Prof. Dr. Hellmut Diwald, sociology professor Dr. Robert Hepp wrote:6 "Occasional experiments that I have conducted in my seminars convince me that `Auschwitz' [the most well known site of the Holocaust] is ethnologi- cally speaking one of the few taboo topics that our `taboo free society' still preserves.7 While they did not react at all to other stimulants, `enlightened' central European students who refused to accept any taboos at all, would react to a confrontation with `revisionist' [denial] texts' about the gas chambers at Auschwitz in just as `elementary' a way (including the compa- rable physiological symptoms) as members of primitive Polynesian tribes would react to an infringement of one of their taboos. The students were lit- erally beside themselves and were neither prepared nor capable of soberly discussing the presented theses. For the sociologist this is a very important point because a society's taboos reveal what it holds sacred. Taboos also reveal what the community fears.8 Sometimes fear of perceived danger takes on the form of ticks and phobias that remind us of obsessive neurotics. How- ever, it cannot be denied that numerous taboos have a function that pre- serves individuals from danger, and even where taboos are a part of an in- dividual's make-up, it is difficult to ascertain if the fear of the one rests on the power of the other, or vice versa. It is thus understandable that priests and rulers have never hesitated to use taboos to secure power. It is well to remember that to date there has been no society which has relinquished the use of taboos to secure its own power base. In a `modern society,' such as the Federal Republic of Germany, the 6 Robert Hepp, "Die Kampagne gegen Hellmut Diwald von 1978/79 ­ Zweiter Teil: Richtigstellungen," in: Rolf-Josef Eibicht (ed.), Hellmut Diwald. Sein Vermächtnis für Deutschland. Sein Mut zur Geschichte, Hohenrain-Verlag, Tübingen 1994, p. 140 (www.vho.org/D/diwald/hepp.html). 7 Cf. Franz Steiner, Taboo, Cohen & West, London 1956, p. 20ff. 8 Hutton Webster, Taboo. A Sociological Study, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1942. Reprinted London 1973, p.14: "Fear is systematized in taboo." 12 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST formal rules of behavior and sanctions play a larger role than it does within the Polynesian tribes, where European explorers first discovered taboos as such. Besides the usual `legal' commands and prohibitions that control behavior, in our [German] society there are also commands and prohibitions that are self-regulating. If such expectations are frustrated then, as in the Polynesian society, an automatic sanctions process is activated that does not need to be justified. A `modern' society does not in any way react differently to breeches of ta- boos than does a `primitive' society. The breaking of taboos is generally perceived as `outrageous' and `abominations' and produce spontaneous `revulsion' and `disgust.' In the end the perpetrator is isolated, excluded from society, and his name and memory `tabooed.'" This book could therefore also be called Lectures about a taboo, because that is what the Holocaust has become. It is possible to talk and report on the Holo- caust but only in a certain permitted way. "Wrong" questions and unwanted an- swers are tabooed. However, the fact that the Holocaust has been tabooed will not prevent me from asking all sorts of questions. This is because any scientific investigation will require the asking of questions so that alternate answers can be postulated, thereby offering us more information about topics that otherwise would remain mystified. This occurs independently of whether the keepers of the taboo consider the an- swers as "good" or "bad" because what is ultimately important is whether an an- swer is, with high probability, correct or false. When it comes to answering open questions, "good" or "bad" are scientifically irrelevant categories. To sum up this introduction then, it is clear that we cannot get around the Holocaust because we literally get it served up with our daily bread, whether we like it or not! Also, whether we like it or not, for some influential groups the Holocaust serves as a means of setting moral standards. That is why it is worthwhile to criti- cally study this topic, and this books aims to assist with such endeavors. The following lectures are based mainly on actual talks that I delivered in Germany and elsewhere. Most of them have been structured as dialogues with the audience that was continuously encouraged to ask questions, make objections, and offer counter-arguments. The dialogue style was retained in this book so as to do justice to the questions that continued to be asked. My own contributions are marked "R" and the listeners' with "L." This unusual mode of presentation gives justice to the topic, which usually generates high emotional intensity. Under such circumstances no lecturer may assume that the listeners uncritically accept what they are hearing, especially if some material initiates argumentative and emotional resistance from the audience. If one wishes effectively to deal with the touchy topic of the Holocaust then one also has to retain openness towards the audience. Although I attempted to retain in this book the atmosphere and style of my lec- tures as I delivered them, I needed for this book to augment those lectures that 13 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST were presented as a multi-media event. Slides and films screened during the talks are reproduced in this book through a selection of photographs that, I hope, do justice to what was presented to the audience. Also, by presenting my talks in book form I was able to delve deeper and more systematically into the topics discussed. I was also able to further elaborate on the topics through extensive footnoting. Hence this book deals more comprehensively with the various topics on which my lectures are based. When lecturing about such a sensitive topic, emotions sometimes ran high, which occasionally lead to emotional and polemic attacks against my. When argu- ing along the line of this book, the reader may find himself in a situation where he is politically or emotionally attacked be others. I decided to also include such attacks in this book, though I concentrated most of them in a separate chapter (1.8.) in order not to interrupt the other chapters too much by polemics. Perhaps this is of some educational value for the reader as well. While reading this book it ought to be borne in mind that it offers only an in- troduction to Holocaust research. The asking of questions and the problematic approach that this entails, as well as attempting to summarize the current state of research, are treated in some detail. But this book does not aim to offer an expert opinion on the topic because that would involve the writing of many a volume. I do hope, though, that the interested reader will study the footnotes and the bibli- ography as well as the advertisements at the end of the book, which list additional books that enable the reader to then deal with the Holocaust topic in more depth. About 12 years ago I wrote the first German edition of these lectures bearing the title Vorlesungen über Zeitgeschichte (lectures on contemporary history) un- der the pseudonym of Ernst Gauss. My initial plan was to re-issue an updated version of the original edition. However, on account of new research results and the growth of my own knowledge on this topic I soon shelved this plan. Hence, only about 5 per cent of the original book make up this current volume. All other material has been written anew. The lecture "Arguments in Dispute" of the first German edition was dropped because I had to limit the current volume to some 500 pages. Instead of adding a special chapter on this topic, I have dealt with it whenever an argument in dispute emerged within the text. In dealing with litera- ture that attempts to refute the revisionist argument, revisionists friends of mine and I have written three books, more of which can be learned at the end of this volume.9 So as to facilitate an easy search of resources in this book, the footnotes con- tain Internet addresses that at the time of publishing were active. It must be noted that such Internet addresses are highly variable and there is no guarantee that they remain valid over time. In such cases Internet search engines or website search engines ought to assist in locating the requested contents. 9 Germar Rudolf, Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz-Lies, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/al); Germar Rudolf, Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: The Case Against Insanity, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/atcai); Germar Rudolf (ed.), Auschwitz: Plain Facts, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/apf). 14 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The intensifying censorship attempts in Europe may cause some websites not to be available from within certain European countries. In cases where specific pages have been blocked I suggest you use anonymizer websites, for example www.anonymizer.com. From such websites you can view the entire world's web- sites without incurring any form of censorship. For space reasons the various articles from the journals The Revisionist, Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, and The Journal of Historical Review have their Internet addresses not listed in this volume, but they are all available on the Internet.10 Germar Rudolf, Chicago, 28. March 2005 10 The Revisionist: www.vho.org/tr, Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung: www.vho.org/VffG, Journal of Historical Review: www.ihr.org/journal/jhrarticles.shtml and www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR. 15 First Lecture: Food for Thought 1.1. An Honest Error? R: Ladies and Gentlemen, dear guests. Before I take up the subject of my talk, allow me to show you an article from Germany's most prestigious daily news- paper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which illustrates, in a very useful manner, the kind of topic we are dealing with and the problems that are related to it. The title of the article is "Traces of the Crime; Shoes, Shoes, even Chil- dren's Shoes." It is the report written by a journalist about his visit to the Stutt- hof concentration camp not far from Danzig, in post-war Poland, that has been turned into a museum.11 The author, in his fourth sentence, states that he cannot imagine what an extermination camp might look like and talks of "installations in which `6 million Jews and a total of 26 million detainees [...] were killed.'" At the end of his account the author writes that he found himself facing "the remains of the most brutal genocide, the most modern killing machines of the time, the cruelest crime of humanity." By putting things that way, one of the most highly regarded newspapers in the world has given its definition of the Holocaust. The annihilation of a total of 26 million people by the National So- cialists in ultra-modern killing machines is the cruelest crime in the history of humanity. Anyone, even if he or she is only vaguely acquainted with recent history, will immediately realize that something is wrong here ­ it is the figure of a total of 26 million human beings that the National Socialists have allegedly killed. Such an outrageously high figure has so far never been mentioned in any his- tory book nor been quoted in any official statement. It is simply a blatant exag- geration. A closer look tells us that this passage is in quotation marks; it has thus been taken from a source which the author, however, does not mention. We may assume that it is a statement made by a Polish guide or that it has been copied from a commemorative plaque in the Stutthof Museum, and that the au- thor of the article simply did not know any better when he used that figure un- critically, thus committing an honest error. However, for the Frankfurter All- gemeine Zeitung it is more than just a black mark when it circulates such non- sense without any critical qualification, thus joining the ranks of the propagan- dists who proffer moral charges against the German people, which far exceed any reasonable measure. Unfortunately, such an uncritical attitude seems to have become the standard for our journalists. 11 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 21, 1992, p. 13. 16 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The critical reader will notice more such shameful slips: the title of the article insinuates that the existence of shoes proves the crime. However, a pile of shoes, prima facie, proves nothing but the fact that someone has put them there; after all, the piles of old clothing and discarded shoes we come across during charity drives do not prove that their former owners were murdered. L: Mr. Rudolf, this makes me think of an incident during a visit to Auschwitz which I remember very well. I was passing through the museum in which one of those famous piles of shoes can be seen in a glass case. What surprised me was the fact that the case stood open with the museum personnel showing the arrangement of the shoes quite openly to the visitors: it was simply a wooden board set at an angle with only a single layer of shoes mounted on it. It was ob- vious that it was nothing but a fake pile of shoes. R: That is interesting. At what time of the year did you visit the museum? L: In the winter of 1991/1992. R: That explains it. The Auschwitz Museum has very few visitors in winter and they do renovating and cleaning during that time. Probably the staff at that time felt quite safe. May I ask why you chose such an inhospitable season for a visit to that former concentration camp? L: We have relatives in Upper Silesia, not far from Auschwitz, that we spent a few days with during the Christmas season that year and used that opportunity for a visit. Our relatives refused to accompany us to the camp. After our return, when we spoke about this incident, an old German friend of the family told us that, after the war, the Germans in that area were forced to collect shoes and hand them to the camp authorities. R: Now look at that! You can see that a talk like this can also teach the speaker a number of things. I must say, though, that piles of shoes in German concentra- tion camps may also have much more innocent reasons. For example, when they liberated the Majdanek camp, the Soviets found literally mountains of shoes which were immediately pounced on as proof of the mass murder of de- tainees, as shown by Illustration 1.12 This photograph has been used over and over again, with decreasing quality and sometimes retouched. The sloppiness of other authors led to blunders, in the case of Raimund Schnabel, for example, who gave it the following caption:13 "Thousands of shoes of detainees murdered at Auschwitz." R: What caused less of a stir was the rectification presented decades after the war by Polish historians. It had turned out, in fact, that one of the companies, which employed detainees from the Majdanek camp, had set up a shop in the camp were old shoes were repaired. The piles of shoes found by the Soviets were the 12 Constantin Simonov, The Lublin Extermination Camp (Majdanek), Foreign Languages Publication House, Moscow 1944. 13 R. Schnabel, Macht ohne Moral, Röderberg, Frankfurt/Main 1957, p. 244. 17 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST stocks of this shop.14 The Polish histo- rian Czes aw Rajca, who worked at the Majdanek Museum, states in this re- gard:15 "It had been assumed that this [quan- tity of shoes] came from murdered detainees. We know from documents that have later come to light that there was, at Majdanek, a store which received shoes from other camps." L: Do you mean to say that all objects shown to the visitors in the various camps do not stem from detainees? R: No. I simply meant to stress the fact that in the heated atmosphere of the final months of the Second World War peo- ple sometimes came to conclusions which later turned out to be erroneous. And you should also be aware that what Ill. 1: Shoes of murdered inmates or the media tell you, what books try to the store of a shoe factory? teach you, or what museums sell you as truth is not necessarily always the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is not really anything very new, but let me underline the fact that this also holds for the Holocaust. At first glance, a collection of objects should be taken only for what it proves: somebody has collected them. Such a collection says very little about the fate of their former owners. But let us return to the newspaper article just quoted. Even if we disregard those uncritical details, which undermine the reputation of Frankfurter Allge- meine Zeitung, we are left with a statement of fact, undeniable and unassailed by traditional historiography: the Holocaust with its perfectly tuned annihila- tion machine was a singular crime against humanity. The only problem we are facing in this connection, though, is the difficulty we have in salvaging the truth from the rubble of romantic embellishments and the layers of propagan- distic exaggeration that have been heaped over it. 14 Józef Marsza ek, "Budowa obozu na Majdanku w latach 1942-1944" (The construction of the camp at Majdanek in the years 1942-1944), Zeszyty Majdanka (Majdanek booklets, Lublin) Vol. IV (1969), p. 48. 15 C. Rajca, "Problem liczby ofiar w obozie na Majdanku" (The problem of the number of victims in the camp at Majdanek), Zeszyty Majdanka, Vol. XIV (1992), p. 127. 18 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 1.2. What is the Holocaust? R: Let us ask a very simple and naive question, as if we had come from a far-away planet; let us ask: what is the Holocaust? What defines it, what are its charac- teristics, what makes it unique? Can anyone give a succinct answer? L: The murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. R: Excellent definition, although the number of victims by itself does not make the Holocaust unique. After all, there have been other large-scale massacres throughout history, such as those perpetrated in the Ukraine in the 1930s or those in China during the Cultural Revolution. L: It was the industrial method of extermination that was unique. L: ...and the cold-blooded bureaucratic determination. R: Those are excellent complements. Let me sketch out what I intend to call the Holocaust on the following pages and what I think it is not. I will call it the premeditated murder of 6 million Jews who had come under the German sway, carried out systematically, almost totally, and on an industrial scale by the Na- tional Socialist government of Germany, primarily by means of gas chambers, i.e. in chemical slaughterhouses, with a subsequent obliteration of any traces through the incineration of the victims. We thus have three main characteris- tics: 1. The planning of a full-scale and systematic genocide. 2. The industrial implementation of the plan in gas chambers and crematories. 3. The total of some 6 million victims. Obviously, the Holocaust is surrounded by other aspects of persecution, such as the deprivation of rights and the deportation of Jews, in parallel with a similar suppression of the rights of other sections of the population ­ political dissi- dents in general, Gypsies, homosexuals, or Jehova's Witnesses. These aspects of the persecution of minorities in Germany's Third Reich are, however, noth- ing new in the history of mankind and not part of what I shall call the (unique) Holocaust in the strict sense of the word. For that reason as well as for reasons of restricted space and time I shall touch only in passing upon those other as- pects. Allow me to add, however, that this exclusion is not to mean that I would want to ignore or condone this injustice. On the contrary: those persecutions were unjust and the victims have my deepest sympathy. 1.3. Since When Do We Know about the Holocaust? R: Obviously, the definition of the Holocaust that I have given here is only one of many, and in fact everyone of us may see things in a different light, which makes it difficult, at times, to reach common ground. This is particularly true for our next topic: When did the world first hear about the Holocaust? The an- swer will depend on the definition of this term, and so I will permit myself, at this point, an extension of the definition to which we have just arrived in order to give it a wider scope. 19 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Let me therefore pose a question: When did the world at large first become aware of the fact that some six million Jews in central and eastern Europe were either threatened by death or had already been killed? Is there anyone who can answer that question? L: I am sure that the world knew before the end of the war to some degree what went on in the territories under German occupation, but no details, nor the ex- tent of the crimes. R: But how long have we been talking about the figure of six million victims? L: I would say that it was only during the Nuremberg trials of 1946 that light was really shed on this matter. R: That is the standard view of things. And if you consider that an investigation into what happened in the territories occupied by Germany became possible only after the war, this seems to be a reasonable assumption. But let us look into the matter more deeply. An analysis of the proceedings of the Nuremberg Tribunal tells us that the fig- ure of six million Jewish victims16 was based neither on statistical evidence from census data nor on the results of an investigation into the material evi- dence connected to the crimes, but merely on hear-say statements given by two German SS-bureaucrats. One of these statements, given by Wilhelm Höttl17 was produced only in writing; the other, coming from Dieter Wisliceny18 was given by the witness in court. However, Wisliceny was never cross-examined. Both witnesses assert to have heard the figure of six million mentioned by Adolf Eichmann, but the latter denied this during his own trial at Jerusalem in 1961.19 Both Höttl and Wisliceny were originally held in the defendants' wing of the Nuremberg prison because of their involvement in the mass deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. Their statements, however, allowed them to be moved to the witnesses' wing ­ a life-saving switch in many cases. Whereas Wisliceny and Eichmann were later tried and hanged, Höttl was never prosecuted, even though he had been just as active in those deportations. It seems obvious that he was promised leniency for his services, that is to say, for his incriminating testimony, and that the promise was eventually kept, contrary to what happened to Wisliceny. What Höttl says in his autobiography,20 though, where he tries to 16 International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals (IMT), Nuremberg 1947, Vol. XII, p. 377, Vol. XIII, p. 393, Vol. XIX, p. 405, 418, 434, 467, 611, Vol. XXI, p. 530, Vol. XXII, p. 254, 538 (cf. the complete IMT online: www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/imt.htm). 17 Ibid., Vol. III, p. 569, Vol. XI, p. 228-230, 255-260, 611, Vol. XXII, p. 346, Vol. XXXI, p. 85f. 18 IMT, vol. IV, pp. 371. 19 R. Aschenauer, Ich, Adolf Eichmann, Druffel, Leoni 1980, pp. 460f., 473ff., 494; for the historical value of this Eichmann biography cf. D. Kluge, Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart (referred to below as DGG), 29(2) (1981) pp. 31-36 (www.vho.org/D/DGG/Kluge29_2.html); cf. also R. Servatius, Verteidigung Adolf Eichmann, Harrach, Bad Kreuznach 1961, p. 62ff.; U. Walendy, Historische Tatsa- chen no. 18 (referred to below as HT), Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1983; H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Reclam, Leipzig 1990, pp. 331ff. 20 Wilhelm Höttl, Einsatz für das Reich, Verlag p. Bublies, Koblenz 1997, in particular pp. 77, 412f. 20 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST justify his original statements, clashes with his own earlier statements and makes him appear a dubious witness.21 L: In other words, Höttl and Wisliceny have tried to save their skin by pleasing the prosecutors? R: That is not so easy to say. The only thing that is certain is that the noose was dangling in front of the mental eye of many prisoners, both in the defendants' and the witnesses' wing of the Nuremberg prison. It is therefore not surprising, for one or the other to have struck a deal to save his life. L: Were the witnesses who appeared before the Nuremberg Tribunal also held in the prison? R: Yes, at least to the extent that the Allies had an axe to grind with them, i.e. to the extent that they had themselves been a member of an organization regarded as being criminal, such as the German government, German military units, the SA or the SS etc. Such witnesses were "forced witnesses" if you like. They could not decide by themselves whether or not to remain in Nuremberg and tes- tify. L: That is not very commendable, is it? R: Quite so. We shall speak later on about the general procedures applying to this and other trials. But let us return to those six million. In a monograph on the Nuremberg Tribunal he published in 1996, David Irving,22 now black-balled because of his controversial ideas, wondered about some Zionist leaders who were able, in June 1945, immediately after the cessation of hostilities in Europe, to come up in Washington with a precise figure for the Jewish victims ­ 6 million, of course ­ even though it was plainly impossible to do any kind of census work in the chaotic conditions prevailing in Europe at that time.23 L: Well, Jewish organizations may have been in touch with local Jewish groups and had realized that these no longer existed. R: Possibly. But let me carry on a little further. A year earlier than Irving, the German historian Joachim Hoffmann who had worked for decades in the Ger- man Federal Research Office for Military History, noticed that Ilya Ehrenburg, the chief atrocity specialist of the Soviets, had published the figure of six mil- lion in the Soviet foreign language press24 as early as December 1944, more than four months before the war came to an end. In May 1944, Zionist activist Rabbi Dov Weissmandel stated that up to that month six million Jews of Europe and Russia had been annihilated.25 Wilhelm Höttl, on the other hand, found an article in the February 1943 issue of Reader's Digest, which spoke of the murder already committed on at least 21 Cf. G. Rudolf, "Wilhelm Höttl ­ ein zeitgeschichtlich dilettantischer Zeitzeuge," Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung (referred to below as VffG), 1(2) (1997), pp. 116f. 22 Cf. section 2.18., p. 151. 23 D. Irving, Nuremberg. The Last Battle, Focal Point, London 1996, pp. 61f. (www.fpp.co.uk/books/Nuremberg/NUREMBERG.pdf). 24 J. Hoffmann, Stalin's War of Extermination 1941-1945, Theses & Dissertations Press, Capshaw, AL, 2001, pp. 189, 402f. 25 Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, Behrman House, New York 1976, p. 322. 21 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST half of the 6 million Jews threatened by Hitler.26 A look into the pages of the New York Times shows us that this was far from being an isolated case, as is borne out by a few quotations.27 December 13, 1942, p. 21: "[...] `Authenticated reports point to 2,000,000 Jews who have already been slain by all manner of satanic barbarism, and plans for the total extermina- tion of all Jews upon whom the Nazis can lay their hands. The slaughter of a third of the Jewish population in Hitler`s domain [3×2,000,000=6,000,000] and the threatened slaughter of all is a holocaust without parallel.'" December 20, 1942, p. 23: "What is happening to the 5,000,000 Jews of German-held Europe, all of whom face extermination [...]. Early in December 1942 the State Department in Washington gave some figures showing that the number of Jewish victims deported and perished since 1939 in Axis-controlled Europe now reached the appalling figure of 2,000,000 and that 5,000,000 were in danger of extermination." March 2, 1943, pp. 1, 4: [...Rabbi Hertz said] to secure even the freedom to live for 6,000,000 of their Jewish fellow men by readiness to rescue those who might still escape Nazi torture and butchery. [...]" March 10, 1943, p. 12: "[...] 2,000,000 Jews killed in Europe. [...] The four million left to kill are being killed, according to plan." (2+4=6 million) April 20, 1943, p. 11: "Two million Jews have been wiped out [...] five million more are in imme- diate danger of execution [...]." (2+5=7 million) L: So it was known for a long time that some 6 million were threatened by exter- mination. That is not really surprising, for it must have been known how many Jews were living in the areas that were later occupied by German troops. R: That is a valuable observation. It would mean that the origin of the figure of 6 million was not any kind of factual determination of the number of victims, but rather that is was based on the assumption that all Jews believed to be in the sway of the Reich were threatened by extermination. There is, however, an argument against this theory in the form of a quotation dating from the year 1936, a time when Hitler reigned only over the Jews who 26 W. Höttl, op. cit. (note 20), pp. 412, 515-519. 27 First quoted by Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Historical Review Press, Brighton 1976. All quotes from the 3rd edition, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, IL, 2003, p. 100-104 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/thottc). 22 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST were then living in Germany and when no one could as yet predict the war and Germany's initial victories. At that time there was a hearing organized by the Peel-Commission, which was envisioning the partition of Palestine. Chaim Weizmann, then President of the Zionist world organization, appeared before the Commission and asserted that 6 million Jews were living in Europe as if in a prison and were regarded as undesirable.28 Here again, we have the general summing-up of all the European Jews, including those in the Soviet Union. In 1936, one could say that only Germany and Poland were following a funda- mentally anti-Semitic policy, and together those two countries accounted for some 3+ million Jews. The remaining 2+ million Jews mentioned by Weiz- mann certainly did not feel that they were living in a prison specifically erected for Jews. The Jews in the Soviet Union may not have been free, but their op- pression was part of the general policy of the totalitarian regime there, not a movement directed against them and no one else. L: It was still a prison where many different peoples were locked up. R: I will grant you that, but then this is no argument for giving the Jews part of Palestine, and that was after all the background of Weizmann's statements be- fore the Peel-Commission. If the oppression of the Jews in the Soviet Union had been sufficient grounds for conceding them a section of Palestine ­ i.e. to take it away from the Arabs living there ­ what could the other peoples of the Soviet Union have claimed for themselves, the Christians, Muslims, Ukraini- ans, Germans, Georgians, Armenians, Uzbeks, Tadjiks, Mongols, and countless others? Another part of Palestine? Or other parts of the Arab world? The fact of the matter is that Weizmann was using this impressive figure of 6 million suffering and oppressed Jews in his effort to reach a political goal, a Zionist goal. We also know that, at that time, he failed. L: Now we are getting away a bit from our original question, because, after all, Weizmann did not speak of a holocaust or an impending or ongoing extermina- tion. That was said only later, in press accounts during the war. R: During which war? L: Excuse me? During the Second World War, of course! R: That is precisely where you are wrong. In fact, similar accounts were circulated during the First World War and, in particular, in the immediate post-war period of WW1. Many of you are looking at me with astonishment and disbelief. Allow me, therefore, to go a little more deeply into what was happening at that time. I re- fer to the results of research done by U.S. author Don Heddesheimer who wrote a book about this topic.29 From about 1915 onwards, various American news- papers, especially the New York Times, reported that the Jews in central and 28 Thomas Mann, Sieben Manifeste zur jüdischen Frage, Jos. Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1966, p. 18. I thank the late Robert H. Countess for indicating this source. 29 Don Heddesheimer, The First Holocaust. Jewish Fund Raising Campaigns with Holocaust Claims During and After World War One, 2nd ed., Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005 (www.vho.org/D/deh/index.html). 23 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST eastern Europe in particular were suffering under the conditions brought about by the war. Between 1919 and 1927 there were, in the U.S., massive campaigns organized by Jewish circles to collect money claiming that five or six million Jews in cen- tral and eastern Europe were near death. I will quote a few relevant passages from those press reports and campaign ads, starting with the latest one known to me: New York Times, Dec. 4, 1926: "five million starving people [...] half the Jews of the world, smitten by pestilence and famine [...]." New York Times, April 21, 1926: "This is the cry that comes from the Jews of Europe [...] a whole people is dying [...] millions of Jews are trapped in Europe [...]." New York Times, Jan. 9, 1922, p. 19: "unspeakable horrors and infinite crimes perpetrated against the Jewish people. Dr. Hertz declared that 1,000,000 human beings had been butchered and that for three years 3,000,000 persons in the Ukraine had been made `to pass through the hor- rors of hell' [...]." L: Is that the same Mr. Hertz you referred to a while ago who claimed on March 2, 1943, in the same newspaper that six million members of the Jewish people were on the verge of being slaughtered by the Nazis and had to be saved (see p. 21)? R: Yes, that is the same man. L: The similarity between the two statements is striking. R: I shall show you other similarities in a minute. But first, let me produce some quotations from the 1920s and from WW1 and the post-war months: New York Times, May 7, 1920: "[...] Jewish war sufferers in Central and Eastern Europe, where six millions face horrifying conditions of famine, dis- ease and death [...]." New York Times, May 5, 1920, p. 9: "To save six million men and women in Eastern Europe form extermination by hunger and disease." New York Times, May 5, 1920, p. 19: "Six million starving, fever-stricken sufferers in war-torn Europe appeal to us [...]" New York Times, May 3, 1920, p. 11: "Your help is needed to save the lives of six million people in Eastern and Central Europe." New York Times, May 3, 1920, p. 12: "In Russia and the neighboring coun- tries the Jews have been subject to a particularly malignant persecution [...]. It is estimated that more than five millions are actually starving or on the verge of starvation, and a virulent typhus epidemic is raging among them and is already spreading among neighboring populations." New York Times, May 2, 1920, p. 1: "Six million human beings, without food, shelter, clothing or medical treatment." New York Times, May 1, 1920, p. 8: "But the lives of 6,000,000 human be- ings wait upon the answer." 24 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST New York Times, Apr. 21, 1920, p. 8: "In Europe there are today more than 5,000,000 Jews who are starving or on the verge of starvation, and many are in the grip of a virulent typhus epidemic." New York Times, Dec. 3, 1919, p. 19: "nothing on earth except a miracle can prevent the death by freezing and starvation of from 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 people in Europe and the Middle East this winter [...] atrocious Jewish massacre." New York Times, Dec. 3, 1919, p. 24: "Five Million Face Famine in Poland [...] The war has left 5,000,000 destitute and stricken Jews in Eastern Europe." New York Times, Nov. 12, 1919, p. 7: "tragically unbelievable poverty, star- vation and disease about 6,000,000 souls, or half the Jewish population of the earth [...] a million children and [...] five million parents and elders." The American Hebrew, Oct. 31, 1919, pp. 582f.: "From across the sea, six million men and women call to us for help [...] six million human beings. [...] Six million men and women are dying [...] in the threatened holocaust of human life [...] six million famished men and women. Six million men and women are dying [...]" (see reproduction in the Appendix, p. 23) L: Now look at that! We have got it all together. The 6 million and the notion of a holocaust. R: Yes, this source is perhaps the one where the parallels with later accounts are most striking, but let me go back in time a little further. New York Times, Oct. 26, 1919, p. 1: "4,000,000 Starving Jews of Eastern Europe." New York Times, Sept. 29, 1919, p. 7: "tragically unbelievable poverty, starvation and disease about 6,000,000 souls, or half the Jewish population of the earth." New York Times, Aug. 10, 1917: "Germans Let Jews Die. Women and Chil- dren in Warsaw Starving to Death [...] Jewish mothers, mothers of mercy, feel happy to see their nursing babies die; at least they are through with their suffering." L: Oh my God, now we have the Germans as villains! R: Yes, but this is the exception rather than the rule. In fact, various German agen- cies helped, during and after the war, to channel the funds collected by the Jew- ish organizations to eastern Europe. The branding of Germans as villains was part of the war propaganda and came to an end after the war. From then on, the focus was on actual or invented atrocities in the countries of eastern Europe. In this connection, I have this article dated May 23, 1919, that appeared on p. 12 of the NYT about alleged anti-Jewish pogroms in Poland. In an ironical twist of history, the editors of the NYT somehow doubted the veracity of the report, for they said:30 "It has been pointed out that some of these reports may have originated with German propagandists or may have been exaggerated by them with the ob- 30 "Pogroms in Poland," New York Times, May 23, 1919, p. 12. 25 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST vious purpose of discrediting Poland with the Allies, in the hope that Ger- many might be the gainer thereby. Germany might have assisted in spread- ing these stories, may have invented them, although it would be a cruel de- ception to wring the hearts of great multitudes of people in order to gain such an end [...]" R: If we follow the NYT, false reports regarding Jewish sufferings are cruel. We should remember that. L: All that is begging the question whether those sufferings and deaths reported by the NYT as having befallen the Jewish population of eastern Europe actually re- flected the truth. R: Don Heddesheimer has analyzed this in his book and has come to the conclu- sion that the Jews, on the whole, were the only population group of eastern Europe to come out of the First World War relatively unscathed. I guess that answers the question. But come along with me on this trip into the depths of history. New York Times, May 22, 1916, p. 11: "[...] of the normal total of about 2,450,000 Jews in Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, 1,770,000 remain, and of that number about 700,000 are in urgent and continuous want." R: As early as 1916, a book entitled The Jews in the Eastern War Zone describing the alleged plight of the European Jews was sent to 25,000 important persons of American public life.31 The book asserted that Russia had transformed a cer- tain area into something like a penal colony where six million Jews were forced to live miserably and in constant fear of being massacred, without any rights or social status:32 "[...] a kind of prison with six million inmates, guarded by an army of cor- rupt and brutal jailers." R: This book The Jews in the Eastern War Zone was at the time quoted exten- sively in the media, e.g. in the NYT. The earliest report found so far dates from the first year of the war: New York Times, Jan. 14, 1915, p. 3: "In the world today there are about 13,000,000 Jews, of whom more than 6,000,000 are in the heart of the war zone; Jews whose lives are at stake and who today are subjected to every manner of suffering and sorrow [...]." R: But let us go one step further back. In 1900, Rabbi Stephen Wise made the following statement before Jewish welfare organizations in the USA:33 "there are 6,000,000 living, bleeding, suffering arguments in favor of Zion- ism." L: It would seem that we are dealing with a constant in Jewish suffering, the fig- ure of 6 million. 31 Nathan Schachner, The Price of Liberty. A History of The American Jewish Committee, The American Jewish Committee, New York 1948, p. 63. 32 The American Jewish Committee, The Jews in the Eastern War Zones, The American Jewish Commit- tee, New York 1916, pp. 19f. 33 New York Times, June 11, 1900, p. 7. 26 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: There is a specific reason for that. Benjamin Blech tells about an ancient Jew- ish prophecy, promising the Jews the return to the Promised Land after the loss of six million of their people.34 L: The passages you quoted would indicate that Jewish sufferings were useful to various Jewish leaders as an argument to bring about that very aim ­ the return to the Promised Land. R: Quite so. We must not forget that Palestine had been promised to the Zionists in the Balfour Declaration by England during the First World War. That was, no doubt, a major reason for the holocaust propaganda during and after the First World War. L: Why would the NYT publish so many of those reports, as opposed to other newspapers? R: Well, first of all, I have quoted here the NYT because, then as now, it is taken to be one of the most widely read, the most respected, and the most influential newspapers. That is not to say that other newspapers did not report similar ac- counts, but those other archives have not yet been searched by anyone for such items, as far as I know. On the other hand, we must remember that the NYT was at the time already in Jewish hands. In this regard, let me quote its former chief editor, Max Frankel:35 "Exploiting this atmosphere [of anti-fascism], and Gentile guilt about the Holocaust, American Jews of my generation were emboldened to make them themselves culturally conspicuous, to flaunt their ethnicity, to find literary inspiration in their roots, and to bask in the resurrection of Israel. [...] Instead of idols and passions, I worshiped words and argument, becoming part of an unashamedly Jewish verbal invasion of American culture. It was especially satisfying to realize the wildest fantasy of the world's anti- Semites: Inspired by our heritage as keepers of the book, creators of law, and storytellers supreme, Jews in America did finally achieve a dispropor- tionate influence in universities and in all media of communication. [...] Within a few years of Punch's ascendancy ["Punch" Sulzberger, Owner of the NYT], there came a time when not only the executive editor ­ A. M. Rosenthal ­ and I but ALL the top editors listed on the paper's masthead were Jews. Over vodka in the publisher's back room, this was occasionally mentioned as an impolitic condition, but it was altered only gradually, with- out any affirmative action on behalf of Christians. [...] And I wrote in confidence that The Times no longer suffered from any secret desire to deny or overcome its ethnic roots." L: I guess that is sufficient to explain this one-sidedness. R: You can say that again. The origin of this figure of six million ­ which has meanwhile been assigned the status of a "symbolic figure" by respected histo- 34 Benjamin Blech, The Secret of Hebrew Words, Jason Aronson, Northvale, NJ, 1991, p. 214. 35 Max Frankel, The Times of My Life. And my Life with The Times, Random House, New York, 1999, pp. 400f., 403. 27 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST rians36 even as far as the Holocaust of the Second World War is concerned ­ is, therefore, not based on any kind of factual knowledge regarding Jewish popula- tion losses. It is thus not surprising that well-known statisticians world-wide stated that the question of the number of victims had, for a long time, not been clarified at all.37 Meanwhile, however, this has changed on account of two studies into this topic, which I will deal with later. 1.4. Wartime Propaganda, Then and Now R: Let me now go into the causes given by the media for the Jewish sufferings in the years 1915 ­ 1927 and 1941 ­ 1945, respectively. Whereas the main rea- sons cited in connection with the first holocaust (the invented one) were by and large poverty, general oppression, and epidemics, the second one (the real one) was ascribed to mass murder in gas chambers and large-scale shootings. While it is generally true that gas chambers were not part of the standard propaganda weaponry during and following WW1, there is one exception. The London Daily Telegraph reported on March 22, 1916, on p. 7: "ATROCITIES IN SERBIA 700,000 VICTIMS FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT ROME, Monday (6:45 p.m.) The Governments of the Allies have secured evidence and documents, which will shortly be published, proving that Austria and Bulgaria have been guilty of horrible crimes in Serbia, where the massacres committed were worse than those perpetrated by Turkey in Armenia. [...] Women, children, and old men were shut up in the churches by the Aus- trians and either stabbed with the bayonet or suffocated by means of as- phyxiating gas. In one church in Belgrade 3,000 women, children, and old men were thus suffocated. [...]" R: Of course, today no historian claims that the Austrians or any of their allies ever committed mass murder with poison gas in Serbia during World War One. This was nothing but black propaganda issued by the British government and eagerly disseminated by the British media. But juxtapose this with an article that appeared in the same London Daily Tele- graph on June 25, 1942, p. 5, that is, five days before the Jewish owned and controlled New York Times reported about the alleged mass murder of Jews in German controlled Europe for the first time: 36 Statement by German historian Martin Broszat, expert called by penal court at Frankfurt on May 3, 1979, ref. Js 12 828/78 919 Ls. 37 Cf. the explanations given by Prof. F.H. Hankins, past president of the American Demographic Asso- ciation, as given in The Journal of Historical Review (referred to below as JHR) 4(1) (1983) p. 61-81. 28 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "GERMANS MURDER 700,000 JEWS IN POLAND TRAVELLING GAS CHAMBERS DAILY TELEGRAPH REPORTER More than 700,000 Polish Jews have been slaughtered by the Germans in the greatest massacre in world history. [...]" R: This time, however, we all know that these claims were true, don't we? And it is also true that at the end of the 20th century nobody would seriously accuse any country in the world of having built gas chambers and stocked Zyklon B to murder all Jews, hence, that the Jews would once more face a holocaust, an ex- tinction of millions. After all, that was something uniquely German and "Nazi," which does not happen again, right? If you think that it is obvious that nobody would make such outrageous claims, I have to teach you another quite astounding lesson: Let me bring up only two examples from a war that took place almost 50 years after the second holocaust propaganda started, in 1991. It is about America's first war against Iraq to drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. The New York based Jewish Press, then calling it- self "The largest independent Anglo-Jewish weekly newspaper," wrote on its title page on February 21, 1991: "IRAQIS HAVE GAS CHAMBERS FOR ALL JEWS" R: Or take the front cover announcement of volume 12, number 1 (spring 1991), of Response, a periodical published by the Jewish Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and distributed in 381,065 copies: "GERMANS PRODUCE ZYKLON B IN IRAQ (Iraq's German-made gas chamber)" R: Then, on p. 2ff., it goes on to say: "Shocking Revelation: German Firms Produce Zyklon B in Iraq True to their legacy of their Nazi-era predecessors, the German business community has sought to absolve itself of its share of blame in the current Middle East disaster. `We did not knowingly supply Iraq with weapons of mass destructions ­ we violated no law ­ we were just filling orders...' [...] Even more ominous is the report that Iraq has developed a new potent gas which actually contains Zyklon B. [...] this gas, and the nerve gas, Tabun, were tested on Iranian POWs in gas chambers specially designed for the Iraqis by the German company [...] (see cover photo of gas chamber proto- type). German Gas Chamber: Nightmare Revisited." R: If you don't believe this, go to the appendix, p. 55f., where the documents have been reproduced. L: Well, I will be darned! Six million, and gas chambers all over the place! R: I hope that you are developing a feel for the underlying design of the Anglo- Saxon and Zionist war and atrocity propaganda ­ 1900, 1916, 1920, 1926, 1936, 1942, 1991... In 1991, as we all know, these things were again nothing but inventions, as were the later assertions before America's second war against Iraq, in 2003, to the effect that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or 29 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST would have them soon, even though this time the gas chambers and/or Zyklon B as "weapons of mass destruction" were not mentioned. But, as Israel's well- known newspaper Ha'aretz proudly proclaimed:38 "The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of his- tory." R: We all know, after all, that the Jews in Israel merit a preventive protection against any kind of annihilation with weapons of mass destruction, regardless of whether this threat is real or imagined... L: Now that sounds a bit too cynical. Don't you think that Jews merit protection from annihilation? R: The cynicism refers only to cases where such a threat was pure invention. Any ethnic or religious group is entitled to protection from the threat of annihilation, Jews are no exception. What I meant to get across with this series of press reports was for you not to accept at face value what the media are saying ­ even if it is the NYT ­ particu- larly in times of war. And I think it is fair to accept, at least as a working hy- pothesis, that not all assertions stemming from the period of 1941 to 1945 are absolutely true either. Couldn't it be that certain things were to some extent dis- torted, deformed, exaggerated, or invented? L: Possibly... R: To show you how war propaganda is generated, I have reproduced, in the ap- pendix to this lecture, the text of a TV documentary produced in 1992 by the German public broadcasting corporation ARD in its "Monitor" series. It tells you how an American publicity company, paid for this purpose by the Kuwaiti government, invented the so-called incubator story. In order to get the U.S. and, in particular, the U.N. to agree to a war against Iraq, they tested, which horror story would eventually work best. The result: the murder of innocent babies. Based on that result, the lie was concocted that Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait had systematically torn babies from their incubators and murdered them. An actress was prepared for her role as a witness; she eventually appeared before the hu- man-rights commission of the Security Council, like Niobe, all tears, and pro- claimed this lie of the evil deeds of the Iraqi soldiers. Her statement was a key element in getting the U.N. to finally agree to an American invasion. Keep this in the back of your head, if we come across similar stories about cruel murders of babies later on. Faced with such facts, we should remember the old rule that the truth is always the first victim in any war. It is really surprising that so many people shy away from this painful experience when they are dealing with the worst of all wars ­ the Second World War. For the very reason that it has been, so far, the most brutal of all wars, it is obvious that in this case the truth has been raped and 38 Ari Shavit, "White man's burden," Ha'aretz, April 7, 2003; www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=280279; cf. also Stephen J. Sniegoski, "The War against Iraq" The Revisionist (subsequently quoted as TR), 1(3) (2003), pp. 288-304. 30 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST abused more often than in any other conflict. And I am not thinking merely of the Holocaust in this connection, which was only one of many incidents in that war. I am referring to that war as a whole. In these lectures, however, I will re- strict myself to the Holocaust. 1.5. One Person Killed is One Person Too Many L: You have just explained that this figure of six million has a mystical or a sym- bolic basis rather than being founded on census data. But if all authorities in this area are in agreement on the point that six million people were killed in the Holocaust, would you say that they are all off the mark? R: I will, in fact, now discuss the number of victims. L: But does that really matter? Even if it should turn out that only one million, or even only 10,000 Jews had been killed, it would still be a despicable crime, wouldn't it? R: I would even go one step further. Even those measures of persecution during the Third Reich which did not cause the death of anyone were completely un- acceptable from a legal and moral point of view. However, such a point of view is unsuitable when it comes to the analysis of statistical data, or as far as the question is concerned whether and, if so, how the extermination of the Jews was carried out. Let me give you three reasons for this: First of all, it is an unsatisfactory argument for the very reason that for decades the number of victims has been regarded as sacred. If the number of victims did not matter, there would be no reason for making it a taboo or even go so far as to protect it by laws, as it happens in several European nations. Apparently, there is more behind this figure of six million than just the sum of the individ- ual fates of the people involved. It has become a symbol which must not be abandoned, because any justified doubts about this number would quickly lead to more undesirable questions into other aspects of the Holocaust. It is abso- lutely dumbfounding that, on the one hand, anyone who questions this figure of 6 million victims is made an intellectual outcast or will even suffer legal perse- cution, whereas, on the other hand, whenever valid arguments against this fig- ure are raised, society and even judges will sound a retreat, claiming that pre- cise figures are not the point and insisting on the criminal character of even a single victim. Is this figure of six million a legal yardstick or is it of no impor- tance? It cannot be both. Next, while it is perfectly valid from a moral point of view to stress the fact that one victim is one victim too many, this argument cannot be used against a scientific examination of this crime. It would be presumptuous to rob any one victim of the tragic character of his or her individual fate, but it would be just as unjustified to bar science from analyzing the quantitative aspects of the topic, because it is in the very nature of science to look for precise answers. Would it make sense to legally prevent a physicist from computing the capacity of the cooling system of a nuclear reactor on the grounds that there is no abso- 31 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST lute protection against accidents and such a computation would, therefore, not be helpful? If a physicist had to work under such conditions, he would sooner or later come up with results which could provoke a catastrophe. If historians are ostracized or even prosecuted because their findings or even the questions they set out to answer are regarded as immoral, we cannot but as- sume that the results of such a distorted way of writing history will be unreli- able. And because our view of history has a direct effect on the policies of those who govern us, a distorted historical perspective will lead to distorted policies. It is the fundamental task and the main responsibility of any kind of science to produce reliable results and data. Principles that have been estab- lished for the field of science and technology cannot be thrown overboard when the science of history is concerned ­ unless we are ready to return intellectually to the dark periods of the Middle Ages. Finally, the morally justified argument that one victim is one victim too many cannot be used to prevent the examination of a crime, in particular if this crime is claimed to be unique in its moral aberration. An allegedly unique crime must, in fact, be open to the detailed analysis of what actually did happen in a way that is applicable to any crime. I will even go one step further: anyone pos- tulating the uniqueness of a crime must also accept a uniquely deep analysis of the alleged crime, before the uniqueness can be accepted. If, however, one were to surround this allegedly unique crime with a protective shield of moral indig- nation, one would ipso facto commit a unique crime, namely the denial of any defense against such monstrous accusations. L: This sounds just as though in the many trials regarding the Holocaust that took place in Germany and elsewhere in the years after the war the defendants had been unable to muster a proper defense. Didn't the sentences that were passed at the outcome of those trials reflect the fact that the defendant did enjoy all the legal protections available in a normal court of law? R: We will go into those questions later. I was not really thinking of the legal as- pects of those trials here, though. I was claiming the right, in the field of his- tory, to be allowed to bring forward new evidence, regardless of whether or not this side or the other regards it as being helpful or detrimental to its cause. No one must be made an outcast or be prosecuted because of such new evidence or novel interpretations. This would lead to an abolition of the freedom of science, which is founded in man's right to doubt and to freely search for answers. 1.6. Are Six Million Missing? L: Let's get down to facts, please. How many Jews, do you think, died during the Holocaust? R: I have not done any research into primary sources myself and have to rely on the work of others. If you look at the literature available on the subject of popu- lation losses of Jews during the Second World War, you will notice that there are only two extensive monographs dealing with this topic. 32 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But every major book on the Table 1: Distribution of claimed Holo- Holocaust has victim numbers. caust victims according to murder site HILBERG39 DAWIDOWICZ40 R: Yes, but in those works the vic- LOCATION tim numbers are merely claimed, Auschwitz: 1,000,000 2,000,000 not proven. Take, for example, Treblinka: 750,000 800,000 the figures in the book The De- Belzec: 550,000 600,000 Sobibor: 200,000 250,000 struction of the European Jews Chelmno: 150,000 340,000 by mainstream Holocaust expert Majdanek: 50,000 1,380,000 Raul Hilberg and compare it with CAMP TOTAL: 2,700,000 5,370,000 those by Lucy Dawidowicz, an- other locations: 2,400,000 563,000 other mainstream expert, which Holocaust Total: 5,100,000 5.933.000 she published in her book The War against the Jews. They both claim that the Holocaust resulted in between five and six million murdered Jews. Yet if you compare how both authors allo- cate these victims to the various sites of the claimed mass murder, it turns out that they do not agree on anything, see Table 1. Such a table could be compiled using many more mainstream Holocaust historians, and the figures would be just as wildly divergent. So how come that all these authors end up with basi- cally the same total, when they disagree on everything else, and not a single one of them proves what they claim with incontestable sources? So let me now go back to the only two books that actually focused on nothing but the statistical topic of Jewish population losses in Europe during World War II. There is the revisionist work The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry41 written in 1983 by Walter N. Sanning, aka Wilhelm Niederreiter, and the an- thology Dimension des Völkermords42 (dimension of the genocide) edited in 1991 by political scientist Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Benz. While Sanning sets the unexplained losses of the European Jewry at an order of magnitude of 300,000, Benz, in accordance with traditional teaching, arrives at a figure of some 6 mil- lion. L: There you have it! The difference couldn't be more striking. Which of the two works is the one you would recommend? R: Benz' book is today regarded as a standard. To a large extent it rests upon con- siderably more extensive source material than Sanning's. L: So we have 6 million dead Jews after all! R: Easy now, and let's go step by step. Even though Benz' book is obviously a reaction to the revisionist work, it makes no attempt at a direct and sober analy- 39 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Holmes & Meyer, New York 1985, p. 1219. 40 Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, Holt, New York 1975, p. 149 for the individual camps, also including non-Jews. The "Holocaust Total" (p. 403) includes Jews only, so the calculated entry under "other locations" should actually be higher. 41 W.N. Sanning, The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry, Institute for Historical Review, Costa Mesa, CA, 1983. 42 W. Benz, Dimension des Völkermords, Oldenbourg, Munich 1991. 33 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST sis of Sanning's arguments. Sanning himself is mentioned only once in a foot- note and then only to be defamed.43 L: That is not really a very scientific approach! R: Right, and all the more so as Benz expressly published his book to refute revi- sionist theses. But if you do that without presenting them and use them only in an effort to suppress them and to insult an opposing author, we have a clear case of a massive unscientific approach. Because of this lack of a discussion of revisionist arguments, one could not but place the two works side by side and compare the statistics the authors present. That is precisely what I have done.44 Let me make a resumé of the most important results. First of all, it turns out that the two others define the victims of the Holocaust in an entirely different way. While Sanning tries to add up only those victims who died from direct killings in line with a National Socialist (NS) persecution policy, Benz attrib- utes to the Holocaust all Jewish population losses in Europe, including those of people killed in action while fighting in the Red Army, victims of Soviet depor- tations and forced labor camps, surplus of deaths over births, or religious con- versions. What is more important, though, is the fact that Benz completely neglects the migrations that occurred during and after the Second World War. This is where the central problem of any statistical treatment of the subject is hidden. Benz casts completely aside the emigration of Jews from Europe to Israel and to the United States, which became known as the second Exodus. It started before World War Two, was largely interrupted in 1941, and reached its peak in the years between 1945 and 1947. Benz also deals only very briefly with the mi- grations of Jews within eastern Europe, such as the number of Polish Jews who managed to escape before the advancing German armies ­ Sanning makes a convincing case for a figure of around 1 million ­ or the percentage of Jews within other groups that were deported to Siberia by the Soviets in 1941 and 1942. L: Do you mean to say that Stalin deported Jews to Siberia? R: Absolutely. Sanning quotes figures announced by Jewish charity organizations at the time which speak of somewhere between half a million and one million Jews that were moved east when the war with Germany broke out. Stalin him- self attacked the Jews massively during the "Great Purge," which took place in 1937 and 1938. Let me give you an example in the form of a comparison of ethnicities in the upper echelons of the Soviet terror apparatus NKVD,45 based 43 Ibid., p. 558, note 396: "The author excels in a methodically unsound treatment of statistical material and adventurous but obviously erroneous combinations and conclusions." These reproaches were, how- ever, not substantiated. 44 Germar Rudolf, "Holocaust Victims: A Statistical Analysis," in: Germar Rudolf, Dissecting the Holo- caust, 2nd ed., Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, IL, 2003, pp. 181-213 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth). 45 Narodny Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del = People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Predecessor of the KGB. 34 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 2: Proportion of Jews in the upper echelons of the NKVD Nationality Jul. 10, 34 Oct 1, 36 Mar. 1, 37 Sept. 1, 38 Jul. 1, 39 Jan. 1, 40 Feb. 26, 41 Russians 31,25% 30,00% 31,53% 56,67% 56,67% 64,53% 64,84% Jews 38,54% 39,09% 37,84% 21,33% 3,92% 3,49% 5,49% on internal NKVD data. For reasons of space I shall show only those figures which concern Russians and Jews.46 L: But Jews are a religious group and not an ethnic one! R: This is a point which the Jews themselves have been debating for thousands of years and which we cannot resolve here. It is a fact that the NKVD listed Jews as an ethnic group, probably because the Jews themselves insisted this should be so. L: So some 40% of the leading positions in the Soviet terror structure were ini- tially occupied by Jews. What was the percentage of Jews within the total population of the Soviet Union? R: Before the war there were some 4 million Jews in a total population of about 200 million, which gives us 2 percent. L: Does this excessive presence of Jews in the terror structure explain the myth of a "Jewish Bolshevism"? R: Quite so,47 except that this anomaly no longer existed when the war broke out. But let us return to Benz and Sanning. For the particular question of Jewish migrations in Poland and the Soviet Union due to flight or deportation to the east after the outbreak of the German-Polish war and then the German-Soviet war, Sanning presents a wealth of material. Because Benz does not discuss this at all, one cannot avoid thinking that he could not argue with Sanning at all and simply preferred to drop the subject. On the whole, Benz' method of arriving at his alleged number of victims can be summarized in the following way: he computed the difference between the number of Jews mentioned in the latest census data before the war for all the countries involved and the first census data arrived at in the early post-war pe- riod, which were, however, taken several years after the end of the hostilities. Neither does Benz consider the fact that, by then, millions of Jews had emi- grated to the USA, to Israel or elsewhere, nor does he discuss the fact that the post-war census data for the Soviet Union are notoriously unreliable when it 46 Nikita Petrov, "Veränderungstendenzen im Kaderbestand der Organe der sowjetischen Staatssicherheit in der Stalin-Zeit," Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte, 5(2) (2001) (www1.ku- eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/petrow.htm). 47 Cf. primarily the Jewish author Sonja Margolina, Das Ende der Lügen, Siedler, Berlin 1992; also, much more scientific: Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein, Jüdischer Bolschewismup. Mythos und Re- alität, Edition Antaios, Dresden 2002; Alexander Solschenizyn, 200 Jahre zusammen, 2 vols., Herbig, Munich 2003; cf. Wolfgang Strauss, "The End of the Legends," TR 2(3) (2004), pp. 342-351; histori- cally interesting: Rudolf Kommos, Juden hinter Stalin: Die Vormachtstellung jüdischer Kader in der Sowjetunion auf der Grundlage amtlicher sowjetischer Quellen dargestellt, Nibelungen-Verl., Ber- lin/Leipzig 1938; reprint: Verlag für ganzheitliche Forschung und Kultur, Viöl, undated; see also Robert Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs, George H. Doran, New York 1920 (reprint: Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach 1993; cf. Mark Weber, "The Jewish Role in the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's Early Soviet Regime," JHR 14(1) (1994), pp. 4-14). Wilton was correspondent of the London Times at St. Petersburg during the Soviet revolution. 35 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST comes to religious affiliation ­ be it Christian or Jewish ­ because of the latent danger of persecution. The fact that in 1959 and 1970 only two million persons in the Soviet Union declared themselves to be Jewish therefore does not mean at all that only two million Jews had survived the war. It simply signifies that only two million people dared declare their Jewish faith in a radically anti- religious and anti-Zionist state. L: And Benz takes these Soviet statistics at face value? R: Yes, without any ifs, ands or buts. If you look more closely at his choice of words, you discover that in Benz' eyes Stalin had made a foreign policy of ap- peasement but had been attacked by Hitler without provocation. This cliché of an unexpected, unprovoked attack on a peace-loving Soviet Union comes straight out of the communist propaganda handbook. Somehow, Benz over- looked the annoying fact that at that time the USSR had just gobbled up half of Poland, had fought a war of aggression against Finland, annexed Bessarabia, and swallowed Estonia and Latvia. L: In other words, Benz has a surprisingly uncritical position with respect to any- thing the Soviet Union was trying to promote. R: That seems to be the case. It may help to explain the strange attitude Benz and his co-authors exhibit. Let me demonstrate this by taking two examples ­ France and Poland. There is general consensus that some 75,000 Jews were deported from France in the first half of 1942, most of them directly to Auschwitz. A standard work dealing with the fate of these people states that after the war only 2,500 of these Jews officially registered in France as having returned, which would mean that some 97% of the deportees had perished.48 This figure was by and large taken over by Benz.49 L: Does this mean, then, that only those Jews deported from France were counted as having survived, if they registered themselves as survivors in France after the war? R: Exactly. L: But what about those who settled elsewhere? R: Well, there is the rub. The Swedish census statistician Carl O. Nordling has shown in a study50 on this topic that most of the Jews deported from France were, in fact, not French at all but for the most part ­ 52,000 ­ were nationals of other countries who had fled to France, be it from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, or even the Benelux countries, and most of the re- maining Jews had only recently been naturalized, which means that most of them were refugees as well. The pro-German government of Vichy France agreed to the removal from France of all those persons who did either not possess French citizenship or had 48 Serge Klarsfeld, Le Mémorial de la Déportation des Juifs de France, Klarsfeld, Paris 1978; Engl.: Memorial to the Jews deported from France 1942-1944, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1983. 49 W. Benz refers to S. Klarsfeld, even though his number of victims is somewhat higher, Benz (ed.), op. cit. (note 42), p. 127. 50 Carl O. Nordling, "What happened to the 75,000 Jews who were deported from France?," TR 3(3) (2005), in preparation. 36 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST acquired it only very recently. The mass of French Jews was never deported. Now the 64,000 dollar question: How many of these non-French Jews would have returned to France after the war and registered officially as surviving Jews, having been deported to Auschwitz a few years earlier by a complacent and eager French administration? L: I suppose that Palestine and the USA would have been more attractive destina- tions. R: That would be true for most of them, I would say. In any case, France was not home to the majority of the Jews deported from France, so why should they have tried to return there? Thus, Benz' method of establishing the number of French victims is highly arbitrary. L: Do you intend to say that most of these Jews actually survived? R: No, I don't. The fate of the Jews deported from France can be traced quite well by means of the Auschwitz Death Books (Sterbebücher), which are documents kept by the camp administration listing all registered inmates who died in the camp.51 Although not all volumes have been handed down to us ­ the series stops at the end of 1943 ­ they still allow us to gain an insight into the fate of many of these Jews. They tell us that a frightening number of them died in a typhus epidemic which ravaged the camp in the summer of 1942. The majority of the Jews deported after that date were no longer registered in the camp, pre- sumably because the camp, with its catastrophic hygienic conditions, was un- able to accept further transports on a large scale, so that those Jews who had been taken to Auschwitz were immediately moved further east.52 L: Now what is the total number of deaths listed in those Death Books? R: Some 69,000. But remember that the early months of the camp, the year 1944 and the month of the camp's liberation (January 1945) are not reported on. L: That would amount to an extrapolated figure of perhaps 120,000 victims ­ a far cry from the million or so Jewish victims at Auschwitz we have been hearing of for decades. R: Now be careful. The Death Books recorded only the deaths of registered de- tainees. Any deportees who were allegedly led directly into the gas chambers are said to have never been registered at all and would, in that case, not appear in any of those records. I will come back a little later to this particular topic. I will now touch upon another example of Benz' incompetence: Poland. Aside from the Soviet Union, Poland was, at that time, the country with the largest Jewish population in Europe. The census of 1931 reported some 3.1 million Jews in Poland. To arrive at his number of victims, Benz does three things: first of all he raises the initial figure by assuming that the increase in the Jewish population up to 1939 was the same as for the Poles at large, thus arriving at 3.45 million Jews at the outbreak of the war with Germany. Then he assumes 51 Certain data taken from the death books have been published: Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (ed.), Die Sterbebücher von Auschwitz, Saur, Munich 1995. 52 Cf. E. Aynat, "Die Sterbebücher von Auschwitz," VffG 2(3) (1998), p. 188-197; cf. E. Aynat, "Consid- eraciones sobre la deportación de judíos de Francia y Bélgica al este de Europa en 1942," in E. Aynat, Estudios sobre el "Holocausto," Graficas Hurtado, Valencia 1994. 37 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST that all the Jews who were living in the area later taken over by Germany actu- ally stayed there, which gives him a total of two million Polish Jews under German occupation.53 Finally, to compute the number of those who perished, he deducts from that figure the number of Jews allegedly still in Poland in 1945, i.e. some 200,000.54 Now I ask you: what is wrong with this kind of rea- soning? L: How does Benz know how many Jews would declare themselves to be Jewish in post-war Poland, a country which was as radically anti-Semitic as ever? R: Precisely. The actual figure could have been much higher. For example, a Brit- ish-American committee of investigation into the problem of the Jewish situa- tion in Europe announced at a press conference in February 1946, according to United Press, that there were still 800,000 Jews in post-war Poland who all sought to emigrate.55 Any other ideas? L: Benz does not mention the possibility that the Polish Jews had fled to the east before the advancing German troops. R: Correct. Anything else? L: Poland was moved west by a couple of hundred miles after 1945. At that time, the situation all over Europe was chaotic. How can anyone claim to know how many Jews were living in Poland at that time? Can the Poland of 1945 be de- fined at all? R: Good argument. More suggestions? None? Then let me start with the census of 1931. Benz' extrapolation of the Jewish population by assigning to it a growth factor similar to the other ethnic groups is off the mark. Poland, in the years between the two world wars, was a nation that subjected its minorities to an enormous pressure of assimilation or emigra- tion by means of persecution culminating in occasional pogroms. That goes for ethnic Germans, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians as well as for Jews. It must be remembered that until the so-called "Crystal Night" in Germany in late 1938, Poland was regarded as more anti-Semitic than Hitler's Germany. The German historian Hermann Graml, a member of the post-war German academic estab- lishment, has shown that some 100,000 Jews emigrated from Poland every sin- gle year after 1933.56 Now those were mainly young people able to procreate. Therefore the number of Jews in Poland overall was probably much lower than 3 million by 1939, closer to 2 million, I would say. Then we have the flight of the population, the Jews in particular, before the advancing German army at the outbreak of the war. Whereas Benz assumes 53 W. Benz (ed.), op. cit. (note 42), p. 443. 54 Ibid., p. 492f. 55 Keesings Archiv der Gegenwart, vol. 16/17, Rheinisch-westfälischesVerlagskontor, Essen 1948, p. 651, Item B of Feb. 15, 1946. The Allied occupation forces in postwar years officially registered the weekly (!) arrival of up to 5,000 Polish-Jewish emigrants in the western zones of occupation alone, W. Jacob- meyer, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977) p. 120-135, esp. p. 125. 56 H. Graml, Die Auswanderung der Juden aus Deutschland zwischen 1933 und 1939, in Institut für Zeitgeschichte (ed.), Gutachten des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 1, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Mu- nich 1958, p. 80. 38 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST some 300,000 Jews to have fled, Sanning shows that Jewish charity organiza- tions at that time mentioned 600,000 to 1,000,000 Polish Jews as having es- caped to the USSR and having been deported to Siberia. All in all, Sanning concludes that only some 750,000 Polish Jews ended up on the German side in 1939,57 some 1,250,000 fewer than Benz. You can see how easy it is to maxi- mize figures like that. I will not go into this more deeply. I only wanted to underline some methodic weaknesses of Benz' work. L: Now we still don't know how many Jews, in your opinion, perished in the Holocaust. My impression is that you tend to believe Sanning rather than Benz. R: I feel that Sanning's book needs to be updated, because of its limited use of primary sources and because it is already more than twenty years old by now. I believe his general approach is the correct one, even though I would hold back with respect to the exact number. Here, we simply need further research by critical scholars who would not be afraid of publishing unpopular results. L: But don't we have lists with the names of six million victims of the Holocaust? R: The Yad Vashem Research Center in Israel has compiled such a list. As of today, it contains about three million names, with one million stemming from published sources, the great majority of the remainder coming from written re- ports made by relatives, friends, or locals.58 Yad Vashem's promotion brochure states in this regard:59 "This is a race against time ­ search the site today, submit unrecorded names and pictures, and help ensure that every Holocaust victim has a place in our collective memory. [...] Gather information ­ talk to your family: As you may not know about relatives who might have perished in the Holocaust, we recommend that you first contact your family: parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles to collect as much information as possible about all of those persons that might [sic] have been murdered. [...] If you have family mem- bers who were murdered in the Holocaust, [...] you may either submit names and details online via the site, or use the attached Page of Testi- mony" L: In other words, anyone can register victims with Yad Vashem. R: Precisely. For example, Yad Vashem mentions a case where a local inhabitant simply reported all the Jews living in the area before the war as having per- ished, for the simple reason that:60 "After the war, he realized that no Jews returned to his home region [...]" L: Does anyone check whether the indications are correct? After all, it could be that those missing persons are now living somewhere in the U.S., in Israel, or elsewhere. R: As far as I know, nothing is checked. You can order such forms from Yad Vashem, fill them out and send them back. The address is Hall of Names, Yad 57 W.N. Sanning, op. cit. (note 41), pp. 39-46. 58 www.yadvashem.org/remembrance/names/site/online.html 59 www.yadvashem.org/remembrance/names/site/Names_Collection.pdf 60 www.yadvashem.org/about_yad/magazine/data3/whats_in_a_name.html 39 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Vashem, P.O.B 3477, 91034 Jerusalem, Israel; Table 3: Officially certi- Telephone: 00972-02-6443582; via Email: fied deaths in German concentration camps 61 names.research@yadvashem.org.il. L: Couldn't I just as well send them data on my Auschwitz 60,056 dog? Bergen-Belsen 6,853 R: Now listen. I don't think that this kind of thing is Buchenwald 20,687 going on, but it would seem to me that there is no Dachau 18,456 way to avoid errors, double entries, or reports on Flossenbürg 18,334 survivors. In any case, this Hall of Names is a Groß-Rosen 10,951 rather insignificant source, from a scientific point Majdanek 8,831 of view. Mauthausen 78,859 L: What criteria would have to be established by Mittelbau 7,468 Yad Vashem to obtain your approval? Natzweiler 4,431 R: Yad Vashem would have to request documents Neuengamme 5,785 proving, first of all, the presence of the persons Ravensbrück 3,639 concerned at the place in question and demon- Sachsenhausen 5,014 strating, secondly, that these persons actually did Stutthof 12,634 perish as a result of events of the Holocaust. Theresienstadt 29,375 L: Now that is asking a bit much, isn't it, if you keep Others 4,704 in mind that most of these victims died an TOTAL 296,077 anonymous death, without being registered in any way and without a death certificate, and were then burnt or simply put under. R: That is the accepted view, and I would say you are right in underlining that kind of dilemma. But, on the other hand, to accept simply at face value the statements by someone who may or may not be acting in good faith and who may not really know anything about the fate of the people in question is a far cry from a scientific approach. The Tracing Center of the International Committee of the Red Cross at Arol- sen, Germany, is proceeding in a very different manner. Deaths in German camps will only be registered there if they can be supported by unquestionable documents. L: And at how many victims did the Red Cross arrive? R: Up to 1993, Arolsen sent out lists of registered deaths in German camps in reply to inquiries. After being strongly criticized for this, it stopped this prac- tice. L: And why were they criticized? R: Let's take a look at the figures in Table 3. They add up to about 300,000 deaths of detainees of any religious denomination. L: Only 60,000 victims for Auschwitz? And only 300,000 altogether? If that were anywhere near the truth it would be sensational! R: In Germany such a claim would be regarded as scandalous or even criminal rather than sensational, and the Red Cross was criticized for that very reason. But before we jump to any conclusions, let us take a look at Table 4, which 61 Letter of the Tracing Center of the International Committee of the Red Cross, statistic last updated on Jan. 1, 1993. 40 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST lists the figures for a number of these Table 4: Documented numbers of camps resulting directly or indirectly victims in various camps of the from original German camp documents. Third Reich You will see that the Arolsen figures Data from preserved Arolsen camp documents62 1993 amount to only 55% of the data result- ing from the documents of the camp Auschwitz 135,500 60,056 administrations themselves. This would Buchenwald 33,462 20,687 mean that the total applicable to all Dachau 27,839 18,456 camps assessed by Arolsen could well Majdanek 42,200 8,831 be in the order of magnitude of half a Mauthausen 86,195 78,859 million. Sachsenhausen 20,575 5,014 We have to keep in mind, though, that Stutthof 26,100 12,634 the Arolsen list does not cover all TOTAL 371,871 204,537 camps. The camps that have been de- scribed as pure extermination camps such as Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, in which murders without any sort of registration are said to have taken place and for which, obviously, no documents could have been pre- served, have not been taken into account, and this also goes for the various ghettos. Furthermore, mass murder of unregistered Jews is claimed to have oc- curred at Auschwitz with a consequent lack of data. Another thing we don't know is the proportion of Jews in the total, although it is arguable that they rep- resented the largest group of victims. 1.7. Holocaust Survivors L: Why do you think that the names collected by Yad Vashem do not even come close to the total number of victims? R: I will answer that question from two points of view ­ a microscopic one and a macroscopic one. Let us first look at the matter from a microscopic perspective ­ of the persons immediately concerned. Let's suppose that you and your family were deported. On arrival at a collecting site, the able-bodied men were separated from the rest of their family and sent to forced labor camps elsewhere. Women and children were taken to special camps, and old people removed to yet another place and housed in segregated camps, according to sex. Depending on the requirements and the whims of the camp administrations, all of these people might then be moved around repeatedly. Towards the end of the war, they would be concen- trated in the shrinking number of camps not yet liberated by the Allies. The ones who survive will, in the post-war months, end up in still other loca- tions from where they will scatter every which way once they have the oppor- tunity. Some of them will keep their surname, many are fed up with being im- mediately recognized as Jews and will take on a new name in their new home ­ 62 Jürgen Graf, "National Socialist Concentration Camps: Legend and Reality," in G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 283-309. 41 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST a Spanish name in South America, an English-sounding name in the U.S., or often a Hebrew one in Israel. Now let me ask you: How would these people find out what happened to their relatives? L: That would be almost impossible, although today, with the Internet, there ought to be a way. R: It is certainly easier now than it was in the first so many decades after the war, but we are also facing a new difficulty in that the second generation would have to find out, first of all, what sort of relatives they should look for. But let me take up a few of the "human interest" stories that appear sporadi- cally in local papers and tell about miraculous reunions of families that were dispersed by the Holocaust: Relatives who believed that everyone else had per- ished somehow managed to find each other again, be it by diligent searches, or by sheer luck. I will give you an example from an American newspaper:63 "The Steinbergs once flourished in a small Jewish village in Poland. That was before Hitler's death camps. Now more than 200 far-flung survivors and descendants are gathered here to share a special four-day celebration that began, appropriately, on Thanksgiving day. Relatives came Thursday from Canada, France, England, Argentina, Columbia, Israel and from at least 13 cities across the United States. `It's fabulous,' said Iris Krasnow of Chicago, `There are five generations here ­ from 3 months old to 85. People are crying and having a wonderful time. It's almost like World War II refu- gee reunion.'" L: But those are individual cases! R: Yes and no. To start with, we see that the scenario I sketched out above actu- ally does exist. You are right in the sense that so far only a few cases have be- come known. But remember: reports about miraculous reunions of families are reported mainly in local media. Who would search all these sources for such stories? What I have just presented I came across quite by accident. There is no systematic analysis. And then: how many of those miraculous family reunions or the identification of lost relatives would engender a press release? Also: what is the probability of finding anyone in the face of the difficulties we have been talking about? Or, if we put things differently, how many mutually un- known surviving relatives do we need for some of them to a) run into each other by accident, b) be mentioned in the media and c) be brought to our atten- tion? L: But can't we assume that the Holocaust survivors, after the war, left no stone unturned to obtain information on their relatives? Because, if you were right, there should have been many more reports about Jewish survivors finding lost relatives. 63 "Miracle meeting as `dead' sister is discovered," State-Times (Baton Rouge), Nov. 24, 1978, p. 8; see also Jewish Chronicle, May 6, 1994; "Miracles still coming out of Holocaust," St. Petersburg Times, Oct. 30, 1992; "Piecing a family back together," Chicago Tribune, June 29, 1987; San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 25, 1978, p. 6; Northern California Jewish Bulletin, Oct. 16, 1992; cf. JHR, 13(1) (1993), p. 45. 42 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: I am not so sure about that and I will back that up with the testimony given by a prominent witness, a man by the name of Arnold Friedman. When he appeared at a trial in 1985 as witness to the alleged evil deeds at Auschwitz, he (A) an- swered the questions of the defense (F) as follows:64 "Q: Have you ever heard of the international tracing service at Arolsen, West Germany, that's attached to the Red Cross, I would suggest? You never heard of that? A: No. Q: You never made attempts to check with authorities to trace your family, or members of your family through ­ after the War? A: No. [...] Q: I see. So you have no personal knowledge of the ultimate outcome of the members of your family. What became of them you really don't know. A: No documented evidence, no. [...] Q: Would you agree that it [people actually finding each other after many, many years] was because after the Second World War many people were displaced all over Europe, some into Russian sectors, some into American, some into the British, some assumed the others were dead. Right? A: Yes. Q: And you're not familiar with the tracing service of Arolsen? A. No." R: So, after the war, Friedman never even tried to find out anything about his rela- tives. L: But you cannot generalize that. R: You are right, but we have to accept the possibility that, when the war had ended, many survivors were themselves so convinced by the Holocaust propa- ganda that they did not even think of searching for relatives. The question as to how many Jewish families were permanently disrupted by those events and mistakenly believed that everyone else had perished can be answered only by a world-wide statistical assessment of Holocaust survivors, and even then only to a certain degree. There exists in Israel an official organization, Amcha, which takes care of Holocaust survivors. According to this source, there were between 834,000 and 960,000 survivors world-wide in 1997. Amcha defines a Holocaust survivor as follows:65 "A Holocaust survivor will be defined as any Jew who lived in a country at the time when it was: ­ under Nazi regime; ­ under Nazi occupation; ­ un- der regime of Nazi collaborators as well as any Jew who fled due to the above regime or occupation." 64 Queen versus Zündel, Toronto, Ontario, Kanada, January 11, 1985, interrogation of Arnold Friedman, pp. 355-450; here pp. 446f. 65 Adina Mishkoff, Administrative Assistant Amcha, Jerusalem, email adina@amcha.org of Aug. 13, 1997, 16:17:20 CDT, to the mailing list h-holocaust@h-net.msu.edu; E. Spanic, H. Factor, V. Strumin- sky, "Number of Living Holocaust Survivors," Amcha Press Release, PO Box 2930, I-91029 Jerusa- lem, July 27, 1997 (www.corax.org/revisionism/nonsense/19970813survivors.html). 43 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Now that is a rather generous definition, I would say. If we follow it, all the Jews who emigrated from Germany between 1933 and the beginning of the mass deportations in 1941 would be survivors, as would be all those who fled to the east before the advancing German army. R: Correct. In that way, you maximize the number of survivors; that may be prof- itable if you claim compensation for them. L: Does that mean you feel those figures to be exaggerated? R: Let me put it this way. In 1998, i.e. one year after those figures were published by Amcha, there was a statement by Rolf Bloch, the Jewish head of the Swiss Holocaust Fund. This organization was negotiating compensation for Jewish Holocaust survivors to be paid by Swiss banks, and Bloch claimed that there were still more than 1,000,000 such survivors,66 and in 2000, the office of the Israeli Prime Minister again reported that there were still more than 1 million.67 L: Hence, the figure could well be motivated politically or financially. R: The number of survivors does have a psychological significance for the Ger- man-Jewish relationship.68 Now the interesting question is: if there were 1 mil- lion Holocaust survivors in 2000, how many were there in 1945? L: Lots more, I would say, because the majority of them must have died a natural death in the meantime. R: Statistically, you can come up with a pretty good approximation if you know the age distribution of those Jews still alive in 2000. Actuaries in life insurance companies have fairly precise life expectancy data, which allow you to go back in time to the original strength of a population group. Unfortunately we lack exact data on the age distribution of Holocaust survivors, although we do have some information. I have done some extensive calculations elsewhere, on the basis of various assumptions concerning age distribution. The result was that in 1945 there existed between 3.5 and 5 million holocaust survivors.69 L: Out of how many Jews in total? R: If you include all the Jews who ever lived in areas that later came under NS domination, you would have a total of 8 million.70 L: That would mean 3 to 4.5 million Jews missing. R: In the worst of cases. L: A frightening figure, still. R: Even if a significant number of them cannot be debited to the NS regime, for example those Jews who disappeared in Stalin's GULag or who died as sol- 66 Handelszeitung (Switzerland), Feb. 4, 1998. 67 Norman Finkelstein, "How the Arab Israeli War of 1967 gave birth to a memorial industry," London Review of Books, Jan. 6, 2000. 68 For example: The American Jewish Committee, "Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe deserve pen- sions from the German Government," open letter to the German federal government, signed by 83 U.S. Senators, New York Times, Aug. 17, 1997 (see VffG 1(4)(1997), p. 290; www.vho.org/News/D/News4_97.html#wiedergutmachung); Erik Kirschbaum, "Jewish leader urges Bonn to pay Holocaust claims," Reuter, Bonn, Aug. 19, 1997; "Jewish group rejects offer to Holocaust survivors," Reuter, Bonn, Aug. 24, 1997; "Jewish group to issue list of holocaust fund recipients," Reuter, New York, Sept. 17, 1997. 69 G. Rudolf, op. cit. (note 44), pp. 209-211. 70 W.N. Sanning, op. cit. (note 41), p. 182. 44 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST diers or underground fighters. But I do not wish to give any definite figure for the survivors, because the statistical basis for any computation is too small and would yield results with too wide a margin of error for any meaningful conclu- sions to be drawn from them. What I did want to show was that there were millions of such people after the war dispersed all over the world. Many of them believed that their relatives had perished, in spite of the fact that we have seen that at least half of the Jews that lived in areas, which at some point in time came under Hitler's direct or indi- rect influence, did in fact survive. Therefore, the cases of miraculous individual reunions that were cited above were not miracles at all, but were based on a fairly high statistical probability. Against that, the names collected by Yad Vashem are based on unverified assertions and should be scrapped. L: But we still don't know how many Jews perished in the Holocaust. R: I will not even give you a definitive answer, for the simple reason that I don't know. If you want to form your own opinion, I would advise you to study the works I have cited. All I wanted to show here was that while no one really knows, the figure of 6 million is more than questionable. Once you have ac- cepted this, you will agree that more penetrating questions into the whether and the how are indeed appropriate. L: Well, if you don't know, as you say, what do you believe? R: "Believing" is not the right term to be used here, in my opinion. Let's rather say "hold to be probable." I think that something like half a million would come close. L: Would the number of applications for compensation addressed to the German authorities allow us to estimate the number of survivors? R: Only to a very limited degree. Since the West German state was established in 1949, the West German authorities paid damages to all sorts of individuals and groups who claimed to have been persecuted during the Third Reich. Up to the year 2000, Germany has paid some 100 billion worth of today's U.S.-dollars. According to what we can gather from published data, we know that more than five million such applications have been submitted by the end of the 1980s, al- though it is not clear from the information given whether the applicant is Jew- ish or not. Furthermore, groups of persons, families for example, can submit collective applications, and anyone can submit more than one form, depending on the nature of the damage suffered ­ physical or mental health, material, or even a damage to a potential career.71 If the German authorities wanted to, they would possibly be able to come up with somewhat more precise figures, but even so, those figures would probably not be published for fear of their being "misused." L: But what about data in encyclopedias? If you compare the data for Jews before and after war... R: You have to be very careful when you do that. Encyclopedias and other such works cannot really be called reliable sources in the strict scientific sense of the 71 G. Rudolf, op. cit. (note 44), p. 208. 45 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST word. If you take that route, you will immediately come under a barrage of counter-arguments by official historiography and end up looking ridiculous. That also goes for items from newspapers or magazines. After all, journalists have never been famous for a penetrating knowledge of the topics they discuss. 1.8. No Permanent Truths R: To wrap up this first lecture, let us now turn a little to politics, also in order to give those of you a chance to voice their views that are more of a political na- ture. I have just used the term "official historiography," which is really a misnomer, for in a democratic society, science is not being told by officials what is true and what is not. That is a characteristic of totalitarian states. Unfortunately, many European states, the three German-speaking countries among them, pre- scribe a certain view of history by penal law ­ section 130 of the German penal code, section 3h of the Prohibition Law in Austria, and section 241bis of the Swiss penal code prohibit the denial of genocidal actions of the NS regime. L: And that is certainly justified! R: Why do you think that? L: After the horrible crimes that the Nazis have committed, we have the duty to see to it that such things will never happen again. R: No one would argue against genocide being made a crime... L: But you have to start much sooner and take action against anyone inciting peo- ple in that way or condoning these things. R: Inciting people to commit a crime or condoning a crime are something quite different, which is taken care of elsewhere in the penal codes. Here we are talk- ing about a discussion of historical facts or assertions. That has nothing to do with inciting anyone or condoning a crime. L: No, but it is a case of belittling these crimes or even negating them altogether. Anyone who does that, actually wants to sweep these crimes against humanity under the carpet or even open up the way for them to happen all over again. At heart, revisionism is an underhanded way of re-admitting National Socialism into decent society by removing its most obvious "scarlet letter" ­ the murder of the Jews. And if we allow that to happen, and allow fascism to be acceptable once more, then a new Nazi dictatorship will spring up and we will have an- other genocide. For that not to happen, we have to do all we can to prevent the Nazis from being white-washed. R: You would say, then, that anyone who utters fundamentally different opinions regarding the Holocaust is basically intending to white-wash the National So- cialists in order to re-introduce right-wing totalitarian ideologies? L: What else could prompt anyone to deny against all evidence what no one of sound mind could put into doubt? R: Strong language, that. It is based on erroneous assumptions, though. First of all this would mean that you yourself are in possession of the ultimate truth when 46 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST it comes to the Holocaust. May I ask what makes you so sure, what confers on you this almost papal infallibility? L: More than fifty years of profound research by thousands of historians. So many people cannot all be wrong. R: In the same way, the views of a thousand years could not be wrong when, in the 17th century, it was stressed that the earth was flat. Giordano Bruno was sent to the stake because of that, and Galileo Galilei was banned for the same reason. And what about the fact that witches were riding on broomsticks and had intercourse with the Devil? That too was an obvious fact for centuries. L: Now those are totally different things. R: Why is that? L: Because in those cases scientific facts themselves were disregarded. R: And you would say that in the case of research into the Holocaust by the estab- lished historians this is not so? L: Of course, as opposed to the patent-medicine you are trying to sell under the label of revisionism, which is totally lacking any kind of scientific principle. R: All right, then, let us take a look at those principles. Let's start with the most basic one: any researcher must be allowed to propose any kind of working hy- pothesis, and any imaginable result must, in principle, be admissible and ac- ceptable. Now let me ask you: is it possible, in Germany for instance, to pro- pose the thesis that there has been no systematic mass murder of Jews in the Third Reich, and is it legal to arrive, at the end of such a research, at the con- clusion that such a thesis is essentially correct? L: That is prohibited. R: Quite so. Now what sort of result do you think German historians will arrive at? L: But historians in other countries, where this is not prohibited, have been com- ing to the same conclusions for decades! R: That may be, but it does not concern us here. My question is: if the whole sci- entific establishment, as well as the media, the politicians, the judicial system, and more or less the public in general are flouting the most fundamental princi- ple of science, why are the victims of such a limitation or denial of scientific freedom accused of being unscientific? Any historian, but also any layman, who accepts or condones that certain hypotheses or results are made illegal ­ whether they concern the Holocaust, witches, or the shape of the earth ­ is by the same token relinquishing his position as a man of science and even be- comes an enemy of science! L: We are not arguing for or against science. We are trying to defend democracy and human rights against their enemies! R: You are saying that anyone who disagrees with certain scientific theses is an enemy of human rights? L: People who set out to make National Socialism presentable again are the real enemies of science, because they use science only as a pretext to promote their despicable political aims. 47 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Does this mean that you would accuse the revisionists of feigning to argue scientifically only for political reasons? L: Correct. That's what is called pseudo-science. R: All right, let's keep open for a while the question whether you are right or wrong in this case. We will take it up again later, after we have learned more about revisionist arguments. Let us talk about another scientific principle, or rather an epistemological principle. I am thinking of the undisputed fact that no cognitive result can claim to be the absolute and complete truth. Any research result is open to revisions or refutations if new evidence or interpretations are encountered. A scientific thesis is characterized by the fact that it must in prin- ciple be open to such refutations. If the Holocaust is regarded as being accessi- ble to science, it cannot be an exception to this rule. L: But that does not mean that pseudo-scientific refutations will be accepted! R: You would say, it seems, that any attempt at disproving the Holocaust is neces- sarily guided by political motives, that is, rehabilitation of Hitler and his re- gime. L: That is correct. R: Then you would consider as being politically unacceptable or even inadmissi- ble anything, which could directly or indirectly promote the rehabilitation or moral exoneration of Hitler? L: Now don't tell me you are promoting that kind of thing! R: That is not the question. I don't care what kind of political views you have and what you consider to be immoral. What I am trying to bring out is that you consider it to be politically reprehensible and therefore unacceptable to come up with any result which could morally exonerate Hitler. Now my question is this: are you motivated by political or by scientific principles in this respect? L: Well, fighting Nazis is political, of course. R: Thank you. Let me ask you, what justification you can come up with to accuse others of having political motives, when you yourself just admitted that you are driven by nothing else than politics? L: But my political motives are noble, their motives are not! R: And you are the one to decide not only, what is going on in other people's head, but also, how to asses it morally? Fact is that science can refuse results only if it has scientific reasons for doing so. Non-scientific motives are unacceptable. This is another characteristic of scientific work, which you apparently are not willing to adhere to. A scientist must not be influenced in his research by the effect his results may have on the moral stance of any individual or political system. A result has to be exact, co- herent, supported by evidence, and free from contradictions. Political views are of absolutely no concern in this respect. To give an example: What would you think of an historian postulating that one must not produce any results which would morally or politically speak in favor of Djinghis Khan and his Mongolian hordes? L: That would provoke only derision and mockery. 48 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: And rightly so, for anyone making such absurd postulates would only have unscientific, i.e. anti-scientific aims. The fact that most people accept such out- rageous political arguments with respect to National Socialism does not render it scientifically acceptable. However, it does tell you much about the state of our society. What do you think is required to condition almost the entire world to the point where all decent rationality applied to all other historical or scien- tific controversies is cast overboard and replaced with paranoid, psychopathic reactions when it comes to this one topic? Why are we not allowed to discuss this topic as any other? Who has such a gigantic interest in silencing dissenters that they went to such great lengths in brainwashing the entire world, so that almost all of us react like mere Pavlovian dogs, barking senselessly as soon as a certain button called "Holocaust" or "Jews" is pressed? Let me relegate to a later lecture the question as to whether Holocaust revisio- nism is scientific or only pseudo-scientific, once we have gone into some methods, working procedures, and arguments used by revisionism and its op- ponents. Let me now address the question if Holocaust revisionism represents in any way a danger for democracy or human rights as has been argued by one of our listeners. L: To the extent that revisionism is furthering ideologies, which do not recognize human rights. R: Now wait a moment! Would you believe it possible that the claims regarding German atrocities were helpful to Stalin in his fight against NS Germany? L: Well, the discovery of fascist atrocities did indeed morally strengthen the anti- fascist effort. R: Did it help Stalin? L: Probably, in a more general sense. R: Then the thesis that National Socialism carried out the systematic industrial extermination of human beings promoted an ideology and a regime which were, undoubtedly, a danger for democracy and human rights. L: But... R: Or would you deny that Stalin and totalitarian communism of the Soviet type embodied such dangers? L: No... R: So here you have a totalitarian regime in Russia that in 1918, when the NS party was established in Germany, had already murdered hundreds of thou- sands. It had murdered millions, when Hitler rose to power, and it had mur- dered several ten millions by the time the war broke out between Poland on the one hand, which had mercilessly persecuted and ethnically cleansed the Ger- man and Russian minorities on its territory,72 and Germany and the Soviet Un- ion on the other hand in September 1939. Next, whereas Hitler did nothing af- ter the war against Poland, Stalin attacked Finland, invaded and annexed Esto- nia and Latvia, and took Bessarabia from Romania without provocation and 72 For this see, e.g., Richard Blake, Orphans of Versailles. The Germans in Western Poland, 1918-1939, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1993. 49 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST with brute force. Yet instead of perceiving Stalin as the greater threat for world peace and for the entire humanity, which he ultimately was, the entire world declared war on Germany and decided to support Stalin unconditionally. At that time, and even until the summer of 1941, Hitler's death toll was a teeny tiny fraction of Stalin's victims. And today, the sum of all victims of commu- nism, including those in China and the Killing Fields of Cambodia, number many ten millions. Why then is it that communism in general and Stalin in particular are never referred to as the ultimate evil? And why is it that communists and other left- wing radicals, who dominate Holocaustism, are tolerated everywhere in the world today, whereas National Socialists are equated with the devil? What kind of logic is hiding behind that? I tell you what logic is behind that: none at all. All this is driven by mere irrational emotions, induced by one-sided, distorted, and false historical information, because objectively seen there is no way that calling National Socialism more evil than communism can be justified with any rational argument. The opposite is true. And that is what it boils down to: You are not motivated by a rational analysis of the facts, but by prejudices and emotions. These are actually so strong that they not only prevent you from looking objectively at the facts, but they even drive you to deny others to look rationally at the facts and draw their own con- clusions. And that is what you fear: that people come up with their own conclu- sions that differ from yours. L: I am not defending any totalitarian regime, neither Nazi nor communist. The Nazi atrocities did not, in the end, constitute the justification of communism, they justified democracy as we know it. R: When compared to the official Holocaust lore, anyone can feel morally supe- rior, be it Stalin or those alleged democrats who handed over the people of eastern Europe to Stalin's raping and plundering hordes and who rubbed out the people living in Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki in bombing raids. Hence, the Holocaust is a convenient shield behind which other mass murderers can comfortably hide. Don't get me wrong. I do not intend to establish a moral ranking of the mass murderers of World War Two, which was, in itself, the greatest mass murder of all time. What I am driving at is this: if you have to throw out ­ or even declare to be illegal ­ any historical or other scientific thesis simply because they can be used or misused by some morally or politically reprehensible system, which might thus further its own aims, how many theses would we be left with, which could be considered harmless or immune to such abuse? If revisionism is reprehensible because it is welcomed by right-wing totalitarian ideologies, why is Holocaustism not reprehensible serving, as it does, much more dangerous left-wing totalitarian ideologies in a corresponding way? L: Now what is Holocaustism supposed to be? R: It is a handy name for the thesis complementary to Holocaust revisionism, the thesis which asserts that a systematic, industrial extermination of Jews was 50 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST practiced by the Third Reich with the gas chamber being the most widely used tool. Isn't it a fact that a scientific thesis cannot, in and by itself, be made responsi- ble if it is misused by whoever might take it up, in the same way as a scientist who comes up with results or who makes discoveries or inventions cannot be made responsible if someone else makes use of these findings for immoral rea- sons? Is Otto Hahn who was the first man to split the atom responsible for the victims at Hiroshima? Or would Gutenberg be to blame for the printing of in- flammatory articles of any sort? L: But we are talking here about concrete acts by revisionists who deny historical facts and at the same time glorify fascism. R: Then give me the name of any revisionist scholar who does that kind of thing. Only one. L: Ernst Zündel. He is proud to be a National Socialist.73 R: I do not know about that, but Ernst Zündel is not a revisionist scholar. L: Ahh, he isn't, is he? Then what is he? R: He is a designer, an editor, a political activist and pacifist. L: That almost sounds like you are distancing yourself from your fellow revision- ist Ernst Zündel. With all due respect for the noble and pure sciences: you can- not possibly put an Ernst Zündel into a lesser category than yourself! After all, Zündel has searched the truth, fought his path step by step through a jungle of lies, and who suffered enormously under the persecution resulting from that. And besides, it is much better and certainly more honorable to make politics with knowledge that one considers to be true than to make politics with lies, as the establishment is obviously doing. R: You misunderstood me. I know Ernst Zündel well and consider him to be a very decent, kind, and rational man, even if we disagree somewhat politically, although I never heard him say that he considers himself to be a National So- cialist or to be proud to be one. And Zündel certainly does not glorify fascism, what ever that means. And finally, I do agree with you that it is certainly hon- orable to make politics with decency. But that doesn't make Zündel a scholar. Let me now turn that political table: take Hermann Langbein and Eugen Ko- gon, two of the most important authors and activists on Holocaustism in the German-speaking countries. Both were communists. L: So what? What are you trying to prove? R: I am trying to prove that political extremes can be found on both sides of the political spectrum. Therefore we should be watchful in both directions. Or think about the ethnic make-up of the revisionists. One would expect that Ger- mans would dominate them, but that is not true at all. As a matter of fact, the French dominate revisionism by numbers. The author of these lines, an ethnic German, is an exception to that rule. In contrast to that, look at the following long, yet still very incomplete list of well-known Holocaust scholars and pro- moters, all of which are Jewish: 73 On Ernst Zündel see www.zundelsite.org. 51 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Yitzak Arad Alex Grobman Arno J. Mayer Hannah Arendt Israel Gutman Robert van Pelt Yehuda Bauer Raul Hilberg Léon Poliakov Richard Breitman Serge Klarsfeld Gerald Reitlinger Lucy Dawidowicz Shmuel Krakowski Pierre Vidal-Naquet Alexander Donat Claude Lanzmann Georges Wellers Gerald Fleming Walter Laqueur Simon Wiesenthal Martin Gilbert Deborah Lipstadt Efraim Zuroff Daniel J. Goldhagen It is needless to say that all these individuals are very hostile toward the Third Reich and have an interest in emphasizing the suffering of their fellow Jews. Hence, their efforts to write about the Holocaust are driven by a clear agenda. Does that mean that their writings are false from the outset? L: Of course not. R: So why then would it be any different with the revisionists? And besides, you will never find a revisionist rejecting a thesis by a Jewish scholar merely be- cause of the heritage or views and thus a possible bias of this scholar. But let's leave politics and go back to human rights. L: Well, fundamentally, I think that, when you consider all the things the Nazis have done, it is imperative for us to see to it that it does not happen again. And if, to do that, it becomes necessary to prohibit anything, which might cause anxiety among Jews or other minorities, we should take appropriate action. Af- ter all, the Germans have a particular responsibility towards minorities. R: What you are saying is that in order to prevent books from being burned and minorities from being persecuted in Germany all over again, they now have to burn books and persecute minorities. L: Now hold it, I never said that! R: But you did. To keep certain books from being burned and certain minorities from being persecuted we have to burn other books and persecute other minori- ties. L: Are you insinuating that today in German books are being burned and dissi- dents sent to jail? R: I do, sir. In Germany today, books by political or historical dissidents are con- fiscated and destroyed as weapons of a crime, which in most cases means that they are burned.74 And what difference does it make whether a political or his- torical dissident is sent to a concentration camp as a communist, a Jehovah wit- ness, or a socialist, or whether he is sent to jail for being a National Socialist, a right-wing extremist, or a revisionist? 74 Abendzeitung (Munich), March 7/8, 1998: "Die Restexemplare werden gegebenenfalls in einer Müll- verbrennungsanlage vernichtet." (The remaining copies, will eventually be destroyed in a garbage in- cineration plant); with respect to R.J. Eibicht, Hellmut Diwald, op. cit. (note 6); www.germarrudolf.com/persecute/docs/ListPos58_d.pdf; ~_e.pdf) Cf. Zur Zeit (Vienna), no. 9/1998 (Febr. 27, 1998): "Vor 65 Jahren geschah solches noch öffentlich, heute wird dies klammheimlich in einer Müllverbrennungsanlage erledigt." (65 Years ago, this was done in public, today it is taken care of behind closed doors in a garbage incineration plant; ~/ListPos59_d.pdf; ~_e.pdf). 52 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: That is really absurd. You cannot equate Nazi-Germany and the Germany of today. In our time, Germans have to commit a crime and be sentenced in a court of law before going to jail, whereas in Nazi-Germany that was not always the case. R: You are quite right with respect to these important formalities, although in modern Germany they are merely used as a very effective and deceptive screen to hide the same kind of persecutions, as I will explain in more detail in the last lecture. But I was not trying to equate the two systems of government. My in- tention was merely to call your attention to a paradoxical situation: the revi- sionist minorities and right-wing nationalists in today's Germany ­ and many other European nations ­ are persecuted for opinions, even if uttered in the most peaceful way, and their writings burned, on the grounds that this is to pre- vent new book burnings and a new persecution of minorities. In chapter 5.3. I shall expound further the problem of censorship in Germany today.75 In concluding this issue, let me state that once again the German peo- ple is learning the completely wrong lesson. In the light of the past, the only right and proper attitude of Germany would be the strict and impartial granting of human rights for all. This time, though, for a change, they refuse to grant those rights to the other side. Apparently Germany is caught in a vicious circle when it comes to this question. The pendulum is still swinging too wildly be- tween two extremes. It is about time for it to come to rest in the center. I wish to end this lecture by making a somewhat trivial statement. One is not born or raised a revisionist. You become a revisionist on account of certain events in your life. In other words: nearly all revisionists were once solid be- lievers in the Holocaust before they began to doubt the dogma they had been handed down. Each one of them may have had different reasons for this change of mind, but they all have one thing in common: being human, they simply cannot walk away from their doubts or repress them. Doubt is something inher- ent to the human soul, as is the search for answers, which may help cure this painful state of mind. Doubt is the systematic attempt at finding the truth below the easy superficial answers. That is the fundamental difference between an animal and a human being. For that reason I ask you: what is the ideal image that a society has of man when it makes doubting reprehensible and tries to curtail the search for answers by means of the penal code? L: Particularly so, if this society considers itself to be enlightened and encourages its members, in every other respect, to be critical and not to accept truths com- ing from above at face value. R: Right. After all, all Germans should have learned that unquestioning obedience is something that has led them widely astray in the past. L: Now you are going down a dangerous road, leading the way to doubt. 75 Germar Rudolf, Eine Zensur findet statt! Redeverbote und Bücherverbrennung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Castle Hill Publishers, Hastings 2005 (www.vho.org/D/ezfs; Engl. see www.vho.org/censor/D.html#GB); cf. also Claus Nordbruch, Zensur in Deutschland, Universitas, Mu- nich 1998; Jürgen Schwab, Die Meinungsdiktatur, Nation Europa Verlag, Coburg 1997. 53 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Doubting is human and being human is a dangerous condition. If you want to avoid this, you would have to go back into the old cave or climb up that tree again. That is why I want to say at the closing of this lecture: No truth is final! And anyone trying to tell us where to look for the truth and where not to is taking away from us the human side of our being, our dignity. The repression of Holocaust revisionists is therefore just like the repression of anyone else who is searching for the truth, a classical example of oppression along with a blatant disregard for human rights. L: That sounds pretty nice, but the fact remains that doubting the Holocaust is something that is prohibited in many European countries, whether or not this is done in a scientific manner, not to mention refutation, denial, contesting, or whatever other category you may want to choose. R: Well, I cannot help that. But I can at least offer a consolation in the form of the opinion of an expert. In 2000, a graduate student of law submitted a doctoral dissertation in law in Germany on the subject of the so-called "Auschwitz lie." From what is known about him, he is a decided opponent of revisionism. Still, he comes to the conclusion that it is an infringement on human rights to make scientific revisionism, as we know it, a crime.76 There has been much criticism in German legal circles concerning the criminalization of this chapter of recent German history.77 Even German politicians have joined the debate and have made critical statements, such as the former German minister of the interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, who said in a conversation with Ignaz Bubis, at that time president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany:78 "With respect to the question whether the Auschwitz lie is a criminal act, and with respect to the prohibition of National Socialist symbols I will say only this: in an abstract space we could have wonderful discussions about whether it is nonsense or not, from a legal point of view, to suppress the ut- terance of opinions. In spite of this, this is the right thing to do, because we are simply not acting in an abstract space but have had concrete historical experiences. I do not think that those legal dispositions will be around for all eternity, but here and now it is right to say, by means of laws that might be called problematic under purely legal considerations: there are limits and barriers in this respect and this is were the fun ends." 76 Thomas Wandres, Die Strafbarkeit des Auschwitz-Leugnens, Strafrechtliche Abhandlungen, neue Folge, vol. 129, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2000; cf. the review by G. Rudolf, VffG 5(1) (2001), pp. 100-112 (German). 77 Cf. e.g.: Theodor Leckner, in: Adolf Schönke, Horst Schröder, Strafgesetzbuch, 25th ed., Beck, Munich 1997, p. 1111; E. Dreher, H. Tröndle, Strafgesetzbuch, 47th ed., update no. 18 on sec. 130; Stefan Hus- ter, "Das Verbot der `Auschwitz-Lüge,' die Meinungsfreiheit und das Bundesverfassungsgericht," Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, 1995, pp. 487-489; Daniel Beisel, "Die Strafbarkeit der Auschwitz- Lüge," Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, 1995, pp. 997-1000; Karl Lackner, Strafgesetzbuch, 21st ed., Munich 1995, update 8a on sec. 130; Hans A. Stöcker, Neue Strafrechts-Zeitung, 1995, pp. 237-240; cf. also Manfred Brunner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Aug. 17, 1994; Ernst Nolte, ibid., Sept. 8, 1994; Ronald Dworkin, Tageszeitung, May 17, 1995; Horst Meier, Die Zeit, Sept. 15, 1995; H. Meier, Merkur, 12/1996, pp. 1128-1131. 78 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 24, 1996, p. 41. 54 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Now we all know: the legal prosecution of revisionist historians takes place not for legal reasons, because the corresponding laws can be called problematic nonsense. Rather, we have to call on alleged "historical experiences" in order to prohibit a debate of these very experiences. L: That is really a case of standing logic on its head. Schäuble says quite clearly that dissidents have to be persecuted in today's Germany because dissidents were persecuted in Germany in the past. R: And he says that we are not free to discuss the content of a historical statement because of this content. L: Well, great! Now we know that historical dissidents continue to go to jail in Germany illegally, because the German courts, including the German Constitu- tional High Court, are breaking the law. R: But at least the revisionists go to jail as martyrs, as political prisoners, not as criminals. And that will sooner or later blow up in the face of the German legal structure. The next lecture will debunk certain myths about revisionism, for example that it is a Nazi movement or an ideology promoted by mentally retarded crackpots. 55 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 1.9. Appendix Ill. 2: "According to reliable information, the victims of the Austrians and Bul- garians exceeded 700,000. Whole districts, with towns and villages, have been depopulated by massacres. Women, children, and old men were shut up in the churches by the Austrians, and either stabbed with the bayonet or suffocated by means of asphyxiating gas." The Daily Telegraph, March 22, 1916, p. 7 Ill. 3: The Daily Telegraph, Ill. 4: The Jewish Press, Febru- June 25, 1943, p. 5 ary 21, 1991 56 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 5: "From across the sea, six million men and women call to us for help [...] six million human beings. [...] Six million men and women are dying [...] in the threatened holocaust of human life [...] six million famished men and women. Six million men and women are dying [...]" The American Hebrew, October 31, 1919, p. 582. Martin H. Glynn was Gover- nor of the State of New York between October 17, 1913, and December 31, 1914. 57 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 6: Response, volume 12, no. 1, spring 1991. 58 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ARD (Association of German Radio Stations), April 8, 1992, 21:00 hrs. Whether there should be a war in Kuwait was something, which was dis- cussed loudly all over the world. The discussion took a decisive turn, par- ticularly in the United States, on account of reports about unbelievable atrocities committed in Kuwait by the Iraqi troops. The impressive story told by a 15-year old Kuwaiti girl about babies that were ripped out of their incu- bators by Iraqi soldiers. One year after the Gulf War, Konrad Ebel and Mat- tias Werth have again looked at this girl and her story (Picture: The weeping girl, Nayirah, as an eyewitness before the Human Rights Committee of the U.N. Security Council): "I saw Iraqi soldiers. They came into the hospital and took the babies out of the incubators. They walked away with the incubators and left the ba- bies to die on the cold floor. It was horrible!" (Picture: The eyewitness in tears before the U.N. Security council, she in- terrupts her report again and again, choking, and wipes the tears from her eyes.) Everyone on the U.N. Human Rights Committee is shaken by this ac- count of what were probably Saddam Hussein's troops' most cruel deeds. Nayirah's report has an enormous effect. Horrified, even President Bush [sr.] speaks about it: (Picture: Bush talks to soldiers in Saudi Arabia): "The babies were yanked out of the incubators and strewn on the floor like firewood." (Picture: Little graves for the allegedly murdered babies are shown). Pictures proving that Saddam Hussein is acting like another Hitler and that his soldiers are coward baby butchers. (Picture: The Kuwaiti surgeon Dr. Ibrahim reporting before the U.N. Security Council): "The hardest thing was to bury the babies. I have myself buried forty ba- bies that had been taken out of the incubators by the soldiers." Two days later, in a vote, the U.N. Security Council decides to approve military force against Iraq, after Amnesty International, in turn, spoke of 312 assassinated babies. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress was debating whether there should be a war. (Picture: A representative at the rostrum:) "The time has now come to stop the aggression of this merciless dictator whose troops impale pregnant women and tear babies from their incuba- tors." Impressed by all this, Congress finally votes in favor of war by a narrow margin! (Picture: Dr. David Chiu.) This is Dr. David Chiu, a biomedical engineer. He was sent to Kuwait by the World Health Organization (WHO) to assess the devastations. He visited several operating and delivery rooms. His surprising result is: the incubator story is a complete fabrication! "I felt cheated. I was surprised to see so many incubators. I asked our guide what had happened and if the story we had been told was true. He 59 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ARD (Association of German Radio Stations), April 8, 1992, 21:00 hrs. said that not a single incubator had been taken away, the whole thing never happened." The only thing that Dr. Chiu discovered was that dentist's chairs were missing (Picture: Dental surgery room without chairs). The allegedly dismantled incubators were still there and the physician in charge clearly said "no!" when asked whether the Iraqis had torn babies from the incubators (Picture: Dr. Soa Ben Essa saying "no"). Now John Stiles of Amnesty International, too, corrects himself: "We have talked to more than a dozen doctors of various nationalities who were in Kuwait at exactly that time, but they could not confirm that story. We realized that this thing could not have taken place." But how could such a fabrication about the Kuwaiti incubators be con- cocted and influence the decision in favor of a war? We found the answer in Manhattan, New York City, with the Hill and Knowlton company, the largest American PR firm. Their business is the professional manipulation of opinion. On behalf of the Kuwaitis, Hill and Knowlton organized a campaign for the unconditional approval of the mili- tary liberation of Kuwait by the American people. Budget: 10 million dol- lars. For this, Hill and Knowlton used methods tested previously for Pepsi- Cola. (Picture: A tester judges emotions when looking at various pictures). The computer shows positive and negative reactions of the public to certain items. President Bush, too, has been using this method in the war of words during his election campaigns. For the Kuwaiti job, this method was used to shape public opinion (Picture: An employee explains the procedure; a speech by President Bush runs in the background, complete with a curve showing the reactions of a test audience): "We gave each person a small transmitter, palm-size, with which they could show whether their reaction to an item shown was one of pleasure or disapproval. The computer then tells us on the screen whether, for ex- ample, the Americans approve of what the President says or not." Kuwait wanted to find out, what the Americans would abhor most strongly. The result was: the murder of babies! That was the origin of the incubator lie. "The objective of our work was the question: how can I move the people to the point, emotionally, where they would support action by the U.N. to throw out the Iraqis? And the emotions that would bring this about would be to convince the people that Saddam Hussein was a crazy guy who killed his own people and still had sufficient aggressiveness to cause yet more trouble!" A free Kuwait for 10 million dollars! In this way, public opinion in America was to be mobilized for the libera- tion of Kuwait. Hill and Knowlton coached so-called eyewitnesses for public 60 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ARD (Association of German Radio Stations), April 8, 1992, 21:00 hrs. appearances. [...] (Picture: Thomas Ross of Hill and Knowlton) "Materially our task was limited to helping the people appear as `wit- nesses,' and give their reports in decent English so that anyone could understand them." So all you did was help them with the translations? "Well, we helped with the translation and we helped them with re- hearsals for their appearances, and we coached them for various ques- tions they might be asked." (Picture: The eyewitness in tears before the U.N. Human Rights Commit- tee). She had apparently been well coached: "It was horrible! All the time I had to think of my little new-born nephew who was perhaps already dead himself!" Behind her, an allegedly neutral spectator and observer (Picture). It is her father, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. Hardly anybody was aware of this (Picture: photograph of Nayirah showing her the way she looks nor- mally). The Committee took her to be simply a child refugee. But she belongs to the royal family of Emir Al Sabah. Did the members of the Human Rights Committee know who she really was? How many people knew that she was the ambassador's daughter? (Picture: John Porter before the U.N. Human Rights Committee:) "I didn't!" There is another allegedly reliable witness who lied before the U.N. Se- curity Council: Dr. Ibrahim. In real life he is a dentist by the name of Dr. Behbehani. After the war he revoked the incubator story. "No, I cannot confirm this thing about the incubators." Then you did not see anything? "No, nothing!" But by then, everything was over. Hill and Knowlton's lies had played a decisive role in getting the Americans to come out in favor of the war and to send soldiers to Kuwait. Was it a clever investment by the Kuwaitis to pay Hill and Knowlton 10 million dollars? (Picture: Thomas Ross of Hill and Knowlton) "A very clever investment!" 61 Second Lecture: Public Controversies 2.1. Communists Step Forward! R: At the beginning of this second lecture, I would like to speak about the French history and geography teacher Paul Rassinier, who can be viewed as the father of critical historiography dealing with the Holocaust. Before the Second World War, Rassinier was an avowed communist, and for that reason he was also ac- tive as a partisan fighter in the Resistance after France fell to the Wehrmacht. As such, he was arrested in the war by the German occupation forces and de- ported into the Buchenwald concentration camp. L: I thought the Wehrmacht shot partisans on the spot? R: According to international law valid at that time and still today as well, the shooting of partisans by martial law is absolutely legal, but in 1943 the Wehrmacht changed its policy in this regard, since the German troops simply had too many partisans to deal with, and because the mass execution of parti- sans aroused the local population against the German occupation forces to such a degree that the partisans gained the moral upper hand thereby and won ever broader support from the populace.79 L: Which can well be viewed as only understandable. R: Yes, the struggle of the civilian population against an occupying power may indeed be illegal, but it is morally understandable and is always viewed as glo- rious if the contested occupying power loses the war. But however that may be, the fact is that at that time the Germans preferred deploying Paul Rassinier and his fellow prisoners as forced labor in firms important to the war effort rather than executing them. So, after several weeks in quarantine custody in Buchen- wald, Rassinier finally landed in the Dora-Mittelbau camp, where the German assembled their rockets to remotely attack the British mainland. Toward the end of the war, he, along with the other prisoners, was transferred aimlessly from one place to the other by the SS, which by this time was pretty headless. Rassinier reports concerning the violent excesses of the unnerved SS men dur- ing this transport. Rassinier finally escaped his guards and was liberated by ad- vancing American units.80 In the post-war period, Rassinier sat in the French parliament as a representa- tive of the Socialists. 79 Franz W. Seidler, Verbrechen an der Wehrmacht, vol. 1, Pour le Mérite, Selent 1998, p. 127. 80 For this see Paul Rassinier's auto-biographical description in Passage de la Ligne, La Librairie fran- çaise, Paris 1948; Engl.: The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses, 2nd ed., Institute for Historical Review, New Port Beach 1990. 62 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST As is probably generally known, during the period directly after the war, a number of former concentration camp inmates began to publish articles and books about their experiences. One of these concentration camp authors was a French priest called Abbé Jean- Paul Renard, who had written: "I saw how thousands upon thousands of people entered the showers in Buchenwald, from which then lowed suffocating gas instead of a liquid." R: When Rassinier objected to this that he knew from his own experience that there were no gas chambers, Abbé Renard responded:81 "Well, this is a poetic expression, so to say." R: Another of these former inmates turned authors was Eugen Kogon, who was a political prisoner during the war and a former fellow inmate of Rassinier in the Buchenwald concentration camp. When Rassinier read Kogon's book,82 he be- came so upset over what, in his view, were the distortions, exaggerations, and plain lies written in it ­ particularly the blotting out of the responsibility of his communist comrades for many of the atrocities committed in the camps ­ that he wrote a book of his own, in which he criticized Kogon's account.83 L: Therefore Kogon was wearing glasses with his own political distorting lenses. R: In his Introduction, Kogon himself wrote that he had presented his manuscript to former leading camp prisoners "in order to dissipate certain fears the report could turn into a sort of bill of indictment against leading camp inmates." When the reproach was made to Kogon that his book Der SS-Staat was a po- lemical pamphlet, a suit for slander was the result, which Kogon nonetheless lost. In its judgment, the court stated:84 "This accusation [that Kogon's book was an unscientific pamphlet] does not appear to have been made up out of whole cloth, insofar as the plaintiff has written a sociological assessment of the behavior of human beings in the concentration camp from the perspective that it ought not turn into a bill of indictment against leading camp inmates. [...] If one considers that there were two members of the USSR and eight Communists among the fifteen representative men to whom he read his re- port in order to dissipate fears that he would present a bill of indictment, then the impression given is that, regardless of the mention of atrocities committed by Communists, this circle of persons above all would be spared, [...]. Such considerations must be foreign to a scholarly work. Pure science does not inquire as to whether the result makes this person or that person uncomfortable. Where questions of expediency co-determine the content, ob- jectivity is lost. Therefore, when the defendant, as a fellow-prisoner, ex- presses his opinion that the `SS State' is a pamphlet, then he is making free 81 Paul Rassinier, Le Mensonge d'Ulysse, La Librairie française, Paris 1950, p. 133. (www.vho.org/dl/FRA/mu.pdf). 82 Eugen Kogon, Der SS-Staat. Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager, Verlag Karl Alber, Mu- nich 1946 (Engl.: The Theory and Practice of Hell. The German Concentration Camps and the System behind them, Secker & Warburg, London 1950 / Berkley Books, New York 1998). 83 Paul Rassiner, op. cit. (note 81), chapter V; Engl. see note 80. 84 LG München 1, 10th civil court (ref.: 10-0 409/58), judgment of Dec. 13, 1958. 63 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST use of his constitutional right to free expression of opinion, without thereby infringing upon the right of personal honor of the complainant [...]." L: Consequently, Kogon's book is a whitewash for himself and his communist friends, who impute everything to the evil SS and other prisoners. R: And precisely this Eugen Kogon in his day played a key role in Germany in the "work of bringing to light" the Holocaust. In later books, Rassinier concerned himself on an ever broadening basis with claims of German atrocities during the Second World War and especially with the question of whether there had been at that time a German policy of system- atic extermination of the European Jews. In Le Mensonge d'Ulysse, Rassinier still assumed that there had been gas chambers somewhere, because he thought that there must be fire where there is smoke. Yet as his research progressed, Rassinier came more and more to the conclusion that there never was a system- atic program to exterminate the Jews, and with every book his certainty grew that there were never any gas chambers in which Jews had been killed in masses.85 Thus, in his book Le Drame des Juifs Européens he wrote in 1964:86 "Each time when I was told during the last fifteen years that there was a witness in the part of Europe not occupied by the Soviets who claimed to have experienced a gassing himself, I immediately traveled to him in order to listen to his testimony. But in every case it ended the same way: With my folder in my hands, I asked the witness a series of precise questions, to which he could respond only with quite obvious lies, so that he finally had to admit that he had not experienced this himself, but that he had related only the story of a good friend, who had died during his internment and whose honesty he could not question. This way I traveled thousand upon thousands of miles throughout all of Europe." R: I recommend Rassinier's books to whoever has an interest in these historical works of critical Holocaust historiography. I would like to point out at the same time, however, that Rassinier's works are not free of error. Yet which works are, anyway, especially when they are those of a pioneer! Rassinier had only limited access to primary source material, so that his works necessarily had to remain full of gaps. For that reason, regarded from the standpoint of today, the persuasiveness and exactitude of his arguments are of less interest than is the author himself: a French communist, partisan fighter, and former concentration 85 Paul Rassinier, Ulysse trahi par les siens (www.vho.org/dl/FRA/uts.pdf): Further critical remarks on false statements by former co-inmates; Le Drame des juifs européens, (www.vho.org/dl/FRA/dje.pdf): critical analysis of Raul Hilberg's book The Destruction of the European Jews (op. cit., note 39); Le véritable procès Eichmann ou les vainqueurs incorrigibles (www.vho.org/dl/FRA/vpe.pdf; Engl.: The Real Eichmann Trial or The Incorrigible Victors, Institute for Historical Review, Torrance 1976; www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres2/PRreal.pdf): critical analysis of the evidence on the extermination of the Jews on the occasion of the Jerusalem Eichmann trial; L'opération Vicaire (www.vho.org/dl/FRA/ov.pdf): Critique of the theater play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth on Kurt Ger- stein and the role of the Vatican in the alleged cover-up of the Holocaust. See also the Engl. language compilation of some of Rassinier's works: Debunking the Genocide Myth, The Noontide Press, Tor- rance, CA, 1978. 86 Paul Rassinier, Le Drame des Juifs Européns, Paris 1964, p. 79. 64 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST camp prisoner was the first who publicly opposed the mainstream lies and ex- aggerations in connection with the Holocaust.87 L: That surprises me. I had always believed that Nazis or neo-Nazi were the first. R: That is a widespread but false cliché. It was a victim of the National Socialists, an ideological deadly foe of National Socialism, who tried to honor the truth. L: Well, certainly no one can accuse that man of having wanted to clean anyone's dirty linen. R: Ultimately it doesn't matter who presents an argument, so long as it is sound. But I agree with you that one is rather more inclined to listen to someone in this matter who has sat behind the barbed wire than to anyone who stood in front of it with a rifle. Although, frankly one can say that both groups of persons can have had an interest from contrary motives in blotting out certain things and exaggerating others or even inventing them. Therefore, we will affirm that the father of critical, revisionist Holocaust re- search was a radical leftist, an anti-fascist, a concentration camp prisoner. L: Did Rassinier encounter trouble due to his critical attitude? R: Oh yes! A criminal proceeding was instituted against him, which in the final analysis was stayed, however. He was continuously defamed in the French me- dia and, other than in his own publications, only rarely had the opportunity to get a word in himself. Yet compared with the persecution against later critical researchers, Rassinier got off lightly. 2.2. Gas Chambers in the German Reich Proper R: During the International Military Tribunal, Sir Hartley Shawcross, chief prose- cutor for the United Kingdom, stated:88 "Murder conducted like some mass production industry in the gas chambers and the ovens of Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Maidanek, and Oranienburg [=Sachsenhausen]." R: These claims of mass murder in homicidal gas chambers in those camps are based upon witness testimonies like the one by Charles Hauter, who was a prisoner in the Buchenwald camp:89 "An obsession with machinery literally abounded when it came to extermi- nation. Since it had to occur quite rapidly, a special form of industrialization was required. The gas chambers answered that need in a very different way. Some, rather refined in conception, were supported by pillars of porous ma- terial, with which the gas formed and then seeped through the walls. Others 87 Although it can be argued that the semi-revisionist books on the Nuremberg Military Tribunal by French author Maurice Bardèche, who called himself a fascist, predated those by Rassinier, although Bardèche wrote journalistic essays rather than scholarly works, and he did not doubt the extermination of Jews as such: Nuremberg ou la Terre Promise, Les Sept Couleurs, Paris, 1948, p. 187 (www.vho.org/dl/FRA/ntp.pdf); see also Nuremberg II ou les Faux-Monnayeurs, ibid. 1950 (www.vho.org/dl/FRA/nfm.pdf). 88 IMT, vol. 19, p. 434. 89 Charles Hauter, "Réflexion d'un rescapé" in: De l'Université aux camps de concentration. Témoign- ages strasbourgeois, 2nd. ed., Belles-Lettres, Paris 1954 (©1947), pp. 525f. 65 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST were simpler in structure. But all were sumptuous in appearance. It was easy to see that the architects had conceived them with pleasure, devoting great attention to them, gracing them with all the resources of their aesthetic sense. These were the only parts of the camp that had truly been constructed with love." R: The French government was particularly fanciful in their description of the alleged gas chamber at Buchenwald in an official document:90 "Everything had been provided for down to the smallest detail. In 1944, at Buchenwald, they had even lengthened a railway line so that the deportees might be led directly to the gas chamber. Certain [of the gas chambers] had a floor that tipped and immediately directed the bodies into the room with the crematory oven." L: But didn't you just state in the previous chapter that there was no gas chamber at the Buchenwald camp? R: Quite right, and this fact is basically agreed upon by all historians today. Yet during the immediate postwar years, things were a little different. As another example, take the confession by Franz Ziereis, last commander of the Mauthausen camp, who was shot into the stomach three times and was there- fore ­ not sent to a hospital, but instead interrogated by a former inmate of Mauthausen, Hans Marsalek, while bleeding to death. In his "deathbed confes- sion," Ziereis is said to have testified the following:91 "SS Gruppenführer Glücks gave the order to designate the weak prisoners as sick and to kill them by gas in a large installation. There, around 1-11/2 million persons were killed. The area in question is named Hartheim and is located 10 kilometers in the direction of Passau." L: Who would take such a "confession" of a deadly wounded man seriously, who is bleeding to death and who does not only not receive any help, but who is also "interrogated" by one of his former inmates? R: Well, today no one really does. But right after the war and during the Nurem- berg Military Tribunal, these confessions were taken seriously.92 The room in Hartheim castle that is today claimed to have been this gas chamber measures some 280 sq ft.93 L: Excuse me? A million people or more killed in a tiny chamber of a castle? R: Yes, three to five times as many people are said to have been killed in this tiny room, if we follow Ziereis or Marsalek, respectively, than Americans ever died during WWII in the European theater of war. Anyway, it took some 15 years before these outrageous claims were chal- lenged. In the beginning of the 1960s, a storm went through the German media: 90 Nuremberg document 274-F (RF-301). IMT, Vol. 37, p. 148. On the Buchenwald camp, see in general Mark Weber, "Buchenwald: Legend and Reality," JHR, 7(4) (1986), pp. 405-417. 91 Documents PS-1515, May 24, 1945; PS-3870, April 8, 1946, IMT, vol. 33, pp. 279-286; cf. Hans Marsalek, Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Mauthausen, 2nd ed., Österr. Lagergemeinschaft Mauthausen, Vienna, 1980; see also Simon Wiesenthal, KZ Mauthausen, Ibis Verlag, Linz 1946, pp. 7f. 92 See IMT, vol. 11, pp. 331f. 93 Hans Marsalek, Die Vergasungsaktionen im Konzentrationslager Mauthausen, Wien 1988, p. 26. 66 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST an activist of the political right had publicly questioned the existence of homi- cidal gas chambers in the Dachau concentration camp, even though every visi- tor could view this gas chamber in Dachau. The journalists were shocked, the cry to bring charges was heard.94 But nothing came of it, for among other rea- sons German historiography at that time wasn't itself entirely certain of the ex- istence of homicidal gassings in Dachau. During the course of the argument, for example, Martin Broszat of the German federal Institute for Contemporary History (Institute für Zeitgeschichte) ­ he later became Director of that Institute ­ wrote a letter to the editor of the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, in which he stated:95 "Neither in Dachau nor in Bergen-Belsen nor in Buchenwald were Jews or other prisoners gassed. The gas chamber in Dachau was never entirely `completed' and put into operation. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners who perished in Dachau or other concentration camps in the territory of the Reich proper, were victims above all of the catastrophic hygienic and supply conditions [...]. The mass extermination of the Jews by gassing began in 1941/1942 and took place exclusively at several [...] locations, above all in the occupied Polish territory (but nowhere in the Reich proper): in Ausch- witz-Birkenau, in Sobibor on the Bug, in Treblinka, Chelmno, and Belzec. There, but not in Bergen-Belsen, Dachau or Buchenwald, those mass exter- mination facilities disguised as shower baths or disinfection rooms were set up [...]. Dr. Martin Broszat, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich" L: What was the German Reich proper? R: That is Germany within the borders of December 31, 1937, thus before the reunification with Austria, the Sudetenland, and the Memel region. L: Broszat contradicts himself here though: If no extermination facilities were set up in Dachau, how can he say at the same time that the mass extermination fa- cilities in Dachau were never completed? R: This internal contradiction is absolutely symbolic of the disagreement among historians with respect to this question. But Broszat was not alone in having this opinion. On January 24, 1993, no less a person than the famous "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal joined Broszat in his opinion, when he wrote in the U.S. magazine Stars and Stripes (see p. 185): "It is true that there were no extermination camps on German soil and thus no mass gassings such as those that took place at Auschwitz, Treblinka and other camps. A gas chamber was in the process of being built at Dachau, but it was never completed." R: Both, however, contradict other researchers, as for example a work which was published in 1983 by authors who the mainstream considers to be the most reputable authorities in this field. The main editors of it were Eugen Kogon... L: Didn't we just make his acquaintance as a propagandist exposed by Rassinier? 94 See the description by Erich Kern, Meineid gegen Deutschland, K. W. Schütz Verlag, Göttingen 1968, pp. 91-100. 95 Die Zeit, Aug. 19, 1960, see Ill. 24 in the appendix, p. 185. 67 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: ... Adalbert Rückerl, the then Director of the Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwal- tungen zur Aufklärung nationalsozialisti- scher Verbrechen (ZStL, Central Office of State Administrations of Justice for the In- vestigation of National Socialist Crimes) in Ludwigsburg... L: What's that? R: ... That is the official federal German "Nazi hunter" authority. The third editor Ill. 7: Memorial plaque at the al- was the communist and Chairman of the leged site of the "gas cham- Auschwitz Committee, Hermann Lang- ber" in the Ravensbrück con- 96 bein. centration camp: "Location of L: An objective group, that is for certain! the gas chamber ­ December R: Objective or not, we don't want to get into 1944 ­ Spring 1945" a discussion of that here. The fact is, the claim was made in this book that there were homicidal gas chambers in the Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück camps of the Reich proper, in which hundreds or even thousands of victims are supposed to have been gassed.97 So whereas the official book claims that there were mass execution facilities set up at camps located in the German Reich proper, the official Ger- man Institute for Contemporary History stated that there were no such facilities ever set up in those camps. Both cannot be true. In the case of Dachau, the editors begin by assuming the existence of gas chambers, but write with reservation:98 "It has not been conclusively proven that killings by poison gas took place at the Dachau concentration camp." R: It is a further fact that in the museums of the former camps at Sachsenhausen, Dachau, and Ravensbrück, all located within the borders of the German Reich proper, anyone can view the sites where the gas chambers are supposed to have been located. In the Dachau concentration camp, the gas chamber is even shown in its alleged original condition. L: Alleged ­ how so? R: There is no documentation proving that the present condition corresponds to the original. Furthermore, as I just quoted, this alleged gas chamber is said to 96 E. Kogon, H. Langbein, A. Rückerl et al. (ed.), Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 1983 (the Engl. version will subsequently be quoted if not indicated oth- erwise: Nazi Mass Murder, Yale, New Haven 1993). Similar in Wolfgang Benz, Legenden Lügen Vorurteile, dtv, Munich 1992, pp. 200-203. In it Hellmuth Auerbach from the German official Institut für Zeitgeschichte lists the gas chamber victims as follows: Mauthausen: 4,000 (Zyklon B, Gas trucks CO); Neuengamme: 450 (Zyklon B); Sachsenhausen: several thousands (Zyklon B); Natzweiler: 120 to 200 (Zyklon B); Stutthof: more than a thousand (Zyklon B); Ravensbrück: at least 2,300 (Zyklon B). Dachau is not listed. Auerbach primarily refers to the above quoted book Nationalsozialistische Mas- sentötungen... as his source. 97 E. Kogon et al., ibid., pp. 177-204. Other leading historians have recently agreed to this, see Reinhold Schwertfeger, "Gab es Gaskammern im Altreich?," VffG 5(4) 2001, p. 448. 98 E. Kogon et al., ibid., p. 202. 68 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST have never been completed, whereas it certainly seems complete today. So who completed it? In the Ravensbrück concentration camp there is merely a memorial plaque, see Illustration 7. L: So it is generally agreed upon that some of the gas chambers claimed after the war by witnesses or even government officials, like the one in Buchenwald, never existed. And their existence in other camps on the territory of the Old Reich is disputed as well. R: Quite so, although in mainstream historiography the tendency prevails since the 1980s to maintain the claim that these gas chambers did indeed exist. Just imagine what would happen if it would be generally admitted that no gas chambers existed in those camps at all. This would logically include the admis- sion that many witnesses lied and that the conclusions of government officials, criminal trials, and investigative commissions were false. How could one then stem the flood of doubts that would necessarily result from this admission of a large-scale fraud? How could you then maintain the claim that gas chambers existed in the eastern camps in Poland, for which the evidentiary basis is just as shaky as for those camps in the Reich proper, as we will see later? In order to prevent a revisionist landslide, the dogma needs to be upheld by all means and with all its aspects, however dubious they may be. 2.3. No Gas Chamber in Sachsenhausen R: In Sachsenhausen, a northern suburb of the German capital city Berlin, the foundations of a building were excavated, in which one room is supposed to have served as a gas chamber. L: Then who tore down the building, which is claimed to have contained a gas chamber? R: In Sachsenhausen the east German communist Volkspolizei tore down this building in 1952.99 L: In other words: they destroyed the sole convincing evidence, by which they would have been able to prove the ultimate wickedness of the Nazis and the correctness of their claims? R: Exactly. L: Whoever wants to believe it, let him. Rather, they have probably destroyed proof of their own malice. R: Evidence of anything whatsoever was destroyed there. It has disappeared and for that reason can no longer be used as proof of anything, period. The German mainstream historian Professor Dr. Werner Maser has pointed out that the evi- dence for the existence of a gas chamber in Sachsenhausen is quite dubious for other reasons as well. He cites the trial record of the Soviet military court of 1947, from which it emerges that the defendants there were drilled before the proceedings to the point that in their testimony before the court they finally 99 www.gedenkstaette-sachsenhausen.de/gums/de/index.html. 69 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 8: Memorial plaque in the remains of the former hygiene building of the for- mer concentration camp at Sachsenhausen with "gas chamber and shot-in-the- neck facilities," according to plaque. confessed their mass murder of prisoners with enthusiasm and pride.100 Such behavior on the part of the defendants is only conceivable if they were appro- priately brainwashed beforehand. L: Does that mean that they were tortured? R: Not necessarily physically, but very probably psychologically at the very least. During the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Soviet chief prosecutor Smirnov claimed that 840,000 Soviet POWs were killed in that camp.101 Of course he knew that he was lying, since the Soviets had secured the death books of this camp, in which 20,000 deceased prisoners are recorded for the years 1940-1945.102 In June 1945, e Soviet commission compiled a report on the alleged homicidal gas chamber, which is claimed to have had just 83 sq ft.103 L: 840,000 prisoners killed on a surface of 83 sq ft? R: Well, Smirnov did not claim that they were all gassed. What the Soviets had described in their expert report on this alleged homicidal gas chamber actually, however, was basically a description of a delousing chamber to kill lice, as it was installed in almost all camps of the Third Reich era.104 Of course, that explains the small size of that room, since only clothes were put into these delousing chambers. L: So the Soviets spread the lie that the Sachsenhausen delousing chamber was a homicidal gas chamber. R: Exactly. Prof. Maser suggests that testimonies of former inmates as to the gas chamber in Sachsenhausen are just as untrustworthy as the evidence presented by the Soviets. In Harry Naujoks' book, Mein Leben in KZ Sachsenhausen 100 W. Maser, Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin, Olzog, Munich 2004, pp. 355f. 101 IMT, vol. 7, p. 586. 102 GARF, 7021-104-2, pp. 52ff. 103 GARF, 7021-104-3, p. 7. 104 Cf. Carlo Mattogno, "KL Sachsenhausen," VffG 7(2) (2003), pp. 173-185 (Engl. in preparation for publication in The Revisionist). 70 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 1936-1942 (My life in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp 1936-1942), it says on page 322:105 "In March of 1943 a gas chamber was erected in `Station Z.'" L: If Naujoks was in the concentration camp only until 1942, as the title of the book indicates, then on what basis does he know what was built there in 1943? R: A shrewd question indeed. The book was brought out in 1987 ­ after Naujoks' death ­ by the Pahl-Rugenstein publishing house and, according to the imprint, "edited Ursel Hochmuth, Martha Naujoks, and the Sachsenhausen Committee for the Federal Republic of Germany." L: So this was inserted by the committee or by Naujoks' widow? R: One may well assume so. The Sachsenhausen Committee was and is dominated by communists and other radicals of the left, as are pretty much all of the or- ganizations of former camp inmates, just as the Pahl-Rugenstein publishing house in Cologne is well-known for the publication of radical leftist literature. L: Don't you think that here you are engaging in propaganda against the left? R: Absolutely not, especially since I am not making any judgment. Nevertheless, though, it is permissible to point out, and it should be pointed out, from what political corner this literature is coming. Besides, that is the same corner from which the first revisionist literature by Paul Rassinier came. The problem of the gas chamber of Sachsenhausen becomes ticklish if one adds that there is witness testimony of German soldiers who were held prisoner by the Soviets in the Sachsenhausen camp after the war and were forced to build a gas chamber as well as a shot-in-the-neck installation for propaganda purposes. The most important of these witnesses is Colonel (ret.) Gerhart Schirmer:106 "And why did the Allied victors have gas chambers installed in the former concentration camps just after the war? As the Americans, among others, did in Dachau. Does anyone have even one plausible explanation for this? In any case, together with other prisoners I personally had the `fun' of in- stalling a gas chamber and shooting facility in the Russian camp at Oranienburg (Sachsenhausen), which did not exist until then." L: Which would explain why the Soviets tore down the gas chamber in 1952? R: The situation is somewhat complex. Maser has pointed out that the Soviet plans of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from the immediate post-war period show no gas chamber, and that is why the statements of Schirmer and his com- rades can be called into question.107 L: But wasn't the Sachsenhausen concentration camp used after the war by the Soviets themselves as a concentration camp for dissidents? 105 Harry Naujoks, Mein Leben im KZ Sachsenhausen ­ 1936 - 1942. Erinnerungen d. ehemaligen Lageräl- testen, edited by Ursel Hochmuth, Martha Naujoks, and Sachsenhausen-Komitee for the Federal Repu- blic of Germany, Röderberg ­ Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1987; quote acc. to W. Maser, op. cit. (note 100), p. 356. 106 Gerhart Schirmer, Sachsenhausen ­ Workuta, Grabert, Tübingen 1992, pp. 37, as well as his sworn affidavit on pp. 49f. 107 W. Maser, op. cit. (note 100), pp. 356, 358-361. 71 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Quite correct, and the conditions there are supposed to have been even worse than under the National Socialists.108 L: So the purpose these camp plans of the Soviets were serving wasn't necessarily propaganda, but instead was probably for the administration of the camp. And if the Soviets knew that there was no gas chamber, then it wouldn't be surpris- ing that they did not carry their own falsification over to their serious plans of the camp. R: In any case, it should be permissible to assume that a gas chamber, actually existing in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp before the end of the war, would have been included in all plans and also would not have been torn down by the Soviets in 1952. The pulling down of the crematory building, in which the gas chamber is supposed to have been located, must probably be seen in connection with the obliteration of traces of communist crimes, which the Sta- linists committed in Sachsenhausen. Schirmer's statement raises another problem, which I would like to deal with in the fourth lecture: in particular, Schirmer's statement is in itself not more be- lievable than the statements of other, contradicting witnesses. It is hardly pos- sible to convincingly refute witness statements by means of other witness statements. L: But the statements are qualitatively not of equal value. At least Schirmer did not make his statement under coercion or after a brainwashing session, and also he appears not to have been exposed to any ideological temptation. R: None from the left, but possibly from the right, especially since he had been, after all, a soldier of the Third Reich. L: Was Schirmer a Nazi? R: That I don't know. He was a Lieutenant Colonel at war's end when he became a Soviet prisoner-of-war, but later served loyally in the Armed Forces of West Germany (Bundeswehr), where he finally attained the rank of full colonel. That probably means that according to the view of his superiors, therefore ultimately of that of the German federal government, he was regarded as a servant loyal to Germany's democratic post-war constitution. Though the view of the federal authorities radically changed after Schirmer had published his statement about Sachsenhausen: criminal proceedings on grounds of "incitement of the people" were initiated against Schirmer by decision of the county court of Tübingen, and his writing was confiscated, which means: it was consigned to the waste incinerator.109 L: But on what grounds? R: Because of Schirmer's statement that the gas chambers, which are claimed to have been in the German camps, were built only after the war by Germany's liberators. 108 Ibid., pp. 358; cf. Günter Agde, Sachsenhausen bei Berlin. Speziallager Nr. 7, Aufbau-Taschenbuch- Verl., Berlin 1994; Adrian Preissinger, Todesfabriken der Kommunisten, Verl.-Gemeinschaft Berg, Berg am See 1991. 109 AG Tübingen, ref. 4 Gs 937/02, of Aug. 21, 2002. The case against Schirmer was closed because the statute of limitation had expired. 72 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: The essence of the whole thing is therefore that the German authorities today are defending with the penal law those historical "truths," which were created through torture, brainwashing, show trials, and forgeries and then disseminated into the world by Russian and German Stalinists. R: We will be coming to the behavior of the German authorities later. Fact is that Schirmer published his testimony despite the threat of being prosecuted for it. So he certainly was not encouraged by his environment to make his statement. Prof. Maser, at any rate, considers Schirmer's statement to be credible:110 "That the Soviets had the gas chamber built in the fall of 1945 was obvi- ously connected with the grossly exaggerated claims of the Soviet prosecuto- rial authorities concerning the number of prisoners murdered in the camps, which were published and discussed throughout the world during the Nur- emberg trials just then ending. Already right after the capture of Sachsen- hausen, they had forced an SS officer who had been taken prisoner to de- clare in a `documentary film' [111] that there had been a gas chamber in the camp. What he had to point out as a gas chamber under frank coercion, however, had nothing at all to do with a gas chamber." L: But the Nuremberg Tribunal did end only in 1946. R: Correct. Maser is inverting the chronology here. Actually, the Soviets were forced into action by the American PR frenzy over the alleged gas chamber in Dachau, which took care of creating sensational publicity after the capture of this camp by the Americans in the spring of 1945. 2.4. Clarity about Dachau R: For that reason, let us now discuss Dachau, where the alleged homicidal gas chamber is still shown today. Until a short while ago, the museum administra- tion there had displayed a sign in the "gas chamber" on which was written in several languages (see Illustration 9): "GAS CHAMBER disguised as a `shower room' ­ never used as a gas chamber." From the 1960s up to the 1990s, such recognized authorities as the Director of the Dachau Museum112 and the Alliance of Former Prisoners of the Dachau Concentration Camp113 supported the same view. L: By whom are these recognized as authorities and why? R: By published opinion. 110 W. Maser, op. cit. (note 100), pp. 358. 111 Chronos-Film, Berlin-Kleinmachnow: "KL Sachsenhausen." 112 Israel Gutman (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, MacMillan, New York 1990, entry on "Dachau," written by Barbara Distel, Director of the Dachau Museum, vol. 1, p. 341f.: "In Dachau there was no mass extermination program with poison gas [...]. In 1942 a gas chamber was built in Dachau, but it was not put into use." 113 Internationales Dachau-Komitee, Konzentrationslager Dachau, 1933-1945, 5th ed., Comité Internat. de Dachau, Brüssel 1978, pp. 165. 73 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 9: Room in the Dachau Museum, allegedly a gas chamber which was never in operation. L: But that says nothing about the correctness of their claims. The correctness of a statement comes not from publicly assigned authority, but rather from the ex- actness and verifiability of a statement. R: I am aware of this, but I am mentioning these sources as being generally recog- nized as competent, and not as proof that their statements are correct. The fact of the matter is that the Dachau Museum has in the meantime removed the sign mentioned above in the alleged gas chamber of Dachau and replaced it with another one, which now claims that gassings did occur. L: How can anyone subserviently believe anything these authorities allege to us, let alone because they contradict one another and even themselves. What veri- fiable arguments do they have for the claim that this was a gas chamber? R: Claims about a homicidal gas chamber in the Dachau camp were first made right after U.S. troops liberated the camp. This alleged gas chamber was de- scribed by a U.S. investigation team under David Chavez on May 7, 1945.114 Gas chamber accusations appeared frequently during the pre-trial investigations preparing the U.S. trial against 40 defendants in Dachau in late 1945, but the accusation was dropped during the trial itself.115 However, the gas chamber 114 "Report of the Atrocities Committed at Dachau Concentration Camp. Vol. 1. War Crimes Investigation Team No. 6823. Signed by David Chavez Jr. Colonel, JAGD, 7 May 1945," microfilm M1174, Na- tional Archives, Washington, DC. See chapter 4.2.5. in this book about the conditions of this trial, par- ticularly p. 388. 115 First Dachau Trial (Trial of Martin Gottfried Weiss and Thirty Nine Others, also known as "The Trial of Martin Gottfried Weiss et al.," Nov. 15 - Dec. 13, 1945, microfilm M1174, National Archives. Cf. Carlos W. Porter, "The Gas Chamber at Dachau: Now You See It, Now You Don't," in: F.A. Leuchter, 74 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST claim reappeared during the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal in 1946 (IMT), along with a re-written report of the above mentioned Chavez investiga- tion team on the order of General Eisenhower.116 It was supported by a state- ment of the witness Dr. Franz Blaha, a Czech physician, who was interned in Dachau and who was the only witness to ever claim during a trial that homi- cidal gassings happened in Dachau.117 When Dr. Blaha testified during the IMT, the court deprived the defense of the opportunity when the latter wished to question Dr. Blaha more closely.118 L: So there wasn't any cross-examination? R: Not about Dr. Blaha's gassing claims at least. His claim was simply let stand without discussion. L: And the IMT was able to simply cut off interrogation of a witness if it threat- ened to become embarrassing? R: That's how it was. We will get into the strange rules of evidence of the post- war trials later. But it should be pointed out in passing that portions of the es- tablished literature at times assume that the Dachau prisoners who were en- gaged in building this facility had prevented the completion of the gas chamber before the end of the war by drawing their work out over three years.119 L: How did the prisoners know what they were working on? R: Well, if this was supposed to be a gas chamber, the SS will hardly have re- vealed that to them. At most, there may have been rumors, which of course could have been false. L: If the prisoners succeeded in delaying the completion of a facility for a period of three years, doesn't this prove that Dachau was a holiday camp, where the prisoners could dawdle around at will, without punishment? R: Careful! You are making yourself criminally liable with such speculations! The fact is that in Dachau we are dealing with the only alleged gas chamber in a camp on the territory of the Reich proper, which has been preserved to the pre- sent day. For that reason, the opportunity exists to conduct more comprehen- sive, even forensic examinations of this. L: What do you mean by this? Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, The Leuchter Reports. Critical Edition, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005, pp. 168-172 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/tlr). 116 IMTdocument L-159 (PS-2430): Document no. 47 of the 79th Congress, 1st Session, Senate: "Report of the Committee Requested by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower [...] to the Congress of the United States Relative to Atrocities and Other Conditions in Concentration Camps in Germany, carried out by a Spe- cial Committee of Congress after visiting the Concentration Camps at Buchenwald, Nordhausen, and Dachau," May 15, 1945, Exhibit no. USA-222, IMT, XXXVII, p. 621. 117 Document PS-3249, January 9, 1946, IMT, vol. XXXII, pp. 62, also quoted in vol. V, pp. 173. E. Kogon et al., op. cit. (note 96), pp. 203f. Blaha also testified during the Dachau trial, op. cit. (note 115). 118 IMT, vol. V, pp. 194. 119 Paul Berben, Histoire du camp de concentration de Dachau (1933-1945), Comité International de Dachau, Brüssel 1976, pp. 13: According to this, the gas chamber was designed in 1942, but was still unfinished in April 1945 at the camp's liberation, "because to a certain extent, it seems, of sabotage carried out by the team of prisoners given the job of building it." (This passage does not appear in the Engl. edition Dachau 1933-1945, The Official History, London, The Norfolk Press, 1975.) Similar: Ge- rald Reitlinger, The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945, Jason Aronson, London 1987, p. 134: "but its construction was hampered." 75 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: By this I mean concretely the technical examination of what is supposed to have served as a murder weapon. The following two questions arise: Can the space, as it exists today, have served the purpose claimed by witnesses? And if the answer is yes: are there traces which prove that this weapon was used as testified? There is, moreover, the question of whether the alleged weapon exists in its original condition or if modifications have been carried out since April 1945. In this connection, let me point out the following: The re-written Chavez Report mentioned above116 described it as follows: 6 m × 6 m; ceiling 3 meters high; gas admission by means of brass shower heads through pipes which were connected to two valves in the exterior wall, into which the gas was introduced. L: Wait a minute! That doesn't agree at all with what one finds in Dachau. Today, there are only two hatches in the exterior wall, through which Zyklon B is sup- posed to have been tossed in. And there is nothing similar to valves for the in- troduction of gas into any sort of pipes! R: Right. You have the makings of a good criminal investigator! But before we analyze the facts, let me first finish my account. In a report of the "Enemy Equipment Intelligence Service Team Number 1" of the Headquarters of the U.S. 3rd Army, it says:120 "Based on the interviews noted above, and further, based on actual inspec- tion of the Dachau gas chamber (it has apparently been unused), it is the opinion of the undersigned that the gas chamber was a failure for execution purposes and that no experimental work ever took place in it. In view of the fact that much reliable information has been furnished the Allies by former inmates regarding the malaria, air pressure and cold water experiments, it is reasonable to assume that if such gas experiments took place, similar in- formation would be available." R: An aspect is caught here which today is often overlooked: in Dachau, as is well-known, medical experiments significant to the war effort were performed upon prisoners by higher orders, for example the search for vaccines against various dangerous diseases or the search for ways and means to insure the sur- vival of pilots who were shot down or shipwrecked sailors, if they were ex- posed at high altitude to extremely low air pressure or were drifting in cold wa- ter for hours. L: So you don't dispute these crimes? R: No. The incidents might at times have been distorted and exaggerated, but I do not doubt the fact of such experiments, which can hardly be justified morally. L: What does "hardly" mean here? R: I mean here moral borderline cases, for instance when prisoners sentenced to death in proceedings under the rule of law have the choice either to be executed or to subject themselves to such an experiment. If they survived it, they would 120 Headquarters Third United States Army, Enemy Equipment Intelligence Service Team Number 1, Chemical Warfare Service, August 22, 1945, Report by Sgt. Joseph H. Gilbert to Major James F. Munn: Subject. Dachau Gas Chamber (3 pages; enclosures), p. 3. 76 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST be pardoned. That was the usual prac- tice, at least in the beginning. The prob- lem, of course, is how a physician in the Third Reich was able to know whether a prisoner had been justly condemned to death, and how he could know whether he had really volunteered. Or one might consider only the problem that it can seem ethically justifiable to sacrifice some human lives in order to save a large number of other lives, perhaps in Ill. 10: Heavy insulated hot water (or steam?) pipes in the room behind the the search for vaccines against typhus, alleged gas chamber of Dachau of which umpteen thousands were dying camp, leading into the space above the current room.122 at that time. The acts of German physicians were in any case punished by a U.S. military tribunal after the war, whose findings are based upon an atmosphere poisoned by the emotions and propaganda of that time and which are by no means sacrosanct. I will be going into the conditions of these trials in more detail later. It will then become clear why not everything, which is today regarded as proven because it was "proved" in these trials, has to also be true. But this changes nothing about the fact that there were experi- ments of that sort. And the report cited here alludes to the fact that there is not only extensive, and, as far as the core of the material is concerned, non- contradictory witness testimony for these experiments with humans, but in ad- dition also many documents that confirm the fact of these experiments. It is quite different, however, with the alleged Dachau gas chamber and its use. There are flatly no supporting documents and also no coherent testimony. But back to the evidence. In a propaganda film shown during the IMT, the following is intoned:121 "Dachau ­ factory of horrors. [...] Hanging in orderly rows were the clothes of prisoners who had been suffocated in the lethal gas chamber. They had been persuaded to remove their clothing under the pretext of tak- ing a shower for which towels and soap were provided. This is the Brause- bad ­ the showerbath. Inside the showerbath ­ the gas vents. On the ceiling ­ the dummy shower heads. In the engineer's room ­ the intake and outlet pipes. Push buttons to control inflow and outtake of gas. A hand valve to regulate pressure. Cyanide powder was used to generate the lethal smoke. From the gas chamber, the bodies were removed to the crematory." L: That is again a description other than that previously cited by the investigatory commission. Each seems to have served up its own version. 121 Document PS-2430: Nazi Concentration and Prisoner-of-War Camps: A Documentary Motion Picture, film shown at the Nuremberg Trial, November 29, 1945, IMT, vol. XXX, p. 470. 77 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: And now here's a reference, which could explain it all: the magazine Common Sense (New Jersey, USA) on June 1, 1962, printed an article on page 2 under the heading "The False Gas Chamber": "The camp had to have a gas chamber, so, since one did not exist, it was de- cided to pretend that the shower bath had been one. Capt Strauss (U.S. Army) and his prisoners got to work on it. Previously it had flag stones to the height of about four feet. Similar flag stones in the drying room next door were taken out and put above those in the shower bath, and a new lower ceiling was created at the top of this second row of flag stones with iron funnels in it (the inlets for the gas)." L: Oops! So in Dachau the Americans emulated the Russians in Sachsenhausen! R: From a chronological standpoint rather the reverse. But the last citation is first and foremost, of course, also nothing other than only a claim. But now, down to proper detective work. Let me enumerate some points here: 1. The building in which the alleged homicidal gas chamber in Dachau is lo- cated also contained several modern circulation-type Zyklon B delousing chambers123 as well as two cremation ovens. Hence, this building was the new hygiene building of the Dachau concentration camp, in which the clothing of the prisoners was deloused and in which the prisoners them- selves showered. The usual procedure during the delousing of prisoners was as follows:124 The prisoners undressed in one room. The clothing went from there to delousing and the prisoners to the shower. From there they went into another room, usually on the opposite side of the undressing room, in order to receive fresh clothing. The separation of the undressing and dressing rooms had hygienic purposes, to give the lice no opportunity to reinfest the freshly bathed prisoners. According to the layout of the Da- chau hygiene building, the alleged gas chamber, which was labeled as a shower room, would have been exactly that room which would have had to have functioned as a shower, since it lies between the undressing and dress- ing rooms and since there is no other shower room in the building. Questions: If this room was a homicidal gas chamber with false shower heads, then where was the shower room? If there was no shower room, then for what purpose were the delousing chambers, undressing and dress- ing rooms? If the room served as shower as well as gas chamber, how was this technically possible? 2. The ceiling in the shower room today is 2.30 m (7.5 ft) high and has tin shower heads embedded into the ceiling. This is substantially different, 122 Taken from www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/GasChamber/interior00.html. 123 "DEGESCH Kreislauf-Entwesungsanlagen," circulation disinfestation devices made by the German firm DEutsche GEsellschaft für SCHädlingsbekämpfung (DEGESCH, German Society for Pest Con- trol). 124 Regarding the design of such hygienic installation see e.g. F. Puntigam, "Die Durchgangslager der Arbeitseinsatzverwaltung als Einrichtungen der Gesundheitsvorsorge," Gesundheitsingenieur, 67(2) (1944), pp. 47-56; Friedrich Erhard Haag, Lagerhygiene, Taschenbuch des Truppenarztes, Band VI, J.F. Lehmanns, Munich 1943; F. Puntigam, "Raumlösungen von Entlausungsanlagen," Gesundheitsin- genieur, 67(6) (1944), pp. 139-180; Ludwig Gaßner, "Verkehrshygiene und Schädlingsbekämpfung," Gesundheits-Ingenieur, 66(15) (1943), pp. 174-176. 78 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST therefore, from the 3 m high ceiling (almost 9 ft) with bronze shower heads found by the U.S. post-war commission. Also, there are no inlet and outlet valves for gas or any sort of valves or buttons for the regulation of gas. There are, to be sure, two shafts in the exterior wall of the room in ques- tion, which are not mentioned, however, in the report or descriptions cited here. 3. A test with an induction apparatus for finding the location of metallic ob- jects reveals that water pipes must be located above the ceiling, that the room therefore actually at one time or another served or was supposed to serve as a shower. 4. A glance through the window on the back side of the building shows a large hot water boiler or steam installation, whose thick, insulated pipes lead through the wall into an unknown space above the alleged gas cham- ber, see Illustration 10. 5. According to a correspondence partner of Barbara Distel, the one-time Di- rector of the Dachau Museum, an expert report was prepared by a sanita- tion company in the 1960s, which is claimed to have come to the conclu- sion that the hot water installation could again be put into operation at any time.125 Since the Museum cannot be induced to publicly admit the exis- tence of such an expert report, or even to make it accessible, would it then not be possible or even more than appropriate to allow another such expert report to be rendered today? 6. Zyklon B cannot be conducted through pipes and shower heads, since the hydrogen cyanide of this product is not a gas under pressure. Correspond- ing statements by investigatory commissions and witnesses are therefore false.126 L: So here as well there is the smell of falsification! R: Well, I have merely given a sketch here of what investigations one would have to perform, in order to come to secure conclusions in this matter. Despite all the time which has elapse since the end of the war, to the present time there has been no serious research with respect to these questions or, if there was, it hasn't been published. However, the contradictions between the description of the official U.S. investigatory commission at the end of the war and the present condition, the technical facts already superficially noticeable, as well as the structure of the Dachau hygienic building are very strong ­ and, for me suffi- ciently convincing ­ evidence to reach the preliminary conclusion: the alleged gas chamber in Dachau is a falsification of the U.S. occupying power. L: Isn't there an Allied document, the so-called Lachout Document, in which it is stated that there were no gas chambers in the Reich proper? 125 Private communication by Anton Schimmelpfennig, who received this information from Mrs. Barbara Distel verbally. 126 Regarding the properties of Zyklon B cf. Wolfgang Lambrecht, "Zyklon B ­ eine Ergänzung," VffG 1(1) (1997), pp. 2-5; see also Jürgen Kalthoff, Martin Werner, Die Händler des Zyklon B, VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1998. 79 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: There is a document the author of which, Emil Lachout, claims that he wrote it at the direction of the Allied occupation authorities. A detailed investigation by a revisionist researcher suggests, however, that this could be a matter of falsifi- cation.127 L: Isn't Lachout himself a revisionist? R: He supports revisionist theses. L: So revisionists are therefore forgers! R: First of all, I do not think that the question whether or not this document is a forgery has been settled yet. But even if it turns out to be a forgery, that doesn't mean that Lachout is the forger. As a matter of fact, Lachout won several court cases where he sued people who called him a forger. L: But the revisionists started the discussion about this document 15 years later than their adversaries!128 R: Show me a scholarly revisionist publication in which the so-called "Lachout Document" was referenced as proof for anything whatsoever!129 The fact is that scientific revisionism has the moral strength to purge itself of errors if they are discovered. Forgeries occur all too frequently in contemporary history, and I will go into some of these later. That there could be black sheep among revi- sionists as well, is but merely human nature. The only thing which, according to my own knowledge, ever was pronounced by the Allied side, was in a private letter to the editor of the former U.S. soldier Stephen F. Pinter, which was published in the U.S. paper Our Sunday Visitor on June 14, 1959 (p. 15), under the heading "German Atrocities": "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." L: But anyone could have written that letter to the editor! R: That might be so. Witness testimonies don't advance our knowledge either, as is demonstrated by the statement of Moshe Peer, a Holocaust survivor, who, in a 1993 interview published in the Canadian paper The Gazette, declared that as a boy he survived no fewer than six gassings in the gas chamber of the Bergen- Belsen camp:130 "As an 11 year-old boy held captive at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II, Moshe Peer was sent to the gas chamber at least six times. Each time he survived, watching with horrors as many of the 127 Cf. Klaus Schwensen, "Zur Echtheit des Lachout-Dokuments," VffG 8(2) (2004), pp. 166-178. 128 Brigitte Bailer-Galanda, Wilhelm Lasek, Wolfgang Neugebauer, Gustav Spann, Das Lachout- "Dokument" ­ Anatomie einer Fälschung, Verlag DÖW, Vienna 1989; Brigitte Bailer-Galanda, "Das sogenannte Lachout-'Dokument,'" in: Dokumentationszentrum des österr. Widerstandes (DÖW), Bundesministerium für Unterricht und Kunst (ed.), Amoklauf gegen die Wirklichkeit. NS-Verbrechen und revisionistische Geschichtsklitterung, 2nd ed., Verl. DÖW, Vienna 1992. 129 The Lachout "document" was published and praised only in right-wing propaganda publications: Walter Ochensberger (ed.), Sieg no. 11/12 (Nov./Dec. 1987), pp. 7-9; Gerd Honsik, "Regierungsbeauf- tragter bricht sein Schweigen ­ Mauthausenbetrug amtsbekannt! Major Lachouts Dokument exklusiv im Halt," Halt no. 40, Vienna, Nov. 1987; Robert Faurisson has discussed the document, but has indi- cated reservations: "If this document is genuine and if Emil Lachout is telling the truth," JHR, 8(1) (1988), pp. 117-126. In private letters he expressed his skepticism regarding the document's authentic- ity, cf. the excerpts of Faurisson's letters in the article by Schwensen, op. cit. (note 127), pp. 173. 130 The Gazette, Montreal, August 5, 1993. 80 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST women and children gassed with him collapsed and died. To this day, Peer doesn't know how he was able to survive." R: Another Holocaust survivor, Elisa Springer, claims in her memoirs, which appeared 42 years after the end of the war, that "the gas chambers and ov- ens"131 in Bergen-Belsen were put into operation after Josef Kramer had be- come camp Commandant there.132 L: Were there gas chambers at all in Bergen-Belsen? R: Well, at least on this point historiography is unanimous today: no, it is certain that there were no gas chambers in Bergen-Belsen.133 This was never claimed by any historian or institute. Therefore the statements just cited prove only the trivial fact that the three to five million Holocaust survivors consisted of nor- mal human beings. How many pathological liars do you think one would probably find among five million randomly selected people? This is, of course, merely a rhetorical question. I would like to close the topic "homicidal gas chambers in the Reich proper" with that.134 2.5. The Invisible Elephant in the Basement R: During World War II, Thies Christophersen was a German soldier assigned to the agricultural section of the Auschwitz concentration camp, which was set up in a small village named Harmense. In 1973 Christophersen published a pam- phlet, in which he described his experiences at that time and in which he denied that there ever was extermination of people in Auschwitz. Christophersen's re- port of his experiences caused a furor at the time and coined a new term, for the title of his pamphlet was Die Auschwitz-Lüge (The Auschwitz Lie).135 At that time, of course, Christophersen meant by this the exact opposite of what this buzzword is generally understood to mean today. Although the pamphlet can hardly lay claim to being a scholarly treatment of the subject, it nevertheless had a signal effect, for it sewed doubt and stimulated a whole set of researchers into taking a critical look at the subject for themselves. One of these researchers was Arthur R. Butz, Professor of Electrical Engineer- ing at Northwestern University in Evanston, about 12 miles north of Chicago. After years of research, he published a book in 1976 dealing with the Holocaust under the title The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.27 L: That has a rather polemical sound to it. R: I am not happy with it either, but titles are often chosen to excite attention. 131 There was only one oven in Bergen-Belsen, which went into operation long before Kramer was trans- ferred to that camp. 132 Elisa Springer, Il silenzio dei vivi. All'ombra di Auschwitz, un racconto di morte e di risurrezione, Marsilio Editore, Venedig 1997, p. 88. 133 Re. the history of the Bergen-Belsen camp cf. Mark Weber, "Bergen-Belsen Camp: The suppressed story," JHR 15(3) (1995), pp. 23-30. 134 Readers interested in more details about this may consult the "Second Leuchter Report" in: Fred A. Leuchter, Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, op. cit. (note 115), pp. 118-179 (first published as The Second Leuchter Report, Samisdat Publishers, Toronto 1990); see also JHR 10(3) (1990), pp. 261-322. 135 Kritik-Verlag, Mohrkirch 1973. 81 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: How can an electrical engineer believe he is competent to write about historical subjects? R: The competence certainly does not come from his training as an electrical en- gineer. Whether Butz is competent or not is revealed exclusively by what he writes, not by his academic degrees. After all, even an historian can be incom- petent in his field. I would like to point out, moreover, that many of the most celebrated mainstream Holocaust experts are not trained historians either, start- ing with Professor Dr. Raul Hilberg, who is a political scientist. In contrast to many other fields, one can indeed quite simply learn the science of history autodidactically and rather rapidly acquaint oneself with special fields of in- quiry. Consequently, a host of researchers who have no academic credentials in history are rushing into this field. L: Is Butz German? R: No, he was born in America. Certainly his forbearers emigrated from Europe, but that goes several generations back. Prof. Butz was probably the first who described the Holocaust subject from a detached, systematic perspective. He examined the first reports in western me- dia which spoke of the murder of Jews. He gives an account of what informa- tion the Allied governments as well as influential organizations like the Vati- can, the Red Cross, and Jewish organizations had available to them, from which sources this information originated, how this information was evaluated, and what reactions ensued from it. He describes the course of the post-war tri- als, at which a designated "truth" was produced within a framework whose pa- rameters merit criticism. He also focuses upon the Auschwitz camp, which he describes as a gigantic armament and forced labor complex in eastern Upper Silesia. I will return to this aspect later. L: Where is Upper Silesia located? R: The region of Silesia was inhabited mainly by Germans since the 12th century, who had settled there on the request of some mixed Polish-German noble men who wanted this area to be developed. As a result of this German settling activ- ity, Silesia was peacefully seceded from Poland to Germany in the early 14th century "for all eternity." It basically includes the lands left and right of the up- per part of the river Oder/Odra. The south-eastern part of it is called Upper Silesia. The German-Polish border along Silesia used to be the most stable bor- derline in Europe, until almost the entire area of Silesia was annexed by Poland after World War II. The nine million Germans living there were ethnically cleansed, that is to say: they were expelled by force during 1945-1947. Ausch- witz was located just east of the south-eastern border between German Upper Silesia and Poland. L: Did Prof. Butz suffer any kind of negative repercussions after the publication of his book? R: Well, he retained his position as professor. His university didn't dare to fire him, since it possibly would have lost a lawsuit, particularly since Prof. Butz had done nothing illegal by U.S. law. But they pushed him into the smallest, 82 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST darkest remote basement cubicle that they could find in the university building, and he is treated like a leper. Just one year after the book's appearance, Butz made headlines, and the reac- tions were varied expressions of outrage. Abbot A. Rosen from the Anti- Defamation League in Chicago, for instance, stated:136 "We have known about it [Butz' book] for some time. But we didn't want to give it any publicity and help the sales. Now it is too late; it is out in the open and we have to face it squarely." R: And with an indirect reference to Butz' book, two Israeli scholars were quoted as follows:137 "Bauer and Prof. Moshe Davis agreed that there is a `recession in guilt feel- ing' over the Holocaust, encouraged by fresh arguments that the reported extermination of six million Jews during World War II never took place. [...] `You know, it is not difficult to fabricate history,' Davis added." L: But that cuts both ways ­ unintentionally, no doubt ­ yet if it is simple to dis- tort history, then that is surely true for all sides, and all the more so for that side which has power and influence. R: Whether that is really so simple shall remain an open question for now. In any case, an objective analysis of Butz' book, which was published in 2003 in a re- vised and updated edition,27 has not occurred up to the present. L: They are as shy of the subject as the Devil is of holy water. R: Prof. Butz excellently summarized the essential results of his research some years later in an article, and really in response to some books which can be viewed as indirectly addressing his work. In these books some established his- torians expressed the notion that it was scandalous that no one had lifted so much as a finger for the Jews during the Second World War, although they all had been thoroughly informed about what was taking place in German- occupied Europe.138 In his article, Butz explained that in fact neither the Allied governments, nor the Red Cross, nor the Vatican, nor the Jewish organizations which operated in- ternationally, behaved as though they took seriously the information about al- leged mass murder of Jews passed on by underground organizations. L: The Red Cross in German occupied Europe could have been biased. R: That it definitely was, because while the Red Cross during the war reported about the bad conditions in the German camps ­ without, however, being able to find anything whatever to the rumors about mass extermination ­ it was si- lent both about the extensive Allied bombing of European cities, which was contrary to international law, as also it was completely silent after the war about the disastrous conditions in Allied prisoner-of-war camps, about the mass murder and mass expulsions of Germans from eastern Germany and eastern 136 Pittsburgh Press, Jan. 26, 1977. 137 Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 25, 1977. 138 Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1981; Walter Laqu- eur, The Terrible Secret, Little, Brown & Co, Boston 1980; cf. similar, but more recent: Richard Breit- man, Official Secrets. What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew, Hill and Wang, New York 1998. 83 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Europe, and about all the other injustice which set in across Germany after the end of the war. L: Perhaps the information they received about the extermination of the Jews was simply not good enough? R: The Vatican, with the whole Catholic Church in Poland part of the opposition, surely had the best of all intelligence services, and the Jewish organizations op- erating internationally made a practice of a constant exchange of information with the local Jewish groups in the German occupied territories. The Allies fi- nally cracked all German radio codes during the war and had hundreds of thou- sands of underground fighters upon whom they could rely. For that reason it must be taken as given that all these organizations knew in detail all that was going on. If they did not take seriously the atrocity reports reaching them, then probably this was so because they knew what quality of information they were dealing with. In regard to this, the British Chairman of the Allied "Joint Intelli- gence Committee," Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, made the following comment in 1943:139 "I feel certain that we are making a mistake in publicly giving credence to this gas chambers story. [...] As regards putting Poles to death in gas chambers, I do not believe that there is any evidence that this has been done." R: In the same document, however, Cavendish-Bentinck also speaks of knowing "that the Germans are out to destroy Jews of any age unless they are fit for manual labor," although stories about gas chambers as a murder weapon did not seem credible to him. L: Of course it may be that, due to the lies invented and spread by the Allies dur- ing the First World War, the Allied authorities were skeptical when they heard similar things from others during the Second World War. However, that doesn't prove that these reports were now basically false. R: Correct. One can even argue that the exposure to the lies from the First World War could have caused people in the Second World War to no longer believe any reports about atrocities at all, particularly not those which resembled those from the First World War. The Dutch cultural mainstream historian Robert J. van Pelt argues precisely this, and therefore concludes:140 "The long-term effect of stories that told [during WWI...] of human bodies used as raw material for the production of soap was that few were prepared to be fooled once again by such a fabrication. [...] There is no historical jus- tification for judging and dismissing the accounts of German atrocities dur- ing the Second World War within the context of the atrocity propaganda of the First World War: the attitude of the public of 1939-1945 was radically different from that of twenty-five years earlier, and it is clear that any at- tempt to generate the kind of propaganda symbolized by the notorious [WWI 139 Public Record Office, London, FO 371/34551, Aug. 27, 1943 (www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Cavendish/Bentinck.html). 140 Robert Jan van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial, Indiana University Press, 2002, pp. 131, 134. 84 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST stories about corpse exploitation establishment] would have merely gener- ated mockery [during WWII]." R: In other words, van Pelt says that during World War II the Allied authorities would not have invented similar stories as were invented by them during WWI, because nobody would have believed them anyway. If such stories circulated during WWII nevertheless, it must have been because they were true. The problem with that assumption is that during the Second World War there were dozens of reports similar to the World War I stories that the National So- cialists were making use of camp inmates as a source for raw materials of every possible sort: hair for felt boots and mattress stuffing, fat for soap, skin for leather, ashes for fertilizer.141 Nobody ever laughed about them or mocked the Allies for these stories. These claims were even part of the Allied charges in various war crime trials after the war. People who dared to laugh publicly about these claims at that time got into trouble, and even today I cannot advise doing so. L: So van Pelt's argument isn't tenable. R: Absolutely untenable, at least with regard to what the Allied intelligence ser- vices and governments wanted the world to believe. The citation of Cavendish- Bentinck mentioned above proves only that the very parties, which had in- vented the lies in the First World War, were skeptical during the Second World War. After the Second World War, the public itself, on the other hand, swal- lowed still much more uncritically what had even struck it as fishy after the First World War. As for the lie about soap of the Second World War, which was only officially exploded 40 years after the war's end, it is still kept alive in popular accounts to this day (see chapter 2.9). The reason for this is again found in the files of the British government liars. Thus, the British propaganda ministry circulated a memo to the Church of England and the BBC on February 29, 1944, which stated:142 "We know how the Red Army behaved in Poland in 1920 and in Finland, Es- tonia, Latvia, Galicia and Bessarabia only recently. We must, therefore, take into account how the Red Army will certainly be- have when it overruns Central Europe. [...] Experience has shown that the best distraction is atrocity propaganda di- rected against the enemy. Unfortunately the public is no longer so suscepti- ble as in the days of the `Corpse Factory,' and the `Mutilated Belgian Ba- bies,' and the `Crucified Canadians.'[143] Your cooperation is therefore earnestly sought to distract public attention from the doings of the Red Army by your wholehearted support of various charges against the Germans and Japanese which have been and will be put into circulation by the Ministry." L: Therefore van Pelt is indeed right. 141 Cf. Paul Grubach, "World War I Atrocity Propaganda and the Holocaust," TR 1(1) (2003), pp. 104-109. 142 Edward J. Rozek, Allied Wartime Diplomacy, John Wiley & Sons, New York 1958, pp. 209f. 143 Reference to allied atrocity propaganda during WWI; cf. Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in war-time, Garland, New York 1971. 85 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: I would say that van Pelt is arguing along the same lines as the British propa- gandists. That doesn't mean, however, that van Pelt is right. The British propa- ganda ministry was, of course, pursuing a goal, namely to get the media and churchmen to uncritically spread the most monstrous reports. Naturally van Pelt's intention is also similar to that: he desires that we accept the most mon- strous reports just as uncritically. L: But perhaps the propaganda ministry really spread only true reports, after all?144 R: It is unlikely that the propaganda ministry itself believed these reports to be true, for if that was so, then why didn't it write that explicitly? Let's read this text once again: "Unfortunately[!] the public is no longer so susceptible" cer- tainly means that a population is preferred that can be lied to easily, and "charges [...], which have been and will be put into circulation by the Minis- try" can certainly mean nothing other than that the ministry is and has been put- ting it into circulation for some time already and not, say, merely passing it on. Moreover, permit me to point out that government propaganda agency offices in times of war have never yet been inclined to spread the truth and nothing but the pure truth about the enemy. The British have been, after all, the masters of psychological warfare in both world wars. One has to be totally naive to be- lieve that in the worst, let alone the most dangerous of all wars for them, the British never resorted to lies. But now back to Butz. Since no one was behaving as if mass killings of Jews were occurring in Europe, despite excellent intelligence information, Prof. Butz came to the inescapable conclusion, which he expresses in the form of a meta- phor:145 "I see no elephant in my basement; an elephant could not be concealed from sight in my basement; therefore, there is no elephant in my basement." R: Or, to put it in plain language, Butz is saying: No one was acting as though there had been a holocaust. Had there been a holocaust, people would have behaved accordingly. Therefore there was no holocaust. 2.6. Because What Should Not Exist, Cannot Exist R: One can imagine that Prof. Butz did not make any friends by this. Still fewer friends were gained in 1978/79 by the French professor of textual, documen- tary, and evidentiary criticism, Dr. Robert Faurisson, who was disseminating his thesis of 1978 that technically seen it was radically impossible that there had been any gas chambers for the mass murder of camp inmates in German concentration camps.146 At the end of 1978, France's greatest daily newspaper, 144 Thus Christopher Browning during the second Zündel trial, B. Kulaszka (ed.), Did Six Million Really Die?, Samisdat Publishers, Toronto 1992, pp. 155 (www.zundelsite.org/english/dsmrd/dsmrd12browning.html). 145 A.R. Butz, "Context and Perspective in the `Holocaust' Controversy," JHR 3(4) (1982), pp. 371-405. 146 Cf. R. Faurisson, Es gab keine Gaskammern, Deutscher Arbeitskreis Witten, Witten 1978. 86 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Le Monde, decided to discuss Prof. Faurisson's provocative thesis in its col- umns by publishing an article by him.147 In later contributions, Faurisson then underpinned his thesis of the technical impossibility of homicidal gas chambers with further arguments.148 The response of established historians to this provo- cation was typical149 and is best illustrated by a passage from a declaration, which was signed by the French Holocaust activist Pierre Vidal-Naquet and 33 other French mainstream scholars:150 "One should not ask oneself how a mass murder was possible. It was techni- cally possible because it happened. This is the inevitable starting point of any historical examination of this subject. We simply want to recollect this truth: there is no debate about the existence of the gas chambers, and nei- ther should one be permitted." L: Good grief! There couldn't be a more dogmatically narrow-minded statement! Similar pronouncements based upon its own authority were made by the Holy Inquisition concerning the existence of witches and demons! R: A good comparison. Such a systematic refusal to think amounts to a total intel- lectual capitulation. After some time, that was probably well understood. Fau- risson's demand for technical and forensic evidence that the alleged gas cham- bers a) were possible at all and b) actually existed then finally gave the main- stream Holocaust experts opportunity to rake over the subject anew: confer- ences were organized,151 which, however, excluded Faurisson and his like- minded colleagues.152 147 "`Le problème des chambres à gaz' ou `la rumeur d'Auschwitz,'" Le Monde, Dec. 29, 1978, p. 8; see also "The `problem of the gas chambers,'" JHR, 1(2) (1980), pp. 103-114; and R. Faurisson, "Fauris- son's Three Letters to Le Monde (1978-1979)," JHR 19(3) (2000), pp. 40-46. 148 R. Faurisson, "Le camere a gas non sono mai esistite," Storia illustrata, 261 (1979), pp. 15-35 (www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/archFaur/1974-1979/RF7908xx2.html); Engl.: "The Gas Chambers: Truth or Lie?" JHR, 2(4) (1981), pp. 319-373; cf. Faurisson, "The Mechanics of Gassing," JHR, 1(1) (1980), pp. 23-30. (www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/FaurisArch/RF80spring.html); ders., "The Gas Chambers of Auschwitz Appear to be Physically Inconceivable," ibid, 2(4) (1981), pp. 311-317. 149 Cf. the documentation in Robert Faurisson, Mémoire en défense, La Vieille Taupe, Paris 1980, esp. pp. 71-101; cf. also Serge Thion (ed.), Vérité historique ou vérité politique?, La Vielle Taupe, Paris 1980 (www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/histo/SF/SF1.html); cf. also R. Faurisson, Écrits révisionnistes, 4 vols., publ. by author, Vichy 1999; 2nd. ed. 2004 (www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/archFaur/archFaurt.html). 150 Le Monde, Feb. 21, 1979. 151 At the Paris Sorbonne from June 29 to July 2, 1982, under the title "Le national-socialisme et les Juifs"; cf. Ecole des hautes études en sciences socials (ed.), L'Allemagne nazie et le génocide juif, Galli- mard/Le Seuil, Paris 1985; from Dec. 11-13, 1987, a second colloquium took place at the Sorbonne, cf. R. Faurisson, Écrits révisionnistes, op. cit. (note 149), vol. 2, pp. 733-750 (www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/archFaur/1986-1990/RF871210.html). Another conference took place in 1985 at Stuttgart, cf. Eberhard Jäckel, Jürgen Rohwer, Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1985. 152 First of all Arthur R. Butz (note 27), then Wilhelm Stäglich, author of Der Auschwitz-Mythos, Grabert, Tübingen 1979 (www.vho.org/D/dam; Engl.: The Auschwitz Myth: A Judge Looks at the Evidence, In- stitute for Historical Review, Newport Beach, CA, 1986), and Wilhelm Niederreiter (aka Walter N. Sanning), with his statistical contributions "Die europäischen Juden. Eine technische Studie zur zah- lenmäßigen Entwicklung im Zweiten Weltkrieg," parts 1-4, Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart 28(1-4) (1980), pp. 12-15; 17-21; 17-21; 25-31 (www.vho.org/D/DGG/Sanning28_1.html); as book see note 41. 87 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But didn't they want to refute their theses? Since one has to give them the chance to first present their theses once and then afterwards to defend them if that is at all possible. R: That would be good form, the scientific way of doing things. But this was not about science, which was clear from the publications following the confer- ences, for the theses of Faurisson and his co-revisionists are not mentioned at all in them. The mainstream work, which is best known of them, the volume first published in 1983 by Eugen Kogon and the entire roll of European main- stream Holocaust notables, Nazi Mass Murder,96 focuses on the revisionists merely in the Introduction, in which it condemns them en masse ­ without mentioning their names or book titles ­ as evil extremists, whose evil theses are to be refuted. L: So the revisionists are personally attacked, without the reader having the oppor- tunity to form an idea for himself. R: Right. At the same time, however, it is admitted that this book was published in order to refute for all time the evil deniers. L: But if it is admitted that there is something to refute, then wouldn't the claim which is to be refuted at least have to be stated? R: That is a fundamental maxim of science. L: And Kogon and his co-authors didn't do that? R: No, not a hint of it. The thesis put forward by Faurisson of the technical impos- sibility of the alleged gassings of human beings as well as the forensic evidence for the claimed mass murder demanded by him, were simply ignored. Instead, the old ploy was repeated of "proving" what they very badly wanted to have proved with questionable witness testimonies as well as with excerpts from documents torn out of their historical context, whose significance was thus dis- torted. L: How do you know that the authors were intent upon proving a preconceived notion? R: Well, from their admission in the original German edition on p. 2 under the heading "About this Book," the following amazing sentence appears: "In order to be able to effectively combat and stem such tendencies [the de- nial of mass murder], the entire historical truth must be irrefutably securely written for all time." L: What is biased in that? R: First of all, no viewpoint can be securely written down as truth "irrefutably for all time." Everything is subject to revision, as soon as new discoveries or pos- sibilities of interpretation surface. Moreover, it is pure insanity to write that a certain scientific thesis must be combated and stemmed. Untrue claims must be corrected, that is proper. But to equate untrue claims with dissident interpreta- tions, as is done here, and to want to "combat" this ­ as if the science of history were a battlefield ­ shows incontestably that the authors of this sentence them- selves are unshakably convinced that theses which run contrary to their inter- pretation must be false, especially when they then take care to provide no hint 88 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST about what these allegedly false theses are. If that isn't biased, then I don't know what, if anything, would be. 2.7. Führer Command ­ German Judges Will Obey! R: Shortly after Faurisson's challenge to the established science of history, a fur- ther revisionist provocation followed in the form of a bulky work by the Ham- burg judge Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich entitled Der Auschwitz Mythos.152 In it, the author examines the parameters of the proceedings, in which the historical pic- ture of Auschwitz generally recognized today was lashed together, and he ana- lyzes some of the evidence presented in these trials with a very critical atti- tude... L: ...and he denies the Holocaust, as the title suggests! R: He characterizes the claims of mass murder at Auschwitz as not credible. Al- though it is true that, as a judge in financial matters, Stäglich had no experience in matters of criminal law, he nonetheless thought that as a jurist he was able to judge that the judicial parameters of the proceedings he examined were a mockery of any legal principal. Later we will come back to that point. Here, I would merely like to address the response of the German justice system to this book, with which Holocaust revisionism first emerged in Germany with the claim of being scholarly. It was exactly this claim which was under dispute. In an expert report for the court as to the question of the scholarliness of this book, German historian Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler made the determination that the book was flatly not scholarly. L: Does that mean that Stäglich landed in court because of the book? R: At that time media offenses, which offensive books were considered to be in Germany, came under the statute of limitations after 6 months, so that Stäglich could not be prosecuted any longer. But the publisher, Wigbert Grabert, who had continued to sell the book, was hauled before the court and ultimately con- victed.153 L: So the book was declared to be illegal? R: Precisely. It was confiscated, which means that publication, storage, selling, import and export as well as advertising of this book are illegal. But that wasn't enough. On the basis of the confiscation ruling, the University of Göttingen, where Stäglich had taken his doctorate in the 1950s, decided to revoke his doc- toral title. This was done under application of Article 4 of the German law on carrying academic degrees, which had been issued by Adolf Hitler in 1939...154 L: A Nazi law is still valid today? R: You have heard me quite correctly. Article 4 of this law permits the revocation of academic degrees in the case of a "lack of academic dignity." L: Führer command us, we will follow you! 153 Cf. the report on the proceedings of confiscation: Wigbert Grabert (ed.), Geschichtsbetrachtung als Wagnis, Grabert, Tübingen 1984. 154 "Reichsgesetz über die Führung akademischer Grade" of June 7, 1939 (Reichsgesetzblatt I, pp. 985); "Durchführungsverordnung" of July 21, 1939 (Reichsgesetzblatt I, pp. 1326). 89 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: A fine irony! In any case, the text of the law contains nothing political, which is why it is still valid today. L: What in heaven's name is a lack of academic dignity? R: That is what is called a catch-all paragraph. Undignified is whatever those in power view as such. Today, for example, gynecologists who sexually misuse their patients, or chemists who brew up illicit drugs are usually targeted by this law, since they abuse their academic knowledge or their academic prestige for committing crimes.155 L: So because Stäglich used his knowledge as a jurist to cast doubt upon the find- ings of other jurists, they took his doctorate away from him? R: Exactly, and that was done although he had never even been convicted of a crime. L: Well, of course it had been determined, after all, that his book was a crime. The fact that he wasn't convicted was due only, of course, to technical factors. R: In the eyes of the German justice system, Stäglich had committed the crime of casting doubt upon the legally endorsed state dogma of the German post-war society with the help of his academic training. And the doubt which has been given an academic foundation is, in its disgracefulness, truly comparable to the crime of a rapist or drug dealer. After all, revisionism confuses the mind simi- lar to a drug, don't you think? L: If the ideas of revisionism are viewed as intellectual drugs, which mislead peo- ple into false thoughts... R: Anyone can be put behind bars using such notions. In any event, Stäglich's pension was reduced on top of all that, especially because they could no longer get him using the criminal law.156 L: So much for the self-confidence of German historians and the German legal system, who think they can protect their officially anointed "truth" only by consigning books to the flames and treat their authors not much differently from the way the Third Reich did with dissidents. R: Well, perhaps in the Third Reich Stäglich would have ended up in a concentra- tion camp, statute of limitations or not. In an article for an anthology of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), even Professor Dr. Eckhard Jesse, who teaches Sociology 155 Example: In 1981, a West German University refused to admit a PhD student to his final examination with reference to the above Hitler law, because several years before, this student had been sentenced to five years in prison for dealing with drugs. In the resulting civil court case, however, the court over- turned the University's decision, deciding that the student did have the required ethical maturity after having spent his time in prison. The court claimed that this Hitler law did not contain any specific Na- tion Socialist ideology and is therefore still valid. Verwaltungsgericht Baden-Württemberg, ref. IX 1496/79, March 18, 1981. 156 The Grabert publishing firm steadily reported about it in their magazine: "Bundesverwaltungsgericht im Dienste der Umerzieher. Erstmalig Doktorgrad aus politischen Gründen aberkannt," in DGG 36(3) (1988), p. 18 (www.vho.org/D/DGG/DGG36_3_2.html); "Unglaubliches Urteil im Fall Dr. Stäglich", ibid, 36(1) (1988), p. 7 (.../DGG36_1_1.html); DGG, "Vernunft wird Unsinn ... Späte Rache für den `Auschwitz-Mythos,'" ibid, 31(1) (1983), pp. 19f. (.../DGG31_1.html); "Ende der Wissenschaftsfrei- heit?," ibid, 29(3) (1981), p. 8 (.../DGG29_3_1.html). 90 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST at the University of Chemnitz (Saxony) and has specialized in the observation of political extremism, asked:157 "whether proceeding in this manner was really necessary. Outsiders might think that there must be something to Stäglich's thesis after all." L: As an expert, how on earth could Prof. Scheffler have lent himself to supplying the ammunition for ruining another scholar? R: Political zeal, I assume. It is worthwhile to read Stäglich's book and then, in the documentation of the Grabert publishing house cited here, to analyze what is criticized in the book. In his own foreword, Stäglich himself acknowledged a political motive when he wrote that the Auschwitz myth was threatening the ethnic vitality of the German people. L: Aha! So this isn't scientific! R: Not so fast! If the fact that a person has a political opinion about a matter and does not conceal but openly admits this is grounds for disputing his constitu- tionally vested unencumberable right to scholarly freedom of inquiry, then in- deed this just has the consequence that only those are protected from prosecu- tion who simply do not acknowledge their own political viewpoints. That being the case, I applaud Stäglich's frankness. For, at least anybody knows where he stands politically, which cannot be said unrestrictedly about the many leftist and communist Holocaust authors. Indeed, everyone has some sort of political interpretations in relation to the significance and consequences of the Holo- caust. Not a few authors might even welcome it if the Holocaust threatens the ethnic vitality of the German people, hence undermining its desire for self- determination, for the protection of its own cultural and ethnic identity. I can- not imagine that such a remark in Germany today would lead to disputing such a scholar's scientific method. But why should the opinion that the German people should not enjoy the right to cultural and ethnic self-determination be morally superior to the opinion that the German people should be able to enjoy those rights, which are conceded to every African and South American indige- nous tribe? L: Stäglich's word choice ­ "ethnic vitality" ­ is anachronistic. It sounds racist and like Nazism. R: So we therefore make the granting of the right to freedom of scholarly inquiry dependent upon whether someone uses the politically correct and sensitive vo- cabulary? L: Was that the sole reason, then, why Scheffler deprived Stäglich of scholarly status? R: No, Scheffler had manifold arguments, and certainly not always without justifi- cation, even though none of the reasons should be a justification for book- burning and other prosecutorial measures. But we cannot deal here with Schef- fler in more detail. The point I am making here is only to demonstrate the reac- tions of the German federal establishment toward well-grounded and objec- 157 Eckhard Jesse, "Streitbare Demokratie und `Vergangenheitsbewältigung,'" in: Bundesamt für Verfas- sungsschutz (ed.): Verfassungsschutz in der Demokratie. Beiträge aus Wissenschaft und Praxis, Hey- mann, Köln 1990, p. 289. 91 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST tively presented theses, that something could be amiss with our picture of the Holocaust. A truly open, democratic society should not react that way. 2.8. The Executed Execution Expert R: Now I would like to direct our attention back to the U.S. How many of you, ladies and gentlemen, know what the Leuchter Report is? Hang on, now ­ this is not a loaded question! Well, that seems to be about 10% of those present. But which of you knows what the Leuchter Report had to say? All of three persons. In September 1992, Germany's largest weekly paper, Die Zeit, was obviously induced to devote an entire page to the Leuchter Report, in two back-to-back issues.158 Before we deal with these articles, I would first like to give a short in- troduction to the Leuchter Report, so that you know how it came about that the public's interest was focused upon this subject. As you probably know, the death penalty exists in the U.S. Different methods of execution are used, and naturally there are technical facilities required for these. Of course there is a need for technical experts to produce and maintain these installations. In the 1980s, there was only one technician in the U.S. who was skilled in the setting up and maintenance of these facilities: Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., sometimes morbidly referred to as "Mr. Death" by the U.S. me- dia.159 In the U.S. media, Leuchter was repeatedly flatly described as the lead- ing execution expert.160 Now what do you suppose would happen if Leuchter came to the conclusion in a private expert report that the huge numbers of executions by guillotine claimed for the French Revolution were technically impossible on the scale claimed for them? L: The media and book market would have a controversy they could make money with. And some historians would have the opportunity to make a public name for themselves by tearing Leuchter apart or by agreeing with him. R: So it is not your view that because of such a statement all of Leuchter's com- missions would be cancelled and a media harassment campaign would be waged against him? L: No, why would that happen? R: Leuchter could, of course, have been wrong. 158 Till Bastian, "Die Auschwitz-Lügen," Die Zeit no. 39, Sept. 18, 1992, p. 104; "Der `Leuchter-Report,'" Die Zeit no. 40, Sept. 25, 1992, p. 90. 159 So the title of the documentary by Errol Morris about Fred Leuchter, first shown in January 1999 during the Sundance Film Festivals in Park City (Utah, USA): Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., (VHS: Universal Studios 2001; DVD: Lions Gate Home Entertainment, 2003); cf. Wil- liam Halvorsen, "Morris Shines a Light on Fred Leuchter," TR, no. 3, 2000, pp. 19-22. 160 Cf. the summary by Mark Weber, "Probing Look at `Capital Punishment Industry' Affirms Expertise of Auschwitz Investigator Leuchter," JHR 17(2) (1998), pp. 34ff.; cf. also Stephen Trombley, The Exe- cution Protocol, Crown Publishers, New York 1992; cf. also Leuchter's own statement in F. A. Leuchter, "The Third Leuchter Report," in op. cit. (note 115), pp. 181-209 (first published as The Third Leuchter Report, Samisdat Publishers Ltd., Toronto 1989). 92 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Then that would be open to proof. But errors in a private expert report regard- ing an historical subject would be no reason to want to pillory anyone. R: ...unless... Now, let me reformulate the question somewhat. What would hap- pen, in your opinion, if Leuchter should come to the conclusion in a private ex- pert report that the huge numbers of executions in gas chambers claimed for the Third Reich were technically impossible on that scale? L: That, of course, is something entirely different. R: It is once again a matter of a private expert report regarding an historical topic, about the claimed mass execution of innocent people. L: Yes, but the public sees this differently. There are sensitivities. R: In any case, scientifically there is no fundamental difference between these two theses, and the reaction of the historians here should have been as it would be in the example given, that is, Leuchter's arguments should have been consid- ered and either refuted or accepted as valid. L: So Leuchter's expert report contained such conclusions? R: Right. This is the expert report, which later became known as the Leuchter Report that I mentioned a little earlier. In 1983, the German-Canadian Ernst Zündel had been charged in a Canadian court for knowingly spreading false news about the Holocaust. He was charged with having sold writings in which the Holocaust is denied.161 In the spring of 1988, during his appeal proceed- ings, on the recommendation of his adviser Prof. Dr. Robert Faurisson, Zündel began searching for experts to compile a forensic expert report concerning the facilities in the former German concentration camps of Auschwitz and Ma- jdanek, at which witnesses have claimed people were gassed. At the recom- mendation of American state authorities, Zündel spoke to Fred A. Leuchter.162 Under enormous pressure due to time constraints, Fred Leuchter eventually composed such an expert report, whose conclusions I would like to quote here:163 "After reviewing all of the material and inspecting all of the sites at Ausch- witz, Birkenau and Majdanek, your author finds the evidence as overwhelm- ing. There were no execution gas chambers at any of these locations. It is the best engineering opinion of this author that the alleged gas chambers at 161 R. E. Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, Historical Review Press, Brighton, undated (ihr.org/books/harwood/dsmrd01.html); this brochure is said to have been based on an essay by David Hoggan, which he had published anonymously some five years earlier: The Myth of the Six Million Six Million, The Noontide Press Los Angeles 1969 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/tmotsm/index.html); see also the response to Harwood by A. Suzman, D. Diamond, Six Million did Die ­ the truth shall prevail, South Africa Jewish Board of Deputies, Johannesburg 1977; cf. also the reaction to this response: Committee for Truth in History, The Six Million Reconsidered, Historical Review Press, Ladbroke 1979. 162 Cf. Robert Faurisson, "The End of a Myth," JHR 8(3) (1988), pp. 376-380; Faurisson, "The Zündel Trials," JHR 8(4) (1988), pp. 417-431. 163 F. A. Leuchter, An Engineering Report on the alleged Execution Gas Charnbers at Auschwitz, Birke- nau and Majdanek, Poland, Samisdat Publishers Ltd., Toronto 1988, p. 33. (www.zundelsite.org/english/leuchter/report1/leuchter.toc.html); British edition by David Irving: The Leuchter Report, Focal Point Publications, London 1989; see also the critical edition, op. cit. (note 115), pp. 13-117, here p. 57. 93 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the inspected sites could not have then been, or now, be utilized or seriously considered to function as execution gas chambers." L: That must have put the cat among the pigeons. R: The initial effect of this opinion was very much like that. L: Where does Leuchter stand politically? R: I have not the slightest clue. Even though I met him, I did not ask him, nor has he ever made any political statement anywhere in public. So the best way to describe him is probably to call him utterly apolitical. He most likely had no idea what kind of a hot water he would get into when he accepted the request to prepare his expert report. L: Was the expert report recognized by the Canadian court? R: No. The court took notice of it but did not admit it as evidence. It was probably way too hot an issue for the judge.164 L: What arguments did Leuchter offer for his thesis? R: Leuchter stated among other things that there had been no gastight doors in the gassing rooms as well as no ventilation facilities for the drawing off of the poi- son, that the capacity of the crematories had been much too small, and similar other technical arguments. However, it was Leuchter's chemical analyses above all which caused a sensation. Leuchter had taken wall samples from those rooms in which, according to witnesses, great numbers of people had been gassed, and also from a room which served as a delousing chamber for prisoner clothing, therefore where no people, but only lice, have been killed. In both spaces the same poison ­ the pesticide Zyklon B ­ is supposed to have been used. Now, while large amounts of chemical residue of the pesticide were found in the sample from the delousing chamber, there was hardly any residue to speak of in the samples from the alleged homicidal gas chambers. Leuchter maintains, however, that just as much residue would have to be found there as in the delousing chambers, if the testimonies about mass gassings were true. L: Then does he prove what he claims? R: In asking this question you are putting your finger right on the sore spot of the Leuchter Report.165 We will concern ourselves later with the technical ques- tions of execution gas chambers dealt with by Leuchter. Here, we are interested first and foremost in the effect of this expert report upon the public. The fact is that this expert report of Fred Leuchter opened the eyes of many and showed that there is a scientific and technical approach to this explosive topic. Due to this expert opinion, the Auschwitz discussion penetrated deeply into the mainstream, although it was given an almost total silent treatment by the me- dia. One of the first signs of this effect of deep penetration in central Europe was the positive mention of the Leuchter Report in the book Der Nasenring (The nose ring) by right-wing Swiss political scientist Dr. Armin Mohler, 164 Cf. B. Kulaszka (ed.), op. cit. (note 144), pp. 354 (www.zundelsite.org/english/dsmrd/dsmrd33leuchter.html). 165 Cf. the critically commented new edition: Fred A. Leuchter, Germar Rudolf, Robert Faurisson, op. cit (note 115). 94 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST which was published in 1989.166 The first person representative of the academic mainstream who picked up the Leuchter Report was Berlin mainstream histo- rian Prof. Dr. Ernst Nolte. In February 1990, he published a full-page article in small the right-wing paper Junge Freiheit, which at that time came out only bimonthly. In this, he wrote about the Leuchter Report and the questions which it raised (see chapter 2.15.). A work by three recognized young historians, which appeared that same year and which dealt with revisions of the historical picture of the Third Reich, contained a longer article by a certain Senior Social Worker Werner Wegner, which claims to refute the Leuchter Report,167 but whose substance is extremely poor.168 The same Werner Wegner then pre- sented his arguments in fall of 1991 at a conference of the libertarian Thomas Dehler Foundation of Bavaria, whose topic was the revisionist debate, which therefore primarily focused upon the controversy triggered by the Leuchter Re- port. The Swiss revisionist Arthur Vogt also appeared there and presented a paper,169 for which he was later sentenced to a fine in Germany.170 The public debate over the Leuchter Report reached a temporary high point a year later, in September 1992, when Germany's largest weekly, Die Zeit, dedi- cated two one-page (and one-sided) articles to the Leuchter Report. The first of these articles appeared in the issue of September 18, 1992, under the title "Die Auschwitz-Lügen" (The Auschwitz Lies), in which the theses of the revisionists were of course accused of being nothing but lies. Apparently the editors of Die Zeit had noticed that revisionism, which was spreading beneath the surface of media attention with an ever increasing tempo, was no longer to be suppressed by silence and that for this reason a massive response was necessary. Die Zeit proclaimed in its subheading the high intent of wishing to now respond at last to the arguments of the "radicals of the right." But what followed in the article was merely a stubborn repetition of the old litanies, without even the appear- ance of engaging the theses of the revisionists. The ritualistic defamation of all persons who think differently with respect to the questions dealt with here as morbid right-wing extremists and stupid Nazis, as Die Zeit was again doing, cannot possibly be taken seriously after the things described to you here up to this point. Here I would not like to go into the details of these articles, espe- cially since for me this pertains here only to showing the public effect of the Leuchter Report. Whoever would like to read the two Die Zeit articles, with a 166 Heitz & Höffkes, Essen 1989, pp. 225f. 167 W. Wegner, "Keine Massenvergasungen in Auschwitz? Zur Kritik des Leuchter-Gutachtens," in U. Backes, E. Jesse, R. Zitelmann (ed.), Die Schatten der Vergangenheit, Propyläen, Frankfurt 1990, pp. 450-476 (www.vho.org/D/dsdv/Wegner.html, with inserted criticism of mine). 168 See my critique "Ein Sozialoberrat schreibt Geschichte" in Germar Rudolf, Auschwitz-Lügen, Castle Hill Publishers, Hastings 2005, pp. 55-73; see also: W. Häberle, "Zu Wegners Kritik am Leuchter- Gutachten," DGG, 39(2) (1991), pp. 13-17 (www.vho.org/D/DGG/Haeberle39_2.html); Wilhelm Stäglich, Der Leuchter Report. Antwort auf eine Kritik, History Buff Books and Video, Hamilton, On- tario, undated (1991) (www.vho.org/D/dlraaek). 169 On Arthur Vogt cf. the obituary by Jürgen Graf, "Arthur Vogt, der erste Schweizer Revisionist (1917 ­ 2003)," VffG 8(1) (2004) pp. 109f. 170 Karl Salm, "Der Justizskandal in Fall Thomas-Dehler-Stiftung," Staatsbriefe, 5(12) (1994), 6(2,3-4,6) (1995) (www.vho.org/D/Staatsbriefe/Salm6_2-4-6.html). 95 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST No. 39, September 18, 1992, p. 104 No. 40, September 25, 1992, p. 90 "The Auschwitz Lies "The `Leuchter Report' Right-wing radicals are denying the mass For several years right-wing extremists murder of the Jews with increasing propa- have been referring to the expert report ganda. It does not suffice to become mor- of an American engineer, who suppos- ally outraged about this. So long as the edly proves that there were no gas cham- arguments of the revisionists are not refuted bers in Auschwitz. What is there to with facts, many people will feel uncertain. this?" What are the facts?" corresponding revisionist rebuttal, can refer to my corresponding publication for this.171 L: Was there any sort of official statement regarding Leuchter's expert report? R: Yes, but they contradicted each other. The first response occurred in 1990 from the German Federal Minister of Justice:172 "With you, I am of the opinion that the actual Leuchter Report was a scien- tific investigation." R: Later, the German federal government changed its opinion, for in the reports of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution the Leuchter Report has been characterized for years as "pseudo-scientific" or as merely "suppos- edly scientific,"173 terms which are used by the German authorities to denigrate historical viewpoints opposed to their own.174 L: Perhaps it is correct that the Leuchter Report is not at all scientific. R: We will return later to the objection about the alleged pseudo-scientific status of revisionist work. I would like to conclude the topic here with a short refer- ence to what happened to the author of the Leuchter Report after the world- wide controversy had peaked. In view of the many tens of thousands of copies of the Leuchter Report in all the main languages of the world, which are in global circulation, as well as the many speeches given by Leuchter, the effect of his work was enormous. Alarmed by this development, the "Never Forgive, Never Forget" brigade wasted no time in taking counter-measures. Self-styled "Nazi hunter" Beate Klarsfeld announced that Fred Leuchter "has to understand that in denying the Holocaust, he cannot remain unpunished."175 171 "Die Zeit lügt!," G. Rudolf, op. cit. (note 168), pp. 75-116. 172 Letter by West German Minister of Justice, ref. II Bla-AR-ZB 1528/89, Bonn, March 16, 1990, signed by Böing (confirmed by Wolff) to Dr. Claus Jordan. 173 Cf. e.g. the Bundesverfassungsschutzbericht of the year 2000. After I started quoting these reports (see www.vho.org/VffG), they tried to completely avoid using the word "scientific." 174 See the reasons given in the respective issues of the periodical BPjM Aktuell, published by the German censorship office Bundesprüfstelle, for indexing revisionist publications, as well as for subjecting revi- sionist media to confiscation and destruction (see also www.vho.org/censor/Censor.html). 175 Taken from Mark Weber, op. cit. (note 160), pp. 34-36. 96 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Jewish organizations launched a vicious smear campaign to destroy not only his reputation, but his ability to make a living. Leading the charge was Shelly Shapiro and her group "Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice." Calling Leuchter a fraud and impostor, this group claimed, despite better knowledge, that he lacked qualifications as an execution equipment specialist and had asserted the possession of professional qualifications which he had never earned.176 Although these accusations were entirely unfounded and failed to survive any legal verification, the "get Leuchter" campaign, with the co-operation of main- stream journalists and editors, was successful. Leuchter's contracts with state authorities for the manufacture, installation, and servicing of execution hard- ware were cancelled. He was financially forced out of his home in Massachu- setts and had to find private work elsewhere. No American has suffered more for his defiance of the Holocaust lobby. L: Does he stand by his controversial conclusions after this? R: The last time I was in contact with him was in the spring of 2003, and at that time this was absolutely still the case. 2.9. Jewish Soap, Lamp Shades, and Shrunken Heads R: But now to the question of whether, in the eyes of the established discipline of history, everything is true which was reported during the war and shortly after it. To begin with, this concerns admittedly only a few details which were re- ported over and over again in connection with the events in the German con- centration camps. First there is the Reichsamt für Industrielle Fettversorgung (Reich Office for Industrial Fat Supply), abbreviated RIF. During the Third Reich period, in addition to many other products, it also made soap, which at the time was produced mostly from fat. During the Nuremberg Trial in 1946, the Soviets presented soap as an evidence exhibit with the allegation that the fat which was the base ingredient of this product came from Jews who died in mass killings.177 The charge with respect to this was not sustained by the court, however. This allegation was too strongly reminiscent of the atrocity tales of the First World War, in which the allegation was made that the Germans pro- duced soap from the corpses of fallen soldiers.178 Up to the present day, the in- terpretation which has it that the initials RIF stamped on German soap stood for "Reines Juden Fett" (Pure Jewish Fat) stubbornly persists here and there. In spring of 1990 the rectification came from the Israeli Holocaust Center, Yad Vashem.179 According to it, the fairy tale of the soap made of Jewish fat is sup- posed to have been invented by the National Socialists themselves in order to 176 Cf. Fred A. Leuchter, "Witch Hunt in Boston," JHR, 10(4) (1990), pp. 453-460; Leuchter, "Is there life after persecution? The botched execution of Fred Leuchter," JHR, 12(4) (1992), pp. 429-444; F.A. Leuchter, correction (www.vho.org/GB/c/DI/Shallit.html). 177 IMT dokuments 3420-PS; 3422-PS; exhibit USSR-393; cf. IMT, vol. VII, pp. 175, 597-600; vol. 8, p. 469; vol. 19, pp. 47, 506; vol. 22, p. 496. 178 Re. similar accusation during WWI cf. Arthur Ponsonby, op. cit. (note 143). 179 The Daily Telegraph, "Jewish Soap tale `was Nazi lie,'" April 25, 1990. 97 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The Daily Telegraph April 25, 1990 Jewish soap tale `was Nazi lie' Israel's Holocaust Museum, rebutting a common belief, said yesterday that the Nazis never made soap from the fat of murdered Jews during the Second World War. But skin was used for lamp shades and hair to fill mattresses. Historian Yehuda Bauer said many Jews believed their murdered families and friends had been turned into soap because the Nazis themselves propagated the idea. "Nazis told the Jews they made soap out of them. It was a sadistic tool for mental torture" ­ Reuter subject the Jews to psychological torture. It was a certainty, though, it said, that soap was never made from human fat. What is interesting here, is how, after the exposure of a lie, the attempt is made to place the blame for it on the very peo- ple against whom it had been hatched and spread to the world, plainly accord- ing to the motto: the victim himself is guilty. Also interesting here is the ques- tion from where the Center got the information that soap was never made from human fat. L: Not because Yad Vashem itself perhaps knows the history of the origin and spreading of these lies in every detail? R: No, the answer to this may lie in the fact that the researchers in Yad Vashem are not exactly stupid. They know all too well the witness testimonies cited as evidence for the soap myth as well as their credibility. Today there is consid- erably more of such testimony, but I doubt that its quality has been improved with increasing distance from the events. During the IMT, the Soviet chief prosecutor Smirnov presented the written testimony of a certain Sigmund Mazur, which reads as follows:180 "In the courtyard of the Anatomic Institute [in Danzig] a one-story stone building of three rooms was built during the summer of 1943. This building was erected for the utilization of human bodies and for the boiling of bones. This was officially announced by Professor Spanner. This laboratory was called a laboratory for the fabrication of skeletons, the burning of meat and unnecessary bones. But already during the winter of 1943-44 Professor Spanner ordered us to collect human fat, and not to throw it away. [...] In February 1944 Professor Spanner gave me the recipe for the preparation of soap from human fat. According to this recipe 5 kilos of human fat are mixed with 10 liters of water and 500 or 1,000 grams of caustic soda. All this is boiled 2 or 3 hours and then cooled. The soap floats to the surface while the water and other sediment remain at the bottom. A bit of salt and soda is added to this mixture. Then fresh water is added, and the mixture again boiled 2 or 3 hours. After having cooled the soap is poured into molds" 180 IMT, vol. 7, pp. 597f. 98 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 11: Soap, allegedly from human fat, Soviet "evidence" during the Nuremberg Military Tribunal. It was never subjected to forensic in- vestigation and disappeared later.183 R: Mazur never appeared in front of the IMT and was therefore never cross- examined. Filip Müller is a typical witness who gave an account of how the fat of the murdered Jews was allegedly obtained. In his statement he reports that thou- sands of bodies in Auschwitz were cremated in pits under the open sky. Here are a couple excerpts:181 "A few days later we made it: the two pits were 40 to 50 metres long [130- 164 ft], about 8 metres wide [26 ft] and 2 metres deep. [6.5 ft...] By digging a channel which sloped slightly to either side from the centre point, it would be possible to catch the fat exuding from the corpses as they were burning in the pit, in two collecting pans at either end of the channel." R: Müller continues:182 "As it began to grow light, the fire was lit in two of the pits in which about 2,500 dead bodies lay piled one on top of the other. [...] we stokers had con- stantly to pour oil or wood alcohol on the burning corpses, in addition to human fat, large quantities of which. had collected and was boiling in the two collecting pans on either side of the pit. The sizzling fat was scooped out with buckets on a long curved rod and poured all over the pit causing flames to leap up amid much crackling and hissing." R: According to Müller, the fat is supposed to have been used as fuel. According to other witnesses, it was processed into soap.184 181 Filip Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz. Three Years in the Gas Chambers, Stein and Day, New York 1979, p. 130. 182 Ibid., p. 136. 183 U.S. National Archives, 238-NT-270. 184 S. Wiesenthal, Der neue Weg (Vienna), 15/16 & 17/18, 1946; Career affidavit of SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Konrad Morgen, National Archives, Record Group 28, No. 5741, Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes, Dec. 19, 1947; Filip Friedman, This Was Oswiecim. The Story of a Murder Camp, United Jew- ish Relief Appeal, London 1946; on the Greenwood cemetery in Atlanta (Georgia) is a Holocaust me- morial with a tombstone for four pieces of "Jewish soap." Cf. R. Harwood, D. Felderer, JHR 1(2) (1980) pp. 131-139; M. Weber, "Jewish Soap" JHR 11(2) (1991) pp. 217-227; R. Faurisson, "Le savon 99 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: And how does one prove that this sort of testimony is false? R: First of all, it should be kept in mind that it is an accuser who must prove his accusation, i.e., the guilt of the defendant, and not the defendant who must prove his innocence. Simply making a claim does not constitute proof, not even when it comes from a Holocaust survivor. But in this case, we can actually re- fute this claim, and indeed with rock-hard scientific arguments. And these are: The flash point of animal fat ­ which is essentially identical to human body fat ­ is 184° Celsius (363°F).185 That means that these fats, in the presence of fire or glowing embers, burn starting at a temperature of 184° Celsius. Burning wood would therefore undeniably kindle the fat escaping the bodies. This effect is well known to anyone who has ever seen fat drop from his steak onto the coals of a grill: when too much fat drops into the glowing coals, the entire grill quickly blazes up in flames. The scheme described by Filip Müller and many other witnesses is therefore simply ridiculous nonsense and would make any skimming off of fat impossible.186 L: So, no soap from fat but we still have lamp shades from human skin and mat- tress stuffing from human hair. R: Whether mattress stuffing was produced from human hair remains open to question. Nobody disputes the fact that all persons who were taken to a camp had their hair shorn for hygienic reasons. That happened in all nations at that time with all prisoners and still happens even today. Also, the hair of all sol- diers must be kept short for the same reasons of hygiene. The utilization of such hair proves neither anything about the fate of its former wearers, nor can I see anything morally questionable in this utilization. L: But it is a quite different matter with human skin. R: Obviously. This allegation was first raised during the post-war Nuremberg Tribunal in parallel with the soap allegations.187 In the same category usually belong some shrunken heads, which are supposed to have been made from killed prisoners. There is sufficient photographic material of both things from the time of the Nuremberg Trial. Later these pictures served as evidence in the trials against Ilse Koch, the wife of the former camp Commandant of the Buch- enwald concentration camp. She is supposed to have selected living prisoners in the camp according to their tattooing and designated them for killing in order to eventually have household objects produced from their skin. In his detailed study, U.S. mainstream author Arthur L. Smith determined that the objects identified as human skin by a U.S. examination after they were sent to the In- ternational Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, disappeared without a Juif," Annales d'histoire révisionniste, 1 (1987), pp. 153-159 (www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/archFaur/1986-1990/RF8703xx3.html). 185 J.H. Perry, Chemical Engineer's Handbook, Wilmington Delaware 1949, p. 1584. 186 This argument was taken from Carlo Mattogno's contribution "The Crematoria Ovens of Auschwitz and Birkenau," in: Germar Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 281-320, here p. 410. 187 3421-PS; IMT, vol. 3, p. 515. 100 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST trace.188 According to the statement of General Clay of the U.S. Army, the alleged human skin lamp shades are supposed to have consisted of goat skin.189 All other objects found later were either of synthetic leather, animal leather, textile, or card- board.190 The charges against Frau Koch which were later Ill. 12: Shrunken heads of prisoners from a con- brought before a German centration camp193 or of Amazon Indians from court were based merely upon an anthropological museum? witness testimony uncritically accepted as true by the court. Frau Koch, who had been previously sentenced to life imprisonment in Dachau by the Americans and finally pardoned, was again sentenced to life imprisonment by a German court in Augsburg in the atmos- phere of hysteria, "propaganda and mass-hypnosis"191 prevailing at that time. Frau Koch later committed suicide in her prison cell. Smith states there was a medical student from the University of Jena during the war period, who was doing his medical dissertation on the correlation between skin tattooing and criminality, for which he used examples of inmates in the Buchenwald concentration camp. In this connection tattooed skin did have a possible use, though of prisoners who had already died.192 L: But there would be no need to take off the skin from deceased persons in order to study body tattoos. Taking a photograph would suffice, don't you think? R: Sure. If they did indeed take skin from a prisoner, which has yet to be proven, then that could be justified only if permission was given by the deceased per- son or relatives of him. L: So the legend therefore has at least a kernel of truth. R: One can start with that assumption. Whether in the kernel there is something immoral, however, I would like to leave as unproven, an open question for the time being. The matter of the shrunken heads appears to be similar. German political scien- tist and revisionist Udo Walendy claims without proof that the two shrunken 188 A.L. Smith, Die "Hexe von Buchenwald." Der Fall Ilse Koch, Böhlau, Köln 1983, pp. 103, 138, 153, 164; cf. U. Walendy, HT no. 43, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1990, pp. 15ff.; G. Frey, Vorsicht Fälschung, FZ-Verlag, Munich 1991, pp. 200ff., 211. 189 A.L. Smith, op. cit (note 188), p. 227. 190 The analysis of a relict in the U.S. National Archives had the following result: Skin of a large mammal, cf. David Irving, "Menschenhäute," VffG, 3(2) (1999), pp. 214-216; Jean Plantin, "Der Mythos von Gebrauchsobjekten aus Menschenhaut," VffG, 5(4) (2001), pp. 397-401. 191 A.L. Smith, op. cit (note 188), p. 138. 192 A.L. Smith, op. cit (note 188), pp. 127f.; confirmed by Wolfgang Röll, head of collection of museum Buchenwald camp, Email from July 29, 2004 (wroell@buchenwald.de). The PhD student was Erich Wagner from the University of Jena. 193 R. Neumann, Hitler ­ Aufstieg und Untergang des Dritten Reiches, Oldenbourg, Munich 1961, p. 183. 101 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 13: Collection of medical objects allegedly found in Buchenwald camp.195 heads presented at that time (see Ill. 12) were of South American provenance and had an inventory number of a German anthropological museum.194 L: The physiognomy of these shrunken heads seems totally non-European. The one on the right even has war paint on his cheeks! R: I am no anthropologist and so don't know whether skin color and physiognomy remain intact after the shrinking process, so for that reason I won't go out on a limb on this point. But when one considers that the hair of the concentration camp prisoners was basically shorn almost down to the scalp, and the hair of these shrunken heads is long, one is permitted to doubt the official history. In any case, the skulls have disappeared without a trace, and a systematic search for similar heads in German or foreign anthropological museums has, as far as I know, not yet been done. At any rate, the tales foisted off on the basis of the evidence discovered ­ soap, human skin, shrunken heads ­ were in part distorted accounts, in part obvious inventions. L: But our children in school keep getting precisely these stories dished out to them as true and have to learn this material. What do you suggest we should do? R: The question answers itself, if you apply the same standards that you do to movies: from what age would you allow your child to watch a horror film in which people are gruesomely killed and objects made out of their remains? L: Not at all. They have to be 18 years old and older and have their own apartment and own television. Anything else would even be illegal, of course. R: Then why do you allow the teachers to present such things to children of 10, 12, or 14 years old? 194 U. Walendy, op. cit. (note 188), p. 18. 195 U.S. Army Audio-Visual Agency SC 203584. 102 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But that is something quite different. After all, the stories on the Holocaust deal with actual historical events, of course ­ at least in the viewpoint of the teacher. R: And that makes the shock-effect on children less intense than if one says to them, all this is only made up? L: The shock-effect is probably even greater. R: That's what I think, too. Some children will have nightmares. Many will be convinced they have come face to face with the Devil. In any case, the sort of presentation of this kind of material to children has a traumatic effect. L: So you recommend forbidding children to listen to these kinds of stories? R: You should not get into this with the children, but rather with the teacher. You should speak with the history teacher in order to find out when and how he or she will bring up the subject in class. If the lesson plan includes films or liter- ary accounts of atrocities, ask that your child be excused from these particular classes. As the one in charge of the child's upbringing, you have this right to do this, in any event. L: And what reasons do I give the teacher? R: If you want to protect your child from attacks and harassment, I suggest not making historically based arguments, with claims that, for this reason or that reason, none of this is true at all. By doing so, you will only make an enemy of the teacher and eventually even the entire staff and put your child in a precari- ous position. Argue on a purely pedagogic basis as I outlined above: horror sto- ries should not be presented to your child either by movies, novels, "instruc- tional" films, or Holocaust literature. You are reserving to yourself the right to present this subject, in a careful manner, to your child yourself. If you are somewhat more ready to deal with opposition, you can obviously also try to insist upon participating in the class, if you have the time for this. But here as well, I would use pedagogic rather than historical arguments. L: But even if I keep my child away from such classes, I naturally cannot keep the subject hidden from my child. R: That is something you should not and must not do. You must give equal time at home to the time your child is not spending in the class, using your own in- struction. You must explain to the child why you took him out of class, and ex- plain the pedagogic reasons as well as the historical ones. And above all, you must explain to your child why the historical reasons can be spoken about only with extreme caution. In this way you are giving your child at the same time an important introduction to social studies, with the topic being "societal taboos," a topic which gets the silent treatment in every school. In this way your child will learn not only what the other children are learning, but also why it is dis- puted and how and in what manner this subject afflicts and controls our society down to the marrow of our bones. At the end, your child will feel not as though he has been excluded from something, but rather the contrary, even privileged. He now knows something which no other student knows. He feels superior to them, because he has been allowed to share in a sort of forbidden secret know- ledge. 103 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 2.10. Ivan the Wrong Guy R: Now I would like to take once again a look at conditions in the United States. In the multicultural USA, human rights form a basis for institutional identity to a far greater degree than is the case in Europe. For this reason the public there keeps a considerably more watchful eye for the preservation of the correspond- ing standards of law. In 1986 the U.S. citizen John Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel because dur- ing the Second World War he was supposed to have murdered thousands upon thousands of Jews in the Treblinka extermination camp. But when it became manifestly clear toward the end of the 1980s that Demjanjuk had been con- victed in Jerusalem only on the basis of extremely dubious, even falsified evi- dence, prominent voices were raised in the U.S. demanding the revocation of the extradition, since, they said, Israel had obtained this by deception with false facts. Finally, they argued, the U.S. had an obligation toward each of its citi- zens, to guarantee that his rights were secured and that he had protection of the law, which obviously was not possible in the case of trials in Israel. The state- ments of prominent personalities went beyond this demand, however. I would like to mention here Pat Buchanan as the individual in the forefront of these personalities. During the 1980s, Buchanan was a personal advisor of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and one of the Republican competitors of President Bush, Sr., running for a re-election after his first term in 1992. In 1986, Buchanan had already characterized the proceedings against Demjan- juk as a new Dreyfus Affair,196 and then four years later, during the course of the appeal proceedings against Demjanjuk, he gave his opinion as follows:197 "Since the war, 1,600 medical papers have been written on `The Psycho- logical and Medical Effects of the Concentration Camps on Holocaust Sur- vivors.' This so-called `Holocaust Survivor Syndrome' involves `group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics.' Reportedly, half the 20,000 survivor testimonies in Jerusalem are considered `unreliable,' not to be used in trials. Finally, the death engine. During the war, the underground government of the Warsaw Ghetto reported to London that the Jews of Treblinka were be- ing electrocuted and steamed to death."... L: That is new to me. 196 The Plain Dealer (Cleveland/Ohio), Oct. 1, 1986; cf. H.P. Rullmann, Der Fall Demjanjuk, 2nd ed., Verlag für ganzheitliche Forschung und Kultur, Struckum 1987, p. 26 (www.vho.org/D/dfd/). Alfred Dreyfus was a French-Jewish officer, who in the late 19th century was scapegoated by the French me- dia, authorities, and legal system for the defeat the French had suffered in their war against Prussia in 1870/71. Dreyfus had been accused of high treason, but the trial against him in an atmosphere of mass hysteria was nothing but a show trial. For this, see Emile Zola's famous essay "J'accuse," L'Aurore, Jan. 13, 1898; Emile Zola, Alain Pages, The Dreyfus Affair: J'accuse and other Writings, Yale Univer- sity Press, Yale 1998. Dreyfus was ultimately acquitted. 197 Pat Buchanan, The New York Post, March 17, 1990, p. 26; here quoted from a later issue of The New Republic: Jacob Heilbrunn, "Absolving Adolf," The New Republic, Oct. 18, 1999 (www.tnr.com/archive/1099/101899/heilbrunn101899.html) 104 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Well, the alleged murder methods for most camps changed quite a bit before historians agreed upon a certain method. We will discuss that in more detail in chapter 3.5. about the Treblinka camp. Now back to Buchanan's article: ..."The Israeli court, however, concluded the murder weapon for 850,000 was the diesel engine from a Soviet tank which drove its exhaust into the death chamber. All died in 20 minutes, Finkelstein swore in 1945. The problem is: Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. In 1988, 97 kids, trapped 400 feet underground in a Washington, D.C., tunnel while two locomotives spewed diesel exhaust into the car, emerged unharmed after 45 minutes. Demjanjuk's weapon of mass murder cannot kill." L: What does the capability of diesel motors have to do with Demjanjuk's possi- ble guilt? R: I will go more into that later. But let me indicate just this much here: the mass gassings which, depending upon the source, resulted in from 700,000 up to 3 million Jewish victims in the Treblinka camp, in which John Demjanjuk is supposed to have been such a terror, are supposed to have been carried out by means of exhaust gases from the diesel motor of a captured Soviet tank.198 But here we want to exclude from discussion, for the time being, the question of how valid this claim is, and whether Buchanan is right in doubting the technical feasibility of the described mass murder scenario. Here I would like to call attention to other things. First: can you imagine, ladies and gentlemen, a prominent politician in, for instance, Germany making such a statement and then two years later still having the possibility, and actually even enjoying good prospects of being the candidate of a major national party for the office of Chancellor? Note well: Pat Buchanan has not retreated from his statements made at that time!199 L: In Germany, a politician who made such statements would probably fall afoul of the law and very quickly disappear from the political arena. After all, by do- ing so he is actually denying the mass extermination in many camps! R: In order to be able to understand what impelled Buchanan to make his state- ment, I would like to briefly summarize the events concerning John Demjan- juk. The immigrants to America from the Ukraine were split into two groups during the Cold War, a communist group, directed by Moscow, and an independent group. The communist-directed group published at that time a weekly paper, News from Ukraine, whose chief assignment consisted of defaming the other, anti-communist nationally-oriented group of exiles from the Ukraine, particu- larly by repeatedly making claims that the national Ukrainians had collaborated 198 For an overview on the orthodox history of that camp cf. Alexander Donat (ed.), The Death Camp Treblinka, Holocaust Library, New York 1979; more recent in the shadow of the Demjanjuk trial: Yitz- hak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press, Bloomington/Indianapolis 1987; for the revisionist approach cf. Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, Treb- linka. Extermination Camp or Transit Camp, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/t). 199 Cf. M. Weber, "Pat Buchanan and the Struggle for Truth in History," JHR 18(3) (1999), pp. 2f. 105 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST stern March 5, 1992, pp. 198ff. Branded a Murderer Although the Federal Crimes Bureau (BKA) warned the Israelis that the supposed SS employment identity card of Ivan Demjanjuk was forged, the former Ukrainian is sup- posed to be executed. [...] The single written piece of evidence in this trial, an SS employment identity card of Demjanjuk made available by the Soviet Union, is a forgery, according to an evaluation by experts of the Federal Crimes Bureau in Wiesbaden. Even more: this was already known to the Israeli authorities before the beginning of the trial in February 1987. [...] [...] Twenty-one former guards from Treblinka have declared in proceedings, independ- ently from one another, that a Ukrainian by the name of Ivan Marchenko had been Ivan the Terrible ­ and not Ivan Demjanjuk. The Chief Prosecutor in Jerusalem, State Attorney Michael Shadek, was not concerned by the doubts raised about his evidence: "That Demjanjuk killed, is a certainty to me ­ whether at Treblinka, or Sobibor, or somewhere else." As to the BKA's suspicion of forgery, he now explains to Der STERN: "We are supported by our own expert opinions and consider them as convincing as ever." with the "German fascists" during World War II.200 One means to that end was the revelation of alleged war crimes by Ukrainians, by which not only discord was sown among these exiled Ukrainians, but also their public reputation was damaged.201 This practice by the USSR of combating opponents by means of disinformation and distorted or totally falsified evidence is generally well known. Even the West German Federal Ministry of the Interior warned of this practice in the mid-1980s.202 So it is all the more astonishing that in the mid- 1970s, the American authorities fell into the trap set by the communist Ukrain- ian exiles in the Demjanjuk Case. In 1975, Michael Hanusiak, at that time an employee of the pro-Moscow News from Ukraine, handed over a list to the U.S. authorities which contained 70 names of alleged National Socialist collaborators of Ukrainian origin, among which also appeared the name of John Demjanjuk, who was then living in Cleveland, Ohio, as a U.S. citizen. Hanusiak came up with an accusatory statement of a certain Danilchenko, according to which Demjanjuk allegedly served at the German camps Sobibor and Flossenbürg.203 This statement as well as the facsimile of an identity card, which allegedly proved Demjanjuk's instruction as a camp guard in the Trawniki labor camp as well as his employ- ment at the two above named camps, were what caused the U.S. immigration authority to focus its attention on the Demjanjuk Case. In 1976, the U.S. De- 200 H.P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 196), pp. 76. 201 Cf. the cases of Karl Linnas, Frank Walus, and Fedor Fedorenko, H.P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 196), pp. 87, 96ff., 164; U. Walendy, HT no. 25, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1985, pp. 35 (Walus); Walendy, HT no. 34, ibid. 1988, p. 14 (Linnas). 202 Information of the German Federal Minister for Internal Affairs, Innere Sicherheit, no. 1, Bonn, March 20, 1985. 203 H.P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 196), pp. 76f., acc. to News from Ukraine. 106 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Thursday, March 26, 1992 Demjanjuk: Ivan the Wrong instead of Ivan the Terrible German federal authorities conceal knowledge about forged evidence [...] Our paper has already [...] reported about an expert report by historian Dieter Lehner [...], in which this "document" is exposed as a complete forgery. One exam- ple: the identity card photo comes from the files of the U.S. immigration authorities and was first taken in 1947 (!) [...] In the meantime, it has turned out that federal authorities are also [...] entangled in the affair. For it is clear that for the past five years, the highest political authorities have seen to it that the truth [...] did not reach the public. [...] When the expert report of the Crimes Bureau reportedly became well known, the Bonn Office of the Chancellor became involved in the matter. Representatives of the Demjanjuk defense were given the runaround. The existence of the BKA expert report was concealed from them. Although the Chancellor's office knew the report by Lehner and the BKA, a false trail was laid: not the identity card was said to have been examined by the BKA, but only the photo. [...] Yet even this statement is false. [...] The Federal Crimes Bureau was compelled to publicly keep silent. A BKA Department Chief made a file memo: "Professional scruples obviously had to be subordinated to political aspects." partment of Justice moved to deprive Demjanjuk of his U.S. citizenship on the basis of alleged false information he gave in his immigration papers. In the meantime witnesses surfaced in Israel who, on the basis of photos shown to them, recognized John Demjanjuk as the "Ivan the Terrible" allegedly em- ployed at Treblinka, whereupon investigations involving both Sobibor and Treblinka ensued. The Office of Special Investigations (OSI), a Nazi-hunting agency established in 1976 under President Jimmy Carter, officially took over the Demjanjuk Case in 1979. Demjanjuk was deprived of his U.S. citizenship in 1984, mainly on the basis of the camp identity card produced by Hanusiak, and he was extradited to Israel in 1986, although Israel was not able to formally claim any right to take such a step. L: But why not? R: Accused persons are either extradited to those nations where they are citizens or were citizens at the time of the crime, or to those nations where they are al- leged to have committed their crimes, thus, in this case, either to the Soviet Un- ion or to Poland. At the time of the alleged crime, Israel of course did not exist yet. During the criminal trial in Jerusalem204 the expert for Demjanjuk's defense, Dieter Lehner, exposed the camp identity card as a complete forgery,205 which was in agreement with the findings of the West German Federal Bureau of In- 204 Jerusalem District Court, Criminal Case no. 373/86, Verdict against Ivan (John) Demjanjuk. 205 Dieter Lehner, Du sollst nicht falsch Zeugnis geben, Vohwinckel, Berg am See, undated; cf. H.P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 196), pp. 103ff. 107 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST vestigations (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA). Although the Israeli authorities had already been informed about this circumstance by the German authorities in 1987, the Israeli court suppressed this finding. Israel's Chief Prosecutor Mi- chael Shadek merely had this to offer in response:206 "That Demjanjuk killed, is a certainty to me ­ whether at Treblinka, or So- bibor, or somewhere else." R: And to the objection that, according to findings of the BKA, the SS identity card was forged: "We are supported by our own expert opinions and consider them as con- vincing as ever." R: But German authorities also played a strange role in connection with the forged Trawniki identity card. The Bavarian weekly Münchner Merkur reported that the German Federal Office of the Chancellor took particular care to see to it personally that the existence of the German expert report by Dieter Lehner and the West German BKA was concealed from Demjanjuk's defense and that on orders from above the BKA was constrained to keep silent as far as the public was concerned. In addition: the expert from the BKA, who finally did appear in the Jerusalem court, was forced by German authorities to give only a partial expert opinion for this trial, which referred merely to certain points of similar- ity of the touched-up passport photograph in the identity card with facial fea- tures of Demjanjuk. This created the impression in the Jerusalem trial that the identity card was genuine. The partial expert opinion was presented by forensic expert Dr. Werner, a head of department of the BKA, who characterized this behavior of the West German authorities with these words in his file memoran- dum written at that time:207 "Professional scruples obviously had to be subordinated to political as- pects." R: It turned out that the picture on the identity card is an old photo of Demjanjuk from the year 1947, taken from the immigration documents in the USA (!) and was correspondingly retouched for the identity card. How important Demjanjuk's camp identity card was to the OSI in this proceed- ing, is proven by the circumstance that the OSI, along with the Israeli authori- ties, tried to persuade a series of witnesses to testify untruthfully to confirm the authenticity of this forged document.208 L: So here we have a conspiracy against the truth involving U.S. authorities with Soviet, German, and Israeli authorities! R: Yes, an international conspiracy for the preservation of a myth! The show trial character of the entire proceedings in Israel against Demjanjuk has been de- 206 stern, March 5, 1992, pp. 198ff. 207 On these events cf. A. Melzer, "Iwan der Schreckliche oder John Demjanjuk, Justizirrtum? Justizskan- dal!," SemitTimes, special edition, Dreieich, March 1992, esp. pp. 3, 13, as well as Münchner Merkur, March 26, 1992. 208 H.P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 196), pp. 118ff., 174ff. 108 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST SemitTimes Special Edition, spring 1992 Prologue by British Historian N. Count Tolstoy Expert Witness during the Jerusalem Trial of Demjanjuk "I pray that this special issue of the SEMITTIMES with the article by Mr. Lehner may prevent a double evil: the one which befalls a person like any of us could be, and another, which is directed against humanity itself. Already by the time of Solomon, a breach of law was seen as a perversion of the natu- ral order. Without truth and justice, honor and trust are destroyed, and with the triumph of the lie, the legitimacy of moral standards disintegrates into the chaos of the arbitrary." scribed in a book by his Israeli defense attorney, Yoram Sheftel, whose account I can wholeheartedly recommend.209 In the end, witness testimonies of survivors were the sole evidence during this trial, upon which the charges against Demjanjuk could be based. However, it emerged during the trial that the testimonies of all of the prosecution witnesses were unreliable, because they contradicted themselves or one another, or be- cause the witnesses were apparently senile to the point that their testimonies were of no value at all. Nevertheless, Demjanjuk was sentenced to death on the basis of the atrocities charged against him. The show trial character of this trial, which had become manifestly obvious to all objective observers, then led to an ever-growing lobby in the USA protest- ing against this travesty of justice. It demanded that the judgment of Jerusalem be overturned and that Demjanjuk be repatriated and his U.S. citizenship re- stored, since Israel was clearly not willing or able to conduct a trial of a former U.S. citizen according to the rule of law. Among the most active lobbyists, in addition to the already mentioned Patrick Buchanan, was also U.S. Congress- man James V. Traficant.210 Pat Buchanan's efforts on behalf of Demjanjuk attracted not inconsiderable at- tention due to his presidential candidacy and his media prominence. In 1992, he consolidated his views with respect to Demjanjuk in particular and concerning Treblinka in general on U.S. TV, saying that Treblinka was certainly a terrible place, to which hundreds of thousands of Jews were brought and where thou- sands died.211 L: Thousands? By this did he mean five thousand or seven hundred thousand? 209 Yoram Sheftel, The Demjanjuk Affair. The Rise and Fall of the Show Trial, Victor Gollancz, London 1994. Cf. also "Mörderische Augen," Der Spiegel, no. 31, Aug. 2, 1993, pp. 103ff. (Ger. & Engl.: www.ukar.org/spiegel2.html). 210 Under the impression of the Demjanjuk affair Traficant turned into a rebel against the U.S. political establishment, which then started to persecute him relentlessly. 211 This Week with David Brinkley, ABC television, Sunday, Dec. 8, 1991. 109 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: That is a matter of interpretation. The fact is that Buchanan was furnished with evidence by a revisionist lone wolf, which was also made available to the Dem- janjuk defense and in which the conclusion was reached that there cannot have been any mass murder in Treblinka. For this reason alone John Demjanjuk, like others accused persons, had to be innocent.212 Buchanan's way of arguing indi- cates that he had adopted at least part of this view as his own. At any rate, a chill wind was then arising for the Holocaust Lobby: the Leuchter Report, cir- culating world-wide at that time, was undermining the Auschwitz legend; dur- ing the Demjanjuk trial survivors, one after the other, were showing themselves to be unreliable witnesses, and prominent Americans were at the point of pub- licly advocating revisionist positions. Behind the shield afforded by the ever mounting world-wide criticism of the Demjanjuk trial, even the German media finally ventured to deal with the topic, as for example in the articles already cited from Stern and Münchner Merkur, although using very cautiously chosen words. It can therefore not come as a surprise that in those years even the most dog- matic of all Holocausters made critical remarks about the reliability of witness testimonies on the Holocaust. In 1986, for example, The Jerusalem Post pub- lished an interview with Shumel Krakowski, the director of Yad Vashem, who considered many ­ if not most ­ of the witness statements in their archive to be unreliable:213 "Krakowski says that many survivors, wanting `to be part of history' may have let their imaginations run away with them. `Many were never in the place where they claim to have witnessed atrocities, while others relied on second-hand information given them by friends or passing strangers' ac- cording to Krakowski. A large number of testimonies on file were later proved inaccurate when locations and dates could not pass an expert histo- rian's appraisal." R: Equally in the context of the Demjanjuk trial, one of the most prestigious Holo- caust scholars, Jewish-American political scientist Raul Hilberg, expressively confirmed in 1986 the statement by Jewish scholar Samuel Gringauz that "most of the memoirs and reports [of Holocaust survivors] are full of [...] exaggera- tion, [...] unchecked rumors, bias, partisan attacks and apologies."214 L: I understand that this show trial backfired for Israel big time. But why did they risk such a disaster in the first place? R: We can thank the German-Jewish periodical SemitTimes for naming both horse and rider: according to the account of this magazine, Israel once again needed a 212 T. Skowron (=Miroslaw Dragan), Amicus Curiae Brief, Polish Historical Society, Stamfort CT 1992 (www.vho.org/GB/c/AmicusCuriaeDemjanjuk.html). 213 Barbara Amouyal, "Doubts over Evidence of Camp Survivors," Jerusalem Post, Aug. 17, 1986; in a letter to the editor, Krakowski stated that he had admitted only "very few" testimonies to be inaccurate. However, he did not deny the many reasons he had given Amouyal, why these "very few" testimonies are inaccurate; Jerusalem Post, Aug. 21, 1986. 214 Jerusalem Post. International Edition, June 28, 1986, p. 8, with reference to S. Gringauz, "Some Methodological Problems in the Study of the Ghetto," in Salo W. Baron, Koppel S. Pinson (ed.), Jew- ish Social Studies, vol. XII, New York 1950, pp. 65-72. 110 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST circus of shock and outrage over the suffering of the Jewish people, so that it could divert attention from its own crimes against the Palestinians in the occu- pied territories and the Gaza Strip.207 L: But what has that to do with the subject of this lecture? R: Well, the question is whether the fact that Israel once again needed a circus of shock and outrage should not give us reason to check whether perhaps, at other trials in other nations, certain procedural parameters contradict the constitu- tional principles to which Israel also officially subscribes. The SemitTimes af- fords us a hint here as well: the Eichmann Trial, which was likewise held in Je- rusalem, was considered a model for the Demjanjuk Trial. I will get into trials held in Germany later. But your question is more than justified. After all, what does the fact of just another falsification of documents as well as unreliable witness testimony mean for the whole complex? For now only that skepticism is appropriate with respect to any document and any witness testimony in this context. If I manage to convince you, dear reader, that it is appropriate to have as much skepticism toward our media and historians as you have, let us hope, toward me, then much is already accomplished. In view of the growing international pressure at the beginning of the 1990s, it probably cannot be very surprising that in the summer of 1993 the Jerusalem appeals court did an about-face and acquitted Demjanjuk due to lack of evi- dence.215 L: So in Israel, the rule of law triumphed over the thirst for revenge after all. R: The gulf between a sentence of death and acquittal is a little bit too large to simply pass over this with a shrug of the shoulders and return to business. The Demjanjuk Case is, after all, not different from other similar trials which ended in sentence of death or incarceration, since the type and content of the witness testimonies, including internal and external contradictions and technical impos- sibilities, had not, of course, made their first appearance at the Demjanjuk pro- ceedings, as we will discover later. It was only that during this trial they were successfully challenged for the first time. But if it was determined that all wit- nesses gave false testimony, which led to a misjudgment, then would not com- plaints have to be lodged against the false witnesses? And would not other tri- als, in which the same witnesses appeared or in which testimonies of similar questionable content were given ­ be it in Israel, in Germany, or in Poland ­ have to be reopened and retried? But nothing of the sort occurred. The cloak of silence was simply spread over this embarrassing matter. L: So was Demjanjuk repatriated in the U.S.? R: Yes, in 1998, but in 2002 the OSI moved to have his citizenship revoked again, a decision which was finally confirmed in 2004 by the U.S. Supreme Court, af- ter which deportation proceedings to his country of birth, the Ukraine, were ini- tiated. Regarding the evidence used to prove Demjanjuk's alleged wrongdo- ings, the Cleveland Jewish News stated:216 215 See the daily media on July 30, 1993. 216 Cleveland Jewish News, May 31, 2004. 111 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "Most prominent among these [documents to prove Demajnjuk's guilt] is the Trawniki identity card, which bears a photo of Demjanjuk and a physical description." R: So after almost 30 years of struggle, Demjanjuk was back to square one. This time he has no public support. 2.11. Freedom of Speech in the USA R: Since the mid-1980s, U.S. citizen Bradley R. Smith has been trying to bring discussion of revisionist theses concerning the Holocaust to colleges and uni- versities with his "Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust" (CODOH). Since 1991, one means he has chosen has been the placement of advertisements in student newspapers. He has attracted attention with succinct statements about freedom of speech and concisely written information about revision- ism.217 Smith's campaign of placing advertisements caught the establishment unpre- pared, and the attention that Smith was able to gain from this at the beginning was correspondingly great. I would like to quote two comments from the two leading U.S. daily newspapers here. The first is from the Washington Post:218 "But the idea that the way to combat these ads [by Bradley Smith] is to sup- press them ­ automatically and in every case ­ is bad strategy. [...] Ironi- cally, one sole sentence near the beginning of the [Codoh] ad copy is in fact correct: `Students should be encouraged to investigate the Holocaust story the same way they are encouraged to investigate every other historical event.'" R: The daily paper which is perhaps the most respected in the world, The New York Times, published an editorial on Smith's advertisement campaign and the diverse reaction to it by various college and university papers, stating:219 "Denying the Holocaust may be monumentally more unjust. Yet to require that it be discussed only within approved limits may do an even greater in- justice to the memory of the victims." R: The controversy resulting from his ads reached a first peak in 1994, when Bradley Smith managed to put revisionism in the headlines of major U.S. mainstream media and ultimately the topic during the news program "60 min- utes" of the U.S. TV station CBS on March 20, 1994, and a subsequent appear- 217 Bradley R. Smith, "The Holocaust Story: How Much is False? The Case for Open Debate" www.vho.org/GB/c/BRS/adscasefor.html; updated: www.vho.org/Intro/GB/Flyer.html; also available as a flyer (download: www.vho.org/Intro/GB/Flyer.pdf; purchase: vho.org/store/USA/bresult.php?ID=87) 218 "College Ads and the Holocaust," Washington Post, Dec. 21, 1991, A18 (www.vho.org/GB/c/BRS/WPDec21-1991-A18.png). 219 "Ugly Ideas, and Democracy," New York Times, January 15, 1992 (www.vho.org/GB/c/BRS/NYTJan15-1992.png). 112 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ance of Smith together with Jewish revisionist David Cole at the "Phil Donahue Show."220 L: There is a Jewish revisionist? R: Yes, there are actually several, for example Joseph Ginsburg, who published many revisionist books under the name Josef G. Burg.221 L: That surprises me. R: Why should Jews not be curious and critical about there own people's past? After all, if it turns out that powerful and influential Jewish personalities and lobby groups assisted in falsifying history, there is a real danger that in future the little Jews will sooner or later be held accountable, even though they are not responsible. That is enough motivation for quite a few Jews not to go along with the dogma. But back to the U.S. media. Unfortunately, this openness and liberality of the U.S. media did not prevail for long. Toward the end of the 1990s, when the Internet had become a weapon for mass instruction, the pressure increased enormously upon the editors of those periodicals, which had accepted and pub- lished paid revisionist advertisements. Jewish lobby groups in particular, but also other politically "correct" associations as well as ultimately even the ad- ministrations of universities themselves pressed the authors or editors of these papers ­ who were often students ­ to refuse to print such advertisements in fu- ture.222 The culmination of the effort against Smith's revisionist ad campaign occurred in the year 2000. At the beginning of 2000, Smith had succeeded in getting a complete issue of his periodical, The Revisionist, included as an ad- vertising supplement in the magazine University Chronicle of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota.223 Reaction to this followed promptly: during an anti- revisionist demonstration against this supplement, which had been organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Research, some especially involved students publicly burned a copy of Smith's writing. The irony here is that the most important article in this issue of The Revisionist dealt with the subject of book-burning and freedom of speech.224 Thus the students were burning noth- ing other than a magazine which took a position against book-burning! 220 Cf. Mark Weber, "`60 Minutes' takes aim at Holocaust revisionism," JHR, 14(3) (1994) pp. 16-20; Mark Weber, Greg Raven, "Bradley Smith's `Campus Project' generates nationwide publicity for Holocaust revisionism," JHR, 14(4) (1994), pp. 18-24. 221 Das Tagebuch, 2nd ed., Ederer, Munich 1978; Verschwörung des Verschweigens, Ederer, Munich 1979; Der jüdische Eichmann und der bundesdeutsche Amalek, Ederer, Munich 1983; Terror und Ter- ror, 2nd ed., Ederer, Munich 1983; Majdanek in alle Ewigkeit?, Ederer, Munich 1979; Sündenböcke, 3rd ed., Ederer, Munich 1980; Zionazi-Zensur in der BRD, Ederer, Munich 1980; Mossad-Pädagogen ­ eine Abrechnung mit Jerusalems Mossad-Welterziehern, Verlag Remer-Heipke, Bad Kissingen 1994 (www.vho.org/dl/DEU.html). 222 Cf. George Brewer, "A Tale of Two Ads," TR, no. 3, 2000, p. 22. See also Bradley R. Smith, Break His Bones, published by author, San Ysidro 2003. 223 Issue no. 2, January 2000. 224 Richard Widmann, "Fahrenheit 451," ibid, pp. 11-15. This article was also published in Katie de Koster (ed.), Readings on Fahrenheit 451, Greenhaven Press, San Diego, CA, 2000. 113 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 14: Campus magazine Chronicle of the St. Cloud State University in Minnesota: They are burning literature which takes book-burning to task! L: That may not have been exactly sensitive behavior, but it certainly isn't forbid- den! The students naturally have a right to do what they want with something that is given to them. And freedom of speech doesn't mean that one has a right to have his opinion published at will. R: Within legal limits anyone can certainly do as he wishes with his property. But one should visualize what was going on there: representatives of the future in- tellectual elite of the leading world power are publicly burning a written work to whose content they are adamantly hostile. By the way, I don't believe that these students actually read the text. I particularly cannot imagine that an intel- lectually open person can burn writings, in which precisely this intellectual mortal sin is pointed out as such and its catastrophic consequences for any so- ciety are demonstrated. If, however, intellectuals refuse to take notice of other viewpoints and instead consign to the fire these views which, in the final analysis, they know nothing about, then what must one think of these people? And what of a university that even promotes, supports, and celebrates such behavior? That is indeed compa- rable to a court proceeding where prosecutor and judge refuse to let the defen- dant have his say, and convict him merely on the basis of prejudice and hear- say. L: Didn't German Poet Heinrich Heine say in 1820: "That was only a prelude. Wherever they burn books, in the end they burn people as well." 114 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: That is the path along which such conduct progresses! Without a doubt a rag- ing, destructive fanaticism lies concealed behind anyone who publicly burns books or magazines only because ­ possibly or presumably (!) ­ the opinions expressed therein are considered disreputable. But I might go one step further here: what is free speech worth, if one has the right, certainly, to speak his opinion but not to disseminate it as well? To illus- trate using an overdrawn example, what would be thought of a state, in which anyone is allowed to freely express his opinion, but only if no one is present? L: That sounds like Germany, where one can no longer express without risk un- permitted opinions about Jews, foreigners, or the Holocaust in the presence of a third person. Even five people who are sitting together in a restaurant can be my undoing if one of them rats on me. R: Absolutely true. Therefore, what if all mass media of a nation refuse to publish unpaid or paid articles, thus advertisements, which represent the views of a per- secuted minority? To give an example: how long do you believe that slavery could have been maintained in the early years of the USA, if it had been possi- ble for the Negroes to compel the printing of paid advertisements in the papers of that time? L: But they cannot force private firms to do such a thing. That would violate free speech, because the freedom to remain silent is of course only the other side of the coin of this right. R: To me, it is not a matter of telling anyone what he can or cannot say. This is a matter of paid advertisements of others and a matter of whether or not it can be regulated, which kind of advertisement a medium is permitted to reject and which not. And in the first place, it is also a matter of the public media who have no right to back out based on arbitrary private rules. But however that may be: I myself don't know whether there should be regulatory interference in this issue, since any law and any regulation which attempts to regulate the me- dia can ultimately be used against free speech. In the end, the problem is rooted in the galloping monopolization of the mass media and advertising agencies and paralleling this, in the world-wide reduction of the variety of published opinions. But we are getting too far afield of the subject. Let me point out that there are ever-increasing discussions in the USA about revisionist theses, that these discussions are nonetheless suppressed due to massive political pressure upon publishers and editors. In order to nip Smith's initially so successful advertising campaign in the bud, the leading figures of the U.S. media and the U.S. Jewish organizations were even impelled to exert extreme care: Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, as well as Abraham Foxman, President of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, two of the most influential men in American culture and politics, joined together in 2003 to personally put an end to Smith's work at the universities. The Anti- Defamation League pronounced:225 225 ADL on the Frontline, Anti-Defamation League, special summer edition 2003; cf. Bradley Smith, "Revisionist Notes," TR 1(4) (2003), pp. 364-366. 115 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "When a campus newspaper editor is asked to print an ad denying that the Holocaust took place ­ or calling for `open debate' on the subject ­ can he or she say `no' without compromising freedom of the press? In the view of the ADL and The New York Times, the answer is yes. Both or- ganizations have been disturbed by the continuing ­ and often successful ­ attempts by Holocaust deniers [...] to place advertisements and other mate- rials in campus newspapers. Out of their common concern came an annual colloquium, `Extremism Targets the Campus Press: Balancing Freedom and Responsibility.' `We seek to educate campus journalists,' said ADL Campus Affairs/Higher Education Director Jeffrey Ross, `to balance freedom of the press with re- sponsibility of the press when responding to hate submissions.'" L: On the other hand, there is naturally no reason to object if it actually is a matter of hate material. R: Yes, if. The problem begins with how one defines hate. A mere claim as to facts regarding an historical subject or the advocacy of free speech for revision- ists can hardly be described as hate, but this is exactly what the ADL and with them the mass media are doing. One sees, therefore, to what lengths the media resort to in the USA in order to block the intellectual success of revisionist theses: censorship is supposed to be firmly implanted early on as a lodestone in the minds of these young journal- ists. L: I would call this training, which is contrary to the professional ethics of jour- nalism, brainwashing. R: Well, classic brainwashing resorts to other, more drastic measures. L: Yet the more subtle and more civilized, the more effective this kind of brain- washing is. R: Then any training would be a type of brainwashing. L: But here, people are manipulated contrary to their professional ethics by the leaders of their professional field! R: Let's put it this way: these leaders redefine their ethics: freedom of speech ­ of course; freedom to hate, no. The problem is that no universally applicable defi- nition of hate is given. For if an historical thesis alone constitutes hate on the basis that this thesis appears hateful to certain people, or causes other people to have unkind feelings toward a third party, then all historical theses potentially constitute hate. I cannot see why one should make an exception when aspects of Jewish history are concerned, which of course impinges upon the history of other peoples as well. L: The historical truth is hate in the eyes of those who hate the truth, and that is the truth! R: A good aphorism, but even if revisionism should not be the truth, but merely an honest error, then that still does not make it hate on that account. 116 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 2.12. Anti-Fascist Lies R: Human jealousies are not unknown even when the victims of the Auschwitz concentration camp are involved. In 1989, when the Danes and the Bulgarians likewise received a memorial plaque at Auschwitz although no Danes and only one Bulgarian died there, Jewish organizations complained that in Auschwitz it was not being stressed that Jews had been the main victims of the camp. Rather, they said, it had been falsely recorded on the memorial plaques that of the four million victims of the extermination two million were Poles.226 A commission formed due to this dispute finally determined toward the end of 1990 that, contrary to what had been officially alleged up to then, not four but "only" about 1.5 million people had died in Auschwitz, of whom approxi- mately 90% had been Jews. As a result, the old memorial plaques in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp were dismantled, which spoke of four million vic- tims. L: Does the removal of the old memorial plaques not have a connection to the expert report that was rendered at this time by a Polish institute? R: Quite clearly not. The conclusion of this expert report from Krakow, which you speak of and which I will get into later,227 made no statement at all about the number of victims. What is interesting is the reaction of the public to the official reduction of the number of victims at Auschwitz, and here I would like to give a few examples. First there is the reaction of Dr. Shmuel Krakowski, research director of the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel. He blamed the exaggerated Auschwitz death toll of four million on Poland's former communist government, which had per- petuated these maximized figures "in an attempt to minimise the Holocaust."228 Can anyone explain to me, how one can minimize the Holocaust by exaggerat- ing the victim numbers? L: Krakowski meant that the old victim number did not emphasize that Jews were the primary victims. R: Yes, but in order to achieve this impression, the communists had not reduced the Jewish death toll, but had exaggerated that and they grossly exaggerated the number of Polish victims. Apart from that: those Polish victims could have been Jewish as well. In any event, the communists did not minimize the Holo- caust, they exaggerated it. Next, there are the comments of Polish journalist Ernest Skalski in Germany's largest political news magazine Der Spiegel (German for "the mirror"), ad- dressing the moral consequences for the culprits of this Auschwitz death toll lie:229 226 "Commission try to defuse Auschwitz controversy," The Canadian Jewish News, Oct. 3, 1990, p. 5. 227 Cf. chapter 3.4.6. 228 Krzysztof Leski, Ohad Gozani, "Auschwitz death reduced to a million," The Daily Telegraph, July 18, 1990, see separate text box. 229 Ernest Skalski, "Ich empfinde Verlegenheit," Der Spiegel, 30/1990, p. 111. 117 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The Daily Telegraph July 18, 1990 Auschwitz death reduced to a million By Krzysztof Leski in Warsaw and Ohad Gozani in Tel Aviv POLAND HAS cut its estimate of the number of people killed by the Nazis in the Auschwitz death camp from four million to just over one million. The vast majority of the dead are now accepted to have been Jews, despite claims by Poland's former communist government that as many Poles as Jews perished in Ger- many's largest concentration camp. [...] Dr. Shmuel Krakowski, head of research at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial for Jewish victims of the Holocaust, said the new Polish figures were correct. [...] Dr. Krakowski accused Poland's former communist government of perpetuating the false figures in an attempt to minimise the Holocaust and support claims that Auschwitz was not exclusively a Jewish death camp. "What was already known to contemporary historians for some time now appears to be a certainty: that there were one to one-and-a-half million vic- tims. Is anything changed for us by this? Nothing at all is changed in the general balance-sheet of this outrageous crime. Six million Jews murdered by the Nazis continue as an entry on the books. [...] What concerns me is that as a Pole I feel uncomfortable, above all because the situation is extremely embarrassing. The error, although committed by others a long time ago, remains tendentious. And it was `our' error, if by `us' is meant enemies of fascism and racism. [...] But it [the error] was also the work of other murderers, who were interested in representing the guilt of their rivals in the arena of genocide as even more horrible than it actually was. [...] I concede that one must sometimes conceal the truth ­ therefore must lie ­ at times even out of noble motives, perhaps from sympathy or delicacy of feel- ing. But it is always worthwhile to know why one does that, which results in the respective deviation from the truth. [...] Even though the Truth does not always represent good, much more often the lie represents evil." R: Skalski's claim that the 4-million-number had been an error is clearly false, however, since it can be proved with documents that the Auschwitz victim count of four million originated from Soviet propaganda.230 For the anti-fascist and Pole Skalski, the lie was therefore "embarrassing." In my view, though, the most embarrassing thing about the entire article ­ even more embarrassing than this revelation of the exaggeration of propaganda, which was well known to specialists in this field for decades ­ is this sentence: 230 C. Mattogno, "The Four Million Figure of Auschwitz: Origin, Revisions and Consequences," TR 1(4) (2003), pp. 387-392, 393-399. 118 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 15: Old memorial plaque on the monument at Ausch- witz-Birkenau with the "anti- fascist" propaganda number Ill. 16: The new memorial plaque in Ausch- "four million" rendered into 19 witz-Birkenau. languages. "I concede that one must sometimes conceal the truth ­ therefore must lie ­ at times even out of noble motives, [...]" L: "Sometimes one must lie": that comports well with journalistic ethics? R: Rather with a lack of the same, especially since one recognizes how far journal- ism has departed from its own principles. But isn't it fine that here at last lies, exaggerations, and tendentious reporting in matters relating to the Holocaust are openly admitted and defended as appropriate, in part, by reputable anti- fascists and leftist media? Since after all, one finally knows what one is to ex- pect from these media! The Curator of Research of the Auschwitz Museum, Wáclaw Dlugoborski, explained in 1998 by what methods the myth of the four million Auschwitz victims was sustained in the Eastern Block:231 "Up until 1989 in eastern Europe, a prohibition against casting doubt upon the figure of 4 million killed was in force; at the memorial site of Auschwitz, employees who doubted the correctness of the estimate were threatened with disciplinary proceedings." L: But that is not significantly different from the procedure in many western na- tions still today, where employees, whose salary is paid by some kind of a pub- lic authority, are also not permitted to cast doubt upon the central aspects of the Holocaust, and indeed not only under threat of disciplinary proceedings, but at times even under threat of criminal prosecution. R: That's right. The same is of course still true today in Poland, where the dogma of the four million was merely replaced by a new dogma of perhaps one mil- lion. In Poland itself Holocaust revisionism is just as punishable as it is in the German-speaking nations, for example. But more about this later. The next publication I wish to cite here is the German Jewish weekly Allge- meine Jüdische Wochenzeitung of July 26, 1990, see separate box. You will see from this that the Central Council of the Jews in Germany considered the re- 231 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 14, 1998. 119 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST July 26, 1990, p. 2 Cynical Number Games By Hermann Baumann Let anyone wonder at it who can: Polish historians have it that "only" about 1.5 million Jews were killed in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and not four million. And the memorial plaque with the number of the four million victims in Auschwitz, which has been accepted for years, was promptly removed. And this without the his- torical findings having been seriously discussed. Quite a singular event, and thus the protest of the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Central Council of the Jews, Heinz Galinski, is absolutely appropriate. [...] Is this new toying with numbers merely a repeated expression of how deeply anti- Jewish feelings are embedded in the Polish people? [...] In any case, the Polish historians have performed a very bad service for the question of guilt of the Germans [sic!]. Their moral cleanliness is not only highly problematic, it is also insensitive. duction in the number of victims to be a cynical numbers game. Moreover, it protested against it, claiming that the historical findings had not been seriously discussed.232 Scarcely two years later, on the occasion of the erection of new memorial plaques in Auschwitz, now with 1.5 million victims claimed, one learned from the same paper that according to scientific findings, not four, but rather approximately 1.5 million people had been murdered.233 Therefore, after initial consternation, accommodation was made with the new number of vic- tims. L: But I have read in newspapers that there are supposed to have been fewer than a million victims in Auschwitz. L: And I have heard that there were far more than four million. R: Auschwitz is often viewed as the center of the Holocaust, and as such it is likewise the center of the Holocaust controversy and the differences of opinion about it. This is especially reflected in the victim numbers, which are littered throughout literature and the mass media. Let me concisely cite in table form a list, certainly incomplete, of the most important victim numbers of the Ausch- witz concentration camp as disseminated by publicly respected media or re- searchers:234 232 "Zynische Zahlenspiele," Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung, July 26, 1990, p. 2. 233 "Neue Inschriften im KZ Auschwitz", Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung, June 11, 1992, p. 1. 234 Abbreviated list, taken from Robert Faurisson, "How many deaths at Auschwitz?," TR 1(1) (2003), pp. 17-23. 120 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 5: Number of Victims Claimed for Auschwitz NO OF VICTIMS SOURCE 9,000,000 French documentary film Nuit et Brouillard (1955).235 8,000,000 French investigative authority (1945).236 6,000,000 Tibère Kremer (1951).237 5­5,500,000 Krakow Auschwitz trial (1947), Le Monde (1978).238 4,000,000 Soviet document at the IMT.239 3,000,000 David Susskind (1986);240 Heritage (1993).241 2,500,000 Rudolf Vrba, aka Walter Rosenberg, Eichmann trial (1961).242 1,5,­3,500,000 Historian Yehuda Bauer (1982).243 40 2,000,000 Historians Poliakov (1951),244 Wellers (1973),245 Dawidowicz (1975). 1,600,000 Historian Yehuda Bauer (1989).246 1,500,000 New memorial plaques in Auschwitz.247 1,471,595 Historian Georges Wellers (1983).248 1,250,000 Historian Raul Hilberg (1961 + 1985).249 1,1­1,500,000 Historians I. Gutman, Franciszek Piper (1994).250 1,000,000 J.-C. Pressac (1989), Dictionnaire des noms propres (1992).251 800­900,000 Historian Gerald Reitlinger (1953 and later).252 775­800,000 Jean-Claude Pressac (1993).253 630­710,000 Jean-Claude Pressac (1994).254 510,000 Fritjof Meyer (2002), Leading Editor of Spiegel.255 235 Historical advisors: historians Henri Michel and Olga Wormser, black/white movie, 32 min. 236 Eugène Aroneanu, Documents pour servir à l'histoire de la guerre. Camps de concentration, Office français d'édition, 1945, pp. 7, 196. Total victim count: 26 million, p. 197; cf. the 26 million victim number quoted at the beginning of the present book, p. 15. 237 Tibère Kremer, preface, in: Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, "SS-Obersturmführer Doktor Mengele," Les Temps modernes, March 1951, p. 1655. 238 Bernard Czardybon during the Krakow trial against R. Höß, acc. to F. Piper, Auschwitz. How Many Perished. Jews, Poles, Gypsies..., Poligrafia ITS, Krakow, 1992, pp. 7ff.; "Manifestation du souvenir à Paris devant le mémorial du martyr juif inconnu," Le Monde, April 20, 1978. 239 IMT, vol. XXXIX, pp. 241-261. This number was later repeated almost infinite times. 240 David Susskind, president of the Centre communautaire laïc juif de Bruxelles, Le Nouvel Observateur, May 30, 1986, p. 19. 241 Californian Jewish weekly Heritage, June 7, 1993. 242 Rudolf Vrba, Alan Bestic, I Cannot Forgive, Bantam, New York 1964, pp. 269-272. 243 Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust, Franklin Watts, New York 1982, p. 215. 244 Léon Poliakov, Bréviaire de la haine, Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1951, p. 496. 245 Georges Wellers, L'Etoile jaune à l'heure de Vichy/De Drancy à Auschwitz, Fayard, 1973, p. 290. 246 Y. Bauer, "Auschwitz and the Poles. Fighting the Distortions," The Jerusalem Post, Sept. 22, 1989, p. 6. 247 Luc Rosenzweig, "Auschwitz, la Pologne et le génocide," Le Monde, January 27, 1995, p. 1. 248 Georges Wellers, "Essai de détermination du nombre des morts au camp d'Auschwitz," Le Monde juif, Oct.-Dec. 1983, pp. 127-159. 249 Including Jews and non Jews, of which 1,000,000 Jews, Raul Hilberg, op. cit. (note 39), p. 894, 1219; also already in the 1st ed., Quadrangle Books, Chicago 1961, p. 572. 250 Israel Gutman, "Auschwitz ­ An Overview," in: I. Gutman, Michael Berenbaum (eds.), Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Indiana University Press, Blooming- ton/Indianapolis 1994; F. Piper, "The Number of Victims," ibid., pp. 71f. 251 Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1989, pp. 264 (http://holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and- operation/); Hachette (ed.), Le Dictionnaire des noms propres, Hachette, Paris 1992. 252 Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, various editions, here quoted acc. to the 2nd ed., Yoseliff, South Brunswick/New York 1961, p. 500. 253 Jean-Claude Pressac, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz. La Machinerie du meurtre de masse, Éditions du CNRS, 1993, p. 148; of this 630,000 gassed Jews. 254 Jean-Claude Pressac, Die Krematorien von Auschwitz. Die Technik des Massenmordes, Munich, Piper, 1994, p. 202; of this 470,000 to 550,000 gassed Jews. 121 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But these figures range all over the place, as though these numbers were ar- rived at by throwing dice instead of by evidence. R: In view of these gigantic fluctuations in the Auschwitz victim numbers, I would just like to point out first that there has obviously never been agreement about how many people actually died in the camp. Besides, it is publicly admit- ted today that lies were told for tendentious reasons. The "official" number of dead ­ that is, the number of dead to which the Auschwitz Museum has given its blessing ­ is now reduced to 20-30% of the original "official" number ­ that is, the Soviet figure ­ but this has not resulted in any correction of the total number of Holocaust victims. If one is familiar with the number-juggling at other Holocaust sites, which we will be dealing with later, then one can only shake one's head in amazement. In light of such a confusing mish-mash of figures, in fact, in such a situation, in which truth and lies are jumbled together, who would want to claim that he is capable of reaching a certain, final pronouncement that justifies the criminal prosecution of those with different views? 2.13. The Wannsee Debacle R: Now I would like to ask you a question, ladies and gentlemen. I am asking for a show of hands from those of you who know what the Wannsee Conference was... That is a clear majority of the audience. The lady over there, yes, can you please tell us in one sentence what this Conference was about? L: In early 1942, several top Nazi bureaucrats assembled in a villa in the Wannsee sector of the city of Berlin to discuss what to do with the Jews. R: OK. Now I am asking for a show of hands from those who think they know the content of the Wannsee Protocol... That is only a few individuals. I am now randomly picking out the gentleman over there. Can you briefly tell us what this Protocol is all about? You know the content of the Protocol? L: Yes! R: Then you can surely briefly relate to me what is in this Protocol. L: As far as I recall, in the Wannsee Conference the extermination of the Jews in Europe was decided upon as well as the measures necessary for this. R: I actually asked you to tell me what is in the Protocol, not what is supposed to have been decided at the Conference. Therefore you have read the Protocol? L: No, but it is known, of course, what was decided there. R: Ah! It is known, of course! So it is obvious? Now, let me first speak of what is in the Protocol and what is not. This protocol deals with, for example, the difficultly of Third Reich officials in determining the definition of half- and quarter-Jews and the number of Jews in the German sphere of influence. It summarizes the measures taken up to that 255 Fritjof Meyer, "Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz ­ Neue Erkenntnisse durch neue Archivfunde," Osteuropa. Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsfragen des Ostens, no. 5, May 2002, pp. 631-641 (www.vho.org/D/Beitraege/FritjofMeyerOsteuropa.html; Engl.: www.vho.org/GB/c/Meyer.html); of this 356,000 gassed Jews. 122 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST June 22, 1992, p. 34 Historian Jäckel: Purpose of Wannsee Conference Disputed The decision to murder Europe's Jews was made earlier [...] The protocol of the Conference, said Jäckel, contains not a word about such a decision [to exterminate the Jews]. Also, the participants had not been authorized at all to do so. [...] To be sure, the actual purpose of the Wannsee Conference is disputed, Jäckel conceded. [He said that] an English colleague had remarked more than 40 years ago that the Conference had been merely a `comradely luncheon.' [...] That the Conference played no sort of role in the deportations was proven [he said] by the list of participants. Representatives from the Wehrmacht as well as of the Reich Transportation Ministry were absent from it. [...] Jäckel believes [sic!] that a corresponding order [Hitler's to exterminate the Jews] followed the meeting between Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich on September 24, 1941, thus three months before the Wannsee Conference. [...] time by the German government in order to expedite the emigration of Jews from the German sphere of influence, and explains that deportation to the east has replaced the policy of emigration. In connection with this it speaks of the fact that Jews should immediately be put to work constructing roads to the east, from which a reduction in their total number will follow due to a natural selec- tion process as a result of the harsh conditions.256 There is not a word in the Protocol to the effect that the Jews were going to be sent to extermination camps. Furthermore, there is not a word about whether, when, and how the Jews were supposed to be conveyed to an intended extermi- nation. In 1982, Yehuda Bauer, Professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, had already explained:257 "The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived at." L: That is the exact opposite of what is constantly dished out by most media. R: Absolutely right. It took until the year 1990 before the media for the first time reported something to this effect, and indeed only after the leftist German his- torian Prof. Dr. Eberhard Jäckel had publicly stated that no decisions about the extermination of Jews had been made during the Wannsee Conference. These decisions, according to Jäckel, had rather already been made previously, even 256 Cf. the reproduction in Johannes P. Ney, "Das Wannsee-Protokoll," Ernst Gauss (ed.), Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, Grabert, Tübingen 1994, pp. 182-189 (www.vho.org/D/gzz/8.html). 257 The Canadian Jewish News, Jan. 20, 1982, p. 8, publishing a news release of The Jewish Telegraphic from London. 123 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST though he was unable to cite any source for this.258 These sorts of rectifications by established historians do nothing, of course, to change the fact that the Wannsee Conference still continues to be represented as the decision-making event for the "final solution of the Jewish question." To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, who is going to be bothered by facts when they get in the way of a good story? But I don't want to end with this. For a long time there have been expert re- ports, having remained largely unnoticed up to now, which cast doubt upon the authenticity of the Wannsee Protocol. Thus the Zeitgeschichtliche For- schungsstelle (Research Office for Contemporary History) in Ingolstadt (Ger- many) produced a detailed paper as early as 1987, in which considerable doubt was expressed as to the authenticity of the Protocol.259 A year after this, the po- litical scientist Udo Walendy published a detailed study about the Wannsee Protocol.260 Its most distinguishing aspect is that it examines the statements of those who participated in the Conference and who for that reason were brought before Allied military tribunals after the war. L: So it isn't disputed that the Conference took place? R: No, certainly not. According to the testimony of the participants of that time, this meeting was conducted for the most part by Reinhard Heydrich, the right hand of SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, in order to make a report about the full authority granted him by Hitler for deportation of the Jews into the occu- pied territories of the east. There was nothing said at this conference about ex- termination through labor or other means. Also, the content of the alleged Pro- tocol was not correct, since quite a lot was missing which had been discussed, while things were mentioned in it which had not been topics of the meeting. The most recent attempt at investigation of the authenticity of the Protocol in the form of an expert report by the German revisionist authors Roland Bohlin- ger and Johannes Peter Ney261 cites a great amount of evidence and arguments for the thesis that it is a forgery; indeed, plainly the "forgery of the century."262 In addition to many stylistic and formal errors, there is a central point of con- tention in this protocol, which is the "ss"-symbol. As is well known, on most official typewriters in the Third Reich, the symbol had its own special key, with the runic-formed "ss." Now it would hardly be troubling if, for lack of a 258 Eberhard Jäckel, "Zweck der Wannseekonferenz umstritten," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 22, 1992, p. 34; see text box on p. 122. 259 Hans Wahls, Zur Authentizität des "Wannsee-Protokolls," Veröffentlichungen der Zeitgeschichtlichen Forschungsstelle Ingolstadt, vol. 10, Ingolstadt 1987; in Table 6, p. 125, not all version compared by Wahls are listed. 260 U. Walendy, "Die Wannsee-Konferenz vom 20.1.1942," HT no. 35, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeit- geschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1988. 261 R. Bohlinger, J.P. Ney, Gutachten zur Frage der Echtheit des sogenannten Wannsee-Protokolls und der dazugehörigen Schriftstücke, Deutscher Rechts- und Lebensschutz-Verband (ed.), Verlag für ganzheitliche Forschung und Kultur, Viöl 1992; cf. auch Roland Bohlinger (ed.), Die Stellungnahme der Leitung der Gedenkstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz zu dem von Bohlinger und Ney verfaßten Gutachten zur Frage der Echtheit des sogenannten Wannsee-Protokolls und der dazugehörigen Schriftstücke, Verlag für ganzheitliche Forschung, Viöl 1995 (www.vho.org/D/Wannsee). 262 "Die Jahrhundert-Fälschung, das Wannseeprotokoll," Huttenbriefe, special edition June 1992, as an abbreviated pre-publication of the expert report by Bohlinger/Ney quoted above. 124 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST proper typewriter, some of the many copies of the Protocol ­ according to the Protocol there should have been 30 copies ­ would have been written with a normal machine. It becomes awkward when, of the 30 copies, only the 16th has remained preserved at all, and this again exists in at least two different ver- sions, one with normal "SS" and one with runic-formed "ss." Moreover, in Table 6 (p. 125), the most important textual deviations for some of the versions known today are given. Which of these ought to be the original version no one can say. The only certainty is that, aside from the unknown original version, all other copies are not authentic. The cover letter belonging to the "Wannsee Protocol" likewise exists in two versions, one with normal "SS" and one with runic-formed "ss." Here, though, the situation is even more unmistakable: not only was an attempt made to leave the typewritten area unaltered, but the handwritten notes of some official, which are found on the version with the normal SS key, have been copied onto the second version with runic-formed "ss" symbols, but the forgers did not manage to complete erase all traces of the old typewritten text. Some traces are still there. Compared with the first version, the identical handwriting has also slipped a few millimeters with respect to the machine text. The forgery is plainly obvious and recognizable to anyone. The proof of the forgery, at least of one version of the cover letter, has thus been furnished for a long time now. L: Why was this forgery done at all? Just to replace the normal SS with a runic s? s R: Other than that, the content of both versions is identical, so it must be assumed that the forgers were not satisfied with the first version with normal SS sym- bols. L: But wouldn't they have been happy with this first version if they had been con- vinced that it was genuine? R: Of course. There are many official Third Reich documents with normal SS symbols. So the appearance of such symbols on such documents does not prove that it is a forgery. L: In other words: The forgers were not happy with the first version, because they themselves did not believe in its authenticity. Therefore they decided to redo it, but this time with proper ss runes in order to dissipate any suspicions. R: Perhaps. But as I said, there is nothing in those documents supporting the ex- termination thesis. When tempering with these documents, why did the forgers not stick something really clear in there stating that the Jews are going to be ex- terminated? This forgery therefore remains a mystery. L: Has there been any sort of response to this on the part of established historians? R: German mainstream historian Professor Ernst Nolte has expressed doubts about the authenticity of the Protocol,263 and Dr. Werner Maser likewise determined the forgery of at least one copy of the cover letter in 2004 with the same argu- ments, though without citing the older studies for it.264 263 E. Nolte, Der Europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917-1945, Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1987, p. 592; Nolte, Streitpunkte, Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1993, pp. 313f. 264 W. Maser, op. cit. (note 100), pp. 317f. 125 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 6: Summary of deviations, compared with version A, of various versions of the 16th copy of the "Wannsee Protocol"259 A Kempner version265 D Poliakov-Wulf- F Ludwigsburg G Ludwigsburg H Staatsarchiv version266 version I version II version Text Zeile Schöngarth 025 Schoengarth Schoengarth Schoengarth Schoengarth diesen Gegner 058 diese Gegner diese Gegner diesen Gegner diesen Gegner 30.1.1933 102 3o.Januar 1933 3o.Januar 1933 3o 1.1933 30.1.1933 15.3.1938 102 15.März 1938 15.März 1938 15.3 1938 15.3.1938 15.3.1939 104 15.März 1939 15.März 1939 15.3.1939 - 15.3.1939 1/4 Million 199 1/2 Million 1/2 Million 1/4 Million 1/4 Million sollen nun im 209 sollen im Zuge sollen im Zuge sollen im Zuge sollen im Zuge Zuge Arbeitskolonnen 212 Arbeitskolonnen Arbeitskolonnen Arbeitskolonnen Arbeitskolonnen bei Freilassung 220 bei Freilassung bei Freilassung bei Freilassung bei Freilassung Wird 273 hat hat hat hat irgendwelche 319 irgendwelchen irgendwelchen irgendwelchen irgendwelchen Lebensgebieten Geybie- Gebieten(Lebens) Lebensgebieten Lebensgebieten ten(Lebens) des Verbleibens 336 für das Verblei- für das Verblei- des Verbleibens im des Verbleibens im im Reich ben im Reich ben im Reich Reich Reich Deutschen 365 deutschblütigen deutschblütigen deutschen deutschen Deutschen 382 Deutschblütigen Deutschblütigen Deutschen Deutschen und Mischlingen 388 und Mischlingen und Mischlingen und Mischlingen 1. und Mischlingen 1. 1. Grades 2. Grades 2. Grades Grades Grades Mischehen- und 410 Mischehen- Mischehen- Mischehen- und Mischehen- und Mischlingsfragen Mischlingsfragen Mischlingsfragen Mischlingsfragen Mischlingsfragen L: So he was plagiarizing? R: Or he arrived at it by himself and doesn't know Bohlinger's expert report. In any case, he did not mention who first brought out the facts, which would have been proper. L: But then he would have had to have cited disreputable sources and would thus have become disreputable himself. R: Yes, the usual choice between Scylla and Charybdis. But otherwise historians, media, and official representatives remain silent. L: Is it not also disputed among revisionists whether the Protocol is actually a forgery? R: The Italian revisionist historian Carlo Mattogno, with whose works we shall later become more closely acquainted, is actually of the opinion that one of the versions of the Protocol could be definitely authentic. In any case, he sees no contradiction between the substantial content of the Protocol and the main revi- sionist thesis ­ no plan, no decision made for, and no carrying out of a planned mass murder ­ and in that he is no doubt right. Therefore, should it turn out that one of the known or even an as yet unknown version of the Wannsee Protocol is genuine, then this would merely say in substance that the extermination the- sis cannot be proved by this document. L: Even if one version of the cover letter was doctored, that doesn't prove that the other is false. And the same also holds true for the Protocol itself.267 And any- 265 Robert M.W. Kempner, Eichmann und Komplizen, Europa-Verlag, Zürich 1961. 266 Léon Poliakov, Joseph Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden, Arani, Berlin 1955. 126 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST way, the whole thing would obviously not prove that there was no mass exter- mination! R: That is correct. I have also intentionally not drawn a conclusion from the Wannsee Protocol as to the reality or non-reality of any kind of events, but merely said that under no circumstances can the extermination thesis be proved by it. But I would permit myself the comment that with the possibility of the forgery of the Wannsee Protocol, we are not dealing with a trivial matter. You know, if over a period of decades one produces as evidence for one's own the- sis a document, which is totally unsuited for what it is supposed to prove and which is, moreover, possibly forged, then the suspicion arises that one has no better evidence. Indeed, one gets the suspicion of complicity with the forgers or even of forgery itself. The question which suggests itself here is this, however: Does anyone who is convinced of the correctness of his thesis resort to forger- ies? Must someone who has evidence for the validity of his thesis take recourse in such primitive forgeries and, even in the face of their obvious untenability, desperately represent them to be genuine? Please understand me correctly: the proof of a falsified or forged Wannsee Protocol or its cover letter does not prove that there was no Holocaust! It sug- gests merely the suspicion that something is fishy. Under such circumstances, whoever continues to repeatedly hinder free research, blatantly transgresses against the fundamental human rights of freedom of opinion and of research. I now return to the question posed at the start. Which of you has now ever ac- tually read the Wannsee Protocol? I see that now no one is left. Esteemed ladies and gentlemen! I am speaking here about a subject, which implicates the German people in the greatest crimes in all of human history! I discover that you have not even made the effort to simply look over the central document of the indictment. L: That is plain nonsense! No one is accusing the post-war generations! R: And what, then, do the continuously repeated calls for Germans to feel collec- tive shame and be held collectively responsible suggest? L: But that is something different. That is up to each person, whether he accepts that or not. R: Well, I would like to see the politician or media person who openly rejects that and demands for Germans an upright posture and a national pride, which is normal in other nations, and a policy of national interests! In Germany, no one makes either a career or wins friends in such a way. But however that may be, what I wished to express here is that everyone keep in mind the facts presented here: Anyone who relies upon truthful reporting by the media and our historical researchers in these matters, is lost the very moment he does so. The suppres- sion of facts, the training for censorship, and the admitted dissemination of lies attest to the fact that our media do not give us reliable information. What we need are rational, critical, enlightened, and independently thinking people, who 267 Cf. about this more recently also Norbert Kampe, in: Mark Roseman, Die Wannsee-Konferenz, Pro- pyläen, Berlin 2002, pp. 157-164. 127 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST approach the media and also our historians with a proper measure of skepti- cism. 2.14. Austrians to the Fore R: Not quite two years after the fuss about the reduction in the Auschwitz victim figure, an intellectual bomb exploded in Austria when it became known that the then President of the Austrian Federal Association of Civil Engineers, gradu- ated engineer Walter Lüftl, had written a paper, in which he cast doubt ­ by us- ing a variety of technical arguments ­ upon the technical feasibility of mass gassings as reported by witness testimony.268 The media started howling, ac- cused Lüftl, who as an engineer had argued on a purely technical level, of hav- ing spread "Nazi slogans,"269 and demanded his resignation. Lüftl finally com- plied with this demand, as Germany's largest daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on March 14, 1992:270 "The 59 year old Lüftl, expert witness to the court and CEO of a Vienna en- gineering firm, has written in the paper `Holocaust ­ Belief and Facts' that mass murder with the poison gas Zyklon B could `not have happened, both natural law and the absence of the technical and organizational prerequi- sites speak against it. That the crematories were not capable of handling the large number of victims can be safely asserted on structural-technical grounds. Bodies are not fuel, their cremation requires much time and en- ergy.' Moreover, he characterized the murder of Jews by means of diesel ex- haust gases as a `sheer impossibility.'" R: The attempt of various lobby groups to charge Lüftl with an offense against the Austrian Prohibition Law, which outlaws "Nazi activities," failed, however.271 L: Who is this Lüftl, and what might have prompted him to write this paper? R: Austria is not a large nation in surface area or in population. There, a man who is President of Austria's Association of Civil Engineers is without a doubt a man of the "High Society." Lüftl testified in thousands of court proceedings as a publicly sworn expert in his field and was consequently considered to be one of the most prominent civil engineers of the Alpine republic. What caused him to write this paper has been given various explanations. Lüftl himself has al- ready taking a position on this issue as early as 1991, although with the use of a rather indirect approach, in an article published in the magazine of his associa- tion, Konstruktiv. In this he concerned himself with the question of which evi- 268 Walter Lüftl, Holocaust ­ Glauben und Fakten, Manuskript, Vienna 1991. A somewhat revised English version appeared as "Holocaust: Belief and Facts" in JHR 12(4) (Winter 1992-93) pp. 391-420. 269 Reichmann, "Die Nazisprüche des Walter Lüftl," Wochenpresse/Wirtschaftswoche, no. 11, 1992; AFP, "Österreicher bestreitet Holocaust," Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 13, 1992, p. 10. 270 "Rücktritt nach Zweifel an Holocaust," Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 14, 1992; for the complete text of this article see the appendix, p. 187. 271 Cf. Werner Rademacher, "The Case of Walter Lüftl," in: G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 61-84. 128 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST dence should have greater weight, the evidence of an expert in the field or the evidence of a witness:272 "We know from past cases: even if 46 witnesses more or less firmly declare that they heard nothing, the 47th witness who heard something, whose statement can be verified by experts, nonetheless speaks the truth. On the other hand, it is strange that in certain proceedings relating to cre- mation facilities, testimony perhaps is given that `meter-high flames shot out of high chimneys,' although this is technically impossible, since as a rule only warm exhaust gases flow out of chimneys (except in quite rare explo- sions ­ with gas heating, perhaps) and there is never even a reflection to be seen, because the flames (as in the case of coke[273] firing) are unable to leave the combustion chamber and the reflection is dissipated in the flue." R: These passages will say little to the uninformed reader. For that reason I would like to go into this case more deeply. At the beginning of 1991, W. Lüftl was already approaching the subject of Holocaust revisionism. This was triggered by a flyer campaign of a right-wing journalist who disputed the existence of homicidal gas chambers in the Mauthausen concentration camp in the vicinity of Linz (Austria). This flyer even got into the Austrian federal parliament and gave rise there to a furious debate. The circulation of this flyer as well as other revisionist activities in the early 1990s were the reason why measures were fi- nally taken in Austria to make a special law, which was in force already, even harsher in order to be able to combat revisionism more successfully. As you perhaps know, after the Second World War Austria was substantially spared reparations, expulsions, and loss of territory. The prerequisite for such privileged treatment by the victors was the so-called Austrian "Lebenslüge" (existential lie), to the effect that Austria was the first victim of Hitler. The consequences of this Lebenslüge have left their mark most especially in the po- litical psyche and in a special penal law. While in politics there was an allergic reaction to everything, which had a connection to any identification with the German culture and nation, after the war the so-called Verbotsgesetz (Prohibi- tion Law) was created, which provided for draconian punishment for anything which could be interpreted as National Socialist activity. The option under in- ternational law of campaigning for a national reunification with the rest of Germany, which indeed actually represented not a National Socialist goal, but rather a goal desired by all the people up until 1945, also fell under this prohi- bition. But what is crucial is a supplementary provision to this law, which went into effect in the spring of 1992 and says in paragraph 3h that the denial of the 272 W. Lüftl, "Sachverständigenbeweis versus Zeugenbeweis," Konstruktiv 166 (1991) pp. 31f.; for the complete text see appendix, p. 186; cf. W. Lüftl, "Die Feuerbestattung in der ersten Hälfte dieses Jahr- hunderts," Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart 41(2) (1993), pp. 14-16 (www.vho.org/D/DGG/Lueftl41_2.html). 273 Coke is produced from coal by burning it with limited oxygen supply, which removes most non-carbon components contained in coal. The resulting highly toxic gas rich in carbon monoxide and hydrogen (coke gas or city gas) was used until the 1970/80 as heating and cooking gas in many households of larger cities with coking and/or steel industries. Coke has a higher energy content per mass than most coals due to its higher percentage of pure carbon. 129 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST fact of the National Socialist genocide is to be punished with up to ten years of imprisonment. The Austrian Prohibition Law therefore not only keeps Austri- ans from exercising their right to self-determination, but also punishes a denial ­ or, to be more accurate, disputing ­ of National Socialist genocidal crimes with harsh penalties. In contrast to most persons who happened to see the above mentioned flyer circulate in the Austrian parliament, W. Lüftl did not stop at a first outraged re- action, but instead made the effort to verify the truth of the claims asserted in the flyer. The result of his researches made him skeptical. He reached the con- clusion that the publisher of the flyer was essentially right, at least in part. Since the start of the parliamentary debate Lüftl, as a professional expert in his field, was thus committed to prevent that challenging facts, which Austrian courts considered to be "self-evident," would become a crime. Because sooner or later, every court expert could find himself in the position of having to make false testimonies before a court, contrary to his professional convictions, if he wished to avoid punishment.274 For the President of the Austrian Association of Civil Engineers, it was therefore also a matter of preventing a muzzling of his professional class when historical questions were involved.275 The article cited above by Lüftl from his professional association's magazine is a result of his researches. They concern the statements by former Auschwitz prisoners who claimed that they had seen meter-high flames shoot out of the chimneys of the crematories. Among these witnesses was also Austrian citizen and world-renowned psychiatrist Viktor Frankl,276 with whom Walter Lüftl made contact and whom he was able to convince that what he had supposedly experienced could not possibly have happened.277 Further results of research, which W. Lüftl had conducted in the meantime with other technicians and natural scientists, were not supposed to reach the public for the time being due to their explosive nature, yet there must have been a leak somewhere. Lüftl was given no chance to defend himself against the campaign of harassment initiated against him that followed, with the lie that he had been circulating "Nazi material." In particular, several politicians with whom he had previously still enjoyed good contact behind closed doors and in whom he had found a receptive attitude in this matter, refused him the right to any defense. After a certain time, the threats, intimidations, and insults against him, his em- ployees, and customers paralyzed his engineering office. He was able to get out 274 Cf. W. Lüftl, "Sollen Lügen künftig Pflicht sein?," Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 41(1) (1993), pp. 13f. (www.vho.org/D/DGG/Lueftl41_1.html). 275 W. Lüftl, "`Damoklesschwert' über dem Haupt eines Gutachters!," Recht und Wahrheit, Novem- ber/December 1992, p. 8. 276 From Death-Camp to Existentialism, Beacon Press, Boston 1959; Man's Search for Meaning, Beacon Press Boston 1962; The Doctor and the Soul, A.A. Knopf, New York 1965; Psychotherapy and Exis- tentialism, Washington Square Press, New York 1967; The Will to Meaning, World Pub. Co., New York 1969; The Unconscious God, Simon and Schuster, New York 1975; The Unheard Cry for Mean- ing, Simon and Schuster, New York 1978, On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders, Brunner- Routledge, New York 2004. 277 Cf. W. Lüftl, Letter to the Editor, VffG, 6(3) (2002), p. 364; Frankl's claims about Auschwitz have been criticized by: Theodore O'Keefe, "Viktor Frankl über Auschwitz," VffG 6(2) (2002), pp. 137-139; El- mar Schepers, "Viktor Emil Frankl in Auschwitz," VffG 6(3) (2002), pp. 304-309. 130 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST of this situation only by resigning his position as President and stopping all re- visionist activities for the time being. We will speak of some of Lüftl's arguments later. Here, I would like to pose only one question for now: Who is to be credited with more technically special- ized competence: the politicians and media princes or a judicially sworn civil engineering expert and President of the Engineering Board? L: That can be hardly any question, although even a Walter Lüftl can commit serious errors. The question is probably rather what drove Lüftl. One might of course impute to some little buffoon the pursuing of some sort of obscure ideo- logical purpose, but Lüftl naturally had nothing whatsoever to gain if he got himself into the quicksand, for that is how "denial" is interpreted, of course. One can only believe that as a member of Austria's upper Ten Thousand, Lüftl had grave legal reservations about the new law, supported by important histori- cal doubts based upon his technical expertise. R: Exactly. Lüftl himself is aware that his public appearance in support of revi- sionism for technical reasons has a profound effect, which can hardly be over- estimated. In this connection, he speaks of the creation of catacomb revision- ists, that is, of the fact that behind the scenes, directly and indirectly, he is con- stantly converting people to revisionism because, due to his reputation, no one suspects him of being a National Socialist. But since revisionists are perse- cuted, they have to conduct their activities underground, like the Christians in ancient Rome.278 L: So Lüftl hasn't renounced his views? R: His regular appearance as author in the revisionist periodicals Viertel- jahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung (Quarterly Journal for Free Historical Research) and The Revisionist shows rather the exact opposite.279 In the train of the so-called Lüftl scandal, there was a second sensational devel- opment in Austria, and indeed, from comments made in Austria's national lib- ertarian Neuen Kronenzeitung, which is Austria's highest circulating newspa- per. Its chief editor Richard Nimmerrichter published a commentary under the pseudonym "Staberl" on the subject of the Holocaust entitled "Methods of a Mass Murder." He wrote there:280 "Since then quite a few experts have been able to prove that the killing of so many people with gas would have been a technical impossibility. [...] The truth is probably simple. Only relatively few Jewish victims were gassed. The others starved to death or were slain, killed by typhus, dysentery, and spotted fever, because they were refused medical assistance; or they froze to death or died from exhaustion. [...] 278 Cf. W. Lüftl, Letter to the Editor, TR, 2(3) (2004), p. 353, as a reaction to another Letter to the Editor, ibid., 2(2) (2004), pp. 233f. 279 Cf. "Die Lügen unserer Zeit," VffG 5(3) (2001), pp. 325f.; "Der Fall Jedwabne und das Verbotsgesetz," ibid, pp. 337f.; "The Dachau Horror-Tale Exposed," TR, 1(4) (2003), pp. 385f.; "The General in the Ice-Block," ibid, pp. 386f.; "1972: A Somewhat Different Auschwitz Trial," TR 2(3) (2004), pp. 294f.; as well as several other articles under pseudonym. 280 Neue Kronenzeitung, May 10, 1992, p. 2; for the complete text see p. 188. 131 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The third generation of surviving Jews may need the martyr-saga of Hitler's victims gassed so barbarically in a similar way as Christians have been nursing the memory of the ­ probably even more barbaric ­ crucifixion death of Jesus Christ for 2000 years. Yet the sober fact is probably that the Nazis killed the great majority of their Jewish prisoners in another way. Certainly not one hair less barbarically!" L: That is fairly strong stuff, for Christians as well! R: True. At any rate, I don't agree with all passages of this quotation. I want to give you an idea here only what sort of statements some of the media allowed themselves to be carried away into making at that time, during the course of the temporary revisionist euphoria. Of course these comments had to result in a criminal complaint being filed against the chief editor for alleged "Nazi activi- ties," and a preliminary criminal investigation was initiated. In a later issue, this paper proved its theses by citations from the American Jewish history pro- fessor Dr. Arno Mayer and thereby defended itself against a campaign of invec- tive by other Austrian media. Later on, I will likewise cite Professor Mayer. On the other hand, however, the Neue Kronenzeitung also approvingly discussed an expert report by Austrian mainstream historian Prof. Dr. Gerhard Jagschitz, which confirmed the existence and massive use of gas chambers in Auschwitz. Hence, at the end Mr. Nimmerrichter got back into line with the mainstream in- terpretation.281 We shall likewise meet Professor Jagschitz in the course of our lecture. At about the same time, an article appeared in the professional journal Der Österreichische Journalist (The Austrian Journalist) by Richard Nimmerrichter entitled "The Scourge of the Nation. Gas Chambers are no Taboo."282 The preliminary investigations against the chief editor of the Kronenzeitung finally began at the start of 1993. Meanwhile, the sort of struggle which must have raged behind the scenes is suggested by R. Nimmerrichter in an article in his paper. With an allusion to the 283-page criminal complaint by the Jewish religious community, he writes below the title "2 Lines versus 283 Pages":283 "Public prosecutor Redt, who is totally unknown to me, also had need of this courage when, in unwavering pursuit of constitutional principles, he decided not to be accommodating to a powerful organization like the Jewish reli- gious community." R: You realize, therefore, that at the beginning of the 1990s, there was quite a bit of public turmoil in Austria about the taboo question of western societies. 281 Neue Kronenzeitung, May 24, 1992, p. 22. 282 R. Nimmerrichter, "Die Zuchtrute der Nation, Gaskammern sind kein Tabu," Der Österreichische Journalist, no. 3, 1992. 283 "2 Zeilen gegen 283 Seiten," Neue Kronen-Sonntagszeitung, Feb. 7, 1993, p. 11. 132 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 2.15. German Historians ­ Subdued, but not Mute R: Now I would like to direct your attention back to Germany and raise the ques- tion of whether there are also brave and honest men and women of the main- stream in that country now, who are taking on this hot issue as stoutheartedly. First of all there was the late mainstream historian Prof. Dr. Hellmut Diwald, who taught at the University of Erlangen near Nuremberg. In 1978 he pub- lished the book Geschichte der Deutschen (History of the Germans), in which, concerning the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, he explains that after the loss of command of the sea by the Third Reich and with it the impossibility of Jewish emigration or expulsion, this meant the plan for the deportation of the Jews to eastern ghettos. With regard to the Holocaust as interpreted today, he wrote few words:284 "Despite all the literature, what actually took place in the following years is still unsolved with respect to its essential questions." R: The howl of outrage from the media which followed this has been thoroughly documented by Dr. Armin Mohler and Prof. Dr. Robert Hepp.285 Due to public pressure, the publishing house ultimately found itself forced to withdraw the book from sale and, without consulting the author, to replace the corresponding passages in a second edition with the usual formulas of shocked concern. Since then, Prof. Diwald has been regarded as a radical right-wing historian. Because he allowed himself to become very involved in a platform committee of the pa- triotic German party Die Republikaner (The Republicans) at the beginning of the 1990s, his scientific reputation is totally ruined, which of course happened not based upon scientific grounds but due to political reasons. The only utter- ances on this subject which have been heard from him in public after that are of the following kind:286 "From within as well as from without, due to other interests, everything which is connected with `Auschwitz' lies under the protection of a most ex- tensively, legally secured shield." R: Once burned, twice shy. But at least Professor Diwald remained interested in the subject, which he once again emphasized shortly before his death by ex- pressing praise for the Rudolf Report (see quote on p. 183). As the next German mainstream historian, I would like to discuss the Berlin Professor of contemporary history Dr. Ernst Nolte, whose theses, published in the middle of the 1980s, were among those decisive for the outbreak of the so- called historians' dispute. In essence, the historians' dispute was about whether the crimes of National Socialism against the Jews had their origin in the atroci- ties of the Bolsheviks in Russia, among whom there were also very many Jews, and whether these crimes of the National Socialists are unique or else are quali- 284 Hellmut Diwald, Geschichte der Deutschen, 1st ed., Propyläen, Frankfurt/M. ­ Berlin ­ Wien, 1978, p. 165. 285 Armin Mohler, "Die Kampagne gegen Hellmut Diwald von 1978/79 ­ Erster Teil: Die Rache der SS," in: Rolf-Josef Eibicht (ed.), op. cit. (note 6), pp. 110-120; R. Hepp, op. cit. (note 6). 286 H. Diwald, Deutschland einig Vaterland, Ullstein, Frankfurt/Main 1990, p. 72. 133 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST tatively and quantitatively comparable to other crimes.287 Later, Nolte answered this question to the effect that he considers the crimes of National Socialism unique not only in the trivial sense, with which the historians' dispute resem- bles a kind of shadow boxing.288 However, whoever reads the book closely dis- covers in the footnotes not only that Nolte at that time already considered the Wannsee Protocol extremely questionable, as I have already mentioned,263 but, referring to the entire topic of the Holocaust, he also makes a remark with far- reaching consequences:289 "Only when the rules of examination of witnesses have found universal ap- plication and expert testimony is no longer evaluated according to political criteria, will secure ground have been won for the effort toward scientific objectivity with respect to the `Final Solution.'" R: In principle, these reservations are none other than those formulated by Dr. Diwald ten years previously. Only Ernst Nolte is clever enough to allow no doubt concerning the Holocaust to appear in the text itself and to hide the "bombs" in the small print. L: How do you know that Professor Nolte is declaring serious doubt in his mar- ginal notes? You are over-interpreting his marginal notes here according to your views and are offering us no chance to check your claim! Professor Nolte is known to me as a serious researcher, and I do not believe that he would like to have your theses taken as his. R: That comes from later publications of Nolte. His book Steitpunkte (controver- sial issues), which deals with "present and future controversies about National Socialism," according to the subtitle of the book, was published in 1993.263 Ranging over a broad area, Ernst Nolte deals in this with revisionist theses con- cerning World War II in general and the Holocaust in particular. He determines that it is incompatible with scientific freedom if scientific doubt with respect to the Holocaust is punished, since in science, everything must be open to doubt (p. 308): "In view of the fundamental maxim `De omnibus dubitandum est' [every- thing must be open to doubt], the wide-spread opinion that any doubt con- cerning the prevailing notions about the `Holocaust' and the six million vic- tims is to be regarded from the start as a sign of a vicious mind having con- tempt for people, and that it is to be prohibited if possible, cannot be ac- cepted for science under any circumstances; indeed, it is to be rejected as an attack upon the principle of scientific freedom." R: After a study of the literature, he found (p. 9): "Although I had to feel myself far more challenged by `revisionism' than the German contemporary historians, I soon reached the conviction that this school was treated in an unscientific manner in the established literature, 287 See on this e.g.: E. Nolte, Das Vergehen der Vergangenheit, Ullstein, Frankfurt/Main 1987; Rudolf Augstein (ed.), Historikerstreit, Serie Piper 816, Piper, Munich 1987; R. Kosiek, Historikerstreit und Geschichtsrevision, 2nd ed., Grabert, Tübingen 1988. 288 E. Nolte, op. cit. (note 263), p. 516. 289 Ibid., p. 594. 134 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST i.e. with outright dismissal, with insinuations about the character of the au- thors, and mostly with plain dead silence." R: That this silent treatment is not due to lack of competence on the part of the revisionists is stated by Professor Nolte in another passage, on p. 304: "for this radical revisionism has been far more well-grounded in France and in the USA than in Germany, and it cannot be disputed that its pioneers know their subject very well and have produced research studies, which, in their mastery of the source material and especially in their critique of the sources, probably surpass those of the established historians in Germany." R: Thus it is his conclusion that with regard to the controversy about the "Final Solution," it is the established side above all whose efforts at scientific methods have not always been crowned with success (p. 319). For that reason, Nolte, strictly following scientific principles, has set himself the task since 1987 of getting to know the theses and arguments of the revisionists. While doing this work, he recognized that earlier he had all too easily given credence with great naiveté to many witness statements and confessions regarding the Holocaust (p. 7-9). Nevertheless, after thorough study of the evidence and all arguments then known to him, his saw his opinion confirmed that the established view was cor- rect and that a denial of the Holocaust was objectively impossible (p. 87, 290, 297, 308).290 In another passage, however, he thinks that the final word con- cerning the technical feasibility of the mass extermination testified to has still not been spoken, and affirms by this that there are important technical and sci- entific doubts which can crucially influence the discussion (p. 316). Nolte sees gains for scholarship from the efforts of the Holocaust revisionists, who he calls "radical revisionists": "In any case, to the radical revisionists the service must be attributed ­ as Raul Hilberg has done ­ of forcing, by means of their challenging theses, the established historiography into an examination and better argumentation of their results and assumptions." (p. 316) R: Since, as we read on p. 309: "[...] the questions as to the reliability of witness testimony, the evidentiary value of documents, the technical possibility of certain events, the credibility of information dealing with numbers, the weighing of facts, are not only ad- missible, but scientifically indispensable, and any attempt to banish certain arguments and evidence by ignoring or prohibiting them, must be viewed as illegitimate." R: With this, Ernst Nolte had clearly not spoken the final word. Five years later, together with the French leftist philosopher François Furet, he published the work Feindliche Nähe (hostile proximity). In this, there are passages reproduc- ing a correspondence between the two authors, from which I give some ex- cerpts from Nolte's pen here:291 290 Cf. on this my response "Im Streit mit Prof. Nolte," G. Rudolf, op. cit. (note 168), pp. 131-187. 291 Herbig, Munich 1998, pp. 74-79; cf. G. Rudolf, "Die ketzerischen Geständnisse eines Holocaus- tologen," VffG, 3(2) (1999), pp. 222-224. 135 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "If radical revisionism were correct in the claim that there wasn't [...] any `Holocaust' in the sense of comprehensive and systematic extermination measures intended by the highest state leaders, [...] then I would have to make the following confession: [...] National Socialism was no `distorted copy of Bolshevism,' but rather it was merely waging a struggle for the sur- vival of a Germany forced upon the defensive in world politics. No author gladly admits that only rubble remains of his work, and thus I have a vital interest in revisionism ­ at least in its radical variety ­ not being right." L: Hear, hear! It seems to me to be an attitude, which applies well to all historians who have devoted themselves to this topic! R: One has to respect Professor Nolte highly for not having kept silent about his own bias. Further on, Nolte address various issues, which follow traditional re- visionist lines of argument, some of which we will deal with later: "But just because of this I feel challenged by it [revisionism] and yet find myself unable to join those who ask the state prosecutor and the police to take legal measures. Just because of that I see myself forced to raise the question of whether revisionism has arguments at its disposal or whether it actually comes out of mendacious agitation. And here the general quality of the historian comes into play. The historian knows that `revisions' are the daily bread of science [...]. The historian knows also that in all probability, in the end, some revisionist theses will be recognized by the established historians or at least will be included in the discussion. [...] It was not expressly mentioned [during the Congress292] that there had been claims during the war and first post-war period, according to which the mass killings were carried out by means of blowing hot steam into locked chambers, by electric shocks on gigantic electrical plates, or by use of quick- lime."... R: There they are again, these obscure murder methods, which historians today cloak in embarrassment (see p. 103). Nolte continues: ..."By being treated with silence, claims like these were declared to be obvi- ously just as untrue as the rumor of the soap produced from Jewish corpses, which, however, has even been taken up again in Germany recently due to newspaper ads by a well-known movie director.[293] Even the testimony probably most widely disseminated in the 1950s, that of the member of the Confessing Church and SS leader Kurt Gerstein, is no longer included into document collections of thoroughly orthodox scholars.[294] And it is well known that Jean-Claude Pressac, who despite his singular precedents is recognized as a serious researcher, has recently reduced the 292 In Stuttgart, cf. note 151. 293 Arthur "Aze" Brauner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 6, 1995. 294 See chapter 4.5.2. 136 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST number of victims of the gas chambers in Auschwitz down to approximately half a million.[295] The claims which, to my knowledge, have only been put forth by `revision- ists,' are not fundamentally different from individual corrections of this kind: that the first confessions of the Auschwitz Commandant Höss were co- erced by means of torture,[296] that claims according to which high flames were shooting out of the chimneys of the crematories, as reported by many eyewitnesses, must be due to hallucinations, that the technical prerequisites for the cremation of up to 24,000 bodies per day did not exist,[297] that the `corpse cellar' in the crematories of camps that had to record about 300 `natural' deaths each day during the typhus epidemics, were quite simply indispensable and, at least during these periods, could not be diverted from that purpose to be used for mass killings. Also, such theses could hardly surprise the historian, for he knows from his daily work that huge numbers, provided that they do not come from statistics departments, must be and have been viewed as questionable since the time of Herodotus, and no less does he know that large crowds of people in extreme situations, and in the face of hardly comprehensible events, were and are breeding places for rumors. [...] However, the question [...] would not be settled, whether a revisionism, dis- tancing itself from rabble-rousing agitation and instead proceeding argu- mentatively, is an extreme manifestation of the fundamentally legitimate re- visions and must be accepted as an internal scholarly phenomenon [...]. I am inclined to answer this question in the affirmative, [...]." R: Another four years later, his book Der kausal Nexus appeared. It is about revi- sions and revisionism in the science of historiography and argues in a similar style:298 "The testimony of the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höß, which un- doubtedly contributed very substantially to the internal breakdown of the de- fendants in the Nuremberg Trial of the chief war criminals, was preceded by torture; therefore, according to the rules of western legal standards, it was inadmissable in court. The so-called Gerstein Document displays so many contradictions and includes so many objective impossibilities that it must be considered worthless. The witness testimonies in by far the greatest number of cases were based upon hearsay and mere supposition. The reports of the few eyewitnesses contradict one another in part and elicit doubt as to their credibility. Aside from the case of Katyn, after the discovery of the mass graves by the German Wehrmacht in 1943, a careful investigation by an international commission of experts did not take place after the end of the war, and the re- sponsibility for this belongs to the Soviet and Polish communists. 295 See chapter 2.16. 296 See chapter 4.5.4. 297 See chapter 3.4.4. 298 Ernst Nolte, Der kausale Nexus, Herbig. Munich 2002, pp. 96f. 137 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The publication of photographs of the crematories and some cans of Zyklon B poison gas has no kind of evidentiary value, since in the larger camps in- fected with typhus, crematories had to be present and since Zyklon B is a known `delousing remedy,' which cannot be dispensed with at any place where masses of people live together under poor sanitary conditions. [...] a questioning of the established idea that the mass extermination in gas chambers is compellingly proved by countless testimonies and facts and is beyond any doubt must be allowed, or otherwise science as such is not ad- missible and possible at all in this sphere." R: And then later even more clearly:299 "It concerns the claim, based upon the findings of natural science or upon technical facts, that either there were not or cannot have been any mass kill- ings by gassing, at least not of the scope accepted until now. I am speaking here of the chemical examinations or expert reports with respect to the cya- nide residue in the delousing chambers on the one hand, and in the rooms of the crematories intended in the beginning as `morgues' on the other hand, by Leuchter, Rudolf, and Lüftl, and last but not least by the unusually de- tailed study by Carlo Mattogno concerning apparent questions of detail like cremation time, coke consumption, and the like. In principle, there is no ar- gument against the thesis repeatedly put forward that that, which is techni- cally impossible or impossible by natural law, cannot have happened, even if hundreds of confessions and witness reports said the contrary; [...]. The admission is unavoidable that scholars in the humanities and ideological critics can have nothing to say in this question." R: Germany's most prestigious daily newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zei- tung, stated in this context:300 "Raul Hilberg [...] and Ernst Nolte [...] agree that the eyewitness reports of celebrated Elie Wiesel should be read only with the most extreme attentive- ness. Hilberg's most recent book, the splendid work of his late years, `Sources of the Holocaust,'[301] has silently taken leave from many of the most famous but apparently also rather unreliable witnesses like Kurt Ger- stein and Jan Karski. Thus the denier and the propagandist are complemen- tary figures of our time." L: Alright, so now let's leave Nolte, whose attitude of taking revisionism seri- ously got him into a good deal of trouble, such as, for instance, a publication ban in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. R: Alright, let's proceed to other mainstream German historians. As it would be, then, with Dr. Joachim Hoffmann, a long-time Director at the official German Militärgeschichtliche Forschungsamt (Research Office for Military History) in Freiburg. Before he gets into deeper waters, he expresses himself plainly in his 299 Ibid., p. 122. 300 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Oct. 7, 2003, p. L 37. 301 R. Hilberg, Sources of Holocaust Research. An Analysis, I.R. Dee, Chicago 2001; cf. Jürgen Graf's review, "Raul Hilberg's Incurable Autism," TR 1(3) (2003), pp. 344-350. 138 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST book Stalin's War of Extermination, first published in German in 1995, con- cerning the scholarly freedom prevailing in his nation:302 "In contrast to the spirit and letter of `freedom of research' as proclaimed under the German Basic Law, it is, unfortunately, advisable today to have many passages of a historiographical text revised for `criminal content' prior to publication ­ an almost disgraceful situation." R: At various places in this book, Dr. Hoffmann says very clearly, in effect, that several things in the historical picture of the Holocaust are not evident. Thus he speaks "of the atrocities actually or allegedly committed by the Germans" (p. 172). He discusses the fact that in the early reports of the Soviet Union and in the findings of the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, gassings in Auschwitz were treated as only a secondary matter (pp. 181-185). He speaks of "gassing of people allegedly having occurred in Majdanek" (p. 182), calls the practices of the International Military Tribunal questionable (p. 185) and ac- cuses the Soviet Union of having misled the International Military Tribunal by means of manifold forgeries of documents relating to supposed German atroci- ties (pp. 188, 210). He calls the total victims figure of the Holocaust, as also that of the Auschwitz camp in particular, "product of Soviet propaganda, intended to influence and indoctrinate public opinion, particularly, the thinking of the Anglo-Saxon countries" (p. 190, cf. 334f.). He deals with the mass mur- der of approximately 34,000 Jews from Kiev in the Babi Yar ravine, allegedly carried out in 1941 by German Einsatzgruppen,303 in the chapter "Soviet Crimes Are Attributed to the Germans" and comments there with precision:304 "An evaluation of the numerous air photos in recent years apparently leads to the conclusion that, in contrast to the clearly visible, extensive mass graves dug by the NKVD [for their Polish victims of mass murder in Ka- tyn...] the terrain of the Babi Yar ravine between the years 1939 and 1944, during the German occupation, remains undisturbed." L: What does that mean? R: That means that the witness testimonies regarding this claimed mass murder, which report about enormous mass graves and gigantic open air cremations of bodies, cannot be correct. I will speak in more detail about this case in chapter 3.10., where I will once again cite Dr. Hoffmann. Beyond this, Dr. Hoffmann labels the 2.2 million victims of the ethnic clean- sing of east Germany305 at war's end victims of an "anti-German genocide" (p. 336). He calls the measures of the German security service in the occupied eastern territories "irresponsible actions in reprisal for the actions of partisans 302 Joachim Hoffmann, op. cit. (note 24), p. 24. 303 Deployment Groups, groups to fight partisans. 304 Joachim Hoffmann, op. cit. (note 24), p. 215. Cf. the contribution by John C. Ball, "Air-Photo Evi- dence" and Herbert Tiedemann, "Babi Yar: Critical Questions and Comments," in: G. Rudolf, op. cit. (note 44), pp. 269-282 and 501-528, resp. The Ukrainian daily Kiev Evening is said to have endorsed these research findings in a report published in the Oct. 20, 1995, edition. 305 Here I use the term "east Germany" (lower case) to mean the former eastern provinces of Prussia (East and West Prussian, Silesia, East Pommerania), which are today a part of Poland. What is called "East Germany" today (upper case, including the states of Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Mecklenburg, Bran- denburg, West Pommerania) used to be middle or central Germany before 1945. 139 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST in guerrilla warfare," a warfare that Hoffmann calls "illegal under international law" and which "was initiated by the Soviets in a spirit of cold calculation" (p. 338). Hoffman furthermore sees in the policy of comradeship-in-arms on an equal footing between the Wehrmacht and the anti-Stalinist "Russian Libera- tion Army," which was undertaken by the German Reich starting in 1943, the beginning of a "friendship between the Russian and German peoples" with a signal effect for the future (p. 340f.). In view of such revisionist thunder-bolts, it is to be expected that Hoffmann represents a differing viewpoint about Holocaust revisionism (p. 185): "The Auschwitz problem has recently become the object of intensive jour- nalistic debate, generally conducted both knowledgeably and intelligently in all its aspects, both in Germany and abroad, even if many groups zealously exceed the proper limitations of this debate due to their political motiva- tions. This controversy is being conducted less in the `official' literature than in rather remote publications,"... L: What the devil are remote publications? R: By this he probably means revisionist periodicals, but he doesn't dare use the word. But let me continue: ... "and is not a little influenced by official prohibitions against certain forms of thought and speech, suspiciously watched over by a system of po- litical denunciation. The related prevention of free discussion of an impor- tant problem of contemporary history, no matter how unfortunate it may be today, will, of course, be ineffective in the long run. Experience shows that free historical research can only be temporarily hindered by criminal law as it exists in many European countries. Historical truths usually continue to exert their effects behind the scenes, only to emerge triumphantly at a later time. In regard to the problem of Auschwitz, moreover, it is not a question of `obvious' facts relating to the cruel persecution and extermination of mem- bers of the Jewish people, which is beyond discussion; rather, it is solely and merely the question of the killing mechanism utilized and the question of how many people fell victim to persecution. Major discoveries are emerging in this regard, to such an extent that many current preconceptions must inevitably be corrected." R: As to the quasi-taboo discussion about the number of victims of Auschwitz, he thinks (p. 334f.): "That the numbers of victims were exaggerated in this context was irrele- vant within the dispute and is still considered irrelevant. Today, it is consid- ered almost a criminal offence `to speak of Jewish losses as having been horrendously exaggerated.' Historians are particularly disturbed by this situation, since it means that they are caught between a system of political justice and spying and informants on the one hand, and their professional duty to the truth on the other hand, i.e., their duty to determine the number of victims with the greatest possible accuracy [...]." R: Yet when one considers that Joachim Hoffmann had his book checked for wording that could get him into conflict with German censorship laws, and as a 140 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST result probably made modifications, one can imagine what Hoffmann might have written if there were no censorship in Germany. L: Did Hoffmann encounter trouble due to these lines? R: He barely escaped it, as he has explained in the foreword to the English edition of his book. The radical left-wing German Green Party even filed a minor in- quiry in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, on Hoffmann's account, but the charges issued against him ultimately came to nothing.306 In connection with these attacks upon Dr. Hoffmann, Dr. Heinz Magenheimer, who teaches modern history at Salzburg University (Austria), also asked leave to speak. He had this to say about Dr. Hoffmann's revisionist tendencies re- garding the campaign of the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union in the Second World War:307 "That all these authors have to live branded as `revisionists' is, after all, not disadvantageous. Any historical research bound to the truth must nourish the questioning of handed-down theses, must constantly carry out re- examinations, and must be ready to make corrections. In this sense, `revi- sionism' is the salt in the process of establishing the truth." L: Rather, revisionism oversalts and spoils the soup of knowledge by distortions and falsifications. R: There you are absolutely wrong. The word revisionism comes from the Latin word revidere ­ to look at again. The reconsideration of traditional theories is something completely normal, and indeed as much in natural science and tech- nology as in the social sciences, to which the science of historiography belongs. Science is not a static state of affairs, but rather a process, namely the procure- ment of knowledge through the search for evidence. When new evidence is dis- covered through continuing research or errors are uncovered by critical re- searchers, then this often leads to old theories having to be modified or some- times even having to be discarded altogether. Thus revisionism can be described as looking at methods, old theories, and scientific claims critically, under the magnifying glass, verifying their conclu- siveness, and investigating whether new evidence possibly refutes or modifies these old theories. The attempt to test old, handed-down theories and notions and to attempt to disprove them is one of the main components of science. Only where one is permitted to expose claims and theories to the toughest at- tempts of refutation, can the content of truth of these assertions and theories be tested, can the truth be approached. This is a fact that in my view the philoso- pher Sir Karl Popper explained best in his standard work on epistemology, the foundation of all acquisition of knowledge.308 306 Joachim Hoffmann, op. cit. (note 24), pp. 16-19; as well as personal communication by Dr. J. Hoff- mann, who saw to it that not a single word was changed in the English translation, because he had been threatened that a revision of the content of this book could result in criminal investigation for "stirring up the masses." 307 Junge Freiheit, Feb. 16, 1996, p. 7. 308 Karl Popper, Objektive Erkenntnis, 4th ed., Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1984; cf. also Claus Nord- bruch, "Die selbsternannten Tugendwächter im Visier," Neuen Zürcher Zeitung, June 12, 1999 141 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Popper was a Jew. He would turn over in his grave if he knew that you are making use of him. Holocaust revisionism has nothing at all to do with a per- missible revision of erroneous opinions. That is an unjust misappropriation of a concept! R: As if the correctness of Popper's assertions depended upon his or my religious affiliation! And merely claiming that revisionist criticism is not permissible does not make it true. Everybody should judge that for himself. Since we are already on the subject of Popper, I shall refer to Popper's view about the beginning of the scientific method in ancient Greece.309 "The new thing which Greek philosophy added," states Popper, was not so much "the re- placement of myths by something more `scientific,' but instead, rather in a new attitude toward the myths." And he continues: "The new attitude is that of the critique. In place of a dogmatic handing down of teachings [...], critical discussion of them appears. Questions are raised, there is doubt of the believability, the truth of the teachings. [...] What is new, however, is that the doubt and the criticism become a scholas- tic tradition. [...] in place of the traditional theory ­ of the myth ­ appears the tradition of critically discussing theories." R: Hence, the heart of science is not its content, but its form, and most important aspect of it is a critical attitude. Therefore, let's doubt seriously and discuss critically! L: Can't you say it in simple words, without referring to the bigshots of western civilization? R: OK, let me give you an example. Let us say I do not believe in the laws of gravity, which is why I want to conduct many thorough tests in order to show that all physicists are wrong. Would you tell me that I am not allowed to do that? Or would the physicists file criminal complaints against me? L: Of course not. Go right ahead with your tests, they probably would say. R: See? There you have it: Those who are confident that they are correct do not fear that their theories are being challenged. Only lies cry out for earthly judges! So, if we can be so sure that the Holocaust happened, as we are con- stantly being told, what is the problem in checking it? But back to Dr. Hoffmann, for in the same year of 1995, loosely following Popper's directions, he gave an expert opinion concerning the revisionist an- thology on the Holocaust published by me with the title Grundlagen zur Zeit- geschichte (foundations of contemporary history),310 in which, among other things, it says:311 "There is much in the various contributions that strikes one as thoroughly convincing. [...] On the whole, the contributions to the anthology here at is- (www.vho.org/D/Beitraege/Nordbruch.htm; Engl.: www.germarrudolf.com/persecute/docs/ListPos39_e.pdf). 309 K. Popper, ibid., p. 361. 310 See Ernst Gauss (ed.), op. cit. (note 256); Engl.: Germar Rudolf (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, op. cit. (note 44). 311 Joachim Hoffmann, "Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte (Foundations of Contemporary History): Expert Report about this Book," in G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 563-566. 142 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST sue frequently manifest a profound understanding of the subject and its as- sociated literature, [...]. The overall impression evoked by this anthology edited by Gauss is that its contents must be acknowledged [...]. A suppres- sion of this carefully documented work would represent a forcible obstruc- tion of the legitimate striving for scientific and academic understanding." L: Wow! And what was the occasion for this expert opinion? R: It had been prepared for the defense involved in the trial at the County Court at Tübingen initiated in order to seize and destroy this very book, about which Hoffmann was giving his expert opinion. Dr. Nolte also gave a similar expert report at the proceeding. However, these two formidable historians were unable to prevent the court from confiscating and destroying the book.312 L: Was Nolte's expert report published? R: Not to my knowledge, but in another connection Professor Nolte has summa- rized his opinion:313 "An informative summary of nearly all revisionist arguments is the anthol- ogy `Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte,' edited by Ernst Gauss (pseudonym of Germar Rudolf) [...]. The circulation of this work is prohibited [in Germany]. It displays, although not without exception, the formal characteristics of scholarship ­ such as the citing of opposing literature and argumentation along with it ­ and for that reason has been described as `pseudo-scientific.' Yet an unsuccessful ap- proach and insufficient arguments are not in and of itself `pseudo-scientific.' Science is not identical with correctness or even truth, but it strives for cor- rectness or truth in a process which presupposes the existence of the false." L: Therefore is the work only partially scientific? R: One would have to read Nolte's opinion in order to be able to find out what his objections are. I have never seen his expert report. But I can imagine that the criticism expressed in it follows the line of what he stated in his book Streit- punkte.314 In any case, he starts with the assumption that the work must be pro- tected by the basic right to free science and research. As a final point, I would like to refer to a historian, who has made a serious name for himself in the late 1980s and early 1990s as what might be called a "half-revisionist" by the publication of a series of very interesting studies.315 I am speaking of Dr. Rainer Zitelmann, who taught contemporary history in Ber- lin until 1992. In order to justify his critical approach to the historical picture of the mainstream regarding the Third Reich, Zitelmann claims that as a historian it must be permissible to take the position of a defense lawyer, even when it comes to the Third Reich, since there are so many who show a one-sided accu- satory attitude toward that era. Therefore defenders would be required in order 312 AG Tübingen, verdict of June 15, 1996, ref. 4 Gs 173/95: book and all data carriers were to be de- stroyed, the publisher was fined DM 30,000 (some $20,000 at that time). The editor Germar Rudolf, that is the current author, avoided this trial by fleeing into exile. 313 E. Nolte, op. cit. (note 298), p. 101. 314 E. Nolte, Streitpunkte, o. cit. (note 263); cf. also my critique, op. cit. (note 290). 315 Thus e.g. M. Prinz, R. Zitelmann (ed.), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1991. 143 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST to balance the scale to ensure historical accuracy.316 Of course, with defense Zitelmann did not mean the defense or justification of ideologies, systems, or even crimes, but rather only the opportunity to present exonerating material. L: I do not think that Zitelmann's approach is correct. Of course, everybody has a right to muster a defense, but by saying that he is defending something, he puts himself into a defensive, apologetic position. R: Sure. Nobody has to justify the search for exonerating evidence, at least that is what one ought to think. But that is exactly what the Germans today are not al- lowed to do. They are prohibited by threat of imprisonment to question the ac- cusations continuously leveled against them, which have the most intense po- litical impact imaginable on them and their nation. Fact is that in every field of science, researchers have their own very personal agendas, be they political or merely because their reputation, their pride, their social status, or their financial welfare depends on their theories prevailing. The controversy around the Holocaust is not categorically different from any other scientific controversy. It merely evokes the strongest emotions and involves the most powerful political agendas. It is therefore naïve to believe that objectivity prevails merely because every scholar is supposed to be objective. Scholars are only humans, and therefore most of them are biased in one way or another, and if only because their social environment is biased due to cultural influences, which no one can escape. In order to ensure objectivity, we need the free market of ideas, were all opinions ­ including apologetic ones for certain historical eras ­ can struggle freely for predominance. Those prevailing at the end should do so not because they are backed by laws or authorities, which protect them from criticism, but because they manage to convince the majority of scholars due to their conclusiveness and exactitude. That is the only way to ensure accuracy in science. But Dr. Zitelmann's argument for the acceptance of a defense position in Ger- man contemporary history has not prevailed. Quite the opposite. While up to now it has been without consequence for the scholarly reputation of anyone, and was frequently even profitable, to indict German history on all possible charges, anyone taking a defensive position quickly becomes an outcast, or might even be prosecuted in several European countries. In order to make it plainly obvious what we are talking about here, let me briefly repeat what incorrect claims have been discovered to this point, the moral burden of which the German people as a whole is made to carry con- stantly. First there are the horror stories, which turn up in many varieties, of soap made from Jewish fat, shrunken heads from the bodies of prisoners, lamp- shades of human skin etc. Those are joined by the exaggerations about the number of victims, which are permitted to be freely invented by every possible institution doing research with no repercussions and are allowed to stand though they are knowingly false. 316 R. Zitelmann, in U. Backes et al. (ed.), op. cit. (note 167), p. 32. 144 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Finally, we have already determined here that, apparently without great risk, false or erroneous witness testimony can be given and documents can be forged in order to make German history appear as negative as possible. I have cited here the Demjanjuk Case and the Wannsee Protocol only as prominent exam- ples, but the list can be extended.317 In the course of these lectures I will bring up an entire series of further cases, on the basis of which it will become clear to you in a dramatic way, how simple it was and is to pull the wool over the eyes of a public, which is for the most part totally uncritical. But may this brief ret- rospective suffice for you to recognize that digging up exonerating evidence, which is so important to enable a balanced assessment, is considered illegiti- mate or even illegal when it comes to Third Reich history. 2.16. Scandal in France R: Let me now ask by a show of hands who has ever heard the name Jean-Claude Pressac? Now that is at least 10% or so. Let me get right to the point and ask what you associate with his name? L: Pressac was a French pharmacist who investigated the technology of the mass murder in Auschwitz and has written a book on it, which was praised by the mainstream media, because it finally refuted the technical arguments of the re- visionists. R: So the claim goes. Pressac, an amateur historian as so many in that field, has actually written two books about Auschwitz. His first, published in 1989, caused hardly any attention, although it has been announced as the ultimate refutation of revisionism regarding Auschwitz. This 500+ pages book in over- size landscape format was printed only in a small edition, most of which ended up in major libraries of the western world.251 Pressac attained a certain public renown for the first time in 1993f., when his second book appeared, which one might describe as a sort of slightly updated summary of his previously men- tioned mammoth work: The Crematories of Auschwitz, subtitle: The Technique of Mass-Murder. 253,254 L: And for this book Pressac was celebrated, because he finally refuted revision- ism with its own technical methods. R: Such was the tenor of the media.318 That is the way, for example, Burkhard Müller-Ullrich wrote in the German news magazine Focus:319 "What has been missing until now has been proof of the technical method of mass murder. The revisionists ­ an international group of private historians, 317 See e.g. the problem of the invented talks of Rauschning with Hitler, the forged Hitler diaries, and the false documentation on the arson of the Reichstag in 1933: K. Corino, Gefälscht!, Rowohlt, Reinbek, Hamburg 1992; see also the large amount of historical lies and forgeries as continuously documented in the German series by Heinrich Wendig, Richtigstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte, Grabert-Verlag, Tübin- gen 1990 and later. 318 Cf. my critical observation: "Pressac and the German Public," and Serge Thion's observations about the reaction in France: "History by Night or in Fog?," both in: Germar Rudolf (ed.), Auschwitz: Plain Facts, op. cit. (note 9), pp. 21-35, and 37-58, respectively. 319 Burkhard Müller-Ullrich, "Die Technik des Massenmordes," Focus, no. 17, April 25, 1994, pp. 116ff. 145 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST mostly confessed National Socialists, who deny the crime or want to `mini- mize' it ­ attack just this point. [...] Pressac's merit is that with his book he has undermined the foundation for any objections of the revisionists and Auschwitz deniers, if there ever was any. [...] Even Nolte did not know about the conclusive, indisputable refutation with which Pressac disposed of the main point of the Auschwitz deniers, that a mass gassing of several thousand people in one day in a single camp was technically impossible." R: Or similarly, Harald Eggebrecht in Germany's largest daily newspaper Süd- deutsche Zeitung:320 "[...] since the brutal resurgence of neo-Nazis and their shameless denial of the annihilation of the Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, propped up with pseudo-scientific theories that the murder machinery was impossible on so-called technical grounds, it has appeared necessary to prove Auschwitz all over again. [...] In this document concerned with the careful analysis of all documents, there are only a few lines in which Pressac grabs hold of the horror. [...] As said before, this book is not a sensation, this is no argument from the defense against the attack of the unteachable, the shameless, the cynics, and the relativizers à la Ernst Nolte,[321] assuming that one should take their arguments and theorization seriously as belonging in a scientific discussion. Whoever does that is well on the way to believing in an `Ausch- witz lie' and acceptance of the Nazi era as an integrateable period." L: In plain language, these critiques can be read as saying: there are no valid ar- guments against the Holocaust, but now someone has refuted them at last! R: Quite funny, isn't it? Now we will verify this claim of refutation. Which of you has read Pressac's book? Yes ­ you there, below, would you please come up here to the front? Thanks. So you have read the book? L: Yes, and I was impressed by it. R: Good. I have here a copy of the book. May I ask you to show me, from the list of references in the book, a single citation from technical literature on cremato- ries or gas chambers or execution facilities, or alternatively, show me one sin- gle technical calculation which Pressac himself has performed. I will give you ten minutes for this. After all, you know the book. Would you do that for us? L: OK, I will do that. R: Good. In the meantime, we will turn our attention to the French journalist and distinguished opponent of revisionism, Eric Conan. A little over half a year af- ter the ballyhoo about Pressac had died away, Conan wrote about the condition of the Auschwitz camp in the largest French daily, Le Monde:322 "Another sensitive topic: What to do with the falsifications which the com- munist administration left behind? In the 1950s and 1960s several buildings, which had disappeared or had been diverted to other uses, were recon- 320 Harald Eggebrecht, "Die Sprache des Unfaßbaren," Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 29, 1994. 321 Reference to Nolte's book Streitpunkte, cf. chapter 2.15. 322 "Auschwitz: la mémoire du mal," L'Express, January 19-25, 1995; cf. also the comments by Robert Faurisson: "Sur Auschwitz, lentement, la vérité reprend ses droits," Feb. 4, 1995 (www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/archFaur/1995-2000/RF950204.html). 146 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST structed with major errors and presented as authentic. Some which were `too new' have been closed to the public. Not to speak of the gas chambers for delousing, which were sometimes presented as homicidal gas chambers. These aberrations have been very helpful to the deniers, who have extracted out of this the substance of their fairy tales. The example of crematory I is typical. The first gas chamber was established in its mortuary. It was work- ing for a short time in the beginning of 1942. The blocking off of the zones which were needed for the gassings disturbed the camp operation. At the end of April 1942, it was therefore decided to relocate the lethal gassings to Birkenau, where they were essentially carried out upon Jewish victims on an industrial scale. Crematory I was consequently converted into an air raid shelter with a surgery room. With the creation of the museum in 1948, cre- matory I was converted into its assumed [sic!] original condition. Everything there is false:[323] [...] the dimensions of the gas chamber, the location of the doors, the openings for the introduction of Zyklon B, the ovens which, ac- cording to the admission of some survivors, were newly rebuilt, the height of the chimneys. [...] For the moment, this remains as it is, and nothing is said to the visitors. That is too complicated. As for the future, one will see." (Emphasis added) L: Does this mean that visitors to Auschwitz don't get to see the original gas chamber at all, but a so-called reconstruction? R: That is exactly what it means, and on top of that, a reconstruction created ac- cording to an "assumed" original, therefore without evidentiary basis and with much poetic freedom. L: But the visitors are told that this is the original gas chamber. R: At least up until a short while ago, it was suggested to them that this was genu- ine. L: Obviously following the motto: we were lying, we are lying, and we will keep lying. R: In a book that appeared a year later two mainstream historians expressed their views about these "reconstructions" divorced from reality, which were carried out after the war:324 "There have been additions to the camp the Russians found in 1945 as well as deletions, and the suppression of the prisoner reception site is matched by the reconstruction of crematorium I just outside the northeast perimeter of the present museum camp. With its chimney and its gas chamber, the crema- torium functions as the solemn conclusion for tours through the camp. Visi- tors are not told that the crematorium they see is largely a postwar recon- struction. When Auschwitz was transformed into a museum after the war, the decision was taken to concentrate the history of the whole complex into one of its 323 Original French: "Tout y est faux" 324 Robert van Pelt, Deborah Dwork, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 1996, pp. 363f.; cf. C. Mattogno, "Architectonical Bunglings of Two Plagiarizers," in: G. Rudolf, C. Mattogno, Auschwitz: The Case against Insanity, op. cit. (note 9). 147 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST component parts. The infa- mous crematories where the Ill. 17: Roger mass murders had taken place Garaudy, born lay in ruins in Birkenau, two in 1913, was miles away. The committee felt one of the that a crematorium was re- leading French communists in quired at the end of the memo- the past. Some rial journey, and crematorium years ago he I was reconstructed to speak converted to for the history of the incinera- Islam. tors at Birkenau. This pro- gram of usurpation was rather detailed. A chimney, the ultimate symbol of Birkenau, was re-created; four hatched openings in the roof, as if for pouring Zyklon B into the gas cham- ber below, were installed, and two of the three furnaces were rebuilt using original parts. There are no signs to explain these restitutions, they were not marked at the time, and the guides remain silent about it when they take visi- tors through this building that is presumed by the tourist to be the place where it happened." L: That leaves a stale taste in the mouth. L: I cannot see what could be objectionable in a reconstruction. R: It is reprehensible when it is not directed toward evidence but rather ­ as is admitted here ­ toward purposes of propaganda. Whether and to what extent this so-called "reconstruction" is authentic, is something we will explore later. This is serving only as a prelude for me here to discuss what occurred in the spring of 1996 in France. As previously mentioned, Professor Robert Faurisson was quite successful in France with his critical research approach. Jean-Claude Pressac looked upon Faurisson's arguments as a challenge which gave him im- petus for his own studies. The Leuchter Report and all forensic investigations after it were direct consequences of Faurisson's activities. Eric Conan's admis- sions are in essence concessions to discoveries that Faurisson had made dec- ades before. In January 1996, the unthinkable happened in France: Of two famous French personalities of the political left, the first suddenly publicly declared himself a proponent of Holocaust revisionism, and the second demanded at least freedom of speech for the revisionists. The first of the two to speak was Roger Garaudy, who in the 1960s and 1970s was one of the most active communists in France. He had published a book about the founding myths of Israeli politics at a leftist publishing house that had previously also published Faurisson's writings.325 In one section of this book, Garaudy deals with the Holocaust, and indeed from a totally revisionist 325 Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne, La Vieille Taupe, no. 2, Paris 1995; Engl.: The Founding Myths of Modern Israel, Institute for Historical Review, Costa Mesa, CA, 2000 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/tfmomi/index.html). 148 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 18: The abbot Henri Grouès, called Abbé Pierre, born in 1912, came from a wealthy family. As a member of the French National Assembly after the war, he supported the policy of the purging of personnel of the Vichy government. In 1949 he founded the Emmaus Alliance for the support of the have-nots. As such, he was well-known in France as a sort of French "Mother Theresa." He was repeatedly roped in by alliances of the extreme left and for some years fought against Jean Marie Le Pen's right-wing party Front National. perspective.326 When Garaudy was roundly attacked because of his book, Henri Grouès openly supported him in April of the same year. Grouès is far better known as Abbé Pierre, a sort of male French version of the late Mother There- sa. For months Garaudy's adherence to revisionism and Abbé Pierre's insis- tence upon freedom of speech for his friend dominated the media of France.327 On June 27, 1996, the title page of the French weekly magazine L'Evénement du Jeudi headlined: "Holocaust ­ The victory of the revisionists" R: This victory is then represented as a catastrophe. In reality, however, there was no victory to speak of, since claims about the revisionists were merely re- counted, along with the usual exaggera- tion, distortions, and lies. The revision- ists themselves were nowhere given their say but rather experienced a re- newed intensification of the campaign against them of demonization and sup- pression of opinion. In the rest of the world this affair, which ended with the recantation of Abbé Pierre,328 was for the most part met with silence, how- ever. L: Were the two ever legally charged? R: Not Abbé Pierre, but Roger Garaudy Ill. 19: The victory of the revisionists was sentenced to a fine of 160,000 326 Garaudy has basically plagiarized the work of Robert Faurisson's without quoting him a single time. 327 Cf. R. Faurisson, "Bilanz der Affäre Garaudy/Abbé Pierre," VffG, 1(1) (1997). pp. 9-18 (Engl.: www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/FaurisArch/RF961101engl.html). 328 La Croix, July 23, 1996. 149 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST French Francs (about $30,000) and nine months imprisonment on probation.329 But this did not prevent Garaudy from also publishing his book in other lan- guages, of which the Arabic edition in particular enjoyed an enormous success, as one can imagine. Garaudy's book was sold there in the millions, and he was interviewed by the major Arab mass media and portrayed as a hero and martyr. L: Therefore Garaudy did not recant. R: No, quite the contrary. Certain natures come to flower only when they see themselves unjustly persecuted. Garaudy seems to belong to that group also. The affair Garaudy/Abbé Pierre had repercussions, which were at first not per- ceptible on the surface. For example, the French mainstream historian and op- ponent of revisionism Jacques Baynac broke his silence on September 2, 1996, therefore something over two months after the end of the affair. In a learned study about revisionism, he wrote that the past scandal had "altered the atmos- phere to the favor of the revisionists," while among their opponents perplexity, dismay, and terror prevailed. He made the point that the historians up to now had retreated from the revisionist challenge and instead had left the subject to the amateur historian Jean-Claude Pressac. Baynac stated:330 "For the scientific historian, an assertion by a witness does not really repre- sent history. It is an object of history. And an assertion of one witness does not weigh heavily; assertions by many witnesses do not weigh much more heavily, if they are not shored up with solid documentation. The postulate of scientific historiography, one could say without great exaggeration, reads: no paper/s, no facts proven [...]. Either one gives up the priority of the archives, and in this case one dis- qualifies history as a science, in order to immediately reclassify it as fiction; or one retains the priority of the archive and in this case one must concede that the lack of traces brings with it the incapability of directly proving the existence of homicidal gas chambers." L: Did I hear correctly: a French historian concedes that the testimony of wit- nesses is insufficient for historiography and that the existence of the gas cham- bers cannot be demonstrated? R: Yes indeed. L: What does he mean by "lack of traces"? R: As he himself explains, this means "the absence of documents, traces or other material evidence." With Baynac's admission that historians shy away from a confrontation with revisionist arguments, and his disclosure that there is no sci- entifically tenable proof of homicidal gas chambers, he will surely have made many enemies. 329 The verdict was even confirmed by the European Supreme Court on July 8, 2003. According to this court, revisionist theses incite to hatred against Jews, which is why they are not covered by the freedom of speech. Cf. VffG 2(2) (1998), p. 163, 3(1) (1999), p. 118 (www.vho.org/News/D/News1_99.html). 330 Jacques Baynac, "Comment les historiens délèguent à la justice la tâche de faire taire les révision- nistes," Le Nouveau Quotidien, Lausanne, Sept. 2, 1996, p. 16; Baynac, "Faute de documents probants sur les chambres à gaz, les historiens esquivent le débat," ibid., Sept. 3, 1996, p. 14; cf. R. Faurisson, "An Orthodox Historian Finally Acknowledges: There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers," JHR 17(4) (1998), pp. 24-28. 150 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: That spells ostracism for Baynac! R: Right, but nothing has happened to him as far as I know. But now back Ill. 20: Jacques to our volunteer, who has looked Baynac, histo- through Pressac's book for technical rian and novel- citations or calculations. What have ist, two profes- you found? sions which are evidently often L: Well, to put it plainly, nothing at all. complementary R: Not a single citation from technical in the field of literature? contemporary L: No. history. R: And no calculations? L: Well, of course I wasn't able to read through the entire book, but in pag- ing through it, my eye wasn't caught by any calculations, which by their for- matting naturally look different from the normal flow of text. R: Good. This result doesn't surprise me, since that is precisely what makes up Pressac's writings: it is claimed that they come to grips with the technical ar- guments of the revisionists and refute them, but when they are examined more closely, it becomes obvious that they do not fulfill this claim. By the way, Pres- sac did cite one technical article: on page 41f. of the German edition, Pressac cites a technical article about modern hydrogen cyanide delousing facilities.331 He does this, however, only because he found the article in the documents of the former camp at Auschwitz,332 which he takes as proof that the SS wanted to equip the alleged homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz in Bunker 2 with simi- lar modern facilities. L: Therefore he's making a technical argument, nonetheless. R: Here, making a technical argument would mean comparing the method of op- eration of these modern facilities with that which then allegedly came into use with the homicidal gassings, which Pressac does not do, however. But we will come back to that later. The fact is that there is no indication whatsoever that there was any consideration at all given to equipping the so-called homicidal gas chambers with such devices. Pressac's assertion is therefore totally un- founded. He is simply assembling a fantasy. At any rate, this sort of irresponsi- ble storytelling is typical of Pressac.333 In other words: the Jean-Claude Pressac celebrated by the media and estab- lished historians as the technical expert on Auschwitz turns out to be a charla- tan on closer inspection.334 331 Gerhard Peters, E. Wüstinger, "Entlausung mit Zyklon-Blausäure in Kreislauf-Begasungskammern. Sach-Entlausung in Blausäure-Kammern," Zeitschrift für hygienische Zoologie und Schädlingsbekämp- fung, 32(10/11) (1940), pp. 191-196; special reprint. 332 RVGA 502-1-332, pp. 86-90. The paper reached the Auschwitz Construction Office on July 3, 1941. 333 Cf. the revisionist critique of Pressac in: G. Rudolf (ed.), Auschwitz: Plain Facts, op. cit. (note 9). 334 Re. criticism of Pressac's first book (note 251) cf. Robert Faurisson, JHR, 11(1) (1991), pp. 25-66; ibid., 11(2) (1991), pp. 133-175 (www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/FaurisArch/RF9103xx1.html); Enrique Aynat, "Neither Trace nor Proof," ibid., pp. 177-206; re. a fundamental critique of Pressac's method 151 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But Pressac has, after all, estimated the number of victims of Auschwitz downward by several hundred thousand down to 700,000 or so. One has to give him credit for that.335 R: But that figure hasn't been recognized by the Auschwitz Museum. However, let me cite Robert Redeker, an inveterate foe of the revisionists, with regard to Pressac's significance. Writing in the French philosophical monthly Les Temps Modernes, he said the following:336 "Revisionism is not a theory like any other, it is a catastrophe. [...] A catas- trophe is a change of epoch. [...] revisionism marks the end of a myth [...] it means the end of our myth." "Far from signifying the defeat of the revisionists, Mr. Pressac's book `The Crematories of Auschwitz: The Technique of Mass Murder' signifies its paradoxical triumph: The apparent victors (those who affirm the crime in its whole horrible extent) are the defeated, and the apparent losers (the revi- sionists and with them the deniers) come out on top. Their victory is invisi- ble, but incontestable. [...] The revisionists stand in the center of the debate, determine the methods, and fortify their hegemony."337 R: The chief editor of Les Temps Modernes, Claude Lanzmann, expressed similar thoughts:338 "Even by their refutation the arguments of the revisionists become legiti- mized, they become the reference point of everything. The revisionists oc- cupy the whole territory." 2.17. The End of Taboos R: In 1998, Count Rudolf Czernin, an Austrian nobleman, entered a mine field with the publication of his book Das Ende der Tabus.339 He dares to cite the most important works and arguments of the revisionists, and indeed with re- spect to the general history of the Third Reich as well as that of the Holocaust. Thus he essentially follows the revisionist arguments regarding a forgery of the Wannsee Protocol (p. 172-177) and explains in detail that the documented Jew- ish policy of the Third Reich, before and during the war, was directed toward an emigration or deportation of the Jews but not toward their extermination (p. 159-182). Under the heading "Blank Spaces in Holocaust Research" he points out: "There continue to be questions upon questions which have remained unan- swered up to the present day. But why? Because dealing with the National see G. Rudolf, "Pressac: From Paul to Pseudo-Saul," in: G. Rudolf, C. Mattogno, Auschwitz-Lies, op. cit (note 9). 335 Cf. the data in Table 5 on p. 120 of the present book. 336 Robert Redeker, "La Catastrophe du Révisionnisme," Les Temps Modernes, no. 568, November 1993, pp. 1-6. 337 R. Redeker, "Le Révisionnisme invisible," ibid., no. 569, December 1993, pp. 127-134. 338 Le Nouvelle Observateur, Sept. 30, 1993, p. 97. 339 Rudolf Graf Czernin, Das Ende der Tabus ­ Aufbruch in der Zeitgeschichte, Stocker-Verlag, Graz- Stuttgart 1998. 152 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Socialist Jewish policy, that of the so-called `Final Solution,' and with the Holocaust, is dealing with an absolute taboo subject, the questioning of which sets loose a storm of outrage. For that reason, up until now a critical examination of the Holocaust and its prehistory on the part of the supporters of the extermination thesis has not been done, while simultaneously any critical examination and analysis by the other side, which doesn't come to the same conclusion, is dismissed with indignation, suppressed, given the si- lent treatment, and indeed, in many cases, is even prosecuted as a crime. Yet according to the official and standard view as well as judicial practice, this complex subject is a matter of `notorious facts which require no proof' ­ a formulation that was applied for the first time by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal." (p. 182) R: Under the heading "The Taboo of the six Million," he summarizes the dubious foundation of the six-million-figure, and in the section "Discussion of the Causes of Death," he then mentions different articles dealing with the question of whether there were really gas chambers for mass murder and introduces the works of various revisionists: Paul Rassinier, Arthur Butz, Wilhelm Stäglich, Fred Leuchter, Germar Rudolf, and Walter Lüftl, and cites the statements of other authors whom we have already mentioned here or will be mentioning yet. L: Is Count Czernin an historian at all, then? R: No. His book mentioned here can hardly be rated a contribution to research, since he is only summarizing the work of others and doesn't even give a list of sources for his statements. However worth reading his book might be, I would like to cite it here merely as a symbol for how deeply revisionism has pene- trated by now into the mainstream and is taken seriously there. 2.18. Worldwide Attention R: In 1993 Deborah E. Lipstadt, the American professor of Jewish religious stud- ies and Holocaust research, published a book entitled Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,340 in which she first of all gives her perspective of the political background and motivations of the revisionists and also tries to deal with some revisionist arguments.341 L: A book very much to be recommended, so I would think... R: ...if one finds political polemics on the subject appropriate. L: What's polemical about the book? R: For example, Lipstadt castigates the revisionists, who are more often non- Germans, for being German-friendly, and in doing so appraises this attitude negatively, and in the same breath lumps this together with other supposed atti- tudes of the revisionists, likewise judged as negative, such as anti-Semitism, racism, and right-wing extremism.342 To the American reader these passages 340 Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Free Press, New York 1993 (www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres2/LIPS.pdf). 341 Lipstadt basically relies upon the work of J.-C. Pressac, see her notes 1-29 to her appendix on pp. 231f. 342 Ibid.: 153 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST might not stand out particularly, but in the German translation their effect is ex- tremely repellent, and one gets the impression that the author is advocating the notion that only someone who is hostile to Germans is a good person.343 Pro- fessor Lipstadt furthermore goes on to explain that she believes that keeping alive in Germany the remembrance of the uniqueness of the Holocaust has an extraordinary importance. L: This is, of course, only appropriate. R: That's debatable. Let me cite Mrs. Lipstadt:344 "If Germany was also a victim of a `downfall,' and if the Holocaust was no different from a mélange of other tragedies, Germany's moral obligation to welcome all who seek refuge within its borders is lessened." R: What ­ aside from political motives ­ could induce an American professor of theology to make the assumption that German is morally obligated to take in every refugee, and that in a book about revisionism, which obviously has no connection to the subject of refugees? Finally there is Lipstadt's reaction to Professor Ernst Nolte justified claim that National Socialism, too, is historical and that it must be investigated scientifi- cally without moral reservations as any other era as well.345 Lipstadt does not only Nolte's claim, but she also wishes to set herself up as an overseer over the German discipline of historiography who strives to suppress opinions as those of Prof. Nolte, for she explains:346 "We did not train in our respective fields in order to stand like watchmen and women on the Rhine. Yet this is what we must do." L: That's indeed a strange understanding of scholarly freedom! To judge by this, Mrs. Lipstadt is for a special treatment of the Germans as beings with inferior rights whom it is reprehensible to like. R: That is exactly the meaning of her words. The actual controversy about the book, though, revolves around the British historian David Irving who is repre- sented in Lipstadt's book as a racist, anti-Semitic Holocaust-denier. David Ir- ving, who was once considered the most successful historian of contemporary history in the world due to having the most editions of his works in circulation, p. 74: " With the zeal of a convert, he [Prof. Harry Elmer Barnes] moved to the isolationist, pro- German end of the political spectrum and stayed there for the rest of his life." p. 83: "The roots of Barnes's views about the Holocaust and his attitudes toward Israel go beyond his deep-seated Germanophilia and revisionist approach to history: They can be found in his antisemitism." p. 91: " An active member of various German American groups, [Prof. Austin J.] App was an ardent defender of Germans and Nazi Germany." p. 92: "Barnes was avidly pro-German but was not a fascist." p. 127: "Despite its veneer of impartial scholarship, [Prof. Arthur R.] Butz's book is replete with the same expressions of traditional antisemitism, philo-Germanism and conspiracy theory as the Holocaust denial pamphlets printed by the most scurrilous neo-Nazi groups." p. 138: "Most people who were aware of its [the Institute for Historical Review] existence dismissed it as a conglomeration of Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis, philo-Germans, right-wing extremists, antisem- ites, racists, and conspiracy theorists." 343 Deborah E. Lipstadt, Betrifft: Leugnen des Holocaust, Rio Verlag, Zürich 1994, pp. 92, 107, 111f., 157, 170. 344 Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying..., op. cit. (note 340), p. 213. 345 Cf. Ernst Nolte, op. cit. (263, 287). 346 Deborah E. Lipstadt, op. cit. (note 340), p. 218. 154 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST was defending himself against this butchering of his reputation and brought suit against Lipstadt and her British publisher...347 L: ... and lost the trial resoundingly. Since then the revisionist arguments are con- sidered as having finally been refuted.348 R: So it is claimed, but that is absolutely not so, for revisionist arguments were not dealt with in this trial but rather Irving's arguments, and that is not the same thing. David Irving made a name for himself with his studies on World War II and with his biographies of personalities of this era. He has never even pub- lished a single article on the Holocaust, let alone a book. He has repeatedly ex- pressed himself in a derogatory manner about the subject, which doesn't inter- est him at all, and when I visited him in London in 1996, he said to me person- ally that has never read a single revisionist book. Moreover, he refused even to consider, in the period preliminary to his trial, letting revisionists appear as ex- pert witnesses. Consequently his situation was catastrophic when during his trial he then saw himself confronted with the concentrated argumentation of the world-wide Holocaust Lobby. For defeat was unavoidable. This says little about the caliber of revisionist arguments. L: After all, a judge who had even less of an idea of the subject than Irving made the decision, of course. One can just imagine how the judge's career would have fared, had he decided the Holocaust was now to be considered as at least partially refuted! For where would we be, if historical truths were determined by judges! R: We would be in Germany. But all joking aside, let me cite here the former president of the organization of American historians, Carl Degler, who is quoted by Professor Lipstadt as having stated:349 "[...] once historians begin to consider the `motives' behind historical re- search and writing, `we endanger the whole enterprise in which the histori- ans are engaged.'" R: I think that this is the proper commentary to Lipstadt's tirades as well as to the endless efforts to impute or to prove some sort of political motivations on the part of Irving or Holocaust revisionist historians. That is nothing other than prying into private attitudes and repression of freedom of opinion. What I would like to point out here is the fact that Holocaust revisionism never received such intensive attention in the international mass media as during the 347 Cf. the trial at Bench Division, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, David John Cawdell Irving vs. (1) Penguin Books Limited, (2) Deborah E. Lipstadt, ref. 1996 I. no. 113 (www.holocaustdenialontrial.com/); cf. G. Rudolf, "The Pseudo-Architect," in: G. Rudolf, C. Matto- gno, Auschwitz: The Case against Insanity, op. cit. (note 9); see also online: vho.org/GB/Contributions/RudolfOnVanPelt.html and .../CritiqueGray.html. 348 R.J. van Pelt (cultural historian, expert witness during the Irving trial), The Case for Auschwitz..., op. cit. (note 140); (cf. critique by G. Rudolf, "A Case for Sane Historiography," in: G. Rudolf, C. Mat- togno, Auschwitz: The Case against Insanity, op. cit. (note 9)); D. D. Guttenplan (journalist, trial ob- server), The Holocaust on Trial: History, Justice and the David Irving Libel Case, Granta Books, Lon- don 2001 (cf. my review G. Rudolf, VffG 6(4) (2002), pp. 479f.); Richard J. Evans (historian, expert witness during the Irving trial), Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, Ba- sic Books, New York 2001. 349 Deborah E. Lipstadt, op. cit. (note 340), p. 198. Even Prof. Lipstadt agrees with that, ibid., p. 199: "But on some level Carl Degler was right: Their motives are irrelevant." 155 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST civil trial of Irving versus Lipstadt. I shall give some examples here. The first is an article by Kim Murphy published in the Los Angeles Times on January 7, 2000, with the headline: "Danger in denying Holocaust?" She introduces her article in this manner:350 "A young German chemist named Germar Rudolf took crumbling bits of plaster from the walls of Auschwitz in 1993 and sent them to a lab for analy- sis. There were plenty of traces of cyanide gas in the delousing chambers where Nazi camp commanders had had blankets and clothing fumigated. There was up to a thousand times less in the rooms described as human gas chambers. Rudolf, a doctoral candidate at Stuttgart University, concluded that large numbers of Jews may have died of typhoid, starvation and murder at Europe's most famous World War II death camp, but none of them died in a gas chamber. When a report on his findings ­ commissioned by a former Third Reich gen- eral ­ got out, Rudolf lost his job at the respected Max Planck Institute and his doctoral degree was put on hold. He was sentenced to 14 months in prison [...], his landlord kicked him out, he fled into exile and his wife filed for divorce. [...] Rudolf stands as a crucial figure because of what he represents: a highly trained chemist who purports ­ despite a wide variety of scientific evidence to the contrary ­ to have physical proof that the gas chambers at Auschwitz did not exist. Over the last decade, supporters of such theories have scrutinized hundreds of thousands of pages of Third Reich documents and diaries made available after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They have analyzed gas chamber con- struction. They have pinpointed contradictions and hard-to-believe details in stories told by camp survivors and, amid nearly universal scorn from the academic establishment, won testimonials for some of their work from aca- demics at respected institutions, such as Northwestern University[351] and the University of Lyon.[352]" R: Murphy's article later comes to Irving and his upcoming trial, and she lets both sides have their say, which is highly unusual. Five months later Kim Murphy, who had attended an entire revisionist conference as the first reporter of the mass media to do so, produced an undistorted report with fair quotations and characterizations of the speakers.353 350 Cf. online www.germarrudolf.com/persecute/docs/ListPos111.pdf, www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates/lat_libel000107.htm. 351 Reference to Prof. Dr. Arthur R. Butz and his work The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, op. cit. (note 27). 352 Reference to Prof. Dr. Robert Faurisson, cf. note 149. 353 "Noted Holocaust revisionist Joins Irvine Conclave," Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2000; for reactions to this see: IHR, "Thirteenth IHR Conference: A Resounding Success," JHR, 19(3) (2000), pp. 2-11. 156 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The British media reported very extensively on Irving's trial. The London Times wrote on January 12 during the preliminary period to the Irving Trial:354 "What is at stake here is not the amour-propre of individuals with grossly inflated egos. Rather it is whether one of the blackest chapters of 20th- century history actually happened, or is a figment of politically motivated Jewry." R: The Korea Herald thought it a matter of distant Western vanities:355 "This trial goes to the heart of Western identity, psychology and self-image. For the victorious Allies: Britain, America and the former Soviet Union, the fight against Hitler became a legitimating narrative: a titanic struggle of light against dark, good against evil, progress against fascism. The reality, of course, was more complex. But the Allies came to believe their own propaganda." R: The February edition of the Atlantic Monthly dedicated a long article to the Irving Trial, written by a declared enemy of revisionism. In it he stated:356 "NOW, nearly forty years after Eichmann's capture, the Holocaust is once again on trial [...]. Irving doesn't deny that many Jews died. Instead he de- nies that any of them were killed in gas chambers, that Hitler directly or- dered the annihilation of European Jewry, and that the killings were in any significant way different from the other atrocities of the Second World War. Of course, many right-wing cranks have argued along similar lines. What makes Irving different is that his views on the Holocaust appear in the con- text of work that has been respected, even admired, by some of the leading historians in Britain and the United States." L: How can an historian who advocates such theses become the most widely read author of historical works in the world? R: Up until 1988 he had what was essentially the common notion of the Holo- caust, but changed his opinion due to the Leuchter Report.357 In 1989, he even published a glossy edition of the Leuchter Report with a preface of his own:358 "Unlike the writing of history chemistry is an exact science. [...] Until the end of this tragic century there will always be incorrigible historians, statesmen, and publicists who are content to believe, or have no economi- cally viable alternative but to believe, that the Nazis used `gas chambers' at Auschwitz to kill human beings. But it is now up to them to explain to me as an intelligent and critical student of modern history why there is no signifi- cant trace of any cyanide compound in the building which they have always 354 Times, Jan. 12, 2000, p. 3; for more clippings on the trials media coverage see www.fpp.co.uk/docs/press/index.html and Greg Raven, "Media Coverage of the Irving-Lipstadt Trial," Journal of Historical Review 19(1) (2000), pp. 40-52; ibid., 19(2) (2000), pp. 47-53. 355 Korea Herald, Feb. 25, 2000 (www.fpp.co.uk/docs/trial/KoreaHerald250200.html). 356 D.D. Guttenplan, "The Holocaust on Trial," The Atlantic Monthly, 285(2) (2000), pp. 45-66 (www.fpp.co.uk/docs/trial/guttenplan/atlm1.html). 357 Cf. for this Irving's testimony during the trial against Ernst Zündel in 1988: B. Kulaszka (ed.), op. cit. (note 144), pp. 363-423. 358 Fred A. Leuchter, The Leuchter Report, British edition, op. cit. (note 163), Irving's Introduction (www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Leuchter/ReportIntro.html). 157 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST identified as the former gas chambers. Forensic chemistry is, I repeat, an exact science. The ball is in their court. David Irving, Mai 1989" L: That is a prescription for becoming a social and professional leper. R: Which he himself probably had not expected. Due to his historical convictions, Irving has committed a figurative financial and social hara-kiri. In any case, like no one else before him, he has managed to draw public attention to revi- sionism. But even in this case the revisionists did not have their say anywhere, but rather for the most part were ­ as usual ­ only reviled. One consequence of this temporary voyeuristic interest in "diabolical" revision- ism was an eleven-page article in the February 2001 issue of the American magazine Esquire, a highly reputable glossy magazine with a circulation of about 600,000 copies. The article, entitled "Inside the Bunker" (pp. 98-140) was written by John Sack,359 who had made a name for himself as author of An Eye for an Eye, in which he reported on the mass murder of Germans in forced labor camps in Polish-occupied eastern Germany after the Second World War.360 L: Wasn't the book destroyed in Germany? R: At first it was supposed to be published by the Piper publishing firm, but be- cause the author was the target of the animosity of Jewish groups, the publisher pulped the entire print run even before its release. But it was eventually pub- lished by a different German publisher.361 L: So is John Sack an anti-Semite? R: No. Sack, who died in 2003, was of Jewish descent. His "mistake" was that he reported the indiscriminate revenge-murder of innocent Germans by Jewish camp personnel in eastern Germany after the war. U.S. revisionist Dr. Robert Countess wrote a favorable review of Sack's book, and had it sent to Sack. Out of this a friendship developed between the two, and this made it possible for Sack to personally get to know some U.S. revisionists and participate in several of their conferences.362 Now here is what an estab- lished Jewish author, who believes in the gas chambers and the Holocaust, has to say about the "malicious" revisionists:363 "Despite their take on the Holocaust, they [the revisionists] were affable, open-minded, intelligent, intellectual. Their eyes weren't fires of unap- proachable certitude, and their lips weren't lemon twists of astringent hate. Nazis and neo-Nazis they didn't seem to be. Nor did they seem anti-Semites. [...] But also I wanted to say something therapeutic [during a revisionist confer- ence], to say something about hate. At the hotel [where the conference took 359 Online at www.germarrudolf.com/persecute/docs/ListPos62.pdf. 360 John Sack, An Eye for an Eye, Basic Books, New York 1993. 361 Auge um Auge, Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1995; cf. Richard H. Curtiss' report on how Sack is censored in the U.S. as well, The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, June/July 1997, pp. 37, 62; cf. G. Rudolf "John Sack und die Gaskammern," VffG 3(1) (1999), pp. 94f. 362 Cf. R.H. Countess, "John Sack in Memoriam," TR 2(2) (2004), pp. 214f. 363 Cf. the entire article at www.germarrudolf.com/persecute/docs/ListPos62.pdf. 158 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST place], I would see none of it, certainly less than I would see when Jews were speaking of Germans. No one had ever said anything remotely like Elie Wiesel, `Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set aside a zone of hate­ healthy, virile hate ­ for what persists in the Germans,'[364]and no one had said anything like Edgar Bronfman, the president of the World Jewish Con- gress. A shocked professor told Bronfman once, `You are teaching a whole generation to hate thousands of Germans,' and Bronfman replied, `No, I am teaching a whole generation to hate millions of Germans.' Jew hatred like that German hatred, or like the German hatred I saw on every page of [Daniel Goldhagen's] Hitler's Willing Executioners,[365] I saw absolutely none of [...]" R: Sack also admitted that some of the arguments that the revisionists ("deniers") have been advancing for many years are actually true: "[...] Holocaust deniers say ­ and they are right ­ that one Auschwitz com- mandant [Rudolf Höß] confessed after he was tortured,[366] and that the other reports [on the Holocaust] are full of bias, rumors, exaggerations, and other preposterous matters, to quote the editor of a Jewish magazine five years after the war.[214] The deniers say, and again they are right, that the commandants, doctors, SS, and Jews at Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and a whole alphabet of camps testified after the war that there were cyanide [gas] chambers at those camps that all historians today refute." R: Nor does Sack remain silent about the persecution of the revisionists: "Sixteen other [revisionist] speakers spoke [...during the revisionist confer- ence in 2000], and I counted six who'd run afoul of the law because of their disbelief in the Holocaust and the death apparatus at Auschwitz. To profess this in anyone's earshot is illegal not just in Germany but in Holland, Bel- gium, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, and Israel, where deny- ing the Holocaust can get you five years while denying God can get you just one. One speaker, David Irving, had been fined $18,000 for saying aloud in Germany that one of the cyanide [gas] chambers at Auschwitz is a replica built by the Poles after the war. A replica it truly is, but truth in these mat- ters is no defense in Germany." L: And what was Sack's experience after this? R: He had to have Deborah Lipstadt, for example, say of him that he was a neo- Nazi, an anti-Semite, that, yes, he was even worse than the "Holocaust- 364 Elie Wiesel, chapter 12: "Appointment with Hate," Legends of Our Time, Schocken Books, New York, 1982, starting at p. 142. 365 Knopf, New York 1996; cf. the critiques by Ruth Bettina Birn, "Revising the Holocaust," The Histori- cal Journal, 40(1) (1997), pp. 195-215; Norman Finkelstein, "Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Crazy' Thesis ­ A Critique of Hitler's Willing Executioners," new left review, July 1997, pp. 39-87; Norman G. Finkelstein, Ruth Bettina Birn, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth, Metro- politan Books, New York 1998. Cf. the review by R.A. Widmann, "Holocaust Literature vs. Holocaust Scholarship: Finkelstein, Goldhagen, and Holocaust Revisionism," TR, no 1, Nov. 1999, pp. 17f.; cf. Martin Kött, Goldhagen in der Qualitätspresse. Eine Debatte über "Kollektivschuld" und "National- charakter" der Deutschen, UVK-Medien, Konstanz 1999. 366 Robert Faurisson, "How the British Obtained the Confessions of Rudolf Höss," JHR 7(4) (1986), pp. 389-403. 159 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST deniers."362 After all, revisionists and their friends must, according to the pre- vailing notion, be portrayed as inhuman evil-doers and not as sympathetic vic- tims. That was the reasoning, incidentally, that Kim Murphy got when she was informed by the Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Times that she would not be allowed to publish any article about the persecution of revisionists on the pages of the Los Angeles Times. Instead, Kim Murphy was "penalized by transfer" to Alaska for the fairness shown in the two articles by her mentioned above.367 2.19. "The Holocaust Never Happened" R: What you read in the headline to this chapter was supposed to be the headline of an advertisement campaign for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, Germany. "It would be bad to have a poster which no one notices." R: With these words, Klaus Wowereit, the mayor of Germany's capital city Ber- lin, explained his choice of the advertising poster (which is reproduced in Illus- tration 21) for the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.368 The poster, which was un- veiled on the wall of a bank near the Brandenburg Gate, measured 30 m × 15 m (100 ft × 50 ft). Even the President of the Jewish Community in Berlin, Alex- ander Brenner, spoke up in favor of this provocative choice. Although older Jews in particular could possibly feel provoked by it, the means employed here would be sanctified by the goal, he said. The no less explosive first two sentences of small print on the poster, which could be read only by someone standing close to it, originally read as follows: "There are still many who claim this. In 20 years there will be even more." R: Possibly due to protests over how anyone could be sure that there would be even more in 20 years, this text was altered a short time later to read as follows: "There are still many who claim this. In 20 years there could be even more." (emphasis added) R: Over 1,000 of these posters were supposed to be pasted all over Germany, and an advertising campaign running parallel to this in the press and television, along with half a million free postcards, were supposed to make this theme fa- miliar to all Germans. Yet hardly had this campaign been publicly announced, when a loud howl of protest was raised, so that the entire campaign was quickly called off:369 "Taken Down ­ Holocaust Poster Found False Friends The donation poster for the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, which met with approval particularly from revisionists, will be taken down `as quickly as possible.'" L: That was a classic case of shooting oneself in the foot. It might be imagined that such a poster had been put up by revisionists. 367 Peronal communication from Mrs. Murphy. However, in 2005 she won a Pulitzer Price for her report- ing from Russia. 368 AP, July 19, 2001; at that time also posted on the Internet, www.holocaust-denkmal- berlin.de/index.php, but no longer. Cf. G. Rudolf, VffG 5(3) (2001), pp. 244-246. 369 German Press Agency dpa, June 7, 2001. 160 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 21: "`The Holocaust Never Happened' There are still many who claim this. In 20 years there will be even more. Therefore, donate for the Memorial of the murdered Jews of Europe" An "original," provocative advertising campaign for the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, a gigantic foot-in-mouth. R: Then they probably would have hanged the revisionists right next to it. How- ever that may be, you do realize that the whole controversy over the sacred Holocaust is not without its humor, if one hasn't forgotten how to laugh. L: How did the creators of this advertising campaign come to admit that in 20 years there will be more people who no longer believe in the Holocaust? R: The impetus was the anxiety that people would forget what allegedly happened back then if the memory were not kept alive by constant reminders. And who- ever forgets will ultimately turn into a denier. And the Berlin memorial is of course supposed to combat this forgetfulness. L: The anxiety is based upon the fact that the generation who experienced that time, including the witnesses of the Holocaust, will have died off in 20 years. Then there will no longer be anything which can be used as rebuttal against the deniers. R: Do you think that the number of those who deny the French Revolution like- wise increased at the end of the 19th century, because the generation which ex- perienced it died out? L: How am I to understand that? R: Well, every generation dies out eventually at some point. If our reliable knowl- edge of history were dependent upon witnesses, then there would be no reliable history that would be older than one human lifetime. Therefore, does the num- ber of deniers of the history of any epoch always increase when the witnesses have died out? L: I hardly believe that. 161 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Then why do we make an exception for the Holocaust? If the knowledge about an event is based only upon witnesses and if there are no other traces, which survive the ravages of time, then what is the value of the reports of the wit- nesses? I would even turn the issue around: our exact knowledge concerning any stan- dard historical event normally increases with the time elapsed. This is so not in spite of the fact that contemporary witnesses die, but rather, in a certain sense, even because those people who had participated in it die. For the participants in historical events always have personal interests, and their accounts are for that reason often distorted. Overcoming this tendency toward distortion is fre- quently only possible when one no longer has to take into consideration these persons and their lobby groups, particularly when the persons or lobby groups involved are influential. Therefore, if the statement is correct that in 20 years there will be even more people who are of the opinion that "the holocaust never happened," then the reasons for this must lie not in the unbelievers but rather in our increasing dis- coveries about the "Holocaust" and in the fading influence of those persons and groups which have strong, non-objective interests with regard to the historiog- raphy of the Holocaust. L: So the admission that there will be even more unbelievers comes like a second shot in the leg. R: Exactly. Since, with their prediction that in 20 years there would be even more of these "diabolical Auschwitz deniers," they are indirectly conceding the lack of plausibility of their arguments and evidence. As a substitute for rational ar- guments, a sea of concrete tomb stones, of which the Berlin Holocaust Memo- rial consists, is just about as convincing as a beating would be. 2.20. The Holocaust Industry R. Following on the heels of the spectacle surrounding the Berlin Holocaust Me- morial at the beginning of June 2001, came the German translation of the book on The Holocaust Industry by Jewish American political scientist Professor Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein.370 Whereas the U.S. media had stayed totally silent about the English edition of this book, the exact opposite happened in Ger- many. The success of the book and the huge echo from it which resonated through the German media had one cause which I venture to express here: the Germans have had it up to here with getting constantly hit over the head with the Holocaust, and Professor Finkelstein acted as a pressure release valve since, as an American Jew, he could express what no one in Germany dares to say any longer. The gist of Finkelstein's book actually is:371 370 Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry. Reflections of the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Verso, London/New York 2000; Germ.: Die Holocaust-Industrie. Wie das Leiden der Juden ausgebeu- tet wird, Piper, Munich 2001. 371 Cf. my review in VffG, 4(3&4) (2000), pp. 435-438 (Engl.: www.vho.org/GB/c/GR/HoloIndustry.html). 162 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Jews lie and exaggerate with regard to the Holocaust for the sake of finan- cial and political advantages. L: But as a German non-Jew, one cannot say that. R: Well you can say that, but only in secret or with the prospect of soon breathing musty prison air. And Finkelstein himself didn't come away unscathed from it either. He lost his teaching position in New York and meanwhile is being sued for slander in France.372 L: But you by no means can count Finkelstein as one of your own, because his parents are Holocaust survivors. R: Finkelstein is no Holocaust expert. In that respect it would not be useful to want to claim him. But at least he has put his finger on the problem and shown how highly political the subject is and how it is misused by powerful Jewish lobby groups. His statements concerning the unreliability of many witnesses can be accepted or rejected. The fact is that Finkelstein has tackled the subject of the Holocaust in a controversial and sensational manner. I don't want to say any more than that here. In order to understand, why Finkelstein touched the heart of so many Germans, let me quote from the speech of a German left-wing novelist, who is quite fa- mous in Germany: Martin Walser. In 1998 he was awarded with the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. On occasion of the festivities of this award, Martin Walser held a speech, one passage of which cause a major stir in Ger- many, because it was considered to be scandalous in politically correct circles in Germany:373 "Everyone knows our [Germany's] historical burden, the eternal shame, there is no day on which it is not held before us. Could it be that the intellec- tuals who reproach us with it by holding our shame before us, are for a sec- ond falling for the illusion that, because they have again performed the ser- vice of cruel reminding, they have excused themselves a little and are for a moment even closer to the victims than the perpetrators? A momentary sof- tening of the merciless contraposition of perpetrators and victims. I have never held it to be possible to leave the side of the accused. Sometimes, when I can no longer look anywhere without being attacked by an accusation, to unburden myself, I have to tell myself that an accusatory routine has also developed in the media. I have looked away certainly twenty times already from the worst film sequences from concentration camps. No person who is to be taken seriously denies Auschwitz; no one still of sound mind quibbles about the horribleness of Auschwitz; but when every day in the media this past is held in front of me, I notice that something in me rises to defend against this continuous presentation of our shame. Instead of being grateful for the incessant presentation of our shame, I begin to look away. When I 372 Press Release by the Wiesenthal Center Los Angeles, March 26, 2004, cf. "N. Finkelstein Sued for Criticizing Holocaust Industry," TR 2(2) (2004), pp. 239. (www.vho.org/News/GB/News2_04.html#m8). 373 Martin Walser, Speech on occasion of receiving the Peace Prize of the German book trade in the Frank- furt Church of St. Paul, Oct. 10, 1998, www.dhm.de/lemo/html/dokumente/WegeInDieGegenwart_redeWalserZumFriedenspreis/ 163 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST note that something in me rises against it, I try to listen for motives when shame is held before us and I am almost cheerful if I believe I am able to discover that the idea is no longer not to permit to forget, but rather the ex- ploitation of our shame for current purposes." R: This speech nicely wraps up the situation, in which the Germans find them- selves: They are incessantly bombarded with Holocaust propaganda and with political demands resulting from it. They are being held collectively responsi- ble and liable for something their forefathers may or may not have done, and they have no legal way of defending themselves against it, because critics are at least ostracized, if not even prosecuted. Just imagine how you felt if you would be uninterruptedly accused of some crimes your great-grandfather had committed; and you were forced to eternally apologize for it; to pay for it; to feel and express shame about it; to abandon all sorts of rights as a punishment. And finally, that you had no right to ever ques- tion if your great-grandfather really was such an arch criminal. Finkelstein allowed the Germans to be "cheerful" for a brief moment, because he pointed out that this eternal political purgatory, in which the Germans find themselves, is an exploitation of their "shame for current purposes." L: Must the Germans "be grateful for the incessant presentation of [their] shame," as Walser expressed it? R: Whoever is grateful that he is incessantly presented with his forefathers' shame probably has a psychological problem. That is called masochism or self-hatred. L: But the case of the German member of Parliament Martin Hohmann, who in 2004 was heavily criticized and forced not to run for office anymore for not be- ing grateful about his nation's shame, shows nonetheless that the Germans are apparently not escaping this duty. R: Martin Hohmann has merely rejected the label "perpetrator nation" for the Germans. However, he has not been attacked for this, but for his claim that Jews were once perpetrators as well, namely during the early years of terror in the Soviet Union. Based on scientific research quoted before,47 Hohmann said about this:374 "For of the seven members of the Politburo of the Bolsheviks were Jews in 1917: Leo Trotzky, Leo Kameniev, Grigori Sinoviev, and Grigori Sokolni- kov. The non-Jews were Lenin [his mother was Jewish, though], Stalin, Bub- nov. Among the 21 members of the revolutionary Central Committee in Rus- sia in 1917, 6 belonged to the Jewish ethnic group, which amounts to 28.6 %. The extremely large portion of Jews among the communist founding fa- thers and in the revolutionary committees was not restricted to the Soviet Union at all. Ferdinand Lassalle was just as much a Jew as were Eduard Bernstein and Rosa Luxemburg. In 1924, four of the six leaders of the com- munist party in Germany were Jews, which is three quarters. In Vienna, 81 of the 137 leading Austro-Marxists were Jewish, which is 60%. In Hungary, 30 of the 48 People's Commissars were Jewish. Even within the revolution- 374 Cf. the reprint of Hohmann's speech, "Gerechtigkeit für Deutschland ­ vielleicht nächstes Jahr," VffG 7(3&4) (2003), pp. 417-421. 164 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ary Soviet secret police, the Cheka [predecessor of the NKVD], the ratio of Jews was extraordinarily high. Whereas only 2% of the entire population of the Soviet Union was Jewish in 1934, they made up 39% of the Cheka lead- ers. It should be noted that Jewry was considered to be an ethnic group by the Soviet Union. Thus, their portion was larger even than that of the Rus- sians of 36%. In the Ukraine, even 75% of all Cheka members were Jew- ish." R: In the first lecture I pointed out that Jews dominated the terror apparatus of the early Soviet Union, that is, between 1917 and 1937 (p. 34). When reading the literature about the Bolshevik revolution quoted there, you will quickly dis- cover that the Bolshevik revolution can also be described, and at that time actu- ally was described both by Jews and non-Jews all over the world, as a Jewish revolution, since the majority of positions in the revolutionary government of the early Soviet Union were occupied by people with Jewish background. L: But Hohmann also rejected the label "perpetrator nation" for the Jews. R: Obviously, but he has committed the "error" of speaking at all of the fact that persons with a Jewish background once had a disproportionately large role in history as perpetrators.375 L: But if that can be proved... R: ...but the perpetrators in the Soviet Union were all atheistic, therefore neither Jews nor Christians. L: That is true only if Jewry is understood to be a religion but not an ethnic group. R: Exactly. L: But then there would be no state of Israel. That is based upon the assumption that Jewry is an ethnic entity. R: There the opinions among Jews, as among non-Jews, diverge quite widely from one another. L: And the thesis which fits best is applied ­ with Israel the ethnic, and with Hohmann the religious. 2.21. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall R: In the spring of 2002 a shock wave traveled through the German community of historians. Fritjof Meyer, a "leading editor" of the Hamburg news magazine Der Spiegel (the mirror), advanced the following thesis in an article:255 "In 1945, the Soviet Investigatory Commission numbered four million vic- tims in the National Socialist work and extermination camp of Auschwitz- Birkenau, a product of war propaganda. Under coercion, camp Comman- dant Höß named three million and recanted. Up until now, how many people actually fell victim to this singular mass murder could only be estimated. The first Holocaust historian, Gerald Reitlinger, assumed one million, while the latest state of research estimated it to be several hundred thousand fewer." (p. 631) 375 See page 34 in the present book and the literature quoted in note 47. 165 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Meyer adds a new step to the dance of Auschwitz victim-counting, one which at the same time represents a record low: "These considerations lead here to the conclusion that in Auschwitz half a million people were murdered, of these approximately 356,000 in the gas." (p. 639) L: How does he justify this reduction? R: His argument is on two levels. First, he thinks that the gas chambers of the crematories would have proved to be technically useless for murder by gas and therefore were not used at all for mass murder: "It cannot be discussed in more detail here that the existing evidence, namely documents concerning a subsequent preparation of the structures not originally established for it [crematories] (for example with shaft open- ings [supposedly for the introduction of gas] and gas-testing apparatus) for becoming the `gassing cellars,' as well as the relevant witness testimony, point rather to attempts in March/April of 1943 to employ the underground morgues for mass murder after the completion of the crematories in the early summer of 1943. This obviously failed, because the ventilation was counterproductive and the expected large numbers of victims did not arrive in the following eleven months." (p. 632) L: But Meyer continues to insist on 356,000 dead from gassing! R: They are supposed to have been gassed in old farmhouses: "The genocide actually committed occurred probably predominantly in the two reconstructed farmhouses outside of the camp." (p. 632) L: Did the farmhouses have a better ventilation system, then? R: They had no ventilation at all. L: Then how can a mass murder fail for technical reasons in properly built new crematories due to inadequate ventilation, but not fail in primitive farmhouses without any sort of ventilation? R: There you have touched upon a sore point. However, here I would not like to get into Meyer's arguments but report on his views. The second string of arguments is based upon Meyer's thesis that the cremation capacity of the Birkenau crematories was not at all sufficient enough to incin- erate the number of victims in it claimed. In his argument, he refers in his foot- note 19 (and then again in footnote 32) to the following work: "Carlo Mattogno/Franco Deana: Die Krematoriumsöfen von Auschwitz [The Crematory Furnaces of Auschwitz] in [...] Ernst Gauss (ed.): Grund- lagen zur Zeitgeschichte. [Engl.: Dissecting the Holocaust] Tübingen, 1994, p. 310. [...] From the other side, `revisionists' have very industriously gath- ered details, [...] Their discoveries were able to perplex the respectable phi- losopher of history Ernst Nolte and even David Irving, but were otherwise ignored as food for thought or even a challenge by historians. The jurist Ernst [correct: Wilhelm] Stäglich (Der Auschwitz Mythos), [...] was after all the first to do this by casting legitimate doubt upon many passages in the notes written by Höß in custody." (p. 635) 166 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: A leading editor of Der Spiegel is citing Holocaust revisionist sources and even heaping praise on them? R: Not quite. I have omitted here Meyer's verbal barbs against the revisionists. But the fact remains: a leading editor of Germany's leftist news magazine Der Spiegel is quoting revisionists in support of his own thesis. A little later Meyer discusses in detail the statements of Rudolf Höß, the former commandant of Auschwitz. Meyer tells of his treatment by his British captors: "After three days' sleep deprivation, tortured, beaten after each answer, na- ked and compelled to drink alcohol, the first interrogation had come off with `convincing evidence.' Even Höß himself reported so: `What is in the proto- col I don't know, although I have signed it. But alcohol and whip were too much even for me.' At about 2:30 in the morning he put his signature with effort to these sentences: In Auschwitz itself according to my estimate cca [sic] 3,000,000 people were killed. Roughly I suppose that of these 2,500,000 were gassed." (p. 639f.) R: Afterwards, Meyer describes in detail the various tortures to which Höß was subjected and proves that the numbers stated by Höß cannot possibly be cor- rect. L: Since of course ... R: ...wait, we are not finished yet. In an e-mail to me, Meyer reveals the likewise surprising fact that he considers the book by Miklos Nyiszli,376 a frequently quoted witness of the gas chambers of Auschwitz, with its "extreme state- ments," to be "obviously edited" and considers the report by Filip Müller,181 another witness often cited, to be a "novel."377 L: That is a turning point in contemporary historiography. For suddenly the eter- nal outcasts are becoming the torch-bearers of progress! R: One can imagine what waves this article has set off, which led to quite diver- gent reactions.378 Indeed, hardly anyone from both sides has failed to tear him apart with criticism. L: How has Meyer reacted to these attacks? R: To begin with he followed suit and defended his argumentation.379 L: Perhaps in Fritjof Meyer we have a crypto-sympathizer of the revisionists! 376 M. Nyiszli, Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, Arcade Publishing, New York 1993. 377 Email by F. Meyer to G. Rudolf, Nov. 8, 2002. 378 For the establishment cf. in the Internet the site idgr.de/texte/geschichte/ns-verbrechen/fritjof- meyer/index.php; esp.: Franciszek Piper, historian at the Auschwitz museum, www.auschwitz.org.pl/html/eng/aktualnosci/news_big.php?id=564; cf. the reply by John C. Zimmer- man, "Fritjof Meyer and the number of Auschwitz victims: a critical analysis," Journal of Genocide Research, 6(2) (2004), pp. 249-266. For the revisionists cf. Germar Rudolf, " Cautious Mainstream revisionism," TR 1(1) (2003), pp. 23-30; Carlo Mattogno, "Auschwitz. Fritjof Meyer's New Revisions," ibid., pp. 30-37; C. Mattogno, "The Four Million...," op. cit. (note 230); Jürgen Graf, "`Just Call Me Meyer' ­ A Farewell to `Obvious- ness,'" TR 2(2) (2004), pp. 127-130; C. Mattogno, " On the Piper-Meyer-Controversy: Soviet Propa- ganda vs. Pseudo-revisionism," ibid., pp. 131-139; G. Rudolf, "The Internationale Auschwitz Contro- versy," TR 2(4) (2004), pp. 449-452. 379 F. Meyer, "Replik auf Piper," http://idgr.de/texte/geschichte/ns-verbrechen/fritjof-meyer/meyer-replik- auf-piper.php. 167 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: That can be excluded with certainty. For at a temporary hiatus during this con- troversy Meyer stated the following:380 "The impression is now growing that they [the "right-wing radicals" or "Auschwitz deniers"] could succeed in again exploiting my theses: for propaganda of belittlement. For that reason I would not like to continue the debate in public. [...] In view of the current dangers in Italy, France, Russia, and the U.S., the fascists must continue to be beaten wherever they are met." L: That sounds like a call for violence against those who think differently. R: Yes. So much for the culture of debate of this leading editor of Der Spiegel. It shows that Meyer is an opponent of National Socialism to the point where he is prepared to use violence against presumed adherents of that ideology. Yet still, he confirms that revisionists are at least partly correct with their historical claims. The best endorsement one can possibly get is from a lethal enemy. 2.22. Professor Maser's "Falsifications and Lies" R: Professor Dr. Werner Maser is considered to be one of the most knowledge- able, if not the world's most competent historian of the Third Reich in general and the personality of Adolf Hitler in particular. The list of his published books, many of which have been translated into other languages, is impres- sive.381 L: Now you are not trying to claim Professor Maser as enlisted on your side as well! R: What Maser thinks of Holocaust revisionism he says in various places in his book Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin (Falsification, Legend, and Truth about Hitler and Stalin), and his opinion is certainly not positive. However, Maser has not confronted the contents of any revisionist work in his book, and the faulty manner in which he cites some old revisionist works suggests that he hasn't even read them. In that respect Professor Maser is spreading things about revisionism which he probably knows only on a third- hand basis.382 Before I give some citations from Maser, it is probably appropriate to say that Maser starts with the basic hypothesis that there was a mass murder of the Jews ordered by Hitler, in which he presupposes mass gassings in the so-called ex- termination camps as a given fact.383 L: Then why are we spending time on him at all? Maser is not considered in any sense an expert on the Holocaust. He has never published anything about it! R: The reason why Maser has not published about the Holocaust as such is not because he would be incompetent. In conversations with a friend of mine and 380 Open Letter of Feb. 12, 2004, www.idgr.de/texte/geschichte/ns-verbrechen/fritjof-meyer/meyer- 040212.php 381 For a comprehensive list of Maser's books see the entries in the German National library (http://z3950gw.dbf.ddb.de/) and the Library of Congress (catalog.loc.gov/). 382 Cf. on this my review " The Courage of a Secure Retiree," TR 2(4) (2004), pp. 455-466. 383 W. Maser, op. cit. (note 100), chapter on the Wannsee Conference, pp. 300-307, and on the Holocaust, pp. 308-351; cf. p. 353. 168 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST with me he stated that he cannot write about this topic, because he would either face prosecution for what he had to write when adhering to the ethical demands to accuracy and truthfulness, or he had to lie. Unfortunately, he stated, he does not have the courage to face possible prosecution, so he chose to stay silent about that topic. Such an attitude is unfortunately only too common among western historians in general and German historians in particular, who are exposed to social and le- gal pressure not to rock the boat. In his new book, Prof. Maser alludes to this when he writes: "To be sure, [...] the extermination of the Jews is considered to be one of the best researched aspects of contemporary history [...], but that is not the case. [...] Indeed, whole regions remain as much terra incognita as ever, [...] also, because [...] German historians exhibit timidity about taking on the horrible issue and possibly bringing to light details that do not agree with the accounts which have multiplied for a very long time." (p. 332) R: With timidity Maser means nothing else but fear of persecution and prosecu- tion, about which Maser states: "The sword of Damocles hovers over historians (not only in Germany) who portray the controversial phases of history as they `actually were' ­ and identify the frequently even officially codified ideological specifications as falsifications of history." (p. 220) L: Good Lord! I really ask myself what the judges of the German courts of law actually think when they read how they are intimidating German historians with their legal terror. They cannot seriously entertain the notion that they are administering "justice." R: I doubt that these judges read such texts at all, and if so, then they whisk it from the table as a "peculiar opinion" of a confused or extremist mind, or they are under the same kind of pressure as the historians. Because that is the situation in many countries, most historians do not even touch the Holocaust with a ten foot pole. The remaining scholars, which do ad- dress the Holocaust topic, are either those who submit themselves uncondition- ally to the taboo and parrot the official party line, or those who don't give a damn about threats of persecution and prosecution and who prefer to speak their mind and by so doing to risk some jail time rather than to lie or to muzzle themselves, that is: the revisionists. After Prof. Maser retired and reached an advanced age, he must have had a slight change of mind, though, because in the book discussed here, he went into the minefield Holocaust for the first time with some courage. Let me give some citations. First, Maser deals with the questionable basis of the total victims figure of the Holocaust: he contrasts the 26 million victims claimed by the Swiss newspaper Berner Tagwacht of August 24, 1945,384 to the total figure of 1.5 million as- serted by another Swiss newspaper, the Baseler Nachrichten on June 13, 1946 384 Cf. the 26 million figure quoted at the beginning of this book, p. 15, and in note 236. 169 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ two classic sources often named by revisionists (p. 333). Then, Maser hurls at the reader a whole series of Auschwitz camp victim figures, which have been given by various authorities,385 and in connection with the 1990 reduction of the Auschwitz victim figure from four million to about one million. Maser cites the confession of Polish journalist Ernest Skalski that anti-fascists have lied (cf. p. 116 of this book). Furthermore Maser quotes the revisionist German journal Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, which I publish, even though he cannot suppress a polemic, derogatory remark about it.386 Yet still, by so doing, Maser is the third mainstream historian after Joachim Hoffmann and Fritjof Meyer who cites a revisionist source to bolster his arguments. So it is not surprising when Profes- sor Maser thanks Fritjof Meyer for his "liberation of Shoah [Holocaust] re- search from the dictates of taboo" (p. 335). Now some more extended quotes from Maser, in which I have underscored words, which highlight Maser's view of the origin of the Holocaust story, so please pay attention to them. On page 339 of his book, Maser explains his perspective on the origin of the gassing stories from Auschwitz: "Stalin's 4-million-dictum [for Auschwitz] has given rise to entire libraries whose authors were chiefly at pains to support this Stalin specification ret- roactively [...]. Neither he [Stalin's chief propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg] nor the other chroniclers grasped that Stalin had only been interested in protect- ing himself and his respective responsible functionaries by means of his ex- aggerations and contrived criteria from being unmasked before the world public [...] as criminals against humanity. [...] It was no topic for many of them that Stalin represented the up to two million Jews, who after the war could no longer return to their places of origin from the USSR because they had lost their way of life there, as victims of the National Socialist regime contrary to the truth." (emphasis added) R: Maser puts the Allied atrocity propaganda into the context of the discovery of Soviet atrocities by the German Army. Right from the start of Germany's east- ern campaign, the Wehrmacht made gruesome discoveries in almost every ma- jor city that they captured. In their hasty retreat, the Soviets had butchered un- counted dissidents they had locked up by the hundreds and thousands in the prisons of the cities of the Ukraine, Russia, and the Baltic states. When the Germans arrived, they found the prisons littered with rotting corpses. Germany seized upon that opportunity and used those discoveries to appeal to the youth of Europe to help fighting the communist menace. This call for help was quite successful, in particular after the Germans discovered the mass graves at Katyn and later also at other places, where the Soviets had buried the victims of their 385 W. Maser, op. cit. (note 100), pp. 334: Andrei A. Smirnov (IMT), Yehudah Bauer, Léon Poliakov, Gerald Reitlinger, and Raul Hilberg. 386 Maser's footnote 73, op. cit. (note 100), p. 334: "Vgl. VffG, 5. Jg., H.4, Dez. 2001, pp. 369, Hastings, Großbritannien"; p. 354, fn 6, 11f., with reference to Reinhold Schwertfeger, op. cit. (note 97), of which he quotes only such documents confirming the existence of gas chambers. 170 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST mass murder against some 20,000 members of the Polish elite.387 Over the years, Germany managed to raise over one million foreign volunteers to assist in Germany's struggle against the Soviet Union, the biggest volunteer army in the history of mankind to ever fight for a foreign nation. To counter the success of the German propaganda, the Allies themselves went to great lengths to invent or back similar stories of mass murder and blame them on the Germans. On page 341, Maser reports how Ellic Howe, the former head of the British Psychological Warfare Office, that is to say, the British lie factory,388 admitted to Maser in person that the British distributed posters throughout Poland, right after the discovery of the Kaytn mass graves in early 1943, with the following invented content: "[The General Government had ordered an] excursion to Auschwitz for a committee of all ethnic groups living in Poland to be organized. The excur- sion shall examine, how humane the means are, which are utilized for the mass extermination of the Polish people, in comparison with the methods employed by the Bolsheviks. German science has accomplished a miracle here for European culture; in place of a brutal massacre of troublesome rabble, in Auschwitz one can see the gas and steam chambers, electric sur- faces etc., with which thousands of Poles are helped from life to death as quickly as possible, and in a manner that brings honor to the entire German nation. It suffices to indicate that just the crematory can take care of 3,000 bodies each day.'" L: There they are again, the steam chambers and electrocution devices. So they are an invention by the British! R: At least in this case. As you can see, even in this poster the British made the connection between Katyn (referred to by the words "methods employed by the Bolsheviks") and the British claims of German atrocities. But that poster was only one of many measures of propaganda directed to counterbalance the suc- cess of German propaganda surrounding the discovery of the Katyn mass graves, as Maser informs us: "On March 23, 1943, for instance [...] the radio station `Swiet', run by the British Secret Service and broadcasting in the Polish language, published the invented claim, meant as counter propaganda [...], according to which the Germans would burn some 3,000 people every day in the crematory of Auschwitz, `mainly Jews.' On April 13, 1943, German radio had also broad- cast this number in connection with the first exhumed Polish murder victims [at Katyn]. On April 15, 1943, [the Soviet newspaper] `Pravda' tried to pin the number 3,000 onto the Germans in an attempt of falsifying history." (p. 343, emphasis added) R: Maser also explains, why this counter propaganda was so important to the al- lied war effort: 387 Cf. Franz Kadell, Die Katyn Lüge, Herbig, Munich 1991, pp. 73f.; cf. George Sanford, Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940, Routledge, Oxford 2005. 388 Cf. Ellic Howe, The Black Game. British Subversive Operations against the Germans during the Second World War, M. Joseph, London 1982. 171 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "A crucial reason for the British secret service to back up the propaganda of lies, however, was to make an effort to counteract the success of the German propaganda that could be supported by authentic facts. The British did that despite their knowledge of the crime of the Red Army at Katyn and the men- dacious Stalinist disinformation measures, [...]. The Americans did so like- wise. [...] Had the British published what their secret service had known since the summer of 1941, [...] they would have back-stabbed their ally USSR, who tried hard to stabilize her propaganda lie about the killings of Katyn [...] by depicting the crime committed by Soviet forces as a crime of the German Wehrmacht. Furthermore, the British would also have been forced to assume responsibility for publicly spreading Soviet forgeries of history as authentic information." (p. 342f., emphasis added) L: So in order to cover up Stalin's mass murders in Katyn and elsewhere, the Brit- ish and Americans invented and spread gas chamber lies against the Germans. R: Correct, but the gas chamber propaganda is older than spring of 1943, the time of discovery of the Katyn mass graves, as Maser emphasizes, even though this older propaganda had a different origin: "In May or June of 1942, the Auschwitz underground succeeded for the first time in sending a report to London in which there was discussion of `gas- sings in gas chambers' `recently.' On August 25, 1942, the British secret service learned from it that [...] 300,000 prisoners had already been mur- dered by August 1942, which the British silently accepted, although it was clear to everyone that these were figures out of fantasy, which had nothing to do with reality." (p. 342, emphasis added) R: Maser here alludes to the fact that the British had cracked the German radio codes, with which the concentration camp commanders sent encoded messages to Berlin about the numbers of prisoners in each camp. The British knew there- fore that the number of 300,000 victims was a lie, because only a small fraction of that number had been deported to Auschwitz until then. Maser also explains, who those people of the "Auschwitz underground" were who sent such false propaganda to London: "The gross exaggerations of enemy propaganda [...] were based upon coded reports from the communist Auschwitz prisoners [...]. `I believe it is no exaggeration,' explained the former communist functionary Bruno Baum in 1949,[389] `when I say that the largest part of the Auschwitz propaganda which was disseminated at the time around the world, was written by us in the camp ourselves.'" (p. 342, emphasis added) R: It can therefore not surprise that the top intelligence officers of the Allies did not consider these atrocity reports from Auschwitz and elsewhere to be based on facts, as Maser points out: "That the propaganda stories which strived to create a sensation were ex- aggerated was admitted in August 1943 even by Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, the Chairman of the Allied `Joint Intelligence Committee,' when he ex- 389 Bruno Baum, Widerstand in Auschwitz, Kongress-Verlag, Berlin 1949, p. 34. 172 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST plained that the accounts about gassings which originated from Polish and Jewish sources were invented and were like the propaganda about the Ger- man enemy forces of the First World War, in which the production of fat from human bodies was imputed to the Germans. `I am convinced,' he con- fessed, `that we are making a mistake if we officially give credence to these gas chamber stories ... As far as the killing of Poles in gas chambers is con- cerned, I do not believe that there is any kind of proof that this actually has happened.'" [139] (p. 342f., emphasis added) R: As you can see from the underlined words, Maser's text is riddled with accusa- tions of propaganda, lies, and forgeries. L: That is surely the core of what Maser wanted to express with the title of his book relating to falsifications and legends. R: Well, Maser's book has 42 chapters, each of which discusses all possible leg- ends and falsifications primarily relating to Hitler. The Holocaust chapters are only three of those, although probably the most controversial ones and also those dealing with the most outrageous lies. L: What other arguments does Maser adduce to underpin what he has objected to as lies? R: He subjects some of the better-known witness depositions to a critique of their assertions, which has to remain superficial, however, due to the brevity of his chapter. For reasons of space I can give here only few samples of what Maser has to say with regard to a few witnesses who are often cited as historical chief witnesses of mass murder in Auschwitz: Alfred Wetzler, Rudolf Vrba, Filip Müller, "[...] the information given by Wetzler and Vrba were compilations of statements by other inmates; because they themselves had never either wit- nessed a gassing or seen a gas chamber. What they conferred, they had been told in Auschwitz for example by their communist comrade Filip Müller. [...] What they [the Allies] learned from Wetzler and Vrba were descriptions from `hearsay' [...]. Additionally, neither of these two reporters could be described as reliable couriers. Vrba evidently tended to exaggerations, and Wetzler [...] turned out to be a would-be poet [...]." (p. 344, emphasis added) "The `witnesses' Wetzler and Vrba were not the only ones who told their stories in order to achieve the use of military force to liberate the inmates. [...] In order to achieve this, propaganda versions, lies, and forgeries were justifiable in his eyes and in the eyes of Vrba." (p. 346, emphasis added) R: This passage is followed by a fleeting but devastating critique of the statements by Wetzler/Vrba. Maser does not only accuse both of inaccuracies, but also of boundless exaggerations, which "was also done by the Auschwitz `supplier of facts' Filip Müller," whose 1979181 book Maser, citing Pressac,390 considers to be a "novel based on a true story" (p. 345). In Maser's footnote 145, Miklos Nyiszli also came in for his deserts: 390 In Maser's footnote 125 (note 100), p. 345, acc. to J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 181. 173 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "Nyiszli [...] lied excessively" (p. 348, emphasis added) R: As a reason why the crown witnesses of the gas chamber murder lied, exagger- ated, and forged so excessively, Maser states: "The witnesses reporting about the murder with gas [...] did that under the psychological and physical pressure of their interrogators." (pp. 348f., em- phasis added) L: Now what does physical pressure mean? R: Well, I guess there are not too many options, are there? I summarize Maser's statements with respect to the Auschwitz gassing witnesses by putting together the words I underlined in the previous quotes: "descriptions from `hearsay'," "exaggerations," "would-be poet," "propa- ganda versions, lies, and forgeries," "lied excessively," "witnesses report- ing [...] under the psychological and physical pressure of their interroga- tors." L: But since Professor Maser is not considered to be a Holocaust expert, would his assessment of these witnesses be accepted at all by internationally recognized Holocaust specialists? R: We will learn more about that in the last chapter of this lecture. The fact of the matter is that one cannot simply dismiss the world's most recognized expert on Hitler and the Third Reich as an ignoramus. If he makes such assertions despite all threats of social and criminal persecution he potentially faces in Germany, then he has his reasons for doing so. Professor Maser's last sentence in his Holocaust chapter can be understood as a hint of what he would say if only he could without fear of persecution: "And the contradictions [to the official version of the Holocaust] were in- deed not infrequently dramatic." (p. 350) 2.23. Growing Confusion R: As a conclusion to this lecture, I would now like to present some citations from research and the media, which to be sure have excited no great attention, but which are appropriate in connection with this lecture and for that reason are in my opinion worth mentioning. First there is Samuel Gringauz, who I mentioned already before. Now I want to quote a little more form his study published in 1950. It focuses on the methodi- cal problems with the investigations of Jewish ghettos of the war period. On the reliability of witness testimony from the Second World War, it stated:214 "The hyperhistorical complex [of survivors] may be described as judeocen- tric, lococentric and egocentric. It concentrates historical relevance on Jew- ish problems of local events under the aspect of personal experience. This is the reason why most of the memoirs and reports are full of preposterous verbosity, graphomanic exaggeration, dramatic effects, overestimated self- inflation, dilettante philosophizing, would-be lyricism, unchecked rumors, bias, partisan attacks and apologies." 174 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Professor Dr. Martin Broszat, former Director of the official German Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, spoke of "[...] incorrect or exaggerating [...] statements of former inmates or wit- nesses."391 R: The American mainstream Holocaust expert Lucy Dawidowicz corroborates this:392 "Many thousands of oral histories by survivors recounting their experiences exist in libraries and archives around the world. Their quality and useful- ness vary significantly according to the informant's memory, grasp of events, insights, and of course accuracy. [...] The transcribed testimonies I have examined have been full of errors in dates, names of participants, and places, and there are evident misunderstandings of events themselves." (em- phasis added) R: Despite the problematic nature of these survivor stories, it is usually considered to be blasphemous to criticize them. In his book The Holocaust in American Life Peter Novick notes:393 "In recent years `Holocaust survivor' has become an honorific term, evok- ing not just sympathy but admiration, and even awe. Survivors are thought of and customarily described as exemplars of courage, fortitude, and wis- dom derived from their suffering." R: Norman Finkelstein describes the result of such sanctification:394 "Because survivors are now revered as secular saints, one doesn't dare question them. Preposterous statements pass without comment." R: There, are, of course, exceptions: scholars who dare to question because they have the privilege to be Holocaust survivors themselves. Renowned French mainstream historian Prof. Dr. Michel de Boüard is one of them. He was in- terned in the Mauthausen camp during the war and became a professor of me- dieval history and also a member of the Committee for the History of the Sec- ond World War in Paris in later years. In 1986 he stated the following on the quality of survivor stories:395 "I am haunted by the thought that in 100 years or even 50 years the histori- ans will question themselves on this particular aspect of the Second World War which is the concentration camp system and what they will find out. The record is rotten to the core. On one hand a considerable amount of fanta- sies, inaccuracies, obstinately repeated (in particular concerning numbers), heterogeneous mixtures, generalizations and, on the other hand, very dry 391 M. Broszat, "Zur Kritik der Publizistik des antisemitischen Rechtsextremismus," Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B19 (1976), p. 5. 392 L. Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians, Harvard UP, Cambridge, MA, 1981, pp. 176f. 393 Peter Novick, op. cit. (note 4), p. 68. 394 N. Finkelstein, op. cit. (note 370), p. 82. 395 In reaction to revisionist analyses of "Holocaust survivors," Ouest-France, August 1-2, 1986, also published in Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaire vol. XXXIV (January-March 1987); Engl.: Jacques Lebailly, "Interview with Michel de Boüard on the `Thesis of Nantes'," JHR, 8(3) (1988), pp. 381-384. 175 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST critical [revisionist] studies that demonstrate the inanity of those exaggera- tions." R: For my next citation, I have chosen U.S. mainstream historian Dr. Arno J. Mayer, Professor of Modern Jewish History at Princeton University, who wrote in a book about the Holocaust:396 "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable. Even though Hitler and the Nazis made no secret of their war on the Jews, the SS operatives dutifully eliminated all traces of their murderous activities and instruments. No written orders for gassing have turned up thus far. The SS not only destroyed most camp records, which were in any case incom- plete, but also razed nearly all killing and crematory installations well be- fore the arrival of Soviet troops. Likewise, care was taken to dispose of the bones and ashes of the victims." L: But what Mayer says here sounds exactly like what we hear over and over again from historians. R: Then consider once again what Mayer is claiming there. In principle, his argu- ment boils down to this: The fact that there is no material evidence proves that this evidence was eliminated without a trace. R: That is the same line of argument, which Simone Veil, the first president of the European Parliament and Jewish Auschwitz survivor, said in reaction to Prof. Faurisson's thesis that there is no evidence for the NS homicidal gas cham- bers:397 "Everyone knows that the Nazis destroyed these gas chambers and system- atically eradicated all the witnesses." R: Or, in other words: the lack of evidence for my thesis does not refute my thesis, but rather proves only that someone destroyed the evidence. What would you think, if I were to assert that the ancient Egyptians already had wireless telegraphs? You want to have the proof for this? The archeologists did not find any telegraph posts! L: I would laugh at you. R: Then why aren't you laughing at Arno Mayer? L: Because I don't want to go to jail... L: No, because I don't want to insult the victims... L: Because one cannot imagine that something that one has believed in so strongly for so long could be untrue. R: You see, there can be many reasons why a person switches off logic in his thinking about this matter. But that does not alter the fact that this type of ar- gumentation is unscientific. Moreover, I would suggest that from the perspec- tive of logic, Mayer has worsened his position. Namely, to the one assertion he has added yet a second, for which he can provide just as little proof, that is, his 396 Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? Pantheon, New York 1990, p. 362; some of the more daring statements have been deleted from the German edition of this book: Der Krieg als Kreuzzug, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1989. 397 France-Soir, May 7, 1983, p. 47. 176 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST claim that the evidence was destroyed. How does one prove that something un- known has disappeared? L: But it is possible, nonetheless, that this is true. R: Whether it is actually possible to destroy the evidence of so enormous a crime is something we will consider later. The fact is that Mayer is now making two unproven claims and that with his argument he has made his thesis immune to any attempt at rebuttal, because a thesis that is accepted as true in spite of or even because of the lack of evidence evades any logical discussion. I may also point out that Prof. Mayer thesis that the SS destroyed all material and documentary traces of their alleged crimes is wrong. The Majdanek camp was conquered by the Soviets in an undamaged condition, and even the ruins at Auschwitz-Birkenau still speak a powerful language, if one only listens. Fur- thermore, almost the complete files of the Central Construction Office of the Auschwitz camp have survived and were released by the USSR a short while after Mayer wrote these lines. Let me now continue with quoting Mayer: "In the meantime, there is no denying the many contradictions, ambiguities, and errors in the existing sources. [...] Much the same is true of for the con- flicting estimates and extrapolations of the number of victims, since there are no reliable statistics to work with. [...] Both radical skepticism and rigid dogmatism about the exact processes of extermination and the exact number of victims are the bane of sound historical interpretation. [...] To date there is no certainty about who gave the order, and when, to install the gas cham- bers used for the murder of Jews at Auschwitz. As no written command has been located, there is a strong presumption that the order was issued and received orally" (p. 163) "[...] the whole of Auschwitz was intermittently in the grip of a devastating typhus epidemic. The result was an unspeakable death rate. [...] There is a distinction between dying from `natural' or `normal' causes and being killed by shooting, hanging, phenol injection, or gassing. [...] from 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but probably overall, more Jews were killed by so- called `natural' causes than by `unnatural' ones." (p. 365) R: That already sounds quite radical, doesn't it? The several thousand statements of witnesses therefore no longer possess evidentiary value even for one of the high priests of Holocaust historiography. But since there is no written order for gassings and there are hardly any other sources given, one inevitably asks one- self upon just what the entire edifice of mass gassings is actually based. Espe- cially since Mayer declares the gas chambers to be practically a "secondary matter." L: Well, what are the "natural" causes of death supposed to be? R: "Natural" means the result of non-violent factors, and the quotation marks means that obviously the forced deportation into a camp is in itself an act of violence. L: That looks as though Mayer is executing a retreat ­ away from the gas cham- bers... 177 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Pierre Vidal-Naquet, one of the toughest opponents of revisionists, already warned against such tendencies in 1984. To give up the gas chambers, he said, would be "a total capitulation."398 But that doesn't change the fact that this is attempted time and again. Take for example the letter to the editor by two teachers of Jewish descent (Ida Zajdel and Marc Ascione) who in 1987 ad- vanced the thesis that the National Socialists had intentionally made false con- fessions after the war and only mentioned the gas chambers in order thereby "to create a time bomb against the Jews, a diversionary maneuver if not an instru- ment of extortion as well."399 L: No matter which way the compass is turned, it always seems to point to the Germans. R: Yes, the bogeyman remains the same. Next, I would like to mention Austrian mainstream historian Professor Dr. Gerhard Jagschitz, who had been commissioned to render an expert report in a criminal proceeding against the Austrian revisionist Gerd Honsik, on the ques- tion of the extermination of the Jews. At the beginning of 1991, Jagschitz sent a provisional report to the court and requested additional funds for further re- search for the following reason:400 "Particularly since [...] substantial doubts regarding fundamental questions [with respect to the gas chambers in Auschwitz] have been intensified, so that the [...] continued writing of court judgments pertaining to this [...] is no longer sufficient to build judgments with a democratic sense of justice based upon it." L: So no notoriety? R: Not for Professor Jagschitz at that time. L: Is it known what he meant by "substantial doubts regarding fundamental ques- tions"? R: No. I know from private communications that Walter Lüftl, at that time Presi- dent of the Austrian Federal Board of Civil Engineers, was corresponding with Professor Jagschitz and tried to make it clear to him that he had to get special- ized technical and scientific expert opinions for the production of a proper ex- pert report regarding the question of mass extermination. However, Jagschitz refused to go into this with Lüftl. During the trial itself, which took place 14 months later, Professor Jagschitz then presented his opinion orally401 ­ as far as I know, he never delivered a written report as is required by Austrian law. Since Jagschitz had to refer to a great many technical questions, but was totally incompetent to do so, the result was correspondingly embarrassing. Walter Lüftl himself exposed some examples of Jagschitz's crass nonsense in a cri- tique.271 398 "Le Secret partagé," Le Nouvel Observateur, September 21, 1984, p. 80. 399 Article 31, January/February 1987, p. 22. 400 Activity Report of expert witness Prof. Dr. G. Jagschitz to the Landesgericht für Strafsachen, Dept. 26b, Vienna, of Jan. 10, 1991, in the criminal case Gerd Honsik, ref. 20e Vr 14184 and Hv 5720/ 90. A reproduction of this report is planned to appear in Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung. 401 Protocol of the testimony of Prof. Dr. G. Jagschitz, 3rd to 5th day of the trial in the criminal case against Honsik, ibid., Apr. 29, 30, May 4, 1992. 178 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Do you think that Professor Jagschitz during his research had started to doubt the truth of the gas chambers himself? R: That doesn't emerge from his expert opinion, quite the contrary. But in his oral report he made at least some interesting admissions, such as, for example, that he finds a good two-thirds of all witness testimonies with respect to the camps in Poland to be not credible and considers the number of victims for Auschwitz officially accepted today to be exaggerated. L: But if he ultimately no longer had any substantial doubts, then why the initial letter? R: Only someone who declares that there is a need for research will in the end be able to get money for research. Finally, it is always a good strategy to throw a poor light on all research results up to the present, in order to then be able to say that you were the first to have proven the existence of the gas chambers. For example, the late French mainstream historian J.-C. Pressac made a very clear remark in reference to this in his first book.402 The excited discussion among the revisionists about Jagschitz's provisional report will also probably have contributed to pulling him back into line on the side of Holocaust ortho- doxy, if he ever had any thoughts about getting out of line in the first place. Next, I would like to cite a surprising statement by German mainstream histo- rian Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, who is plainly considered to be one of the experts on the Einsatzgruppen murders:403 "And only recently suspicious facts are accumulating that the systematic ex- termination of the Jews was possibly first begun some time after the attack upon the Soviet Union, and indeed, without completely unmistakable direc- tives from Berlin. There are quite clear indications that `rules of speech' were first arranged in Nuremberg in 1945, according to which the appropriate orders [for the Holocaust] in 1941 are supposed to have already been given before the entry into the east. The testimony of witnesses differs quite considerably. There are witnesses who were repeatedly questioned on the same points in a whole series of trials and who were forced not only to modify these in direct con- frontation with their earlier given statements, but to overturn them com- pletely. The critical source problems which arise from this are obvious." R: Obviously it is been noticed among historians by now that witness testimonies are very shaky ground. In a telephone conversation that I had with Mr. Wilhelm in 2001, he even suggested that he was readily prepared to admit that the usual claims about mass exterminations were sometimes grotesque exag- gerations. Nevertheless, he did not believe it possible to have fundamental doubts as to the existence of gas chambers. 402 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 264: "This study also demonstrates the complete bankruptcy of the traditional history (and hence also of the methods and criticisms of the revisionists), a history based for the most part on testimonies, as- sembled according to the mood of the moment, truncated to fit an arbitrary truth and sprinkled with a few German documents of uneven value and without any connection with one another." 403 H.-H. Wilhelm, in: U. Backes et al. (ed.), op. cit. (note 167), pp. 408f. 179 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The Dutch journalist Michael Korzec is also one of those who tried to turn things around full circle. In a newspaper article Korzec wrote that too much emphasis has been put upon the significance of the gassings and the number of the gassed. He added that the Germans, not the Jews, were guilty of this error, since with the thesis of the secret gassings, the Germans had wanted to divert attention from the fact that many more Germans than had been believed up to now had participated all over Europe in the murder of Jews by shootings and mistreatment.404 L: That sounds like Daniel Goldhagen's thesis. R: Right. In his book, which declared that the Germans were genetically condi- tioned mass murderous anti-Semites, Goldhagen advanced a similar thesis, in- cluding downgrading the gas chambers to secondary importance:405 "[...] gassing was really epiphenomenal to the German's slaughter of Jews." R: In an interview that Goldhagen granted a Vienna magazine, he declared:406 "The industrial extermination of the Jews is for me not the core issue of the definition of the Holocaust [...]. The gas chambers are a symbol. But it is nonsense to believe that the Holocaust would not have happened without gas chambers." R: Naturally, that doesn't fit the notions of the high priests of the gas chambers, such as Robert Redeker and Claude Lanzmann, who had characterized the de- mystification of the gas chambers as a catastrophe.407 Claude Lanzmann, one of the most active Holocaust lobbyists, nevertheless expressed himself in his de- featist manner in much the same way. Asked why in his film Shoah408 he only interviewed witnesses but presented no hard evidence (documents, material evidence), he says:409 "In Shoah there is no time spent on archival material because this is not the way I think and work, and besides, there isn't any such material. [...] If I had found a film ­ a secret film, because filming was forbidden ­ shot by the SS, in which it is shown how 3000 Jews ­ men, women, and children ­ die together, suffocated in the gas chamber of crematory 2 in Auschwitz, then not only would I not have shown it, I would have even destroyed it. I cannot say why. That happens on its own." L: But that is insane! R: Three years later Lanzmann added to this:410 "Not to understand was my iron law." L: But all this makes no sense at all. 404 "De mythe van de efficiente massamoord," Intermediair, Dec. 15, 1995. 405 Hitler `s Willing Executioners, Little, Brown & Co., London 1996, p. 521, note 81. Cf. note 365. 406 Profil, Sept. 9, 1996, p. 75. 407 See p. 151 of the present book. 408 Available as VHS video and DVD; cf. the book version: Claude Lanzmann, Shoah, Pantheon Books, New York 1985.; cf. the reviews by Robert Faurisson, JHR, 8(1) (1988), pp. 85-92; and Serge Thion, "The Dictatorship of Imbecility," JHR 16(6) (1997), pp. 8-10. 409 Le Monde, March 3, 1994. 410 Le Monde, June 12, 1997. 180 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: For me it has value because it provides us with a picture of the psyches of these persons. Or take Elie Wiesel, who wrote in his memoirs:411 "The gas chambers should better have stayed locked away from indiscrete gazes. And to the power of imagination." R: Considering the lack of documentary and material evidence for an event which, after all, encompassed six million people, dragged on for over three years, spanned an entire continent, and is supposed to have involved countless au- thorities, decision makers, executors, and helpers, the historians still sometimes encounter the need for an explanation of how such a gigantic enterprise could have been launched entirely without organization. For example, Professor Raul Hilberg, one of the most respected, if not the most respected mainstream Holo- caust expert of the entire world,412 once summarized his thoughts on this as fol- lows:413 "But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction [of the Jews] not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They [these measures] were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a con- sensus mind reading by a far-flung [German] bureaucracy." L: Mind-reading? Does he mean telepathy, perhaps? R: Yes, the issuing of orders and the construction as well as the revision of plans by means of telepathy. L: I cannot imagine that he wants this to be understood that way. R: In any case, here we have the admission of the world's most recognized expert on the Holocaust that there is no documentary or bureaucratic trace of this mil- lennial event. I would now like to quote from the Russian language newspaper Novoyi Russkoyi Slovo (The New Russian Word), which is published in the U.S. This paper is read mostly by Russian speaking Jews living in New York, who emi- grated from the Soviet Union or Russia during the last decades. From February 26 to February 29, 1995, the New Russian Word presented a three-part essay, in which each of these three parts filled almost an entire page of this large format paper. This sober essay, based upon facts, explained accurately and in detail various revisionist arguments as well as those of the anti-revisionists and also mentions that by now even some of the world's most recognized Holocaust ex- perts, as, for example, Professor Raul Hilberg, would admit that in the war false rumors were spread, which today could no longer be sustained. Historians had the duty in particular, according to Raul Hilberg as reported by this paper, of thoroughly separating these rumors and falsifications from facts and truth. 411 Tous les fleuves vont à la mer, Mémoires, vol. 1, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1994, p. 97. 412 Cf. his standard work The Destruction..., op. cit. (note 39), as well as his most recent book, op. cit. (note 301); cf. Jürgen Graf's Kritik: Giant with Feet of Clay. Raul Hilberg and his Standard Work on the den "Holocaust," Theses & Dissertations Press, Capshaw, AL, 2001 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/Giant), as well as Graf, op. cit. (note 301). 413 Newsday, Long Island, New York, Feb. 23, 1983, p. II/3. 181 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 22: The New Russian Word openly admits: the revisionists have air superiority; diesel exhaust gases are not suited for mass murder! Here, the edition of February 28, 1995: "World View Holocaust" For little lies would furnish the revisionists with material against the estab- lished historians: "This admission comes from the most highly recognized and respected Holocaust scholar and not from a hate-spreading anti-Semite. When Jews castigate revisionists wholesale for denial, they are thereby denouncing and defaming other [respectable] Jews [like Hilberg]. These anti-revisionists re- fuse to hear facts which are presented by their own respectable historians because they are afraid of discussion. This generates the following vicious circle: Jewish leaders and scholars probably want to participate in the revi- sionist debate but refuse to do so because it would mean legitimizing this re- visionist school of thought, and this would be a major triumph for the anti- Semites ­ something for which the anti-Semites yearn. On the other hand, imposed silence and a wholesale condemnation and disparaging of all revi- sionist arguments, accompanied by the publication of [anti-revisionist] books which contain outdated [incorrect and poor] arguments, lead not only to the revisionists taking the initiative, but procured for them `air superior- ity' as well, to speak figuratively." R: The author makes further allusions to his experiences in the Soviet Union that the suppression of the debate about the Holocaust will backfire just like the suppression of the thoughts of dissidents by the KGB in the Soviet Union back- fired. The allusion suggests that the suppression of dissidents not only did not silence these, but on the contrary engendered in society a greater interest in their ideas ­ as a consequence of the natural fascination of forbidden fruits. The author concludes his long article with the realization that the present measures 182 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST against Holocaust revisionism are totally ineffective and he offers the proposal of introducing a worldwide competition in order to make an effort to find better solutions. With subconscious trepidation, the author concludes his article as follows: "These solutions will offer Holocaust revisionism a double stake. They must!" R: What trembling desperation emanates from these lines! The late French historian Jean-Claude Pressac seems to have been the only person of the establishment who took notice of the progress of revisionist re- search. He recognized that traditional historiography of the Holocaust is re- duced to absurdity by the facts revealed by this research. Consequently, he kept changing his attitude when making public statements. The last and also most vehement attack by Pressac on the dominating historiography occurred during an interview published as an appendix to a PhD thesis analyzing the history of Holocaust revisionism in France. In it, Pressac described the established histo- riography of the Holocaust as "rotten" with reference to a statement by Prof. Michel de Boüard (see p. 174). Asked if the course of historiography could be altered, he answered:414 "It is too late. A general correction is factually and humanely impossible [...]. New documents will unavoidably turn up and will overthrow the official certainties more and more. The current view of the world of the [National Socialist] camps, though triumphant, is doomed. What of it can be salvaged? Only little." R: With this statement I would like to finish this second lecture. L: You certainly have provided us with a fine overview of the history and reper- cussions of Holocaust revisionism, but you have told us nothing at all about your own work, which is among the most comprehensive of all revisionists. R: This I have not done because these entire lectures, including many source ref- erences, are based to a great extent upon my own work, be it as an author, edi- tor, or merely as a publisher. I therefore tell you throughout these lectures about my work. My own revisionist activity began with the Rudolf Report, with which I veri- fied Leuchter's expert report (see chapter 2.8.). At this point it may perhaps be of interest to allow some German mainstream historians and a few other ex- perts to have their say who have commented positively on my report, some of whom I have already mentioned here in a different context. This may get us in tune for the next lecture:415 414 "Entretien avec Jean-Claude Pressac réalisé par Valérie Igounet," in: Valérie Igounet, Histoire du négationnisme en France, Editions du Seuil, Paris 2000, pp. 651f. (www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/tiroirs/tiroirJCP/jcpvi0003xx.html). I thank R. Faurisson, who made me aware of this interview. 415 Printed on the back cover of G. Rudolf, The Rudolf Report, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2003 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/trr). 183 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "I am extraordinarily impressed. To my knowledge, you are the first expert in Germany who has addressed this particular topic in a scholarly impecca- ble and well-founded way. It is not for me to attribute an ice-breaker func- tion to your expert report. It is easy to see which political-historical effects will originate from it, though its entire dimension cannot yet be estimated." Prof. Dr. Hellmut Diwald, Historian, January 22, 1992 "I read it with great interest. [...] My impression is, however, that this ex- pert report is an important contribution to a very important question which, since the `Leuchter Report,' needs to be answered urgently. [...] One can only very much hope that the well-known tactics of hushing up is not applied to your expert report, but that critical responses and comments will be made." Prof. Dr. Ernst Nolte, Historian, January 28, 1992 "For me, the significance of receiving your report rests on the fact that it substantially contributes to our stock of knowledge. With many of my col- leagues active in the field of contemporary history, I am overjoyed and thankful for you having initiated this research activity. Of course, I am even more delighted regarding the results of your accurate scientific investiga- tion." Prof. Dr. Werner Georg Haverbeck, Historian, January 31, 1992 "I calmly read your report! It gives me hope to realize that a representative of the younger generation courageously sets out, with scientific thorough- ness, noticeable great expertise, and corresponding investigative curiosity, to get to the bottom of a controversial question that is of worldwide signifi- cance! The result is clear and unequivocal! True facts cannot be suppressed forever! I wish that your work will make the breakthrough!" Prof. Emil Schlee, Historian, April 1, 1992 "I sincerely hope that all statements about this topic would obviously be based on long and intensive work such as yours. Most of it is certainly un- verifiable for the layman, but the photographs are already quite informa- tive." Prof. Dr. Ernst Nolte, Historian, January 6, 1993 "Rudolf is a young scientist who tried to prove in an excellently layed-out work with tables, graphics, and so on, that the gas chambers were techni- cally impossible. [...] These scientific analyses are perfect." Hans Westra, Anne-Frank-Foundation, BRT 1 TV (Belgium), Panorama, April 27, 1995 184 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "All in all, he relies on literature which was written long before this report was completed, and the report must be described as scientifically accept- able." Prof. Dr. Henri Ramuz, Chemist, interrogated as expert witness about the Rudolf Report by the Swiss Court at Châtel-St.-Denis, May 18, 1997 185 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 2.24. Appendix Ill. 23, top: Letter to the Editor by Simon Wiesenthal Ill. 24, left: "No Gassings at Da- chau," Letter to the Editor by Martin Broszat in Die Zeit, Aug. 19, 1960 186 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Dec. 1991, pp. 31f. Expert Evidence versus Witness Evidence by BR h.c. Dipl. Ing. Walter Lüftl, President of the (Austrian) Federal Chamber of Civil Engineers The expert frequently has to judge the correctness of witness testimonies. He is, however, denied to make a final assessment of such testimonies, since this is reserved to the judges, yet he has to judge with his expert knowledge whether a testimony is con- gruent with technical possibilities and natural laws. I should like to first refer to Wittgenstein, who in "Concerning Certainty" (Proposi- tion 454) wrote the following: "There are cases in which doubt is unreasonable, others, however, in which it is logically impossible. And there seems to be no clear border be- tween them." Moreover, in the same place we read in Proposition 441: "In the courtroom, the as- surance of the witness `I know ...' would convince nobody. It must be shown that the witness was able to know." That means that technical facts can never be clarified by witness testimony alone, but that the content of truth must withstand a testing by means of factual proof. (Cf. for this also the above article, "What a useful expert report should look like") Even the self-confident assertions, presented by respectable persons, must always be scrutinized, so that their correspondence with technical possibilities or natural laws can be ascertained. We know from past cases: even if 46 witnesses more or less firmly declare that they heard nothing, the 47th witness who heard something, whose statement can be verified by experts, nonetheless speaks the truth. On the other hand, it is strange that in certain proceedings relating to cremation fa- cilities, testimony perhaps is given that "meter-high flames shot out of high chimneys," although this is technically impossible, since as a rule only warm exhaust gases flow out of chimneys (except in quite rare explosions ­ with gas heating, perhaps) and there is never even a reflection to be seen, because the flames (as in the case of coke firing) are unable to leave the combustion chamber and the reflection is dissipated in the flue. Therefore, if judges are supposed to believe something and do not allow scrutiny by experts who are able to objectively prove that witnesses are speaking falsely (only they themselves can know whether they are lying!), then they should at least ask the chimney sweeper before they forgo "showing that the witness was able to know" (cf. Wittgen- stein, No. 441!) Of course it is frequently the tendency of parties in trials concerned with construc- tion cases (and also of criminal defense attorneys) to prove facts in dispute by means of as many witnesses as possible. And then a contradiction is construed between witness statements and evidence involving factual proof. This is totally wrong. If the court's expert witness explains, for instance, that a fire wall had collapsed due to lack of adequate bolstering, then even the assertions of many (as a rule, biased!) witnesses that the fire wall had been adequately bolstered are of no use. For had it been adequately bolstered, it wouldn't have been able to collapse. But if, say, the construction supervisors, foremen etc., testify truthfully, then the owner of the construction business employing them could right away ask his liability insurance to pay. 187 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Therefore, the persons cited above probably testify falsely in the trial against the party that sued them for damages. Otherwise they would of course be economic maso- chists. For that reason in trials concerning construction cases, what is always true is what can so clearly be gathered from a letter to the editor by a Salzburg judge: every court of a modern constitutional state unhesitatingly rates documents and the opinions of experts more highly than the assertions of not exactly impartial witnesses. Only in dim dark ages did the outcome depend upon the number of witnesses. Thus, as a rule, in trials con- cerned with construction issues, after the testimony by experts, the most important ele- ment is documentary evidence: The document which was written at a point in time, when the parties did not yet know that they would be suing one another, has substantially more credibility than the witness who, in a trial dealing with construction, is usually not unbiased. The "acciden- tal witness" who has no relationship to the parties, the object of contention, or the pre- ceding history is well known to be the rare exception in this kind of trial. That is why contradiction between the testimony of witnesses and the opinions of experts is often to be explained by the fact (analog to Wittgenstein's Proposition 441) that the expert shows that the witness "cannot know" or "consciously speaks falsely." Therefore, as a rule the contradictions are not to be laid at the door of the expert. But years ago it was different in the "Investigative report by the prosecution." No. 62, March 14/15, 1992, p. 8 Austria's President of Engineers takes Consequences Resignation following Doubts about Holocaust Lüftl called Mass Extermination of Jews "technically impossible" Vienna (AP) After a wave of outrage which is continuously damaged, she said, over his remarks concerning the murder by the false impression of underground of millions of Jews during National So- neo-Nazi activities. cialism, Walter Lüftl, the President of the The 59 year old Lüftl, expert witness Austrian Board of Engineers, has re- to the court and CEO of a Vienna engi- signed. In an announcement by Lüftl neering firm, has written in the paper published on Friday in Vienna, it says "Holocaust ­ Belief and Facts" that mass that the atrocities of the Nazis are to be murder with the poison gas Zyklon B condemned but are also in need of scien- could "not have happened, both natural tific proof lacking up to now. In an ex- law and the absence of the technical and cerpt from an expert opinion by Lüftl, organizational prerequisites speak which has become well known, Lüftl had against it. That the crematories were not characterized the mass extermination in capable of handling the large number of Auschwitz as "technically impossible." victims can be safely asserted on struc- The Lüftl case has set off general un- tural-technical grounds. Bodies are not rest. The Federal Board of engineers met fuel, their cremation requires much time in crisis session. The General Secretary and energy." Moreover, he characterized of ÖVP, the Conservative ruling party, the murder of Jews by means of diesel Ingrid Korosec, appeared deeply dis- exhaust gases as a sheer impossibility." turbed over the image of Austria abroad, 188 Jewish victims in the newspapers of Neue the world. Kronen Since then quite a few experts have been able to prove that the killing of so Zeitung many people with gas would have been a technical impossibility. And from there it was but a small step for Independent some old Nazis to the absurd claim that the Nazis had killed no Jews at all. May 10, 1992, p. 2 ­ Staberl The truth is probably simple. Only rela- tively few Jewish victims were gassed. Methods of a The others starved to death or were Mass Murder slain, killed by typhus, dysentery, and spotted fever, because they were re- When a murder trial is underway in a fused medical assistance; or they froze half-civilized state, then it is above all a to death or died from exhaustion. matter of clearly showing whether the According to the survivors of both the defendant committed the crime with concentration camps of the Nazis and which he has been charged. It will be the prisoner-of-war camps of the Rus- viewed as less important whether the sians, things happened with desperate murderer strangled, shot, beat to similarity. After I had entered prison on death, or stabbed his victim. the 28th of June 1944 ­ on the same In big politics it is apparently different. day, incidentally, as Nobel Prize winner In the crime of murder committed Konrad Lorenz ­ I had to learn that against the less wealthy Jews by the following winter that in the Tambow Hitler regime a half-century ago ­ the camp of approximately 7000 prisoners, well-to-do were of course for the most more than 2000 starved to death or part able to save themselves by emi- died of epidemic disease. Why, there- gration, not infrequently by buying off fore, should the Nazis have created for the Nazis ­ today it is apparently less a themselves, in their extermination of matter of whether the crime was com- the Jewish prisoners, the complication mitted, but rather a matter of the of gassing the Jews, if it was so easy to method of killing employed by the Na- kill them in other, simpler ways? zis. Here only one assumption is con- The third generation of surviving Jews sidered valid: that the Jews were may need the martyr-saga of Hitler's gassed under Hitler. Those violating victims gassed so barbarically in a this come before the court in "Ausch- similar way as Christians have been witz Lie" cases. Because I worked for a nursing the memory of the ­ probably major American news agency shortly even more barbaric ­ crucifixion death after the war, certain personal experi- of Jesus Christ for 2000 years. Yet the ences are available to me. When at sober fact is probably that the Nazis that time gassing facilities were found killed the great majority of their Jewish in some concentration camps, whose prisoners in another way. Certainly not existence could also be demonstrated one hair less barbarically! with solid evidence, it soon became the simplifying journalistic manner to gen- erally write about the gassing of Hitler's 189 Third Lecture: Material and Documentary Evidence 3.1. Defining Evidence R: Now let's forget about the Holocaust and its controversies for a little while and talk about evidence in general, so that we can better evaluate it. L: How do you define "evidence?" I mean, when does an allegation become evi- dence? R: Basically, evidence has to satisfy two main kinds of criteria, logical and formal. Let's take logical first. Evidentiary allegations must not be based on circular reasoning such as "A is true because B is true and B is true because A is true." Circular reasoning is quite tricky because it often passes through several inter- mediate steps before it closes the circle. Sometimes it branches off as well, making it even more difficult to identify. Next, an allegation must be princi- pally open to attempts of refutation. Thus evidentiary allegations such as "A is true because or although it cannot be proven" are inadmissible. L: Surely no one would claim that. R: Oh, but they do! It is often claimed that the absence of evidence does not refute an allegation, but rather proves that the evidence has been destroyed. I gave an example of this in the Second Lecture (see p. 175). Such an allegation is logi- cally irrefutable and is inadmissible for that reason. Or take the argument that evidence for an event was not just lost, but could never have existed. Accord- ing to this reasoning, if someone asserts that there is indeed evidence, it proves that such evidence was wrongly interpreted or even falsified. Again this is le- gally inadmissible, because the argument that an event leaves no traces is logi- cally irrefutable. L: Could you give us an example of this? R: Of course. We hear such pseudo-arguments over and over again in this dispute. We are told that the National Socialists would never have left behind docu- ments referring to mass murder, since they did not want to incriminate them- selves. Then, when such a document does turn up, there is the immediate suspi- cion that it is falsified. L: But that might be right, because we cannot expect that mass murderers would deliberately leave proof of their crimes. R: Your point is basically correct. It is the same idea expressed by Mayer and other Holocaust experts: Either the National Socialists left no evidence, or else they saw to it that the evidence was destroyed. But even if such argumentation is credible, it is still no substitute for the absence of evidence of a crime or any 190 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST other event. Because, if absence of evidence is admitted in place of evidence of a crime, then everyone can be charged with any crime. If we admit logic like that, absolutely everything can be "proven" in court or in science. Finally, from the logical standpoint, it is just as inadmissible to maintain that evidence supports the exact opposite of what it suggests. L: What do you mean by that? R: Well, if I have a document that says "We are going to bring Person A to place B and make him work there," this does not justify the claim that Person A was murdered. L: But that is just obvious. R: That is what one would expect, but unfortunately it is not the case. According to the established historiography, if a National Socialist document states that "The Jews from place X are to be transported to the east for forced labor," this is proof that they are to be murdered, not transported as laborers. We are told that the document means something different than what it says; that the expres- sions used are code words which have to be "interpreted." L: But we know that so and so many Jews were deported and that from there on all traces of most of them are lost. R: That may be so, but lack of evidence of someone's whereabouts does not prove that they were murdered in a certain way at a certain time in a certain place. We discussed the problems of locating survivors in the first lecture, to which I re- fer. L: But there is indeed evidence for the use of code words. R: When there is such evidence, then these interpretations may be admissible. But the practice of interpretation cannot be generalized, or else everything can be reinterpreted at will. I will deal with this complex of false logic later in more detail. For now, let's move on to the formal criteria for evidence. These criteria de- mand that evidence be capable of physical examination. For example, they re- quire that we must be able to locate a source, which is quoted as prove for a claim. In the case of scientific experiments, it means that they must be repeat- able or reproducible by third parties. This is why it is so important to give the exact circumstances of an experiment. Where calculations or other forms of logical argumentation are concerned, they must correspond to certain laws and rules and be repeatable by others, bearing in mind that every professional dis- cipline has its own rules. Furthermore, evidence should be supported and cor- roborated by similar evidence. This is known as "evidentiary context." 3.2. Types and Hierarchy of Evidence R: Now I would like to pose a question to the whole room: what do you consider the most convincing evidence of the Holocaust? L: I was most convinced by heartrending testimony given by an Auschwitz survi- vor, who once gave a lecture about his experiences in my home town. 191 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: For me, the confessions of former SS criminals were more convincing ­ we cannot accuse them of wanting to exaggerate what happened. L: What made the strongest impression on me, was the sight of mountains of dead bodies discovered and filmed in the concentration camps at war's end. L: For me, visiting the gas chamber at Auschwitz was the most convincing thing. R: Good. Now, let's proceed systematically with our discussion. The first two types of evidence you mentioned belong to the category of party witnesses. L: And what is a "party witness?" R: A party witness is someone who has personally participated in an event under discussion and is therefore not an impartial observer. In a civil court case, it would be either a member of the litigating or of the litigated party, or when talking about criminal cases, that would be the alleged victims and alleged per- petrator. The third type of evidence is documentary evidence, and the fourth is actual observation of a material item of evidence. To review, the various types of evidence are as follows: 1. Party testimony 2. Witness testimony 3. Documentary evidence 4. Observation 5. Material evidence, if necessary interpreted by an expert L: And what is "material evidence?" R: That is a tangible, concrete trace of an event, which in most cases must still be interpreted through expert knowledge. Let me give an example: A person is accused of having run a red light at a specific time and struck a pedestrian, but maintains that he was sitting in an airplane at the time of the event. The court is presented with the following evi- dence: 1. The assertion of the defendant concerning his airplane flight (party testi- mony.) 2. The testimony of a pedestrian who claims that he was struck by the defen- dant (party testimony.) 3. The testimony of an airplane passenger who was unacquainted with the de- fendant, who stated that he had seen the defendant in the airplane (witness testimony.) 4. The testimony of an uninvolved automobile driver who stated that, from a side street, he had seen the automobile of the defendant run a red light while the defendant was sitting behind the steering wheel (witness testimony.) 5. The passenger list of the corresponding airplane containing the name of the defendant (documentary evidence.) 6. A photograph of the subject intersection made by a surveillance camera, showing the automobile of the defendant (documentary evidence.) 7. The report of an examination of an airplane pillow from the seat in which the defendant claimed he had been sitting during his flight. The pillow contained traces of the passenger's hair and skin which under analysis provided the 192 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST DNA "fingerprint" of the defendant (material evidence, analyzed and inter- preted by an expert.) Now, what would your verdict be if you were the judge? L: All the pieces of evidence contradict one another. R: But that is the daily routine for judges, sometimes historians and researchers as well. How are we going to proceed? L: We have to rank the evidence according to its persuasiveness. R: More precisely, the court follows the same principle as science. If there is a conflict, the evidence with a higher ranking refutes or supersedes that with a lower ranking. Conversely, evidence of higher persuasiveness cannot be refuted by evidence of lower persuasiveness. In the above listing, I gave the types of evidence according to the generally accepted rankings of credibility.416 L: According to that, testimony by a member of a party has the lowest credibility value on the scale. R: That's right, because people who are involved in an event or have been in- volved in the past, are most likely to have a distorted view, whether deliber- ately or inadvertently; or even to lie. The testimony of a party witnesses is inferior to that of witnesses who were not directly involved in the event and are therefore less engaged emotionally. With that I mean the proverbial impartial bystander. Next in the hierarchy are docu- ments that were produced during the event and thus have preserved aspects of the case in the form of data. Here, documents in which humans are the minor factor are superior to documents directly created by people. Thus, depictions made by automated devices are more convincing than those created by bureau- crats. All these types of evidence can be overridden by material evidence properly interpreted by expert witnesses, however. In the above example, expert deter- mination that hair and skin cells of the defendant were found on the seat of the airplane, would lead to his exoneration. L: But what about the witness statements and the photo taken by the surveillance camera? R: There are always explanations for false testimony, whether it is made deliber- ately or inadvertently. Documents can be erroneously interpreted because someone other than the owner may have been sitting in the car; or it can be simply inaccurate, as for example if the camera clock malfunctioned and printed the wrong time or date; or a filthy rich relative of the litigating person might have paid to have the photo falsified. There is no limit to the capacity of witnesses to falsify evidence. The fact is that the defendant was sitting in the airplane at the time of the accident. L: But maybe he had been sitting there at a different time. R: That could be true, but it would be the job of the expert witness to determine it. L: And what if the guy who was struck by the car hired another expert who gave conflicting testimony? 416 Cf. E. Schneider, Beweis und Beweiswürdigung, 4th ed., F. Vahlen. Munich 1987, pp. 188, 304; even though this is German expert literature, these standards are fairly universal. 193 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: In that case, it would be a contest over interpretation of material evidence. At any rate, material evidence cannot be refuted by witness testimonies or docu- ments, and certainly not by the testimony of parties to the suit.417 L: But ultimately, expert witnesses interpreting such material evidence are still just witnesses, even if they are experts in their field. R: Of course. It can be argued that ultimately all evidence is subject to human interpretation. But there are objective differences between the credibility of normal witnesses and that of an impartial expert witness ­ provided he is really impartial. The difference is so great that witness testimony is sometimes treated as circumstantial evidence in courts of law on account of its unreliability ­ that is, not even treated as direct evidence.418 In the next lecture we will consider party witnesses and impartial witnesses in detail. In this lecture we are concerned primarily with the essential, higher ranking kinds of evidence: material evidence and documentary evidence. L: Fine, but where is the link to revisionism and the Holocaust? R: Holocaust revisionism respects this hierarchy of evidence and focuses on the discovery and proper interpretation of material and documentary evidence con- temporary to the time in question. That is something that cannot be claimed by mainstream historiography, where material evidence interpreted by experts did not play any role until the late 1980s, and where documentary evidence is only used out of context to support witness claims. It was only the permanent pres- sure of revisionist research results that finally forced mainstream Holocaust scholars to pay attention to this hierarchy of evidence, even though they still do not respect it. 3.3. The "Final Solution" of the Jewish Question R: First of all, let me digress from the framework of our subject by briefly men- tioning what I will not cover here, namely the entire history of the National So- cialist camp system as such. From the various categories of prisoners in those camps, we clearly see the original purpose of the NS camps: to isolate and re- educate political opponents. L: Re-education by extermination? R: I am referring to the early period of the camps, following the abolition of the communist party in early 1933. No one has claimed that systematic murder of prisoners took place at that time. In those years, attempts were made to convert those political prisoners to National Socialism. However, people who oppose a government on political grounds are usually well-educated and intellectual, whereas the SS men serving in those camps and who tried to instruct the pris- oners were usually not the smartest people in town. It can therefore not surprise that these early attempts at political indoctrination were hardly successful. The German government's economic and foreign policy achievements did more to 417 Cf. for this the already quoted statements of the court expert witness Walter Lüftl, p. 186 of this book. 418 R. Bender, S. Röder, A. Nack, Tatsachenfeststellung vor Gericht, 2 vols., Beck, Munich 1981, vol. 1, p. 173. 194 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST sway the population than any repressive measures in the camps, which often produced the opposite result from what was intended. Later on, the camps were also used to segregate criminal and asocial elements that were deemed to be in- corrigible. Homosexuals and gypsies were included in these categories. Fol- lowing the so-called "Crystal Night" of Nov. 8, 1938, Jews first began arriving in the camps simply because they were Jews. However, nearly all of these were released after a short time. The changeover to the so-called "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" and mass deportation to the camps did not occur until the beginning of the Russian campaign in summer 1941. L: Then you are admitting the irrefutable: there was a "Final Solution!" R: Of course there was, and now we are coming to the real subject of our lecture. The National Socialists spoke quite specifically about the "Final Solution." It is well known that from the outset they favored the removal of Jews from Ger- many.419 All historians agree that until shortly before the invasion of Russia, the Jewish policy of the Third Reich was not directed toward extermination at all. Rather, it was to encourage as many Jews as possible to emigrate from the German sphere of influence.420 To accomplish this, Hermann Göring commis- sioned Reinhard Heydrich to organize the Reichszentrale für jüdische Auswan- derung (Central Reich Office for Jewish Emigration) with the goal of "encour- aging Jewish emigration by all means available."421 However, Germany's enormous territorial conquests beginning in the early summer of 1940 drasti- cally changed the situation. Huge numbers of Jews in Poland, France, and other countries now came under German jurisdiction, while the war made emigration much more difficult. For this reason, Heydrich informed the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on June 24, 1940, that it was now necessary to subject the overall problem to a "territorial solution."422 In response to this directive, the Foreign Ministry developed the so-called Madagascar Plan, which provided for deportation to Madagascar of all Jews living in the German sphere of influence.423 L: But why Madagascar? That sounds so exotic, even fantastic. R: Madagascar was a French colony and therefore, following the defeat of France, an "object for negotiation." Palestine, in contrast, was under British control; and besides, the National Socialists were not particularly interested in alienat- ing their potential Arab allies by creating Israel. It is a fact that these plans were seriously considered and not completely abandoned until the beginning of 419 For Hitler's early statements see: E. Deuerlein, "Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik und die Reichswehr," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 7 (1959), p. 204, R.H. Phelps, "Hitlers `grundlegende' Rede über den Antisemitismus," in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 16 (1968), p. 417. 420 Summarized by Ingrid Weckert, Jewish Emigration from the Third Reich, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004. Cf. also Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, Univ. of Texas Press, Austin 1985. 421 NG-2586-A. 422 T-173. 423 Magnus Brechtken, Madagaskar für die Juden. Antisemitische Idee und politische Praxis 1885-1945, Studien zur Zeitgeschichte, vol. 53, 2nd ed., Oldenbourg, Munich 1998; Hans Jansen, Der Mada- gaskar-Plan. Die beabsichtigte Deportation der europäischen Juden nach Madagaskar, Herbig, Mu- nich 1997; cf. the review by Ingrid Weckert, "`Madagaskar für die Juden,'" VffG 3(2) (1999), pp. 219- 221. 195 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 1942, when they were overridden by decisions in the context of the notorious Wannsee Conference.424 The so-called "Final Solution" was introduced by a directive written by Hermann Göring dated July 31, 1941, when Germany was expecting the mo- mentary collapse of the Soviet Union following colossal early successes of the Wehrmacht in the east:425 "As supplement to the directive already given to you by the edict of Jan. 14, 1939, to solve the Jewish question through emigration or evacuation in a most favorable way according to the prevailing conditions, I hereby instruct you to make all necessary organizational and material preparations for an overall solution to the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe. Insofar as the responsibilities of other authorities are affected, they are to be involved. I further instruct you to promptly provide me with an overall conceptual plan regarding the organizational and material requirements for carrying out the desired final solution to the Jewish question." L: Well there is no mention of murder. R: To the contrary: Governmental policy from Jan. 14, 1939, until the summer of 1941 was in fact directed towards emigration and deportation. Heydrich's original mission was not superseded by his new directive but rather "supple- mented," that is to say, expanded territorially. In 1939 his activities had been restricted to the Reich, but after the summer of 1941 they were extended to nearly all of Europe. This is exactly what the Göring directive prescribes: de- velop an expanded plan that provides for emigration and evacuation of all the Jews from the German sphere of influence in Europe. L: And did Göring still have Madagascar in mind as destination, or was he already thinking about Russia? R: The document does not say anything about that. From Goebbels' diary we do know that as early as August 1941, Hitler was talking about deporting the Jews to the east.426 After that, references to Russia as a destination appear more and more frequently.427 One of the reasons why it was eventually decided to deport the Jews to Russia may be the decision of the Soviets from August 28, 1941, to deport the three million Germans, which had settled along the Volga river during the 17th and 18th century, as members of an enemy nation to Siberia. This mass deportation was indeed implemented with the greatest brutality imaginable during subse- quent months. It is assumed that a great many of those Germans died during 424 Cf. Wulf von Xanten, "Die Wannsee-Konferenz," VffG, 1(2) (1997), pp. 60-69. 425 NG-2586-E. PS-710; Martin Luther from the German Foreign Office thinks that the order by Göhring was a result of the Heydrich letter of June 24, 1940, mentioned above, NG-2586-J. 426 Cf. Martin Broszat, "Hitler und die Genesis der `Endlösung.' Aus Anlaß der Thesen von David Irving," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 25 (1977), p. 750. 427 Steffen Werner quotes a long list of such documents: Die 2. babylonische Gefangenschaft, 2nd ed., Grabert, Tübingen 1991 (www.vho.org/D/d2bg; Engl.: www.vho.org/GB/Books/tsbc); cf. also the summary by Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, Treblinka, op. cit. (note 198), pp. 179-201. 196 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST this process.428 The reaction of the German government to this ethnic cleansing can be seen from the directives given to German radio stations, in which the National Socialist German government threatened the carriers of "Jewish Bol- shevism" with retaliation:429 "In case the actions against the Volga Germans are implemented as an- nounced by the Bolsheviks, the Jews of central Europe will also be deported to the eastern most parts of the areas controlled by the German administra- tion. [...] If the crime against the Volga Germans becomes reality, Jewry will have to pay for this crime many times." L: So the German government viewed the final solution as a kind of retaliation? R: That is at least what German radio propaganda claimed. Fact is, however, that the German government had planned the forced resettlement of the Jews al- ready earlier, just as Stalin had planned and started the deportation of the Volga Germans already before August 28, 1941. At any rate, in 1941 the terror appa- ratus controlled by Stalin could no longer be called "Jewish," because the dominant role of Jews in the Soviet government had been broken by Stalin in 1938 by the most violent purges.430 As such, the central European Jews were the wrong target for this announced retaliation not just because collective guilt is not permissible anyway, but also because Jews no longer predominated in the Soviet Union. The Madagascar plan was definitively abandoned after the Wannsee Confer- ence in February 1942.431 However, the decision to deport Jews to the east must have been made still earlier, since Himmler on Oct. 23, 1941, had ordered "that effective immediately, the emigration of Jews has to be prevented."432 On the very next day, Oct. 24, 1941, police chief Kurt Daluege gave a directive for the evacuation of Jews according to which "Jews shall be evacuated to the east in the district around Riga and Minsk."433 In a discussion in the Führer head- quarters on the following day, Oct. 25, 1941, Hitler referred to his speech be- fore the Reichstag of Jan. 30, 1939, in which he had predicted the extermina- tion of European Jewry in case of war.434 He mentioned the more drastic pol- 428 Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Das Drittte Reich und die Deutschen in der Sowjetunion, Deutsche Verlags- Anstalt, Stuttgart 1983. 429 I. Fleischhauer, "`Unternehmen Barbarossa' und die Zwangsumsiedlung der Deutschen in der UdSSR," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 30 (1982), pp. 299-321. 430 Cf. on p. 33 of the present book. 431 Letter by Franz Rademacher, Auswärtiges Amt, Referat D III (Jewish Affairs), to Harold Bielfeld, Head of AA Pol. X (Africa and Colonial Affairs), Feb. 10, 1942, NG-5770 and Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918-1945, Series E, vol. 1, p. 403.: "The Führer accordingly has decided that the Jews shall not be deported to Madagascar but to the East." (www.vho.org/GB/c/RW/inconmad.html) 432 T-394: "Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police has ordered that the emigration of Jews has to be prevented immediately." 433 PS-3921. 434 Often quoted as evidence for Hitler's intention for extermination; acc. to Yehuda Bauer, however, this was only an unspecific statement made in the heat of the moment, since an intention of extermination contradicts the rest of Hitler's speech: Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945, Yale Uni- versity Press, New Haven 1994, p. 35f.; cf. my review: VffG 1(1) (1997), pp. 45f. 197 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST icy, now going into effect, of deporting the European Jews to the swampy re- gions of Russia.435 L: Well it certainly looks as though Hitler's order for the change in the final solu- tion was given in October 1941. R: That could well be. The succession of documents indicating a territorial solu- tion continues without interruption. On Nov. 6, 1941, Heydrich mentioned his directive to prepare for "the final solution" which he had received in January 1939 and which he had characterized as "immigration or evacuation."436 The new goal of a "territorial final solution" was discussed during the Wannsee Conference. In its important passages, the protocol reads as follows:437 "Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emi- gration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the east, provided that the Fuehrer gives the appropriate approval in advance. These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question." L: According to that, what happened during the war was not the Final Solution, but merely a provisional measure. R: That is certainly true as far as the protocol is concerned, and it agrees with what is found in numerous other documents of that period. Here are some more ex- amples: ­ On Aug. 15, 1940, Hitler mentioned that the Jews of Europe were to be evacuated following the end of the War.438 ­ On Oct. 17, 1941, Martin Luther, the head of the Germany department in the Foreign Office, composed a document which discusses "comprehensive measures relating to a Final Solution of the Jewish Question after the end of the War."439 ­ On Jan. 25, 1942, five days after the Wannsee Conference, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler wrote the following to Richard Glücks, Concentration Camp Inspector:440 "You will make preparations to receive 100,000 Jews and up to 50,000 Jewesses in the concentration camps in the coming weeks. Large scale economic tasks will be assigned to the concentration camps in the coming weeks." ­ In the spring of 1942 the chief of the German chancellery, Hans Heinrich Lammers, mentions in a document that Hitler wanted to "postpone the final solution of the Jewish question until the end of the War."441 435 Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier, Seewald, Stuttgart 1963, Oct. 25, 1941. There are many similar references in those confidential talks by Hitler in the circle of his closest friends, all referring to the resettlement or deportation of Jews to eastern Europe and elsewhere: 1941: Aug. 8-11; Oct. 17; Nov. 19; 1942: Jan. 12-13; Jan. 25; Jan. 27; Apr. 4; May 15; June 24. 436 PS-1624. 437 NG-2586-G. Cf. chapter 2.13. in this book. 438 Memo by Luther for Rademacher of Aug. 15, 1940, in: Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918- 1945, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, Series D, Volume X, London 1957, p. 484. 439 Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (Berlin), Politische Abteilung III 245, ref. Po 36, vol. I. 440 NO-500. 198 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ On Apr. 30, 1942, Oswald Pohl, chief of the SS economic administrative main office, reported:442 "The war has brought about a visible structural change in the concentra- tion camps and their tasks regarding the employment of inmates. The in- crease in number of prisoners detained solely on account of security, re- education, or preventive reason is no longer in the foreground. The pri- mary emphasis has shifted to the economic side. The total mobilization of inmate labor, first for wartime tasks (increase of armaments) and then for peacetime tasks, is moving ever more to the forefront. From this realization arise necessary measures which require a gradual transformation of the concentration camp from its original, exclusively political form into one commensurate with its economic tasks." ­ On June 24, 1942, Hitler announced at his headquarters that after the war he would "rigorously defend his position that he would hammer on one city af- ter another until the Jews came out and emigrated to Madagascar or some other national state for the Jews."443 ­ On Aug. 21, 1942, Martin Luther produced a summary of the Jewish policy of National Socialism.444 In it, he referred to the Wannsee Conference as be- ing preparation for "evacuation of the Jews" to the "occupied eastern re- gions" and observed that the number of transported Jews would be inade- quate to cover the shortage of labor.445 ­ September 1942: In the so-called "Green Map" for the "Administration of the Economy in the Occupied Eastern Regions," it is stated that "After the War, the Jewish question will be solved overall throughout Europe," which is why until then everything would merely be "partial measures." It admonished that "thuggish measures" against Jews would be "unworthy of Germans and must be avoided by all means."446 ­ On Sept. 5, 1942, Horst Ahnert of the Paris security police wrote that in con- junction with the "final solution to the Jewish question" the "deportation of Jews for purpose of labor" was about to begin.447 ­ On Sept. 16, 1942, one day after his meeting with Armaments Minister Al- bert Speer, Oswald Pohl reported in writing to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler that all prisoners of the Reich were to be conscripted for armaments production:448 "This means the Jews destined for eastern migration will have to interrupt their journey and work at armaments production." 441 PS-4025. 442 R-129. 443 Henry Picker, op. cit. (note 435), p. 456. 444 NG-2586-J. 445 NG-2586. 446 "Richtlinien für die Führung der Wirtschaft in den besetzten Ostgebieten" (Grüne Mappe), Berlin, September 1942. EC-347. IMT, vol. XXXVI, p. 348. 447 Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, vol. XXVI-61. 448 Pohl report to Himmler of Sept. 16, 1942, on armament works and bomb damages, German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) Koblenz, NS 19/14, pp. 131-133. 199 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ On Dec. 1942, ministerial adviser Walter Maedel summarized the Jewish policy of National Socialism as "the gradual freeing of the Reich from Jews by deporting them to the east."449 ­ On Dec. 28, 1942, Concentration Camp Inspector Richard Glücks gave the following instructions to the commanders of 19 camps:450 "The head camp physicians have to ensure, by all means at their disposal, that the death rates in the individual camps decrease significantly. [...] More than heretofore, the camp physicians have to oversee nutrition of the prisoners and in accordance with the directors, make recommendations for improvement to the camp commandants. Furthermore these recommenda- tions are not to remain on paper, they are to be effectively carried out by the camp physicians. [...] The Reichsführer SS has ordered that the death rate must unconditionally decrease." ­ On Oct. 26, 1943, Oswald Pohl wrote the following to all concentration camp commandants:451 "In the context of armaments production, the concentration camps [...] are of vital significance to the war. [...] In the context of reeducation, it might have been insignificant in previous years whether a prisoner performed productive labor or not. Now, how- ever, prison labor is very significant. It is vitally important that all meas- ures be taken by the commandants, leaders of V-Dienst (Information Ser- vices) and physicians to ensure the maintenance of health and the capacity of prisoners to work. Not from mere sentimentality, but because we need them with their sound bodies, because they must contribute to the great vic- tory of the German nation: therefore we must insure the welfare of the prisoners. I am setting as a goal: A maximum of 10% of all prisoners may be incapa- ble of work on account of illness. Through common endeavor, all responsi- ble persons must achieve this goal. To achieve it, the following is neces- sary: 1. A proper diet appropriate to the prisoner's task. 2. Proper clothing appropriate to the prisoner's task. 3. Application of all natural measures for health and hygiene. 4. Avoidance of all unnecessary exertions which are not directly required by the prisoner's task. 5. Performance rewards. [...] I shall personally monitor compliance with the measures reiterated in this message." L: Assuming the correctness of your statements, how do you explain the various remarks by National Socialist officials made before or during the war, in which they speak of the extermination of Jews? 449 NG-4583. 450 NO-1523. 451 Archiwum Muzeum Stutthof, 1-1b-8, pp. 53ff. 200 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Aside from remarks by Hitler made in his confidential circles, which never mention extermination, I quote here only bureaucratic documents. Together will all other bureaucratic documents, these never mention physical extermina- tion. The situation is a bit different when we come to diaries, speeches, or postwar memoirs. In principle we are dealing there with written testimonies of party witnesses, which I will discuss in detail in the next lecture, where I deal with confessions made by accused persons. L: But what if the official documents are lying, if "evacuation" and "deportation" were code words for murder?452 R: In that case we have a logical problem. There is no disagreement that, until the middle of 1941, the terms "emigration," "evacuation," "transfers," and "depor- tation" meant what they say. How, then, could it have been made clear to the recipients of official orders after mid 1941 that these same terms had suddenly become code words meaning something altogether different from what they say, namely mass murder? We must keep in mind that during the Third Reich, government officials are considered to have been obedient and subservient. They were expected to carry out orders literally and unquestioningly. Whether that was really the case is a different matter. It is a fact that disobedient conduct was severely punished. This would have been all the more true if the orders had been to transport and force prisoners to labor at vital wartime production, and the recipients of these orders had murdered them instead. The point is: how could the people giving orders have made it clear to those receiving orders that they suddenly, at a specific instant, had to reinterpret their orders and do something entirely different from what the orders instructed? Furthermore, how could those giving orders have hindered those receiving them from re-interpreting them when they were not meant to be re-interpreted? L: They would have had to be given entirely different orders everywhere! R: Exactly. The problem is quite simply that in connection with the "Final Solu- tion," there are no documents stipulating definition and "re-interpretation" of presumed code words. Such orders would have undermined secrecy, and se- crecy was the claimed reason for the alleged use of coded language in the first place. L: The murderers would have been completely stupid if they had put all that down in writing. They would have abandoned their code language. Such orders would have to be given orally and passed on down the chain of command. R: Wouldn't this have meant that the thousands of people who were involved in the final solution actually participated in mass murder without asking ques- tions, simply because some superior gave an oral order that was diametrically opposed to the written orders? L: Yes. R: Well, what if you received a written note from the head of your company in- structing you to move your company's computer system to another building, 452 The thesis of a code language was summarized in a classic fashion by E. Kogon et al., op. cit. (note 96). The book even has an introductory chapter called "Enttarnung der verschlüsselten Begriffe" in the German edition and "A Code Language" in English edition, p. 5-12. 201 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST but your section chief tells you the boss secretly told him that you were sup- posed to smash it to bits. Would you take an axe and go to the computer room and make kindling out of everything? L: Aaargh! R: And consider this: in those days, the punishment for unauthorized killings, like the punishment for sabotaging the war effort, was always death. In view of the extremely harsh penalties exacted during the Third Reich, one could only have expected that such offenses would be severely punished. The fact that to this very day no document has been found, which orders the mass murder of Jews453 or which gives directives about when and how to re- interpret certain "code words," has caused a real headache for established histo- riography. In fact, not even a bureaucratic trace of such an order or directive exists. Keep in mind that the alleged crime was the greatest genocide of all time. It involved six million people over a period of three years, extending over an entire continent and involving countless agencies and minor officials. In the Second Lecture I quoted Prof. Raul Hilberg's absurd explanation of telepathic commands within the Third Reich (see p. 180). Telepathy is precisely what would have been required for the implementation of such monstrous orders that were never written down, contradict all the documents that were written, and were allegedly disseminated without leaving a bureaucratic trail. For these reasons, I consider the whole thesis of a code language to be absurd. But let's put this problem aside for now, and direct our attention to what was actually going on in the concentration camps after the middle of 1941. We will begin with Auschwitz, the most notorious camp of all. 3.4. Auschwitz 3.4.1. The Industrial Region of Auschwitz R: First I would like to describe the geographical region we are discussing. Auschwitz is not just any region of Poland. We are discussing a city in the im- mediate vicinity of the industrial region of Upper Silesia, shown in Figure 25. The city of Auschwitz lies at the confluence of the rivers Sola and Vistula (German name: Weichsel). The adjacent village of Birkenau is situated at a railroad intersection where railway lines from Bohemia via Ostrau and Bielitz- Biala connect to railway lines running to the areas of Krakow and Kattowitz. Since the 1300s until 1919, the river Vistula, which flows just one kilometer west of Birkenau, had formed the border between German Silesia and Poland, or between German Silesia and the Austrian province of Galicia after the parti- tioning of Poland in the 18th century. Under the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, a military barracks was built on the spot where Auschwitz is situated. In 1919, it 453 See the collection of quotes by Richard Widmann, "The Missing Hitler Order," www.vho.org/GB/c/RW/inconorders.html. 202 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 25: Map of the Auschwitz area during the Second World War passed into the hands of the newly formed Polish army.454 Following the Ger- man-Polish War in September 1939, this barracks was converted into a concen- tration camp for Polish prisoners. Today this camp is called the Stammlager (main camp), or simply "Auschwitz I." It lies southwest of Auschwitz, imme- diately adjacent to the river Sola. Under German occupation the Auschwitz region changed drastically. Before the war, Auschwitz had been a backwards agricultural village by western stan- dards. Following the German withdrawal, it was a modern town with a high quality industrial infrastructure and huge, modern chemical plants. L: Are you trying to say that these German enterprises at Auschwitz benefited Poland? R: If you limit consideration of German activity to the development of the indus- trial infrastructure, then it benefited Poland greatly. This does not of course in- clude consideration of other German activities in the region. It does not include consideration of whether the totality of events during the Second World War tipped the balance positively or negatively. It is easy to see the reason for the accelerated industrialization of the region. Because of its proximity to the Upper Silesian area, good railroad connections and abundance of processing water from the Vistula and Sola, the Auschwitz region was an ideal place for expansion of the German chemical industry. In 454 On the history of Auschwitz see Robert van Pelt, Deborah Dwork, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, op. cit. (note 324), as well as J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251). 203 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST addition, on account of the great distance from England, the factories were safe from Allied aerial bombardment until mid 1944. As should be known, Germany has always possessed little or no oil reserves. Oil products are vital for war production, however. Cut off from Arab and Rus- sian oil, Germany developed a process for refining coal as early as World War I in order to overcome its dependence on crude oil. This process changes coal, which Germany had in abundance in the Ruhr, Saar, and Silesia areas, into gaseous or liquid hydrocarbons. These were then used by the petrochemical in- dustry as raw materials for every imaginable chemical synthesis, including production of artificial rubber, fuel, and lubricants. During World War II, German coal refining technology was applied on a very large scale, especially in the Ruhr, in Baden (BASF), and at Auschwitz.455 One of the first steps in the process for coal gasification is the production of carbon monoxide by means of burning wet coal in an oxygen poor environment. An analysis by the U.S. War Department, which interpreted the effects of the Al- lied bombing campaign on Germany, summarized the importance of that tech- nology for Germany as follows:456 "War-time Germany was an empire built on coal, air and water. 84.5% of her aviation fuel, 85% of her motor fuel, more than 99% of all her rubber, 100% of her concentrated nitric acid ­ the base substance for all military explosives ­ and 99% of her no less important methanol were synthesized from these three raw materials. [...] Coal gasification facilities, where coal was converted into producer gas, were the body of this industrial organism." Air photographs of Auschwitz taken by Allied reconnaissance aircraft in spring 1944 indicate the size of these chemical plants.457 Illustration 25 gives a rough delineation of the area, in which I.G. Farbenindustrie AG created this huge chemical plant from scratch within a few years, using to a great degree forced labor from the Auschwitz concentration camp. Following the war, this technology was destroyed by the Allied theft of patents, kidnapping of German scientists, and dismantling of German industry. Because the Allied victors feared a self-sufficient Germany and due to the abundant availability of cheap crude oil, there was no revitalization of coal refining in Germany after the war. Not until the oil crisis in the 1970s was there a modest comeback in coal research. But let's get back to Auschwitz. The I.G. Farbenindustrie chemical complex is the largest, but not the only example of the German intention to develop indus- try in the region. After the beginning of the Russian campaign, the Germans thought they could solve the problem of labor shortage in the new industries with Russian prisoners of war, among others. For this reason, a large POW 455 Cf. esp.: W. Gumz, J.F. Foster (Battelle Memorial Institute), "A Critical Survey of Methods of Making a High BTU Gas from Coal," Research Bulletin, no. 6, American Gas Association, New York, July 1953. 456 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Oil Division Final Report, 2nd ed., War Department, Washington 1947, p. 1. 457 Cf. the various air photos in John C. Ball, Air Photo Evidence, Ball Resource Services Ltd., Delta B.C., 1992 (www.air-photo.com). 204 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 26: The I.G. Farbenindustrie AG chemical plant in Auschwitz-Monowitz in winter 1944/45.458 camp was planned by the Waffen SS west of the town of Birkenau, which to- day is known as "Auschwitz II" or "Auschwitz-Birkenau." L: But Birkenau is widely known as a pure extermination camp. R: But it is definitely known that in October 1941 it was not planned as such. All the early documents speak exclusively of a POW camp.459 L: Did the camp remain under administration of the Waffen SS? R: Yes. Until the end of the war, the organization responsible for the construction at Auschwitz was called the Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei, (Central Construction Office of Waffen-SS and Police.)460 L: Then the Waffen SS were not garbed in snow white robes as described by some German right-wing politicians?461 R: That depends on which version of history one believes in. If the mass murders alleged to have taken place at Auschwitz and elsewhere really happened, then the Waffen SS certainly had a hand in them. The Birkenau camp is situated in a swampy river valley at the confluence of the Sola and Vistula rivers. With the increasing employment of prisoners in the in- 458 www.auschwitz-muzeum.oswiecim.pl/html/eng/historia_KL/foto/ig_farben_foto_buna.html. 459 "Erläuterungsbericht zum Vorentwurf Neubau K.G.L. Auschwitz," Oct. 30, 1941, RGVA 502-1-233, pp. 13-30. K.G.L. = Kriegsgefangenenlager = POW camp. 460 Cf. Carlo Mattogno, The Central Construction Office of the Waffen-SS and Police Auschwitz. Organi- zation, Responsibilities, Activities, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/cco). 461 See for instance Franz Schönhuber, Ich war dabei, Langen Müller, Munich 1981. 205 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST dustries of the Auschwitz region, a series of other, smaller work camps came to Upper Silesia, one after the other. Altogether there were a total of 30 so-called satellite camps organizationally belonging to the Auschwitz camp and housing prison laborers near their work sites. For example, on the map shown here there were satellite camps near the settlements of Harmense, Rajsko, and Monowitz. I am not going to discuss these smaller camps, since no one ever suggested that mass murder took place there. Quite the contrary! Allow me to digress a bit and relate the testimony of Jakob Lewinski, a former prisoner at Monowitz, which he gave at his interrogation in 1958, as part of the proceedings which led to the Auschwitz trial held at Frankfurt.462 Lewinski was deported along with his wife but was separated from her at Auschwitz. He never saw her again. He describes his accommodations at the Auschwitz-Monowitz camp as "adequate for human beings":463 "Inside the camp there was a brothel with 10 women, but they were only available to Reich German prisoners. The prisoners received up to 150 DM [should be RM - Reichsmarks] scrip per week for their labor, with which they could purchase mustard, sauerkraut, red beets, and so on [...] The camp had generally good sanitary facilities, bathing, and showering rooms, and an excellent health-care facility. [...] For provisions we received 1/3 [loaf of] army-type bread three times a week, 1/2 army-type bread 4 times, and additionally a bowl of coffee in the morning, 20 grams of marga- rine 5 times, one time a small amount of marmalade and one time a piece of cheese. In the afternoon at work there was the so-called Buna soup, nutri- tionally worthless. In the evening there was a thicker soup, partly beets, partly cabbage etc." R: According to Lewinski, there was initially a high death rate at the camp on account of the strenuous 12 hour working days and inadequate nutrition. Later, however, the workload was decreased and there was a drastic decrease in the mortality rate. Concerning the SS leadership he stated:464 "Our camp commander was SS Obersturmführer Schöttl, who was sen- tenced to death at Dachau, supposedly for crimes he had committed before he came to our camp, because as camp commander of our camp he would never have deserved the death penalty." L: I call this a truly amazing statement, completely free of vindictiveness! Re- member that the poor man lost his wife on account of the SS. Hats off to such a noble character! R: You are right. I have real respect for some witnesses thanks to such statements. After 1942, Auschwitz served as the deportation center for Jews from western and central Europe. A great many transports passed through the Birkenau camp 462 Interrogation on Nov. 24, 1958, Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), Strafsache beim Schwurgericht Frankfurt (Main) gegen Baer und Andere wegen Mordes, ref. 4 Js 444/59, vol. 2, pp. 305-310. 463 Ibid., pp. 305, 305R; cf. in more detail G. Rudolf, "From the Files of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, part 3," TR 1(3) (2003), pp. 352-358, here pp. 356f. 464 Staatsanwaltschaft..., ibid., p. 306; this statement is supported by the testimony of Gerhard Grande, who made a similarly positive statement about Schöttl, cf. Staatsanwaltschaft..., vol. 7, p. 1058. 206 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST without being registered there. From here, they were either assigned to outlying camps or else transported to other labor camp complexes. A part of them re- mained at the Birkenau camp and were registered there. Today's official histo- riography assumes that Jews who were note registered at Birkenau went di- rectly to "gas chambers." After the Allied landings in Italy, the Upper Silesian industrial region came into the range of American bombers. Hence, in the spring of 1944, industrial production in the Auschwitz area was interrupted and construction drastically curtailed by repeated bombing raids. We can identify a great many details of the camp complex from air photos made by Allied reconnaissance aircrafts during those days. Among other things, we can see that the Polish peasants worked their fields right up to the fences. This means that it would have been impossible to keep secret what went on there.465 The heavy passenger and freight traffic passing through the busy railroad hub at Auschwitz would likewise have made secrecy difficult or im- possible, as would the fact that many of the prisoners were employed as work- ers in German plants and factories, both civilian and military. These internees had frequent contact with prisoners of war from other nations, as well as Ger- man and foreign civilians. In addition, a large number of civilian construction companies with all their employees were involved in erecting many buildings in the concentration and prisoner of war camps.466 Furthermore there were con- stant releases and furloughs from the concentration camp. L: Releases from an extermination camp? R: It may or may not have been an extermination camp. At any rate, releases from Auschwitz and Birkenau are easy to prove. According to a publication by the Auschwitz museum, for example, over a thousand of 26,200 registered inmates were released from imprisonment while around 3,000 were transferred to other camps.467 L: Those would have been 4,000 witnesses to mass murder. Apparently the SS were unconcerned about what those prisoners would tell the world about Auschwitz. R: And those are just a fraction of the total. The official number of prisoners re- leased is at least 1,400 and the number transferred to other camps is around 200,000.468 Scholars who claim that huge numbers of people were secretly murdered at Auschwitz simply do not know what they are talking about. They are obviously unfamiliar with the layout and daily routine, ignorant of the objective reality of 465 Cf. J.C. Ball, op. cit. (note 457), pp. 51-53. 466 See the list of 46 firms and at times over 1,000 civil employees active in Auschwitz: C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 460), pp. 51-56. 467 Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (ed.), op. cit. (note 51), pp. 231. Cf. Michael Gärtner, Hans Jürgen Nowak, "Die Stärkebücher von Auschwitz," VffG 6(4) (2002), pp. 425-436, here p. 430. 468 The number of released inmates are partly unknown for 1940 and 1941; see Franciszek Piper, Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz, State Museum, Auschwitz 1993; cf. C. Mattogno, "The Four Million...," op. cit. (note 230), Part II: "Franciszek Piper and The Number of Victims of Auschwitz," pp. 393-399. 207 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the situation.469 There were thousands of locations in the German occupied ar- eas, which would have been better suited for conducting secret mass murder than the bustling industrial city of Auschwitz. 3.4.2. Mass Murder Scenes R: There are basically two ways of getting a picture of what happened in Ausch- witz. You can either go to original sources and read and analyze the thousands of documents and statements by witnesses, or else you can reach for a book published by the institution that claims to be the ultimate authority on the sub- ject. That is the Polish State Museum at Auschwitz. Needless to say, almost everyone chooses the latter method. Who has the time and resources for the former? For this reason, I would like to briefly summarize the literature published by the Auschwitz State Museum. I would like to briefly describe the museum's official history of Auschwitz and its presentation of the alleged extermination process. It goes like this:470 In the summer of 1941, Camp Commandant Höß receives oral orders to get the camp ready to exterminate Jews. Early in September 1941, in the cellar of a building in the main camp, there is an experimental gassing of several hundred Soviet POWs using the cyanide based pesticide Zyklon B.471 In the following weeks the morgue of the crematory in the main camp is converted into a homi- cidal gas chamber. The conversion consists of knocking holes in the concrete roof so that Zyklon B can be dumped into the room below. This gas chamber begins operation around the end of 1941 and is in use until early 1943 (see the plans of this crematory in Ill. 71, p. 252). The "selection" of victims is performed next to the railroad tracks in front of the main camp. Those prisoners who are able to work are accepted in the camp, while those unable to work are sent directly to "gas chambers." The bodies of the victims are then cremated in the room next to the gas chamber, which originally contained two double-muffle472 crematory ovens (later there were three.) In the first half of 1942, two old farmhouses outside the Birkenau camp are converted to gas chambers. These are called "Bunker 1" and "Bunker 2" or sometimes "Red House" and "White House." These continue in operation until the beginning of 1943. With the deportation of the Hungarian Jews in May 469 For example, an allied lack of knowledge about the mass murder of the Jews during the war is empha- sized by U.S. historian A.M. de Zayas, explaining it with the policy of secrecy by the German govern- ment: A. M. de Zayas, "The Wehrmacht Bureau on war crimes," in The Historical Journal, 35(2),1992, pp. 383-399. 470 Danuta Czech et al., Auschwitz, nationalsozialistisches Vernichtungslager, Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Auschwitz 1997. 471 Reports about this alleged undocumented first gassing are extremely contradictory, cf. C. Mattogno, Auschwitz: The First Gassing, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/atfg). 472 The muffle is the cremation chamber of a cremation oven, where the corpse is reduced to ashes. Each oven can have one or several such muffles. There were double-muffle ovens at Auschwitz, and triple- and eight-muffle ovens at Birkenau. 208 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 1944, one of these farmhouses (Bunker 2) is reactivated as a homicidal facil- ity.473 The victims of these Bunkers are cremated over wood fires in trenches that are several meters deep. Melted human fat is retrieved with large ladles and used as fuel for the fires. In the summer of 1942 planning begins for four new crematories in Birkenau, built as two pairs with mirror like symmetry. Two of these have underground morgues, one of which is used as an undressing room and the other as a gas chamber. In addition each has an oven room equipped with five triple-muffle ovens, making a total of 15 muffles (see crematories II and III, Ill. 62f., p. 242). The other two crematories (no. IV and V474) both have a mortuary above ground and an oven room with an eight-muffle oven, as well as three smaller rooms used as "gas chambers." These crematories go into operation one after the other between March and June 1943. Crematories IV and V quickly fall out of operation because of defective construction. Crematory IV is never repaired, Crematory V very late in the war. The ovens of Crematories II and III remain in operation, with interruptions, until the end of 1944. In the underground gas chambers of Crematories II and III, just as in the crematory in the main camp, Zyklon B is dumped through openings, which were chiseled through the rein- forced concrete roof after construction was completed. The gas chambers of Crematories IV and V, which are above ground, have small hatches in the walls through which the pesticide is introduced. The only gas chambers provided with ventilation are those in Crematories I, II, and III. Thus the poison gas can- not be forced out of the gas chambers in Crematories IV or V or the two farm houses. One has to rely solely on the natural ventilation through opened doors and hatches. L: I beg your pardon? R: One moment please. Let me first finish my overview. Until May 1944, victim selection takes place at the railroad tracks of the main camp, but after that on the new ramp built at Birkenau. Those selected for gassing are told that for hygienic reasons they have to shower and have their clothes deloused. The victims disrobe, partly in special buildings or rooms and partly in the open. Sometimes they are given soap and towels. Then they are directed into the gas chambers, some of which are equipped with phony shower heads in order to trick the victims. After the doors are sealed, pesticide is thrown into the chamber in quantities sufficient to kill insects. A few minutes later, everybody is dead. After about a quarter hour the doors are opened and the so-called Sonderkommandos (prisoner special unit) begin the task of removing the corpses from the gas chamber. Sometimes they wear gas masks, sometimes they don't. They harvest hair from the corpses and 473 For lack of space these bunkers cannot be treated in more detail here. Witness statements about them are very contradictory, but their existence as a building used by the SS can be refuted on the basis of existing documents: C. Mattogno, The Bunkers of Auschwitz, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/tboa). 474 For a side view and a floor plan see Ill. 123, pp. 329, taken from my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), p. 135; also J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 401. 209 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST extract gold teeth. Then they drag the corpses to the crematory ovens or incin- eration trenches. The ovens are stuffed chock full of bodies, up to eight in a single muffle. Flames and thick black smoke shoot out of the crematory chim- neys and huge incineration trenches. The entire area is blanketed in smoke and the hellish stench of burning flesh. At least 10,000 Jews are murdered every day between May and September 1944. Most of the resulting corpses are burned in open trenches. L: How many victims are supposed to have been crammed in these alleged gas chambers at a time? R: The witnesses do not agree on this. For the underground morgues no. 1 of the crematories II and III, which had a surface area of roughly 210 m² (2,260 sq ft), at least 1,000 victims are said to have been executed at a time. Other witnesses speak of 2,000 or even up to 3,000 victims. L: That is between ½ and 1½ persons on every square foot. How can you get up to three people to stand on two square feet? They must have squeezed themselves together quite extremely? R: That is quite a logistic problem, indeed. Just imagine the following scene: 1,000 people of both sexes plus children enter the undressing room with a sur- face area of 390 m2 (4,200 ft2). Each one would therefore have an area of only 60 cm × 60 cm (2×2 ft) on which to undress. Experience shows that people do not pack themselves tightly to the very edge of an enclosed area, unless, of course, they are quite willing to do so, like when they enter a bus and need to fill it tightly, so that other passengers can still get in. L: Not even that works most of the times. People simply won't scoot over to make room for others unless they are informed of what they need to do and then are also willing to comply. And that is particularly true if they are told to undress completely in front of hundreds of strangers of both sexes. That would never work. R: Correct. Actually, in order to get people to enter through just one door in a long, stretched out room and to fill it tightly to the last place, the procedure must be rehearsed. Once inside the naked people walk over into alleged gas chamber, the same problem occurs again. Here the victims must press them- selves even more tightly together, since that room was even smaller. The first people entering the room must proceed to the very end of this 100 ft long room in a disciplined manner and line up against the wall. The next lot will form the line directly in front, and so on, until the entire chamber is full. Even if choreo- graphed perfectly, this would still take at least half an hour. L: So how did they get these 1,000 naked people to pack themselves tightly to- gether, touching other completely naked strangers? R: I do not know, but it would have required the drill and discipline that you can instill only in soldiers after weeks of excercising, provided they are dressed. I don't know if that would still work if you had those soldiers line up naked, par- ticularly if there are female soldiers present as well. L: Well, that is ridiculous. After all, under such circumstances, the alleged claim by the SS that their victims are going to have a shower in that room would con- 210 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST vince nobody. How do you take a shower when your neighbors step on your feet and you can hardly turn around, not to mention bend down to wash your- self? R: You have revealed this absurdity quite well. So even before going into techni- cal and documentary details, you can already see that the claims made about those alleged homicidal gassings are fishy already on pure logistical grounds. In closing this brief overview of the alleged murder scenarios, it should also be mentioned that the first report about the alleged murder methods used in Auschwitz as reported by Boris Polevoy,475 a Soviet propagandist writing for the Soviet newspaper Pravda, differed quite distinctly from what was sug- gested otherwise:476 "Last year, when the Red Army revealed to the world the terrible and abominable secrets of Majdanek, the Germans in Auschwitz began to wipe out the traces of their crimes. They leveled the mounds of the so-called `old' graves in the eastern part of the camp, tore up and destroyed the traces of the electric conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were simultaneously electrocuted, their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to the top of the blast furnace where they fell in, were com- pletely burned, their bones converted to meal in the rolling mills, and then sent to the surrounding fields." R: The story about the conveyor belt electrocution with subsequent incineration in blast furnaces was, of course, nothing but Soviet atrocity propaganda with no foundation in reality. It quickly ended up in the trash bins of history and was replaced with something more "credible," which had been claimed since 1942: gas chambers. Just how credible these gas chamber allegations are will be in- vestigated in the next chapters. 3.4.3. Air Photo Evidence R: Now, let us subject the allegations summarized above to critical examination. First of all, we will refer to documents that were produced by the Allies at the time of the alleged murders, specifically air photos made by their reconnais- sance aircraft. Beginning in the spring of 1944, these aircraft made air photos of Auschwitz on a regular basis, since it was part of the Upper Silesian indus- trial region. Before we analyze these photographs critically, I would like to ask you all what you would expect to find if you believed the official version that I have just summarized. L: I would expect the camp to be blanketed with smoke. L: Especially from the chimneys: there should be a lot of smoke, maybe even flames. 475 On Polevoi see Don Heddesheimer, "`Nothing Has Been Invented:' The War Journalism of Boris Polevoy," JHR, 21(1) (2002), pp. 23-38. 476 Boris Polevoy, "The Factory of Death at Auschwitz," Pravda, Febr. 2, 1945 (www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Pravda020245.html); see R. Faurisson, "Auschwitz, Facts and Leg- end," JHR, 16(4) (1997), pp. 14-19. 211 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 27: POW Camp Birkenau in June of 1944, including the alleged Bunker 2 and part of the crematory trenches (center top). R: But only if the ovens happened to be operating and the fires burning... L: The fires in the ovens could be put out quickly, but not huge fires in trenches, where ten thousand bodies were being burned every day. Fires like that would smolder for days. R: Good, let's concentrate on trench incinerations. What would you expect to find in air photos? L: First of all, huge trenches, smoking to a greater or lesser degree. Then, huge stacks of firewood. Ashes would have to be scattered everywhere, and that would discolor the vicinity of the fire pits. R: And how big would these pits be, if they were large enough to cremate 10,000 bodies per day? L: 10,000 square meters, perhaps? Maybe they could complete two burnings per day, in which case they would need around 5,000 square meters, plus the area around the trenches. That would be roughly the size of a soccer field. L: A lot of excavated material, mountains of dirt would be piled up near the trenches. L: We would see transport paths from the gas chambers to the trenches, as well as paths for bringing in firewood and carrying out the ashes. 212 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST May 31, 1944 June 26, 1944 July 8, 1944 August 23, 1944 Ill. 28-31: Sections of air photos of the region around the site of Bunker 2, alleg- edly with massive incineration trenches, 1944 R: German author Heinrich Köchel has analyzed the space, time, and fuel re- quirements for mass incineration of cattle that had died during a massive foot- and-mouth epidemic in Great Britain in 2001. Uncounted thousands of animal carcasses had to be incinerated on pyres.477 According to this, a large pyre as it would have been required in Auschwitz could have been cleared from ashes and unburned remains a week after it had been lit at the earliest, since such large fires burn for one to two days, and the remaining embers keep glowing for many more days. Also, the surface area required to build as many pyres as would have been needed to accomplish the task as claimed for Auschwitz and to store the necessary fuel would have been around half a square mile. This is far larger than what any witnesses ever claimed. 477 Heinrich Köchel, "Leichenverbrennungen im Freien," VffG, 8(4) (2004), pp. 427-432. 213 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Top: November 29, 1944 Left: September 13, 1944 December 21, 1944 February 19, 1945 Ill. 32-35: Sections of more air photos of the region around the site of Bunker 2, allegedly with massive incineration trenches, 1944-1945. L: In addition, if I may interject, if all this was a swampy river depression, the whole area would be turned into a swampy morass by such intensive activity. All the vegetation would be destroyed. R: Now, let us look at eight photos taken in and around Auschwitz. Here I have magnified the sections containing Bunker 2, close to which the alleged incin- eration trenches are claimed to have been located, west of Crematories IV and V in Ill. 28-35. These photos were taken on May 31,478 June 26,479 July 8,480 Aug. 23,481 Sept. 13,482 Nov. 29483 and Dec. 21, 1944484 as well as Feb. 19, 1945.485 What can we see on the better quality pictures? L: A light colored area in the form of an irregular pentagon. R: Do you see any smoke? 478 U.S. National Archives, RG 373 Can D 1508, exp. 3056. 479 Ibid., RG 373, Can C 1172, exp. 5022. 480 Ibid., DT/TM-3/Germany-East, Auschwitz/Neg no. 3. N50 E19 (German war-time photo). 481 www.evidenceincamera.co.uk/images/Large/conc1.htm 482 U.S. National Archives, RG 373 Can B 8413, exp. 3VI. 483 Ibid., mission 15 SG/887, exp. 4058 484 Ibid., RG 373 Can D 1534, exp. 4023. 485 Ibid., GX 12337/145 (German photo). 214 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 36: Allied air photo of Auschwitz taken Ill. 37: Section of German air photo of Aug. 23, 1944, section showing smoke near Auschwitz taken July 8, 1944, showing Crematory V.481 smoke near Crematory V.480 L: No. R: Any trampled or rutted paths for bringing in wood and hauling out ashes? L: No, but there is a street leading into the area, so we would not expect such paths. We can make out three rectangular forms which might have been crema- tion trenches. R: In that case the vegetation would be trampled down and covered over with mud and ashes. The adjacent areas here are still intact, though. At other places in the photo we can recognize similar rectangular forms and the vegetation around them is undisturbed as well (see Ill. 48, p. 225). L: That is true. Maybe they are mass graves that have been covered over. L: Or garbage pits. R: At any rate we can be sure they are not cremation trenches, because during the entire period May to September of 1944 nothing changes here. There was no significant activity. L: But this is true of the whole area. All these photos look so similar that one has to assume nothing important was going on there. R: Now let's go to a different section from the photo taken Aug. 23, 1944, north of Crematory V in Ill. 36. L: I can see smoke there! R: That's right, this is what smoke looks like in an air photo. In almost the same area, we see similar smoke in a German reconnaissance photo taken about 6 weeks earlier, in Ill. 37. How large is the area from which the smoke is rising? L: Following down the smoke funnel I would say the source is a single point, measuring a few square meters. R: But not huge trenches incinerating thousands of bodies? L: No, it is just a small fire. And we cannot tell what is being burned there at all. R: Right. With this I would close the discussion of these alleged open air incinera- tions. There are more, primarily logistic problems with the witness claims in this regard, but I would like to postpone a discussion of them to the chapter about Treblinka (3.5.4. Burning Corpses without a Trace, p. 284). Those inter- 215 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 38: Enlargement of section of Allied air photo RG 373 Can F 5367, exp. 3185, of Birkenau camp, taken Aug. 25, 1944. The dark specks on the morgues, the alleged "gas chambers" of both crematories (arrows) are especially interesting. We now know that these were not shafts for the insertion of Zyklon B. ested to learn more details about the claims of open air incinerations at Ausch- witz may read a special study focusing exclusively on this topic.486 Let us now consider another aspect of these air photos which might be just as interesting. The first air photos of Auschwitz-Birkenau were made available to the public by the CIA in 1979.487 L: That stinks. Why would the largest criminal organization of the world have their fingers in that? Why didn't an organization with academic prestige pub- lish these photos? R: Well, there is a lot at stake for the U.S. Above all, I would like to direct your attention to two photos of the Birkenau camp taken on August 25, 1944.488 These were taken at an interval of 3.5 sec- onds, which allows three dimensional inspections by means of a stereoptic or a three dimensional device. Let's start with the first of the two. Illustration 38 is an enlargement of the section around Crematories II and III, and Illustration 39 is a schematic drawing of it. The specks on the roofs of morgue 1 of both cre- 486 C. Mattogno, Auschwitz: Open Air Incinerations, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, IL, 2005 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/aoai). 487 D. Brugioni, R. Poirier, The Holocaust Revisited: A Retrospective Analysis of Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex, Central Intelligent Agency, Washington 1979; cf. W. Stäglich, "Auschwitz- Fotos widerlegen `Holocaust,'" Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart 27(3) (1979) pp. 10-14 (www.vho.org/D/DGG/Staeglich27_3.html). 488 Ref. no. RG 373 Can F 5367, exp 3185 and 3186. 216 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 39: Schematic drawing of the air photo in Ill. 38. We can tell immediately that the specks on the roofs of morgue 1 are not insertion shafts: too large, too irregular, and their "shadows" fall in the wrong direction. matories, the alleged gas chambers, were identified by the CIA as shafts for the insertion of Zyklon B, along with their shadows.487 But even without 3D vi- sion, we can tell that these specks on the roof were not insertion shafts: ­ The direction of the specks does not correspond to the direction of the chim- ney shadow. ­ On a photo taken Sept. 13, 1944, the specks on crematory III retain their shape and direction, although the sun is now somewhere else.489 ­ In the same photograph, the specks are missing from morgue I of crematory II. ­ The specks are some 4-5 m long and 1.5 m wide, which would correspond to a theoretical object height of 3-4 meters. ­ However, the shafts described by witnesses were much smaller than one me- ter, both in length and width. ­ These specks have a completely irregular and non-geometrical shape. In other words, these specks cannot possibly be shadows or any construction object. L: Well then, what are they? R: It has been suggested that they are beaten paths made by SS men walking to the shafts, which are too small to be visible.490 489 Ref. no. RG 373 Can B 8413, exp. 6V2, J.C. Ball, op. cit. (note 457), p. 65. 490 D. Brugioni, letter to Charles D. Provan, Sept. 24, 1996, cf. C. Provan, No Holes? No Holocaust?: A Study of the Holes in the Roof of Leichenkeller I of Krematorium 2 at Birkenau, Zimmer Printing, Mo- nongahela, PA, 2000 (www.revisingrevisionism.com); similar Daniel Keren, Jamie McCarthy, Henry Mazal, "The Ruins of the Gas Chambers: A Forensic Investigation of Crematoriums at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau," Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 9(1) (2004), pp. 68-103, here p. 72. 217 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But why would beaten paths be dark? R: I do not know any reason why they should be. But consider that, accord- ing to the official version, countless thousands of victims had marched across the crematory courtyard and Ill. 40: Dark specks on the roof of Mortu- then gone in line down the cellar ary 1 of Crematory III in Birkenau. Do steps to morgue 2. So if beaten paths they show the beaten path of SS men would be dark, can you imagine how jumping back and forth? the trampled path to those cellar steps would look like? L: Black as pitch. But there is nothing to be seen. R: Exactly! The shape of the alleged beaten path ­ only almost the direction of the shadow ­ would mean that the SS men did not walk directly from hole to hole, but in a pointless oblique direction. Then they would have had to jump five me- ters to the next hole, see Ill. 40. L: Well, what is it then? R: Just a second. Illustration 42 is another enlarged section of the same photo from which the section in Ill. 38 is taken. Arrows are pointing to a place that looks like a group of marching prisoners. Unfortunately, these prisoners are marching partly across the roof of a barracks, which is of course impossible. This be- comes clear from the photo in Illustration 41, taken September 13, 1944, in which the barracks is again easily recognizable, but this time without the "pris- oners" marching across it. L: Could there be dirt on the photo, or a scratch? R: The shape of the spots is too regular for dirt that might have haphazardly fallen on it, and scratches can remove the silver pigment developed within the film material only along lines, but not evenly across an entire area. If something was scratch away from this negative, then this happened evenly for this entire area, that is to say, it happened intentionally and systematically. We are coming closer to a solution of the puzzle when we look at a different part of this photo- graph. Illustrations 44 and 45 are enlargements of sections of both these photos, taken shortly after one another on August 25, 1944. According to the CIA in- terpretation, this is a group of prisoners marching toward the gas chamber. L: How do they know that? R: I don't know. They just follow orders by their CIA superiors, I guess. Now note the shape of this marking in Illustration 43: a zigzag line, corresponding to the pencil movement of an unskilled retoucher. L: Are you suggesting that these pictures have been altered? R: The professional air photo interpreter John C. Ball comes to that very conclu- sion in his analysis, and he presents a lot more evidence of alteration as well.491 In this connection it is interesting to note that Dino Brugioni, the same CIA au- thor who in 1979 first published the photo analyzed here, treated this same 491 Cf. besides notes 303 and 457 also J.C. Ball, "Air Photo Evidence," in: G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 269-282, here pp. 277-279. 218 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Probably real prison- ers in line in front of a hut. Spots partially across the roof of a hut. Note the dark coloration. Ill. 41: For comparison with Ill. 42: a photo made in Sept. 1944 without spots on the roof. Ill. 42: Spots appearing like a formation of prisoners, partly across the roof of an inmate hut. photo again about 20 years later. This time it was in a book about photographic forgeries. This picture, however, it is the only photo in his book that he does not expose as a forgery. What a coincidence! Instead, he "proves" its authentic- ity with the same old insinuations that are here proven false!492 L: Well, what would one expect from the CIA? And besides, why would a secret service publish specifically these pictures? R: At any rate, whether we are dealing with irregularities, alterations, scratches or stains, these pictures do not prove the allegations about Auschwitz. In fact they actually refute it, as far as thick clouds of smoke and incineration in deep trenches are concerned. 492 D. Brugioni, Photo Fakery: The History and Techniques of Photographic Deception and Manipulation, Brassey's, Washington, D.C., 1999. 219 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 43: The forger's zigzag line is easy to recognize. Ill. 44 (exposure Ill. 45 (exposure 3186): 3.5 seconds 3185): Is this a col- later. Now the zigzag form is even more umn of prisoners noticeable. marching to the gas chamber? 3.4.4. Crematories L: The missing clouds of smoke from crematory chimneys do not prove that they were not used, though. After all they were built to be used. Maybe they were so well built that they did not smoke. R: You just touched on the next question I wanted to discuss, which is whether the Auschwitz crematories really had the capacity to cremate the corpses of hun- dreds of thousands of murder victims, as is frequently claimed. The crematories of Auschwitz were all fired with coke, so we must assume that their chimneys smoked like other coke fired facilities. There actually are signs that these chimneys smoked, namely a photograph of the chimney of Crema- tory II in Birkenau whose rim is colored black by soot (see Ill. 46). This would not have sufficed to cover the whole camp or area with thick smoke, however. It also needs to be pointed out that there is only one air photo known that shows smoke coming from a single crematory chimney at Auschwitz ­ that of crema- tory III on a photo of Aug. 20, 1944.493 This proves that these chimneys did in- deed smoke, if they operated, but that during late spring and summer of 1944 they apparently did hardly operate at all. 493 Ibid., Mission USEC/R 86. Can B 10658, Exposure 5018. 220 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Wouldn't the I.G. Farbenindustrie coal refining plants in the vicinity have pro- duced a lot more smoke than the crematories ever could? And if there was no constant breeze blowing, so much smoke would have accumulated in the river valley that it would have created a real problem. R: Not to mention the stench from the chemical plants. In those days environ- mental protection measures for such industries were not as strict as they are to- day. There is a seed of truth to reports about stench at Auschwitz, although it was probably caused by a different culprit. L: And what about the chimneys spewing flames? R: I have already quoted Walter Lüftl on this subject (see p. 186). And Italian revisionist scholar Carlo Mattogno settled that question with extensive and well documented research. His experiments prove that even under the worst imagin- able conditions, flames could never have shot out of the crematory chimneys. The reason for this is the simple fact that the smoke duct from the ovens to the top of the chimneys was around 30 meters long (100 ft). Coke burns almost without a flame. Therefore its flames could never attain such a length, espe- cially if there were nothing in the muffles except human cadavers, with no flammable liquids or gases.495 L: Fine, no flames and only little smoke. But this would just make cremation all the more effective, since it would have been less noticeable. R: The problem of smoking chimneys spew- ing flames is significant for determining the credibility of witnesses. It is important to know whether they resort to dramatic Ill. 46: Soot deposits on outside of but untrue enhancements of their testi- chimney of Crematory II in Birke- 494 nau. mony. As you correctly note, the presence of smoke and fire would tell us very little about the efficiency of the cremato- ries or the alleged numbers of corpses incinerated in them. In order to establish numbers, one would have to know the capacities of the crematories, that is to say, the number of corpses they could incinerate per unit of time. For the most part, established historians follow the propaganda writ- ings of Ellic Howe, which I quoted in Lecture 2 (see p. 170). They give a figure of around 3,000 corpses per day for "the crematory." In addition to the widely diverging witness testimonies, an SS administration document is often quoted as proof of such magnitude. It mentions a daily cremation capacity of all cre- matories in Auschwitz together of 4,756 corpses.496 Over a period of operation 494 APMO, Neg. no. 20995/460. 495 Cf. C. Mattogno, "Flames and Smoke from the Chimneys of Crematoria," TR, 2(1) (2004), pp. 73-78. 496 RGVA, 502-1-314, p. 14a; cf. E. Kogon et al. (ed.), op. cit. (note 96), p. 157; Brigitte Bailer-Galanda, Wolfgang Benz, Wolfgang Neugebauer (ed.), Wahrheit und Auschwitzlüge, Deutike, Vienna 1995, p. 69; J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 247; Komitee der antifaschistischen Widerstandskämpfer in der DDR (ed.), SS im Einsatz, Kongress-Verlag, Berlin 1957, p. 269; Der Spiegel no. 40/1993, p. 151. 221 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 7: Some characteristics of the crematories at Auschwitz-Birkenau Crematories II & III Crematories IV& V coke per muffle, ideal: 15.5 kg/hr 11.7 kg/hr coke per muffle, real: 22 kg/hr 16 kg/hr time required per corpse 1 hr 1 hr number of muffles 30 16 max. hrs of operation per day 20 hrs 20 hrs max. no. of corpses per day 600 320 total no. of days in operation 888 276 TOTAL MAXIMUM CAPACITY 532,800 88,320 of one and a half years, this would give a maximum capacity of around 2.6 mil- lion corpses. L: Aha, if we add to that number those corpses burned in pits, that takes us back toward the four million number! Is the document authentic? R: The great minds are in disagreement about that.497 But it is not especially im- portant. L: Well, listen to that! R: Not so fast. If you found a "document" saying that an old VW beetle has a maximum speed of 320 miles per hour and therefore can cover 2.7 million miles per year, what would be your opinion of such a document? L: I would consider the author of such a document to be a jokester. R: On what grounds would you make that evaluation? L: On technical data of a VW beetle, of course, when you get down to it. R: Of course. Now let's go through a similar process with the Auschwitz cremato- ries. I don't want to re-invent the wheel here. Since the early 1990s, the inde- pendent Italian engineer Dr. Franco Deana and Italian revisionist historian Carlo Mattogno have analyzed thousands of SS documents seized at Auschwitz ­ these are documents produced by the firm that built the crematory ovens and by the SS ordering and maintaining them ­ as well as all kinds of professional literature and trade publications pertaining to the technology and performance of crematory ovens in general and to the models used at that time. Based on these documents, Deana and Mattogno carried out some very detailed calcula- tions.498 Even left-wing radical German mainstream journalist Fritjof Meyer, leading editor of Der Spiegel, relied on these scientific results in his controver- sial study, which I mentioned in chapter 2.21. Let me summarize the results of their extensive research here: L: Over 600,000 corpses! These numbers certainly suggest they planned to com- mit mass murder. 497 Cf. Manfred Gerner, "`Key Document' is a Forgery,'" TR, 3(3) (2005), in prep.; C. Mattogno, "`Key Document' ­ an Alternative Interpretation," ibid. 498 C. Mattogno, I forni crematori di Auschwitz. Studio storico-tecnico con la collaborazione del dott. ing. Franco Deana, 2 vols., in preparation. An English translation is planned to be published by Theses & Dissertations Press. 222 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Not so hasty! It is the prevailing opinion that Auschwitz was developed as the location for mass murder of Jews in early 1942, when the "Bunkers" were set up. However, this was not what led to the planning of the four new crematories. At that time only one crematory was planned. That was Crematory II, which was planned as a replacement for the old crematory in the main camp, which was about to be shut down. The three additional crematories were not planned until the summer of 1942,499 after the outbreak of a typhus epidemic that was taking a toll of 500 prisoners per day.500 That was the actual background for the massive expansion of crematory capacity. Furthermore Himmler had ordered that Auschwitz be expanded to a capacity of 200,000 prisoners, during his visit to Auschwitz on July 17 and 18, 1942. This was a tenfold increase.501 Can you imagine what would have happened if a typhus epidemic had broken out in that camp after its population had been increased by a thousand percent? L: How could they send people to a camp where such terrible conditions existed and prisoners were dying like flies in the first place? R: That is a justified moral objection. It is a fact that deportations to Auschwitz continued even after the outbreak of this terrible epidemic, even though most of these deportees were no longer registered in Auschwitz, they were probably sent to other locations straight away, exactly because of this epidemic. L: Recklessly exposing innocent people to such dangers, to which many succumb, such an act is what is called manslaughter by negligence. R: That's right, negligent manslaughter of thousands and thousands. But let's get back to the number of crematories. The numbers given in Table 7 are mislead- ing, because they are theoretical maximum numbers. It is like saying that be- cause an old VW beetle can go as fast as 80 miles per hour, it can drive roughly 900,000 miles in one and a half year, if driven for 20 hours every day at maxi- mum speed. L: I don't think the engine would last that long, if always running at maximum speed. R: And neither would the crematories' engines, that is, their muffles last that long, when used always at maximum power. I would therefore like to discuss two parameters that allow us to estimate the numbers of bodies that were actually cremated. One of these parameters is the durability of the fireproof brickwork in the ov- ens. The Topf firm, which constructed the ovens at Birkenau, listed the life ex- pectancy of this brickwork as 3,000 cremations, which at that time was 50% above the norm.502 When we consider that the Birkenau crematories were oper- ated and maintained by unskilled and hostile personnel, namely prisoners, we 499 The first known document proving the extended plans is a construction draft of crematories IV & V of Aug. 14, 1942, drawing no. 1678, APMO, negative no. 20946/6. 500 Cf. for this the Sterbebücher, op. cit. (note 51). 501 Letters by Bischoff to Amt CV of the SS-WVHA, Aug. 3 & Aug. 27, 1942. GARF, 7021-108-32, pp. 37, 41. 502 R. Jakobskötter, "Die Entwicklung der elektrischen Einäscherung bis zu dem neuen elektrisch beheiz- ten Heißlufteinäscherungsofen in Erfurt," Gesundheits-Ingenieur, 64(43) (1941), pp. 579-587, here p. 583. 223 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST can see that the Topf estimate was a very optimistic maximum. After 3,000 cremations, the brickwork had to be replaced, which necessitates an expensive and time consuming overhaul of the entire crematory. It is like installing a new engine into our VW, to stick with that comparison. It is a fact that in the ex- tremely detailed documentation of the Auschwitz Central Construction Office, in which practically every single nail or screw is itemized, there is nothing to suggest that the fireproof brickwork of even a single oven in the crematories at Birkenau was ever replaced! From this we can conclude that the maximum number of cremations (46 muffles × 3,000 = 138,000) was not exceeded.503 This is very nearly the number given as "natural" deaths by the Auschwitz camp authorities in the death books,51 if we extrapolate their existing data for 1941-1943 to the entire existence of the camp, that is to say, the total deaths excluding those allegedly caused by gassings or other acts of mass murder. Another parameter for determining utilization of the new crematories in Birke- nau is the amount of coke delivered to the camp, which is completely docu- mented for the period February 1942 to October 1943 (see Table 8).504 First I would like to direct your attention to one truly amazing fact. During the operating period of the six-muffle crematory in the main camp from February 1942 until February 1943 (the only crematory in operation at that time), the av- erage monthly consumption of coke came to around 30 tons, or 5 tons per muf- fle. The extremely large coke delivery made in March 1943 served for drying and preheating Crematories II and IV, which went into operation at that time. In addition to this, there was probably a backlog of corpses on account of the typhus epidemic raging at that time, so the crematories were probably in almost uninterrupted operation at the beginning of this period. It is amazing that coke consump- Table 8: Monthly coke deliveries to the tion rose only by a factor of 2.5 Auschwitz Crematories when the new crematories came Month `42 Tons Month `43 Tons into operation, even though they February 22 January 23 contained almost 8 times as March 39 February 40 many muffles as the old crema- tory. Even if we consider that the April 39 March 144.5 May 32 April 60 new ovens were somewhat more June 25 May 95 energy efficient than the old one had been, it is still clear that the July 16.5 June 61 August 31.5 July 67 new crematories were not nearly September 52 August 71 as intensively operated as the old one had been at times, when it October 15 September 61 November 17 October 82 had to carry the entire workload December 39 Summe 1032.5 alone. In other words, the SS 2/42-2/43: 30 3/43-10/43: 80 created a huge overcapacity which they never used. 503 Add to this the six muffles of the old crematory in the main camp = max. 24,000 corpses. 504 APMO, D-AuI-4, segregator 22, 22a.; cf. J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 224. 224 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST If assuming an average coke con- sumption of 20 kg coke per corpse,505 we see that a total of 51,625 corpses could have been cremated with 1,032.5 tons of coke over a period of the 21 months, for which we have proof of coke deliv- ery. Again, this order of magnitude corresponds to the amount necessary to cremate the number of victims Ill. 47: Ground water table at Birkenau, registered in the Auschwitz death close to the location where the alleged books.51 deep trenches were dug to incinerate corpses. Photo taken in 1997, with the Birkenau drainage system still working. 3.4.5. Incinerations in Open Trenches L: Maybe the mass murder victims were not burned in the crematories, but rather in the open. R: This is Fritjof Meyer's thesis.255 In this case, the problem is to explain why the SS did not use the idle capacity of the crematories before resorting to the alter- native method. Open air incineration is much less effective than oven incinera- tion for the simple reason that huge amounts of energy are lost through radia- tion and convection.506 L: But didn't you already establish that there is no evidence of large scale trench incinerations in the air photos? R: That is correct, but it applies only to the period beginning May 1944. We have no photos for the preceding years. If at that time such hypothetical trenches ex- isted, which had already been filled in by 1944... L: ...Such as the rectangular shapes that we saw in several pictures? R: That is an example. Such trench incinerations could hardly be refuted by means of air photos a year or two later. L: I have another question regarding trench incinerations. If the area around the Birkenau camp is as swampy as you said, is it even possible to dig a trench several meters deep, without hitting ground water? R: That is the main argument against incineration trenches. Two expert studies, made independently of each other, did in fact demonstrate that the ground wa- ter level in and around Birkenau was just a foot or two below ground level be- tween 1941 and 1944. Any deep trenches would have quickly filled with wa- ter.507 L: And so how does one burn corpses under water? 505 The coke consumption of the old double muffle ovens in the main camp was actually somewhat higher than that of the new crematories in Birkenau. 506 Cf. for this Carlo Mattogno, "Combustion Experiments with Flesh and Animal Fat," TR, 2(1) (2004), pp. 64-72. 507 Michael Gärtner, Werner Rademacher, "Ground Water in the Area of the POW camp Birkenau," TR, 1(1) (2003), pp. 3-12; Carlo Mattogno, "Open Air Incinerations in Auschwitz: Rumor or Reality?," ibid., pp. 14-17. 225 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 48 (top) & 49 (bottom): Possible sites of old mass graves of typhus victims close to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. R: Maybe with SS black magic. L: That's not funny! Not only are you denying mass murder, you are making jokes as well. R: Well, do you have a better explanation? L: How about this: the water level was lowered by means of a drainage system. R: In 1944 there was a completed drainage system in the camp proper, but any trench incinerations during 1942/43 would have been a long way from the im- proved area. Furthermore the drainage system was built after 1942. But even the drainage system which existed in 1944 was unable to lower the groundwa- ter level in the camp by not more than three feet below ground level. So, you wouldn't get far with that argument. Realistically speaking, it is entirely possible that there were open air incinera- tions in Birkenau in the fall of 1942. In the summer of that year, when the terri- ble typhus epidemic was raging, the old crematory was out of commission for 226 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST several months because of massive damage to the chimney. Tens of thousands of typhus victims were probably buried in graves that were very shallow be- cause of the high groundwater level. Those rectangular shapes that we saw in the air photos might have been such graves. There are actually three locations close to the Birkenau camp which could be such mass graves, see Ill. 48f. It is entirely plausible that those typhus victims were exhumed after several weeks or months, in order to avoid polluting the ground water. Since there was no crematory in Birkenau and the old crematory in the main camp was out of commission, the authorities might have been obliged to burn them in the open. There is a document known of Sept. 17, 1942, in which the architect Walter Dejaco, who was involved in planning the new crematories in Birkenau,508 re- ported a "visit of the special installation and discussion with SS Standarten- führer Blobel on the design of such an installation." This "special installation" probably concerned burning corpses in the open air. Dejaco also mentions a "ball mill for substances," which might well have referred to a device for crushing incompletely incinerated remains.509 According to the Kalendarium, often quoted by mainstream historians as the standard chronology of Auschwitz events, which relies exclusively on witness accounts when it comes to the claimed mass murders, these incinerations of previously buried corpses occurred between September 21 and end of Novem- ber 1942.510 L: That reminds me of the reports of survivors describing the gruesome task: dig- ging up rotting corpses, the terrible odor, burning the corpses on bonfires, and then crushing the remains. Paul Blobel is repeatedly mentioned as the expert on open incinerations.511 Do you believe those stories are true? R: I suspect that such descriptions have a core of truth to them. However, the tes- timonies to which you refer relate mostly to burning the corpses of prisoners who are claimed to have been murdered in gas chambers, and that is of course a different matter. At any rate, it was alleged that the gas chambers and incinera- tion grounds at the so-called Bunkers had already been in operation since the late winter of 1941/1942 or spring of 1942. A trip in mid September 1942 to in- spect similar facilities elsewhere in order to learn how to build them would have been too late. In other words: The letter by Dejaco on the possible explo- ration of open air incineration installations refutes claims that such incineration took place on a grand scale before Sept. 17, 1942. L: But not those claiming that started at that time. 508 Cf. W. Lüftl, "1972: A Somewhat Different Auschwitz Trial," TR 2(3) (2004), pp. 294f. 509 NO-4467; RGVA, 502-1-336, p. 69; cf. Ill. 124 in the appendix, p. 330. 510 Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse des Konzentrationslagers Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939 ­ 1945, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1989, p. 305 (Engl.: Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945, H. Holt, New York 1990). 511 G. Reitlinger, op. cit. (note 252), pp. 144, 146f.; Raul Hilberg, op. cit. (note 39), pp. 389, 977; E. Kogon, et al. (ed.), op. cit. (note 96), p. 60-62, 134, 169; I. Gutman (ed.), op. cit. (note 112), article "Aktion 1005," vol. 1, p. 11; Steven Paskuly (ed.), Death Dealer. The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz, Da Capo Press, New York 1996, p. 33f.; cf. Dokument NO-4498b of the IMT, as well as Paul Blobel's "confessions," NO-3842, 3947. 227 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Correct. But their background was the typhus epidemic then raging in Birke- nau. 3.4.6. Chemical Analyses R: Now let's turn our attention from technology to the exact sciences. Let's con- sider the chemical qualities of the poison gas that was allegedly used to murder millions of people, along with its effects on organic and inorganic substances. First let me describe the product that has such a dubious reputation throughout the world today. The 1992 edition of Römpp's Chemical Lexicon gives the fol- lowing description:512 "Zyklon B. Originally the trade name for highly effective hydrogen cyanide fumigant used against insect pests. In Second World War cover name for cyanide agent used for mass murder in National Socialist extermination camps." R: Historically, however, the assertion that Zyklon B was used as a "cover name" for hydrogen cyanide is not tenable, since the name Zyklon B has been a trade name of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung (DEGESCH, Ger- man Society for Pests Control) since the 1920s.513 Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek were the only so-called "extermination camps" where it is claimed that Zyklon B had been used to commit mass murder, and the number of al- leged victims at Majdanek is now only a small fraction of what it formerly was claimed to have been.514 The commercial product Zyklon B, as used in German controlled areas during the war, is basically liquid hydrogen cyanide absorbed in gypsum granules.515 Until the introduction of DDT following the end of the war, it was the most ef- fective of all known pesticides. Since the early 1920s, it had been increasingly used by exterminators all over the world to combat every imaginable pests: in food warehouses, grain silos, railroad trains, and freight ships as well as public buildings, military barracks, prisons, and concentration camps. L: So Zyklon B was nothing more than the leading pesticide? R: That's right. Today we have a wide assortment of highly effective pesticides that did not exist in those days. One of the most dangerous pests fought with Zyklon B was the common louse, the principal carrier of typhus. This disease was especially prevalent in eastern Europe during both world wars, causing countless deaths among civilians as well as soldiers. It was a huge problem everywhere where people were crowded together, especially in prisoner of war 512 J. Falbe, M. Regitz (ed.), Römpp-Lexikon Chemie, Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart 1992. 513 On the history of Zyklon B see J. Kalthoff, M. Werner, op. cit. (note 126). 514 Engine exhaust gasses are claimed to have been used in the camps Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chelmno. In the Majdanek camp Zyklon B was allegedly used for murder, but Majdanek is not one of the "pure" extermination camps. It is also claimed to have been used for murder in other camps as well, which are not commonly referred to as extermination camps, like Stutthof. 515 I restrict myself to a description of the product with the trade name Ercco, which was used in the camps during WWII. The carrier materially also contained some starch, and the HCN was mixed with a tear gas as a warning agent as well as other ingredients to increase the chemical stability. For details see Wolfgang Lambrecht, op. cit. (note 126). 228 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 50: "3. Activities of retaliation [...] Typhoid fever microbes and typhoid 519 fever lice: in a few hundred cases" camps and concentration camps.516 The camp administration at Auschwitz struggled desperately against an epidemic which broke out in summer 1942 and was not brought under control until the end of 1943. This struggle has been de- scribed numerous times in the literature on the subject.517 The typhus epidemics which broke out in the hopelessly overcrowded camps of the Third Reich to- ward the end of the war were just as catastrophic. We will discuss them later on. Until the beginning of 1944, fumigation with Zyklon B was the most effec- tive method for controlling these epidemics. Other, less effective methods were delousing with steam or hot air. L: According to that, Zyklon B was a life saver, if used properly. R: Exactly. There is general agreement among acknowledged historians that Zyk- lon B was extensively used in concentration camps to improve hygiene. It did in fact save lives. It is less widely known that typhus bearing lice were used by Polish partisans as a biological weapon against the German occupation during World War II.518 L: You mean, while the Germans were desperately trying to combat typhus epi- demics and protect the lives of prisoners and laborers, her enemies were work- ing to spread epidemics? R: That's right. This is called war. L: And then when the war was supposed to be over, Germany's enemies exploited typhus victims to accuse the Germans of mass murder. They claimed that Zyk- lon B, used to combat the disease, was a weapon used to commit mass murders. 516 Cf. summarizing and with further references: G. Rudolf, op. cit. (note 415), chapters 5.2.1. "Danger of Epidemics" und 5.2.2. "Epidemic Control with Zyklon B," pp. 59-65; as well as F.P. Berg, "Typhus and the Jews," JHR, 8(4) (1988), pp. 433-481; F.P. Berg, "The German Delousing Chambers," JHR, 7(1) (1986), pp. 73-94. 517 Besides the works just quoted see foremost: Carlo Mattogno, "The Morgues of the Crematoria at Birkenau in the Light of Documents," TR, 2(3) (2004), pp. 271-294. 518 Cf. G. Rudolf, "Aspects of Biological Warfare During World War II," TR, 2(1) (2004), pp. 88-90. 519 For document excerpt with source see ibidem. 229 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 51: Photo of microwave delousing device in the reception building of the Auschwitz main camp, summer 1944. R: Yes. This is called psychological warfare. Remember that the truth is the first victim in every war. The extent of the German effort to improve hygienic conditions at Auschwitz is evident from an amazing decision made in 1943/44. During the war, the Ger- mans developed microwave ovens, not just to sterilize food, but to delouse and disinfect clothing as well. The first operational microwave apparatus was in- tended for use on the eastern front, to delouse and disinfect soldiers' clothing. After direct war casualties, infectious diseases were the second greatest cause of casualties of German soldiers. But instead of utilizing these new devices at the eastern front, the German government decided to use them in Auschwitz to protect the lives of the inmates, most of whom were Jews.520 When it came to protecting lives threatened by infectious disease, the Germans obviously gave priority to the Auschwitz prisoners. Since they were working in the Silesian war industries, their lives were apparently considered similarly important to the war effort as the lives of soldiers on the battlefield. But let's get back to Zyklon B. Now I will have to pester you with a little chemistry, but I promise to keep it to a minimum. As you know, it is alleged that hundreds of thousands of human beings were murdered in homicidal gas 520 Hans Jürgen Nowak, Werner Rademacher, "Some Details of the Central Construction Office of Auschwitz," in: G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 311-336, here 312-324; see also Hans Lamker, "Die Kurzwellen-Entlausungsanlagen in Auschwitz, Teil 2," VffG, 2(4) (1998), pp. 261-273; a sum- mary was published by M. Weber, "High Frequency Delousing Facilities at Auschwitz," JHR 18(3) (1999), pp. 4-12. 230 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST chambers at Auschwitz, using cyanide gas in the form of the pesticide Zyklon B. The question that now arises is: Could this poisonous gas have left traces in these alleged chemical slaughter houses that might still be detectable today? L: Isn't hydrogen cyanide a highly volatile liquid? R: Yes it is. L: Well then after a few days we would no longer expect to find traces of it, and certainly not today. R: If we were looking for hydrogen cyanide itself we would no longer find traces of it. But what if it reacted with certain materials in the wall during the fumiga- tion? What if it underwent a chemical change and formed new compounds that are much more stable? Does anyone know which compounds these could be? The products of reaction that interest us are the iron salts of hydrogen cyanide, called iron cyanides. In nature, iron is found almost everywhere. Iron gives bricks their red color and makes sand ocher and clay reddish brown. If it were not for iron, all these things would be a uniform gray. To be more exact, we are talking about iron oxide, more popularly known as rust. There is hardly a ma- sonry wall anywhere which is not composed of at least one percent rust, since it is present in sand, gravel, clay, and cement. The iron cyanides have always been known for their extraordinary stability, one of which is especially well known. This cyanide salt is called Iron Blue, Prussian blue, or Berlin Blue and has been one of the most common blue pig- ments for centuries. It is known as one of the most stable pigments of all. Once it has formed within a wall, Iron Blue is as stable as the wall itself since it is one of the most stable elements of the wall.521 In short: once Iron Blue forms in a wall, it stays there as long as the wall stands. L: And is this Iron Blue formed from hydrogen cyanide? R: Yes, under certain circumstances. The German term for hydrogen cyanide ­ Blausäure (blue acid) ­ comes from the color of the compound which results from its reaction with iron salts. Let me give you an example of such a reac- tion: In 1976, the protestant church at Wiesenfeld in Bavaria was renovated, and in the summer of 1977 they were faced with a disaster: Huge blue splotches were forming all over the new interior plaster. Chemical analyses in- dicated that all the new plaster was full of this Iron Blue compound. It turned out that, in order to kill various wood pests that had infested the church's gal- lery as well as the structural woodwork for the choir section, the church had been gassed with Zyklon B a few weeks after application of the new plaster. The hydrogen cyanide had reacted with the rust in the sand of the plaster and formed Iron Blue.522 L: But if such reactions were normal, all the walls in every building ever gassed with Zyklon B would have turned blue, and people would have soon stopped using this Zyklon B treatment. 521 For a detailed proof of this see chapter "6.6. Stability of Iron Blue " in my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), pp. 170-180. 522 Helmut Weber in: G. Zimmermann (ed.), Bauschäden Sammlung, vol. 4, Forum-Verlag, Stuttgart 1981, pp. 120f., Engl. translation in G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), 557-561. 231 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: That's right. As a rule, there are no such problems connected with expo- sure to hydrogen cyanide. Basically, a moist and relatively fresh plaster surface or wall structure is necessary in order for Iron Blue to form after a single gassing. But fumigations normally occur only in buildings that have stood for many years, since new buildings are not normally infested with pests. Furthermore most buildings are kept warm and dry. The blue discoloration of this church was therefore an exception But I have to make a big exception to this exception as well, since blue discoloration is the rule in some cases. L: Where ­ in homicidal gas chambers? R: Bad guess. I am speaking of Zyklon B delousing chambers during the Ill. 52: In August 1976, this Evangelical Third Reich. As we have seen, Zyk- church at D-96484 Meeder-Wiesenfeld lon B was used to kill the insect car- (above) was gassed with Zyklon B. Sub- sequently, the plaster turned blue all riers of several diseases. Sometimes over (cf. Ill. 53). this occurred in professionally con- structed chambers designed specifi- cally for this purpose and at other times, ordinary rooms were used temporarily for delousing. After the war, many concentration camps were simply leveled to the ground. In others, existing buildings were dismantled and their materials used for reconstruction of destroyed cit- ies. A few have been preserved to Ill. 53: Ink-blue spot on plaster of a this day, however. Ill. 54-61 show church that had been treated with hydro- how they look like (see color photos gen cyanide. at the back cover of this book). L: I recall that the delousing chambers in Dachau Concentration Camp did not have this blue coloration. Does that mean that these chambers were never used? R: Your observation is correct, but the reason is that the walls of the Dachau chambers were treated with waterproof paint so that the hydrogen cyanide could not penetrate. With the walls pictured above, this was not the case. 232 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 54: Interior wall, northwest, of Zyklon Ill. 55: Exterior wall, southwest, of Zyklon B delousing wing of building BW 5a in B delousing wing of building BW 5b in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Ill. 56: Zyklon B delousing installation, Ill. 57: Zyklon B delousing installation, chamber III (east wall), of building 41 in chamber II (west wall), building 41 in Ma- Majdanek. (© C. Mattogno523) jdanek. (© C. Mattogno523) This blue coloration of masonry walls is therefore the rule rather than the ex- ception for delousing chambers. This must be especially true of unprotected wall s of structures that were built expressly for purposes connected with exposure to hydrogen cyanide ­ structures that were repeatedly exposed from the begin- ning and over a long period of time. Massive and continuous fumigations with hydrogen cyanide in special delous- ing chambers really began only with the Second World War. These large scale applications of hydrogen cyanide ended abruptly with the end of the war, the invention of DDT, the closing of the National Socialist camps, and the dissolu- tion of the company that produced and distributed Zyklon B (DEGESCH was a daughter of I.G. Farbenindustrie AG). No one paid any attention to the obvious "damage" that had occurred to the walls of former delousing chambers. The subject did not come up in the litera- ture of the construction industry until the incident at the Bavarian church quoted above. 523 Taken from Jürgen Graf, Carlo Mattogno, Concentration Camp Majdanek, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2003, photos XIII, XIV, XIX (www.vho.org/GB/Books/ccm); see also the picture in Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know, Little, Brown & Co., Boston 1993, p. 138. 233 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 58: Large Zyklon B delousing cham- Ill. 59: Zyklon B delousing installation, ber, ceiling, building 41 in Majdanek chambers II and III (exterior walls), build- camp. (© C. Mattogno523) ing 41 in Majdanek camp. (© Carlo Mat- togno524) Ill. 60: Zyklon B delousing chamber in Ill. 61: Zyklon B delousing chamber in Stutthof camp, interior seen from the Stutthof camp, exterior east wall. (© Carlo Mattogno525) southern door. (© Carlo Mattogno525) The question that now arises is whether blue coloration and thus the consequent analytical evidence of Iron Blue would have occurred in homicidal gas cham- bers similar to the delousing chambers, if homicidal chambers had existed. Af- ter all, they are supposed to have been built expressly for this purpose, gone into operation immediately after construction, and are said to have been used uninterruptedly over a long period, if we are to believe the witness reports. L: But you cannot compare gassing humans with delousing operations! R: I would say we can compare them but not equate them. I have summarized several characteristics of Zyklon B or hydrogen cyanide in Table 9.526 You will notice that humans are much more sensitive to hydrogen cyanide than are pests such as lice. This comparison is a bit misleading, however, because, in a way, apples are being compared to oranges here. The data on insects refers to the ex- posure necessary to thoroughly eradicate them along with their eggs and larvae, while the information on humans marks the threshold at which hydrogen cya- 524 Taken from G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), color section, received from Carlo Mattogno. 525 Taken from Jürgen Graf, Carlo Mattogno, Concentration Camp Stutthof, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2003, photos 13 & 14 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/ccs). 526 For this see besides the sources mentioned in note 126 also the various sources mentioned in my expert report, op. cit. (note 415). 234 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 9: Characteristics of the Pesticide Zyklon B A fumigant for combating pests (insects, rodents) Effective Ingridients: Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) blocks the cellular respiration enzyme ferro- cytochrom oxidase through reversible addition to Fe3+. As warning agent, several percent of a gaseous irritant is added, since some people cannot smell HCN. For humans: 1 mg CN­ per kg of body weight; for insects: 10 mg/kg or Fatal Dose: more. Lethal percentage in air: For humans 0.01-0.02 vol.% within ½ to 1 hour; for lice 1 vol.% within 1 to 2 hours (this would be fatal for humans in a few minutes.) Types of packaging: Absorbed in cardboard discs, gypsum granules (brand name Ercco, the principal wartime brand) and diatomaceous earth (Diagrieß, abandoned in the late 1930s) in metal cans requiring a special opener. Around 2/3 of total contents was the carrier substance. Vaporization time: At temp. 15-20°C, 10% in first 5-10 minutes. Vaporization is intense during the first 1.5 to 2 hrs. Method of Application Preparation laid out in space to be fumigated while wearing gas masks. Slow vaporization allows workers to exit safely. Ventilation begins after 2 hours earliest, since HCN is still present in carrier substance. Prevalence: Between WWI and WWII and before the invention of DDT (beginning of the 1940s, in Germany only after WWII) it was the most widely used pesticide in the world. Areas of application: Used for fumigation of ships, freight trains, gristmills, silos, food warehouses; living areas in military barracks, prisoner/concentration camps, large public buildings, etc. Under the name Cyanosil® only in special situations where modern Present day use: chemical fumigants cannot be applied. nide is fatal. It is a kind of lower safety threshold. Nevertheless the fact remains that significantly less hydrogen cyanide per kg of body weight would be re- quired to kill people than lice. L: Doesn't that mean that for homicidal gassings a lot less hydrogen cyanide would have been required for a shorter period of time? R: That depends on what we accept as parameters of such gassings. L: Well, let us take all that we have, that is to say: the witness reports. R: OK, that would mean that death occurred in a couple of minutes.527 If we con- sider that it takes 10 to 15 minutes to kill a human with hydrogen cyanide in an American execution chamber using gas concentrations similar to those of de- lousing chambers,528 then what does that mean? L: Then we would need still more gas in order to cause death more quickly. R: And we would have to use at least ten times as much Zyklon B in the gas chamber as would be fatal, because in the first few minutes, only about 10% of the absorbed hydrogen Cyanide (HCN) evaporates. L: And the hydrogen cyanide would continue to evaporate for at least two hours. R: That's exactly right. 527 See the list of witness statements in my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), fn 465, pp. 208f. 528 Conrad Grieb (aka Friedrich Paul Berg), "Der selbstassistierte Holocaust-Schwindel," VffG, 1(1) (1997), pp. 6ff. (Engl.: "The Self-assisted Holocaust Hoax," www.vho.org/GB/c/FPB/SelfAssisted.html) 235 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Unless of course the gas chamber was equipped with powerful ventilators to remove the gas quickly. R: But this was not the case. According to prevailing descriptions, the gas cham- bers in the bunkers as well as Crematories IV and V at Birkenau had no venti- lation whatsoever. L: How likely is it that the Germans would have been constantly handling poison gas in these rooms and never install ventilation fans? R: I report the facts, you draw conclusions. L: But the delousing chambers at Auschwitz had ventilation fans, right? R: They certainly did.529 L: In a homicidal gas chamber, it would be absurd not to install a ventilation sys- tem that was at least as efficient as that in a delousing chamber. R: Yes, but it would be absurd to gas millions of people anyway, so what do you expect? L: Technical impossibilities do not suddenly become possible just because people act crazy. A crazy person who thinks he can fly does not suddenly grow wings on that account. L: But this has nothing to do with absurdity. You don't need ventilation to apply Zyklon B. The Bavarian church that was fumigated by exterminators as men- tioned before had no ventilation either. R: You are right, but the church was exposed to gas only a single time. Afterwards it was aired out for several days by opening doors and windows. But here we are told that these so-called gas chambers were exposed to gas for months and years on end, sometimes several times a day, and the corpses removed immedi- ately, with little or no time for airing. L: But the gas chambers in the main camp and in the crematories II and III in Birkenau were equipped with a ventilation system! R: That's right, but their ventilation system had been designed for morgues. They were designed, constructed, and outfitted as morgues. A delousing chamber is recommended by expert literature to have a ventilation system with seven times this capacity. Keep in mind that the other rooms in the Birkenau crematories II and III also had ventilation systems. Strangely enough, these systems had greater capacities than those of the morgues, which we are now told were homicidal gas chambers.530 L: Are you saying that the SS equipped the alleged homicidal gas chambers at crematories II and III with the smallest capacity ventilation systems? R: That is correct. L: This gets more absurd all the time. R: Not at all, if you remember that these rooms were planned, constructed, and equipped to be morgues. L: The bottom line is, there were ventilation systems in the gas chambers of cre- matories I, II, and III. It would have been possible to remove the poison gas. 529 Cf. e.g. the ventilation openings in the HCN delousing wings of buildings BW 5a and BW 5b as de- scribed by Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 59f. 530 Carlo Mattogno, "Auschwitz: The End of a Legend," in: G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 9). 236 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: That may be, but several more hours would pass before the gas dissipated, since it was still being released by the carrier.531 L: As I see it, your argument is that the circumstances of homicidal gassings, as claimed by witnesses, are very similar to those associated with insect fumiga- tions. R: Exactly. The time that the gas was in contact with the walls may have been somewhat shorter during the alleged homicidal gassings than during insect fu- migations, but other factors would have tended to offset this. For example, the unheated cellar morgues of Crematories II and III, the alleged homicidal gas chambers, were very damp. The walls of the delousing chambers, on the other hand, were dry, since they were above ground and heated. Hydrogen cyanide accumulates much more readily in a damp wall than a dry one. In short: The prevailing conditions in the cellar morgues of Crematories II and III (allegedly used for mass murders) were such that we would have to expect similar ten- dencies to form Iron Blue as in the delousing chambers.532 And now for the results of our analyses.533 L: This is getting to be really interesting. R: The first, white block in Table 10 (p. 237) contains samples from rooms, or ruins of rooms, which are claimed to have served as homicidal gas chambers. The second block, which is beneath it and shaded in gray, contains samples from walls of delousing chambers. The third block, which is white again, con- tains samples from other walls or buildings, which had nothing to do with ei- ther homicidal gas chambers or delousing chambers. L: Wow! The concentrations in the delousing chambers are a thousand times those in the alleged homicidal gas chambers! L: But the results from the alleged homicidal chambers are not zero. This means that there are cyanide traces in them as well. This proves that people were gassed there! R: Don't be so quick to judge! The traces of cyanide found there are present in the same amounts as in rooms which were only occasionally fumigated, such as inmate huts, or never fumigated at all, such as the Bavarian farmhouse or the washroom in Crematory I. If such minute traces are proof of homicidal gassing, does that mean there were other "Auschwitzes" we don't know about, like in some Bavarian farmhouses? L: Not likely. R: And besides, just look at the results of the attempts to reproduce these minute amounts in Rudolf samples #3 and 8, second value. 531 Cf. chapter "7.3.2.2. Speed of Ventilation of the `Gas Chambers'" in my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), pp. 220-230. 532 For a detailed discussion of all factors see chapter "6.5. Formation of Iron Blue" and "6.7. Influence of Various Building Materials" in my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), pp. 159-170, 180-189; see also my articles "Fantasies of a Biochemist" and "Green sees Red" in G. Rudolf, C. Mattogno, Auschwitz-Lies, op. cit. (note 9). 533 Leuchter: cf. op. cit. (note 163); Rudolf: cf. op. cit. (note 415), pp. 156f.; Ball: John Clive Ball, The Ball Report, Ball Resource Services Ltd., Delta, BC, Canada, 1993. The values given by Ball are aver- age values of several samples taken from the buildings indicated. 237 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 10: Cyanide concentrations in the walls of alleged homicidal gas chambers and delousing chambers at Auschwitz/Birkenau - No. Location Sampler c[CN ] mg/kg 1-7 Crematory II, mortuary 1 (`gas chamber') Leuchter 0.0 8 Crematory III, mortuary 1 (`gas chamber') Leuchter 1.9 9 Crematory III, mortuary 1 (`gas chamber') Leuchter 6.7 10,11 Crematory III, mortuary 1 (`gas chamber') Leuchter 0.0 13,14 Crematory IV, remnants of foundation wall Leuchter 0.0 15 Crematory IV, remnants of foundation wall Leuchter 2.3 16 Crematory IV, remnants of foundation wall Leuchter 1.4 17-19 Crematory IV, remnants of foundation wall Leuchter 0.0 20 Crematory IV, remnants of foundation wall Leuchter 1.4 21 Crematory V, remnants of foundation wall Leuchter 4.4 22 Crematory V, remnants of foundation wall Leuchter 1.7 23,24 Crematory V, remnants of foundation wall Leuchter 0.0 25 Crematory I, mortuary (`gas chamber') Leuchter 3.8 26 Crematory I, mortuary (`gas chamber') Leuchter 1.3 27 Crematory I, mortuary (`gas chamber') Leuchter 1.4 29 Crematory I, mortuary (`gas chamber') Leuchter 7.9 30 Crematory I, mortuary (`gas chamber') Leuchter 1.1 31 Crematory I, mortuary (`gas chamber') Leuchter 0.0 1 Crematory II, mortuary 1 (`gas chamber') Rudolf 7.2 2 Crematory II, mortuary 1 (`gas chamber') Rudolf 0.6 3 Crematory II, mortuary 1 (`gas chamber') Rudolf 6.7/0.0 3 Crematory II, mortuary 1 (`gas chamber') Ball 0.4 4 Crematory III, mortuary 1 (`gas chamber') Ball 1.2 5 White Farm House, remnants of foundation Ball 0.07 6 Crematory V, remnants of foundation wall Ball 0.1 32 Delousing Room B1a BW 5a, inside Leuchter 1,050.0 9 Delousing Room B1a BW 5a, inside Rudolf 11,000.0 11 Delousing Room B1a BW 5a, inside Rudolf 2,640.0/1,430.0 12 Delousing Room B1a BW 5a, inside Rudolf 2,900.0 13 Delousing Room B1a BW 5a, inside Rudolf 3,000.0 14 Delousing Room B1a BW 5a, outside Rudolf 1,035.0 15a Delousing Room B1a BW 5a, outside Rudolf 1,560.0 15c Delousing Room B1a BW 5a, outside Rudolf 2,400.0 16 Delousing Room B1b BW 5b, outside Rudolf 10,000.0 17 Delousing Room B1b BW 5b, inside Rudolf 13,500.0 18 Delousing Room B1b BW 5a, wood from door jamb Rudolf 7,150.0 19a Delousing Room B1b BW 5b, inside Rudolf 1,860.0 19b Delousing Room B1b BW 5b, inside Rudolf 3,880.0 20 Delousing Room B1b BW 5a, inside Rudolf 7,850.0 22 Delousing Room B1b BW 5a, inside Rudolf 4,530.0 1 Delousing Room B1b BW 5b, inside and outside Ball 3,170.0 2 Delousing Room B1b BW 5a, inside and outside Ball 2,780.0 28 Crematory I, Washroom Leuchter 1.3 5 Inmate barracks Rudolf 0.6 6 Inmate barracks Rudolf <0.1 7 Inmate barracks Rudolf 0.3 8 Inmate barracks Rudolf 2.7/0.0 23 Inmate barracks Rudolf 0.3 24 Inmate barracks Rudolf 0.1 25 Untreated brick from collapsed Bavarian Farmhouse Rudolf 9.6/9.6 Concentrations are in mg of cyanide (CN­) per kg of building material (brick, mortar, concrete, plaster). Cyanide values of less than 10 mg/kg are uncertain, samples returning values of less than 1-2 mg are considered cyanide-free. If two values are given, the second value gives the result of a control analysis performed by a different company. 13500 238 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Those values could not be re- produced. R: Exactly. L: But those prisoner barracks we 12000 see in Birkenau nowadays ­ are they actually original? R: They are new construction, built 1 000 1 with materials of unknown ori- gin, like the foundation walls of Crematories IV and V. 10000 L: So, these values too indicate 10000 only that the values are too small to be interpreted. R: These are exactly the results of this forensic investigation: the traces of cyanide in the alleged homicidal gas chambers are too 8000 7850 small to be interpreted. If the testimonies of witnesses were truthful, there would have to be 7150 mg CN-/kg traces of cyanide in concentra- tions comparable to those in the delousing chambers. L: But wasn't there another expert 6000 report done, by an institute in Krakow? R: There certainly was.534 I delib- erately omitted their results 4530 here, because the Polish re- searchers committed fraud. 4000 L: That's a serious charge. R: Yes but it is justified, and I would like to explain why. In 3170 3000 analyzing their wall samples, the 2900 2780 2640 scientists involved in this report intentionally used a procedure that is incapable of indicating 2000 stable iron cyanide compounds of the Iron Blue type. According to their own testimony they did 1050 1035 534 J. Markiewicz, W. Gubala, J. Labedz, Z Zagadnien Nauk Sadowych, Z XXX (1994) pp. 17-27 1 0.4 1 7.2 0.6 6.7 9.6 0 .3 .2 (www2.ca.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/polish/ 0 institute-for-forensic-research/post- L1 L28 B3 B4 R1 R2 R3 R25L32 B1 B2 R9 R1 2 R1 4R1 R1 8R20R22 -7 1R1 3R1 6 7R1 leuchter.report). 239 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST this on purpose. Because they could not imagine how such stable iron cyanide compounds could have been formed, they ruled out that they could be formed at all.535 L: Well, it is no disgrace to be unable to understand something. R: No, it certainly is not. In a sense, a lack of understanding is the beginning of all research. When a scientist realizes that he does not understand something, it motivates him to discover what he did not know before. But this was not the case with the Krakow scientists. They used their ignorance as justification for failing to investigate. Did you ever hear that inability to understand something was a reason not to investigate it? This was obviously the case with the Krakow scientists. It would be scientifically permissible to exclude Iron Blue from the analysis only if one could categorically exclude the possibility that the reaction of hydrogen cyanide on masonry walls can produce Iron Blue. These Krakow scientists completely failed to do this. Worse still: Not a single time did they at- tempt to refute my proof that Iron Blue can be formed by exposure of masonry walls to hydrogen cyanide. I had published these findings in spring 1993,536 and the Krakow scientists were obviously familiar with them, since they quoted them. They did not quote them in order to discuss or refute my theses, how- ever. By their own admission, they discussed them only as an example of the "satanic" efforts of the "deniers" and Hitler's "whitewashers," who the Krakow scholars were attempting to refute. L: It sounds like these Krakow scientists were not interested in finding out what happened, they were merely interested in undermining revisionism in any way they could. R: That is their declared political intent, and this should suffice to show that the efforts of these Krakow scientists around Prof. Dr. Jan Markiewizcz are ideo- logically motivated to the highest degree. If they were objective scientists they would have utilized a proper and comprehensible method of analysis. They would have objectively discussed my published research on the subject rather than blathering about "Hitler's whitewashers." Furthermore the Krakow group did not even attempt to explain the high con- centrations of cyanide and blotchy blue surface of the walls in the delousing chambers. L: So you are saying the Krakow group came up with a method of analysis that would produce the results they wanted? R: That is exactly what they did. If you delete what you are looking for from the methods used to demonstrate its presence, you are not going to find it. The re- sult of their efforts was that they found the same infinitely small amounts of unstable cyanide in the delousing chambers that they found in the alleged homicidal gas chambers. This is not surprising, since unstable compounds are obviously not stable, and therefore not to be expected after 50 years. From the 535 See me response "Polish Pseudo-Scientists" in G. Rudolf, C. Mattogno, Auschwitz-Lies, op. cit. (note 9). 536 Ernst Gauss (=G. Rudolf), Vorlesungen über Zeitgeschichte, Grabert, Tübingen 1993, pp. 163-170; 290-294 (www.vho.org/D/vuez). 240 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST similarity of these minute amounts of unstable cyanide salts, they concluded: see here, the concentrations in the delousing chambers are about the same as those in the homicidal gas chambers! Therefore, the same amount of HCN gas was used in the homicidal gas chambers as in the delousing chambers. L: Wow, that takes your breath away! R: Yes but that is still not the end of it. Several years before, the Krakow group had analyzed a similar collection of samples. The results were so disturbing for them ­ so much cyanide in the samples from the delousing chambers, so little in those from the morgues ­ that they decided to suppress the results of their initial investigations. They never published them. It was only through an indis- cretion that this data was released to the public, in 1991.537 Hence, the Krakow group rejected their first series of tests and began a new series, until they fi- nally produced results that supported their political concepts. L: And how do the Krakow scientists respond to your charges? R: The leader of this pseudo-scientific group, Dr. Jan Markiewicz, died in 1997. By the way, he was nothing more than a "specialist for technical analysis." The others have kept quiet since his death. L: The Krakow group must have been really desperate to resort to such methods. R: Unfortunately they belong to what is considered respectable society. When it comes to forensic investigations of the "Auschwitz Gas Chambers" there is a lot of hanky-panky. For instance, a PhD chemist ignores the most basic chemi- cal rules in order to produce predefined results.538 The German Press Agency dpa doesn't hesitate to invent the opinion of non-existing experts in an attempt to make me look silly;539 and then the bureaucrats in the Orwellian "Agency for the Protection of the Constitution" of Germany distribute this false news re- lease for years, knowing full well that they are lies.540 Next a professor of chemistry and head of a laboratory tells a brazen lie on camera, disclaiming the results of his own research when it becomes clear that his research supports re- visionist views.541 Finally a PhD chemist defends the Krakow forgers by saying 537 J. Markiewicz, W. Gubala, J. Labedz, B. Trzcinska, Expert Report, Prof. Dr. Jan Sehn Institute for Forensic Reserach, department for toxicology, Krakow, Sept. 24, 1990; partially published, e.g. in: "An official Polish report on the Auschwitz `gas chambers,'" Journal of Historical Review, 11(2) (1991), pp. 207-216. 538 Josef Bailer, "Der Leuchter-Bericht aus der Sicht eines Chemikers," in: Dokumentationszentrum des österreichischen Widerstandes, Bundesministerium für Unterricht und Kultur (eds.), Amoklauf gegen die Wirklichkeit, Vienna 1991, pp. 47-52; see my critque in my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), pp. 269f.; as well as more detailled in my article "Lüge und Auschwitz-Wahrheit" in G. Rudolf, Auschwitz- Lügen, op. cit. (note 168), pp. 189-231. 539 See in my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), pp. 179f., 385-387; more detailed "Fälscherwerkstatt dpa," in G. Rudolf, Auschwitz-Lügen, op. cit. (note 168), pp. 117-130. 540 Cf. Bayerisches Staatsministerium des Innern, Verfassungsschutzbericht 1997, Munich 1998, pp. 64. When it was pointed out to that authority that the factual claims by the dpa were incorrect by revision- ist historian Hans-Jürgen Witzsch (letter of Oct. 8, 1998), they responded as follows: "Your efforts to deny or relativize the NS crimes has been known to the security services for years. [...] We have no reason to discuss the gas chambers." Letter by Dr. Weber of Bayerisches Staatsministerium des Innern from Oct. 13, 1998, ref. IF1-1335.31-1. It cannot get more brainless. 541 Cf. chapter "8.4.3. The Memory Hole" in my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), pp. 273-276. 241 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the Poles must never lower themselves to debate with "Holocaust deniers" like Germar Rudolf.542 L: So they clam up and threaten with the penal law instead. R: That's exactly what happened. The good German judges confiscate all copies of expert forensic reports that arrive at politically unacceptable conclusions.543 This is the way modern Germany solves scientific disagreements: by legal re- pression. Quite simple. 3.4.7. Those Pesky Zyklon Holes R: Now let us turn our attention to architecture or, to be precise, the question of how poison gas could have been introduced into the rooms which are claimed to have been "gas chambers." First, however, I would like to disregard what of- ficial historiography says on this subject, and stick to the laws of reason and logic. Imagine the following: You have a crematory with a cellar which was designed to be a morgue, but you decide to use it as an execution chamber in- stead. That is what is alleged to have happened at Crematories II and III in Birkenau. Unfortunately the idea of using your morgue as an execution cham- ber occurred to you only after it had almost been finished, so the official story goes. L: But isn't it true that these crematories were not built until the fall of 1942, when full scale exterminations of Jews in other buildings had already been un- derway for almost a year? R: That is true if you believe the official version of what happened. L: But what kind of goofballs were they if they didn't think of using those cellars as gas chambers until they were almost finished? R: Very good, that is the first irrational point. Let's go on. This cellar morgue has no floors above it, only a layer of dirt about two feet thick. L: Why did they build those morgues underground in the first place? R: To keep them cool. This makes perfect sense if you are planning to use them to store corpses. This is also why they are far away from the hot furnace room. The roof of this cellar consists of three layers: a thick layer of concrete rein- forced with steel bars, above that an insulating layer of tar, and above that a thin concrete slab floating on top of the insulation, called concrete screed. In addition, this cellar has an air ventilation system that was also designed for a morgue. It allows fresh air to be introduced through numerous roof openings above the long walls connected to air ducts, and it allows stale air to be re- moved through outlets along the floor. The chimneys for both fresh and stale 542 Cf. chapter "8.4.4. The Moon is Made of Pizza," in my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), pp. 276-279, as well as the paper "Green sees Red," op. cit. (note 532). 543 The new German edition of my expert report, Das Rudolf Gutachten, Castle Hill Publishers, Hastings 2001, was put on the German list of banned media "endangering the youth" on Feb. 12, 2002, accord- ing to the German Minister for the Interior (ed.), Bundesverfassungsschutzbericht 2002, Berlin 2003, p. 98. A customer of mine who had ordered several copies of this report was prosecuted for it, which means that the book is not just banned for public distribution, but also ordered seized and destroyed. For more details about censorship in Germany see Lecture 5. 242 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 62: Ground plan of morgue I (alleged homicidal gas chamber) of crematories II and III (mirror symmetrical) in the Ausch- witz II/Birkenau camp. 544 a: morgue I, alleged "gas chamber," 30×7×2,41 m b: morgue II, alleged undressing room, 49,5×7,9×2,3 m c: rooms of former morgue III d: corpse lift to oven room on ground level e: exhaust air duct f: concrete pillars g: concrete support beam h: access to basement built at a later time Ill. 63 (bottom left): Cross section through morgue 1 (alleged homi- cidal gas chamber) of crematories II and III (mirror symmetrical) in Auschwitz-Birkenau.544 1: exhaust air duct; 2: fresh air duct; 3: soil air are located in a different part of the crematory and are easily accessible from the attic. You can see basement plans in Ill. 62f.544 Now here is the question: As an architect, what changes would you make in order to bring poison gas developed from Zyklon B into this cellar as quickly and evenly distributed as possible? L: Since there is already a duct designed for the even distribution of fresh air, I would modify it so that it would supply air mixed with poison gas instead. R: Are there other possibilities for modification? L: If we want to use Zyklon B, which releases its gas gradually, we should try to somehow place Zyklon B in a basket inside the fresh air duct so that the incom- ing air would pick up the gas as it passes over the Zyklon B. Since we already have easy access to the air intake chimney from the attic, this should not pre- sent a problem. 544 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 319-329. The numbers drawn into this plan indicate samples taken by me as listed in my expert report, cf. Table 10, p. 237. 243 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: And while we are on the subject of chimneys: divert some warm air from the crematory chimney and mix it with the incoming air so the hydrogen cyanide would vaporize more quickly. L: That arrangement would also allow us to "turn off" the poison gas so to speak, since one could simply shut off the ventilation and remove the Zyklon B basket from the air duct. L: And in addition, such a slight modification would leave hardly any trace, ex- cept for a little trapdoor in the intake chimney that wouldn't mean anything. R: You are all talking like real professionals ­ I hope none of you are experienced mass murderers. The problem is that they say the SS did not solve the problem this way. Instead, they are supposed to have acted like the proverbial Citizens of Schilda from a German fairy tale, who tried to carry sacks full of sunlight into their house in an attempt to light it, because they had forgotten to equip their house with windows.545 Jokes aside now. According to the politically correct version of what happened, the SS did the following: First, they removed the two feet thick layer of dirt from the cellar roof. Then they took hammers and chisels and broke through the concrete screed at four places... L: But that is absurd. Such a thin layer of concrete would crack all over if you took hammers and chisels to it! R: That is Absurdity Number 2. Then we are told that the SS removed the insulat- ing layer of tar... L: ...So that rainwater could come into the cellar? There is Absurdity Number 3. R: ...and then they are supposed to have knocked out four square holes ranging from one to two and a half feet on a side, depending on the witness. L: Through thick steel-reinforced concrete? They must have enjoyed chiseling through concrete! That's Absurdity Number 4. And the result of all this devas- tation was supposed to somehow facilitate the introduction of Zyklon B? R: That is what they say. L: How would you seal off such crude holes knocked through a concrete roof? Think of all the poison gas they were allegedly playing around with. And then the water seal would have been destroyed, and the cellar would have filled with water and mud at the first rainy spell. R: The best way to keep out water and mud would have been to build little brick chimneys around the holes, sealed with tar. A temporary alternative might have been wooden shafts sealed with tar. L: And after they had dumped Zyklon B through these little chimneys onto the people below, how did they stop the gas from vaporizing, after everybody was dead? R: They didn't worry about that. The Zyklon B would have been lying between the dead bodies, merrily releasing more HCN. L: There is Absurdity Number 5. 545 A German fairy tale in the imaginary town of Schilda who do everything in the most irrational way imaginable. 244 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: As a matter of fact, the great minds are debating whether there might not have been something called "wire mesh push-in device" (Drahtnetzeinschubvorrich- tung).546 The prevailing opinion is that it was a kind of an interlaced wire mesh column. With this sieve like apparatus, they say it was possible to lower Zyk- lon B into the cellar and then pull it out again.547 L: A wire mesh column in a cellar where hundreds of people are being murdered? R: Well the term may be a bit misleading. They were supposed to have been made of sheet iron. L: Well they certainly should have. With hundreds of people in a mortal panic, they would have to be solid steel and anchored in concrete so they would not be knocked down. R: That is right. According to witness Henryk Tauber, the dying victims actually demolished the entire equipment in the room:548 "The people going to be gassed and those in the gas chamber damaged the electrical installations, tearing the cables out and damaging the ventilation equipment." R: I have been concentrating here on Crematory II because its morgue, which is alleged to have been used as a homicidal gas chamber, is still relatively well preserved. At the end of the war the cellar was dynamited, and the force of the explosion blew the concrete roof off its supporting pillars. When the roof fell back down, these pillars knocked several holes in it, causing it to break into several large sections, mostly along the concrete center beam. Since that time, the cellar has been undisturbed for the most part, with exception of a few small alterations which we will discuss later on. Thus we can still examine the scene of the alleged crime. In the light of what we have discussed so far, what evi- dence would we expect to find? L: A great deal of evidence, and that is Absurdity Number 6. R: What evidence, precisely? L: The first of course would be four square shaped holes of the size described, cleared of iron reinforcement bars. Then I would look for remains of little shafts or chimneys, provided they had been of masonry construction. I would look for traces of mortar or concrete around the holes where these chimneys had been attached to the concrete roof. L: But if the chimneys had been made of wood, there would be nothing left to see. L: But if it was a masonry chimney, they would have had to clear the concrete screed and tar a certain distance away from the holes, to make room for the chimney. In any case, they would have to seal around the original layer of tar in order to build up a chimney. L: If there were really sheet metal insertion shafts, they would have had to attach them to the ceiling, floor, and supporting pillars as well, if these shafts were 546 Based on an entry of "4 Drahtnetzeinschubvorrichtungen" in the inventory of morgue 2, that is, the other morgue(!) of this crematory, cf. J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 430. 547 Such a contraption was described by Michal Kula during the Krakow Höß trial, files, vol. 2, pp. 99f. 548 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 483f. 245 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST next to the pillars. We should be able to observe where these sheet metal col- umns were attached to the concrete. R: OK, let's have a look at the roof of this cellar morgue. The first person who conducted a search for such traces and reported his findings was the Swedish revisionist Ditlieb Felderer. In 1980 he reported:549 "Obviously the hoaxers have paid token heed to the legend here, and have chiseled out two holes in the roof of gas chamber 2 [= morgue 1 of crematory II]. But the larger hole is so rough and sloppy that the rein- forced steel bars at the concrete are visibly projecting, and the mortar has obviously been chiseled." L: Well, it was to be assumed that the holes had been chiseled out. Ill. 64: Alleged hole for insertion of R: That's true, but not that reinforcement Zyklon B in roof of morgue 1 ("Gas bars were still in the holes. I was the Chamber") of Crematory II, entrance next person to inspect and record my to part of cellar still accessible today. findings, which I published in 1993. © Carlo Mattogno Let me summarize them here.550 When I inspected this roof in the summer of 1991, I too found only two holes, each bearing the chisel marks described by Felderer. They were roughly geo- metric in shape as you can see in Illustrations 64 and 65. All the others were obviously only irregular cracks in the concrete, holes punched through the roof by the pillars and the center beam. None of the holes showed any chisel traces and none had been cleared of the crisscrossing steel reinforcement bars. L: Two holes are two too few. R: But that is not all: In the opening shown in Illustration 65 the reinforcement bars were just cut and bent backwards. There is no way this hole could ever have been used as an insertion hole. It was never completed, it could not be sealed or closed, and no column or shaft could ever have been located there. Even the Holocausters assume that this hole had nothing to do with insertion of Zyklon B. L: Well then what was it for? R: It is assumed that this hole was knocked through the roof after the war, maybe because a Soviet or Polish investigatory commission wanted to see what was in the cellar, since the entrance had been buried by debris. There are other indica- 549 Ditlieb Felderer, "Auschwitz Notebook Part 2: Lids and Openings," JHR 1(3) (1980), pp. 255-266, here p. 265. 550 Cf. updated in G. Rudolf, op. cit. (note 415), pp. 113-134. 246 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST tions as well that the hole was not made until after the cellar was dynamited. The concrete speaks to us and can at least tell us when the hole was made. I discussed this matter with a construction professional, the court appointed expert and ac- credited engineer Walter Lüftl. Here is a summary of what he advised me concerning this problem late in the summer of 1991: "If one or more openings had been made in this con- crete roof after construction was complete, the roof would have been weakened and the structure of reinforcement bars interrupted. If the cellar Ill. 65: Alleged hole for insertion of Zyklon B had subsequently been dy- in roof of morgue 1 ("gas chamber") of Cre- namited, the resulting breaks matory II. It is clearly visible that it has not and cracks in the roof would been cleared of iron reinforcement bars. They all have run through the were simply bent backwards. © Carlo Mattogno opening or openings. The reason is that, since an explosion is a tremendous application of force, for- mation of cracks always begins at the weakest points, since the tension peaks reach extremely high values in areas where angles begin. This is particu- larly true of holes which had been made after original construction was completed. Such holes represent the points in the slab that are most likely to give way. In the cellars of Crematories II and III, the entire force of explosion was forced upward, causing heavy damage to the roofs. The hole under consid- eration is characterized by the fact that all the cracks and breaks of the slab are found around it, but do not go through it! According to the rules of con- struction technology this fact alone proves with scientific certainty that it was made after the roof had been destroyed." L: In other words, the condition of the roof is not original, it was altered after the war. R: That is unfortunately true. The true extent of the alterations is not known. There is an indirect indication of the condition of the roof at war's end in an expert report given by Polish Prof. Roman Dawidowski, however. This report was introduced in court during the 1947 Stalinist show trial of the former commandant of Auschwitz camp, Rudolf Höß, in Krakow on September 26, 1946. Dawidowski lists every possible "criminal traces" that could suggest the 247 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST cellar morgue had been used as a homicidal gas chamber, including objects that were probably found there.551 But as Mattogno points out, the Dawidowski re- port makes no mention of holes in the roof. In his expert report, the reason Dawidowski does not mention holes is because they had not yet been made when he inspected the cellar. Mattogno thinks they were made when the court undertook its own investigation, at which time the authorities broke through the roof in order to reach the interior of the cellar.552 The chisel marks on the edges of the hole in Illustration 64 do in fact resemble those on the edges of the hole in Illustration 65 so closely, that it must be as- sumed that both holes were made at the same time. L: This is so scary, it makes your hair stand on end! These cellar ruins actually represent their only physical evidence for the alleged mass murders! How can anyone simply come and arbitrarily manipulate physical evidence? It would be like a criminal investigator finding a suspected murder weapon like a gun, and then start scratching around inside the barrel. The grooves in a gun barrel are like fingerprints, you don't mess around with them. The same thing is true here: The original condition of this roof, specifically the question whether it contained holes, is critically important in determining whether the cellar was the scene of mass murder. If it is now proven that the Poles or Soviets knocked holes in the roof after the war, what value would the roof still have as evi- dence? How could you distinguish between holes chiseled out by Germans and alterations made by Poles or Soviets? This is a catastrophic situation, it is called destroying physical evidence! R: It might be that the Auschwitz museum has documents showing who made the holes, as well as when and why. If such documents exist, they have not been made available yet. L: Well, all that suggests there were originally no holes at all. R: That is my firm opinion. That circumstance was confirmed by mainstream cultural historian Prof. Robert J. van Pelt, who appeared as expert witness for architecture during the Irving trial, as I mentioned in chapter 2.18:553 "Today, these four small holes that connected the wire-mesh columns and the chimneys [on the roof of morgue 1, crematory II] cannot be observed in the ruined remains of the concrete slab. Yet does this mean they were never there? We know that after the cessation of the gassings in the Fall of 1944 all the gassing equipment was removed, which implies both the wire-mesh columns and the chimneys. What would have remained would have been the four narrow holes in the slab. While there is not certainty in this particular matter, it would have been logical to attach at the location where the col- umns had been some formwork at the bottom of the gas chamber ceiling, and pour some concrete in the holes, and thus restore the slab." 551 Höß trial, vol. 11, p. 45. 552 C. Mattogno, "`No Holes, No Gas Chamber(s),'" TR 2(4) (2004), pp. 387-410. 553 Pelt Report, introduced in the Irving trial, op. cit. (note 347), p. 295 (www.holocaustdenialontrial.com/evidence/van.asp). 248 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: First of all, Prof. van Pelt is cheating here, because there is no evidence at all that any "gassing equipment" was ever removed from anywhere. Based on his unfounded, false first claim, van Pelt then suggests that at the end of the war the SS also filled the alleged holes in order to deceive future researchers and then blew up the whole cellar. L: That doesn't make sense. If they intended to blow up the roof, why did they repair it in the first place? Is there any evidence for such a repair to the claimed holes at all? R: No. It would not have been possible to obscure the existence of pre-existing holes anyway, because holes filled with fresh concrete are still identifiable. There are no such holes, but at least Prof. van Pelt agrees with us revisionists that there is no evidence of the alleged holes. I would like to mention one more witness here, someone who contacted Mr. Ir- ving by email after conclusion of his court case against Deborah Lipstadt in May of 2000. This was an engineer named Paul Barford, who together with colleagues assisted the Auschwitz museum administration with preservation and restoration of the camp. He informed Irving that secret examinations of the holes were conducted during that trial by the museum and explained: "[...] despite spending half an hour examining the collapsed roof of the un- derground gas chamber of crematorium II from different angles, I found no evidence of the four holes that the eyewitnesses say were there [...]. I remain puzzled by the lack of physical evidence for these holes." L: This brings us back to the question of how Zyklon B is supposed to have been put in the so-called gas chamber. Maybe our theory of the hatch in the air sup- ply shaft was correct, after all. R: In that case they would have to declare all the witness testimonies false, and that would mean dropping their only existing evidence of the alleged gas chamber in the cellar. The consequence of this would be that all witness evi- dence of a "Holocaust" would be in question. This is what led Robert Faurisson to his early conclusion:554 "No Holes, no `Holocaust'" R: This conclusion produced a massive reaction on the part of the Holocausters, who promptly accepted the revisionist challenge in two publications. One of these was a private study by Charles Provan,555 while the other appeared in the world-renowned mainstream periodical Holocaust and Genocide Studies.556 L: Then it is not true that revisionist arguments are all being ignored. Obviously they are now being taken seriously, even in the loftiest circles. R: That is correct. Carlo Mattogno scrutinized Provan's private study very care- fully. In his critique he demonstrates that all the holes Provan thinks he has found, resulted from the dynamiting.552 Mattogno also prepared a detailed re- 554 Coined during the conference of the Institute for Historical Review in 1994. 555 C. Provan, op. cit. (note 490). 556 D. Keren, J. McCarthy, H.W. Mazal, op. cit. (note 490). 249 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST sponse to the study557 by Daniel Keren and col- leagues that had appeared in Holocaust and Geno- cide Studies. I may sum- marize some points in the following. First of all, Mattogno's critique of Provan's study was completely ignored in the Holocaust and Geno- cide article. Then the au- Ill. 66: Photo of Crematory II (Birkenau), Feb 1943.559 thors of the latter study themselves admitted: ­ that none of the holes were originally planned and competently made when the concrete was poured, but that we are dealing with subsequent damage to the concrete; Ill. 67: Section enlargement of part of Ill. 66 with ­ that all of the holes are outlines of cellar and scales. The width of the three located immediately objects in Ill. 66 shows variation between 50 and 75 cm. Furthermore the shade of the first object seen next to pillars, suggest- ing that the pillars made from left is significantly weaker than that of the oth- ers. them when the roof fell back down after having been blown in the air; ­ and that there are no traces of anchor points, on which the ominous wire mesh push-in de- Ill. 68: Schematic drawing of cellar morgue 1 of Crematory II. Lengthwise, the concrete center vices would have had to beam with 7 supporting pillars. Shown as crossing be secured. lines: Flow lines showing midpoint of the three ob- From a closer inspection jects found on the roof.558 Shaded rectangle: Loca- of the roof as well as all tion of the openings shown in Ill. 64 and 65. the photos, it is also evi- dent that ­ neither concrete screed nor insulation have been removed from around the existing holes and cracks; 557 Carlo Mattogno, "The Openings for the Introduction of Zyklon B," 2 parts, TR 2(4) (2004), pp. 411- 436. 558 Taken from Jean-Marie Boisdefeu, La controvers sur l'extermination des Juifs par les Allemands, vol. 1, Vrij Historisch Onderzoek, Berchem 1994, p. 168. 250 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ no traces of chisel marks are to be seen on any of the holes ­ except of course on those two dis- cussed before (Ill. 64f.); ­ there are no traces of mortar or concrete for Ill. 69: Blurred section enlargement of Keren et al. any kind of chimney to mislead the reader: the third object at the left was around the holes; and ignored.560 ­ the holes and cracks that were found were neither square nor did they have any kind of geometrical shape, nor had they been cleared of the iron rebars. L: But there are at least holes in the roof. R:Yes, but the decisive question is the following: How do I distinguish holes caused by the violent destruction of the roof from those that were in the roof before that, if there are no criteria to distinguish them? In other words: The the- sis lying on the very foundation of the argumentation of Keren et al. ­ original holes cannot be distinguished from cracks and holes caused by the destruction ­ immunizes their claim of the existence of original Zyklon B holes against any attempt at refutation. But that is the main characteristic of an unscientific the- sis. It is therefore proven: 1. At least one hole, if not two, were made after the roof had been destroyed. Maybe even forgers were at work here, trying to "help out" with the unsatis- factory evidentiary situation. 2. There is no evidence that there were any holes in the roof before it was dy- namited. All circumstantial evidence claimed can just as well have been cre- ated by the explosion and are therefore logically inadmissible. 3. If there had been holes in the roof before its destruction, with characteristics as claimed by witnesses and as required by construction technique and safety considerations, then these holes would have left traces behind, which would allow their identification even after the roof was dynamited. Because such traces cannot be found, it is a proven fact that the witnesses made false state- ments. At the end of this discussion I want to indicate that the three authors of the article in Holocaust and Genocide Studies even resorted to intentionally misin- terpreting photographs. That is evident from the fact that there are several war- time ground level photographs of the cellar. On one of these, taken on or about Feb. 10, 1943, shortly before crematory II was completed, several objects can be seen on the roof of the alleged gas chambers (see Ill. 66).559 From the sec- tion enlargement in Ill. 67 however, we recognize that these objects ­ have differing widths, ­ have shadows of differing darkness, 559 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), crematory II, p. 340, taken between Feb. 9-11, 1943; also in D. Czech, op. cit. (note 510), p. 454. 251 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 70: Photo of crematory II taken on Jan. 20, 1943, from a similar perspec- tive as Ill. 66, obviously without the mystery objects.561 ­ and are all located very closely together, which contradicts the theory of an equal distribution of four chimneys on the roof (Ill. 68). In addition, the sectional enlargement by Daniel Keren (Ill. 69) is of such an inferior quality that one can barely determine the widths of the objects.560 They also ignore the third object from the right, since this would contradict the the- ory of an equal distribution of small chimneys. Furthermore there are no objects in another photo of this cellar roof taken Jan. 20, 1943, as is clear in Ill. 70. This picture was taken about three weeks before the one in Ill. 66.561 L: Well then what could the objects be, if not chimneys for inserting Zyklon B? R: Since the crematory was in the final phase of construction at that time, it could have been construction items that were left there, for example. To conclude the discussion of these crematories, I would like to direct your attention to an absurdity. As already mentioned, official historiography claims that the crematories II and III were redesigned for homicidal purposes only at their final stage of construction. As circumstantial evidence for such homicidal planning some changes in the design made in late fall and winter of 1942 are emphasized. I will prove later that these changes were completely innocent and had nothing to do with murderous intentions. What I would like to highlight here is the following: If the SS, as claimed, started in late fall 1942 to redesign the crematories, how can it be explained that the reinforced concrete roof of morgue 1 of crematory II, which was poured in January 1943, did not received properly planned and designed Zyklon B introduction holes in its roof right from the start? L: Such goofballs are capable of anything. 560 D. Keren et al., op. cit. (note 490), pp. 80. 561 From D. Czech, op. cit. (note 510), p. 398, and J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 335. 252 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 71: Floor plan of crematory I, Auschwitz main camp, as originally planned. The morgue is alleged to have been used later as a gas chamber.562 1: ante- chamber; 2: laying out room; 3: wash room; 4: morgue; 5: oven room; 6: coke; 7: urns R: But with the efficiency of goofballs you can neither commit an efficient mass murder nor can you wage a war against the entire world for six years. Next I would like to discuss the old crematory in the main camp. We are told that its roof also had four rectangular openings chiseled through it for insertion of Zyklon B, although there is no claim of any wire mesh columns under these holes. L: So Zyklon B is supposed to have been dumped directly on the heads of the victims. R: That is right. Ill. 71 shows the floor plan of this crematory at the time when the room marked "Leichenhalle" (corpse hall = morgue) is supposed to have been used as a homicidal gas chamber.562 L: But there is no direct entrance to this morgue! R: No, at least none from the outside. The victims would have to enter the morgue either through the laying-out room and wash room, or else through the oven room. L: That means walking past dead bodies. That would not put the intended victims in a very cooperative frame of mind. R: For sure. We are told that four holes were knocked through the roof of this morgue. For a long time, no documentary evidence could be found for a venti- 562 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 151, 153. 253 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST lation system in this room, and so Franciszek Piper, director of the Auschwitz museum, assumed that there had been no such system. This was his opinion:563 "In the case of Krema I there were no ventilators. The doors were opened and the gas was allowed to ventilate by convection." L: But the morgue had no doors opening to the outside. R: What a pity! L: How can you operate a morgue without a ventilation system? R: Well, certainly more easily than a gas chamber, although it would have had a most unpleasant odor. L: Unpleasant, but not poisonous. R: Right, in contrast to hydrogen cyanide, which doesn't smell bad but is highly toxic. However, documents proving the existence of a ventilation system were re- cently discovered by Mattogno.564 A letter from the head of the Political De- partment (Maximilian Grabner) to the SS director of new construction dated June 7, 1941, reads as follows:565 "It is absolutely necessary that an appropriate ventilation system be in- stalled in the crematory morgue. The system that was in use until now has been made useless by the second oven. [...] The lack of ventilation and de- livery of fresh air is particularly noticeable in the present warm weather. It is hardly possible to remain in the morgue, even for short periods of time. [...] We therefore request that two ventilators be installed in the morgue, one air exhaust and one air intake fan. For the exhaust fan an additional duct must be built to the chimney." R: So you can see that as a matter of course, the SS equipped their morgues with functional ventilation systems. And by the way, the documents published by Mattogno show that bad air from the morgue was channeled into the main smokestack. So far we do not know how the fresh air was brought in, but it was probably through an opening in the roof. L: Well then, the SS would logically have installed ventilation systems in all those alleged execution rooms as well. Anything else would be unthinkable. R: You are absolutely right. All other statements would have to be rejected as false testimony. In 1944 the crematory building in the main camp, which had been out of opera- tion since summer 1943, was converted into an air raid shelter for the SS, as shown in Illustration 72.566 It is alleged that the holes for inserting Zyklon B were sealed at that time ­ assuming they had ever existed. There is a document that lists the work done in the course of this conversion to an air raid shelter.567 There is no mention of filling old openings in the roof, but 563 D.D. Desjardin, "My Visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 30-31, 1996," Interview with F. Piper (www.vho.org/GB/c/DDD/ndddausch.html). 564 C. Mattogno, Auschwitz: Krematorium I, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005. 565 RGVA, 502-1-312, p. 111, cf. C. Mattogno, ibid., Dok. 9. 566 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 156. 567 "Herstellung der für die Beheizungsöfen, sowie für die Ent- und Belüftung erforderlichen Mauerdurch- brüche und Schläuche," Letter of the head of Air Raid Shelters Auschwitz, Aug. 26, 1944, RGVA 502- 254 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 72: Floor plan of crematory 1 at Auschwitz main camp after conversion to air raid shelter in 1944.566 1: air lock; 2: surgery room; 3: former washroom, now room of air raid shelter with toilets; 4: air raid shelter rooms; 5: former oven room there is detailed description of the installation of gastight windows and doors as well as new openings to be made in the walls: "installation of gastight doors, shutters, and windows; openings in wall necessary for heaters and various ventilation ducts and hoses." L: According to that, there had not been gastight doors and windows, or openings in the walls before this time. R: That is the only way to interpret it, although there was probably an opening for a fresh air duct as part of the morgue ventilation system. However, this would not have sufficed for the various rooms of the air raid shelter. There was no direct access from outside to the rooms of the former morgue, until this conversion was completed. This air lock to the air raid shelter still ex- ists today, fraudulently called the "victims' entrance."568 L: How else could they make visitors think the victims found their way into the gas chambers? R: "No doors, no destruction" as Robert Faurisson so neatly expressed it. 1-401; cf. also "Erläuterungsbericht zum Ausbau des alten Krematoriums als Luftschutzbunker für SS- Revier mit einem Operationsraum im K.L.Auschwitz O/S. BW 98M," RGVA 502-2-147. 568 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 131f. 255 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: I have a question regarding the door drawn on the floor plan of the air raid shelter leading to the former oven room (Ill. 72). Was this door already there during the operation of this building as a crematory? R: Yes, as can be seen from situation plans of the years 1940 and 1942, even though the door Ill. 73: Swinging door between opened the other way around according to morgue (bottom) and oven these plans, see Ill. 73.569 But this door and the room (top) in crematory I in wall opening belonging to it were removed Auschwitz. Section of situation during the conversion of this building to an air plan of April 10, 1942, that is, at a time when the morgue is raid shelter, so the floor plan in Ill. 72 is faulty said to have been used as a in this regard. gas chamber.569 L: So there was either a swinging door or two doors, of which the one closer to the morgue opened into that morgue. R: Correct. L: That means that the gas chamber is finally finished. A swinging door can be made neither gastight nor panic-proof, and a door opening into an alleged homicidal gas chamber could not have been opened, because hundreds of corpses would have blocked it from the inside. R: Well observed! Illustration 74 is a ground plan of the crematory as it exists today. If we com- pare it with the layout of the air raid shelter (Ill. 72), we can see all the changes made by the Polish museum administration after the war.570 The museum claims this is an accurate reconstruction of the "gas chamber," but a compari- son with the original layout of the old crematory (Ill. 71) clearly shows this is not the case: ­ The entrance from the former morgue to the former oven room was created anew, because it had been walled up during the conversion to an air raid shel- ter in 1944. However, the new wall opening to the oven room is at the wrong place. It also has no door at all and has an odd shape. ­ The dividing wall of the original washroom, never part of the morgue or al- leged "gas chamber," has been misleadingly removed, thus making the "re- constructed gas chamber" even larger than the original morgue. ­ The entrance through the air lock to the air raid shelter was never removed. ­ Two non-functional cremation ovens without flues were reconstructed, using various parts of old ovens. ­ A new chimney was built, but not connected to the ovens. ­ Since they could find no holes for inserting Zyklon B, they made new ones and decorated them with little wooden chimneys and hatches. However, the 569 "SS-Neubauleitung, K.L. Auschwitz ­ Krematorium," Nov. 30, 1940; RGVA, 502-1-312, p. 135; "Bestandsplan des Gebäudes Nr. 47a B.W. 11, Krematorium," April 10, 1942; RGVA, 502-2-146, p. 21; taken from C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 564), docs. 1, 4; cf. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 557), p. 411. 570 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 159. 256 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 74: Ground plan of crematory I in main camp as it exists today, following post war alterations.570 1: "gas chamber"; 2: hatch for inserting Zyklon B; 3: sewer line for toilets; 4: former dividing wall between morgue and washroom, now removed; 5: ventilation shaft for air raid shelter; 6: air lock to air raid shelter, now called "victims' entrance;" 7: urns; 8: coke; 9: reconstructed oven;10: opening to oven room at wrong location (original location at dotted lines); 11: remains of old oven; 12: chimney dummy . spacing of these holes in the roof was done in relation to the new, oversized "gas chamber."571 L: But how could it happen that the locations of former holes were not known? It is not possible to make holes in a reinforced concrete roof disappear without a trace! R: This excuse is in fact rather lame. You can actually see several spots indicating former holes that had been filled in; but they are all round, not rectangular as claimed by the witnesses. One of them is even in an area outside the original morgue. The filled holes are not evenly distributed over the space (see Ill. 75). L: And what were the holes for, if not for inserting Zyklon B? R: In all probability, they were the holes mentioned in the above document. They were made in order to install ducts for a ventilation system and heater exhaust pipes in the rooms of the air raid shelter. The Auschwitz museum probably filled in the holes during its "reconstruction," since they did not fit into its scheme of things. L: So here again, "No holes, no Holocaust?" R: That is exactly right. This latest example of incompetence in "reconstructing gas chambers" caused Eric Conan to complain that they had done everything wrong, as mentioned on p. 145. 571 Ibid., p. 133. 257 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 75: Schematic floor plan of the morgue of crematory I with washing and surgery room (original situation). A,B,C,D: location of current openings in the roof made after the war. 1, 2, 3, and 4: location of original openings of the air raid shelter for ventilation and heating ducts, today closed.573 In 1994, the American revisionist David Cole indulged in a little joke by put- ting on a Jewish cap and making a video documentary on Auschwitz. L: And is David Cole Jewish? R: Well let's say he has Jewish parents, but he is not religious. First Cole taped a lady museum guide representing the "reconstruction" as a real gas chamber to him and other visitors. Next he interviewed Dr. Franciszek Piper, who was mu- seum director at the time. Confronted with so many absurdities and contradic- tions, Piper admitted in front of the camera that the "gas chamber" shown to tourists is not authentic. Thus Cole caught the museum in the act of lying, as they have been doing to millions of tourists, year in, year out.572 L: That is a particularly vicious Auschwitz lie. R: Yes, but this one is not punishable by law in Europe. 3.4.8. Documentary Evidence R: Now let us discuss some purely documentary evidence. When the Red Army captured the Auschwitz camp on January 27, 1945, the entire files of the Cen- tral Construction Office fell into their hands, everything that had to do with construction and maintenance of the camp. The documents were carted off to Moscow and stored in archives which were opened to the public after the col- lapse of the Soviet Union. Since that time they have been evaluated by various researchers. The most prominent of these are the Italian revisionist historian Carlo Mattogno, whom we have mentioned several times, and a group of Ger- man engineers and architects. There was so far no mainstream historian who has shown an interest in these documents. L: That is amazing. Just imagine what would happen to the world-wide commu- nity of archeologists, if suddenly a gigantic tomb of ancient Egypt full of arti- facts and mummies would be discovered. They would be all over this place! But here, the Holocausters just don't care. R: Right, because they are apparently not interested in facts, but merely in myths. 572 "David Cole Interviews Dr. Franciszek Piper, Director, Auschwitz State Museum," VHS Video, dis- tributed by CODOH, P.O. Box 439016, San Diego, CA 92143, USA (text and video link: www.vho.org/GB/c/DC/gcgvcole.html); JHR 13(2) (1993), pp. 11-13. 573 Taken from Carlo Mattogno, op. cit. (note 557), p. 269; here a slightly corrected version. 258 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST I would like to divide my investigation into two parts. The first part deals with documents that contradict the thesis of mass murders at Auschwitz, while the second concerns documents that were taken out of context and used to indicate mass murder. By means of several typical examples, I will demonstrate that these so-called "criminal traces" collapse as soon as the documents are placed in their proper context. Now for the first group. In chapter 3.6.4. I have already described the micro- wave delousing apparatus that was installed at Auschwitz (see p. 229). I strongly suggest that everyone read the article written by engineer Hans Jürgen Nowak on this subject, so you will understand the tremendous effort the SS made at Auschwitz to improve camp hygiene during the struggle against the typhus epidemic.520 They were clearly attempting to preserve life, rather than destroy it. In an article mentioned above that has a different investigative emphasis, Carlo Mattogno has demonstrated the role which the crematories played in the SS at- tempts to improve camp hygiene and thereby survival at Auschwitz.517 The German engineering group I mentioned carried out a study calculating the total costs of construction at Auschwitz, as contained in the documents.574 In terms of today's currency, the SS spent the equivalent of more than a billion dollars, which comes to over a thousand dollars per prisoner allegedly mur- dered there. L: A billion dollars? That was a pretty expensive death camp, considering that bullets cost just a few pennies. R: That is right. Compare it to the postwar American death camps along the river Rhein in Germany, where German POWs were held captured and died by the thousands between 1945 and 1947 due to lack of food, water, and medical care.575 All you need for an extermination camp is barbed wire and a few guards, just a few thousand dollars in materials. L: But Auschwitz was not just a death camp, it was a work camp. It may well be that the SS spent a lot of money to keep prisoners alive who were able to work, although that did not occur to them until the epidemics broke out. But that tells us nothing about what happened to the prisoners who were unable to work. R: On the surface, you seem to be right. But there is a logical catch to that. Legend tells us that SS doctors sorted out the prisoners who were unable to work when they arrived at the camp. We are told they were sent to be gassed, rather than receiving medical treatment. However, at the same time there was an epidemic in the camp that was making many thousands of prisoners unable to work. In- stead of being sent to "gas chambers," these prisoners were sent to the camp hospital where they were nursed back to health. L: What ­ a hospital for prisoners at Auschwitz? R: Yes, there was. A large part of Birkenau was made into a convalescence area. Countless thousands of medical records are stored at the Auschwitz Museum, 574 Manfred Gerner, Michael Gärtner, Hans Jürgen Nowak, "The Construction Costs of Auschwitz," TR in preparation. 575 Cf. James Bacque, Other Losses, Stoddart, Toronto 1989. 259 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST showing that the camp spent enormous amounts of money caring for sick pris- oners. At the neighboring camp of Rajsko in 1942, the Waffen SS even built a "Hygienisch-bakteriologische Untersuchungs-Stelle" (Hygienic Bacteriological Examination Office) devoted to improving camp hygiene. The documents of this office clearly show the extent of the struggle against the epidemics.576 And while we are on the subject: right now the incredibly industrious researcher Carlo Mattogno is completing documentation based on original camp records that shows the vast extent of the entire Auschwitz health care system.577 L: Well that is a powerful contradiction of the notion of an extermination camp. R: Later on, I will introduce another batch of prisoners' statements regarding time they spent in Auschwitz hospital. If the camp administration made such a mighty effort to keep those prisoners alive, this gives rise to the unavoidable question: Why would they not do the same for prisoners who were sick or weak when they arrived? Right now I would like to discuss the second group of documents, that is, documents that illustrate the topic of the alleged code words that I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture (see p. 190). Auschwitz camp documents never mention mass killings. However, it is alleged that code words were used for this such as "special treatment," "special measures," "special actions," "special details," etc. Carlo Mattogno has published an entire book on this subject. In it, he discusses all the documents that he has found in which such expressions oc- cur.578 Let me give you one example how a harmless document containing such a buzz word like "special action" is misrepresented by mainstream historiography.579 On December 16, 1942, the German secret state police (Geheime Staatspolizei, Gestapo) made a "special action for security reasons encompassing all civilian workers" in Auschwitz.580 Does that mean that the Gestapo started to execute German civilian workers, which they needed to built the camp? L: Hardly. R: Right, but that is what a Holocaust peddler claims.581 Fact is that the Auschwitz camp had been under a permanent lock-down since summer 1942 due to the typhus epidemic. Not even the civilian workers had been allowed to leave the camp for that time, which finally resulted in a strike of the civilian workers. 576 The files of the Auschwitz-Raisko Hygienic Institute are stored at the Tracing Center of the Interna- tional Committee of the Red Cross in Arolsen, Germany. They are not accessible to the general public. These files contain 151 volumes for the years between 1943-1945. Heinz Boberach, Inventararchival- ische Quellen des NS-Staates, 2 vols., K.G. Saur, Munich 1991/1995, here 1991, p. 118. The highest case number of these files is 79,698. They prove how intensive the care was thousands of inmates re- ceived at Auschwitz; cf. also the contribution by Claus Jordan, "The German Justice System: A Case Study," in G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 145-179. 577 Publication is planned for late 2005/early 2006; stay tuned by visiting our list of publications available, in preparation, and defined projects: www.vho.org/GB/Books/HHS.html. 578 Carlo Mattogno, Special Treatment in Auschwitz. Genesis and Meaning of a Term, Theses & Disserta- tions Press, Chicago 2004. (www.vho.org/GB/Books/st). 579 Taken from, ibid., pp. 98f. 580 Teletype from Karl Bischoff to Hans Kammler of December 18, 1942. APMO, BW 30/27, p. 17. 581 John C. Zimmerman, Body Disposal at Auschwitz. http://holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/body- disposal/. 260 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The Gestapo then, in a "special action" outside of their routine work, inter- viewed "all civilian workers" to find out how to remedy that situation582 and concluded:580 "For that reason, a grant of leave [for all civilian workers] from Dec. 23, 1942, to Jan 4, 1943, is absolutely essential." R: On December 22, four days after the "special action," the civilian workers were very much alive: On the next day, 905 men went off quite contentedly on their Christmas vacations, which lasted through January 3!583 L: There certainly are documents of the Third Reich period in general, in which there is clearly a connection between expressions such as "special treatment" and execution. R: That is true. One such documents states, for instance, that as punishment for serious crimes "special treatment with the noose" must be the consequence.584 In other cases, however, the expression "special treatment" refers to something entirely favorable. Thus for captured dignitaries of hostile countries, "special treatment" meant lodging in luxury hotels with regal service.585 This shows that the meaning of the term always depended on context in which it was used. If "special treatment" actually does refer to execution or liquidation in some documents, it does not mean that it always and inevitably has that connotation. L: That would be absurd anyway. Such expressions are very common in the ver- nacular, they just mean that something does not conform to prevailing norms, however defined. When someone gets "special privileges," that doesn't mean he is murdered ­ why should it be any different with "special treatment?" R: Exactly. Where Auschwitz is concerned, Mattogno discovered that in most of the documents he examined in the various archives, such expressions were used to describe measures for improving camp hygiene.586 Here again the main ef- forts of the camp administration were dedicated to reducing the death rate, in compliance with the very highest directives.587 Mattogno did not find a single document from the files of the Central Construction Office of Auschwitz, in which such an expression was used in connection with executions. Conflicting interpretations by established historians are based on false interpretations, be- cause the context had either been unknown or ignored. L: Or because they were compelled to lie again, for reasons of good anti-fascism. R: Whatever the reasons. At any rate, Mattogno's study pulls the rug out from under official historiography's interpretations of these alleged code words. The thesis of code words has been very effectively refuted. 582 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 254), pp. 79f. 583 "Baubericht für Monat Dezember 1942", produced by Bischoff on January 6, 1943. RGVA, 502-1-214, p. 2. 584 Cf. 3040-PS, from Allgemeine Erlaßsammlung, Teil 2, A III f ("Behandlung fremdländischer Zivilar- beiter" ­ treatment of foreign civil workers), enacted by the RSHA: As punishment for heavy crimes committed by foreign civil workers, special treatment with the noose is ordered. 585 IMT, vol. 11, pp. 338f.; first mentioned by Arthur R. Butz, op. cit. (note 27), p. 145. 586 This was already stated in 1996 by Wilhelm Stromberger, "Was war die `Sonderbehandlung' in Auschwitz?," DGG 44(2) (1996), pp. 24f. (www.vho.org/D/DGG/Strom44_2.html). 587 Cf. Himmler's order, transmitted by Glücks to all concentration camp commanders on Dec. 28, 1942, p. 199 of the present book. 261 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But what was the point of those selections carried out at the notorious railroad ramp at Auschwitz, if they were not for "gas chambers?" Do you also deny that such selections took place? R: Certainly not, even if the expression used was actually "sorting out" rather than "selection." There is no doubt that such sortings took place. With hundreds and thousands of prisoners arriving, there had to be some kind of allocation. These people had to be sent somewhere. And finally, even those capable of work had to be selected according to their skills. I may quote former Auschwitz inmate Arnold Friedman in this regard. When presented with wartime pictures of such a selection at Auschwitz as published in the Auschwitz Album,588 the following exchange developed between prosecution witness Friedman (A.) and the de- fense lawyer (Q.) during the First Zündel trial in 1985:589 "Q. Okay, Turn the page again. We are looking at page 28 and 29. There's a selection process? A. If I may clarify, 28 gives you a selection process. 29 gives you a ques- tioning of an individual. Q. I see. Okay. A. And if I may explain that, if you'd like to know what that questioning was, they were searching out professional people, even amongst the older people, before relegating to on side. They would ask if there are any physicians or certain people that they were looking for at the par- ticular time, like engineers. Q. Engineers? A. And so on. Q. They wanted to use their skills, I guess. Is that right? A. At that point I don't know what they wanted, but this is, I am just ex- plaining to you the selection process as I know it. Q. So obviously they were selecting them for their skills for some reason of other. A. From time to time, yes." R: So you see, Friedman himself unwillingly debunked the legend about the pur- pose of these selections. Legend has it, though, that arriving prisoners who were capable of work were admitted into the main camp as forced laborers and then routinely entered into the administration's card files. According to witnesses, prisoners deemed inca- pable of work by the camp physicians ­ the sick, the frail, the old, and the young ­ were sent directly to "gas chambers." None of these prisoners were listed in the camp records. We were told that none of these alleged gas chamber victims were registered in any way, so that their total number could be esti- mated only on the basis of daily numbers. Only the first part of this legend concerning the registered prisoners is sup- ported by documents, though. As is German habit, everything that happened with those registered prisoners was meticulously recorded. And if any of those 588 Serge Klarsfeld, The Auschwitz Album, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1978. 589 Queen versus Zündel, op. cit. (note 64), pp. 431. 262 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST prisoners died, a bureaucratic avalanche was unleashed: forms had to be filled, registries updated, and reports written and sent to all sorts of authorities. Hence, the death of every registered prisoner that ever died in Auschwitz left a thick paper trail. One item of this paper trail were the so-called Sterbebücher (death books), in which every prisoner ever registered at Auschwitz was en- tered when he deceased during his incarceration in that camp. But these death books had vanished after the war. At the beginning of 1990 the German press reported that the Soviets had found them at war's end and had locked them away in a secret archive, but were finally willing to release them to the Tracing Center of the International Red Cross in the small town of Arolsen, Germany. According to these media reports, the fates of 74,000 registered prisoners who died at Auschwitz had been meticulously entered in these death books.590 About five years after that, the Red Cross published excerpts from these death books as a series of books.51 It turned out that the fates of 68,751 registered prisoners who died at Auschwitz as of the end of 1943 are entered in the death books. The volumes for 1944 have so far not been found. Now, what is really interesting are the statistics about the ages of those who died. Can you imagine why? L: To determine if it is true that only those prisoners who were registered in Auschwitz were capable to work? R: Exactly. Because if the legend had been true, there could be no victims at Auschwitz entered in those death books who were very much under 14 or above 60 when they were registered there. L: Just don't say now that children and the elderly were routinely registered on their arrival at Auschwitz! R: That's exactly what happened. In 1991, the German journalist Wolfgang Kempkens, thanks to high connections, had actually been allowed to make cop- ies of around 800 death certificates in the Russian archives where the Ausch- witz death books were stored. He collected 127 of these in a little book which he offered for sale for a while. The revisionists were jubilant because, lo and behold, in the documents he selected several names appeared of persons who at the time of death were over 60, 70, even 80 years of age, as well as children under 10.591 This is not really as surprising as it might seem, however. For a long time now we have had documents showing that a great many Auschwitz prisoners were incapable of work, but had not been killed.592 590 "Moskau öffnet Rotem Kreuz die Totenbücher von Auschwitz," Frankfurter Rundschau, Jan. 6, 1990, p. 5. 591 Mark Weber, "Pages from the Auschwitz Death Registry Volumes," JHR 12(3) (1992), pp. 265-298, with 30 reproduced death certificates of geriatric inmates; E. Gauss, Vorlesungen..., op. cit. (note 536), pp. 214-219. 592 For example, an internal German telex message dated September 4, 1943, from the chief of the Labor Allocation Department of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA), reported that of 25,000 Jewish inmates in Auschwitz, only 3,581 were able to work, or a secret report dated April 5, 1944, by Oswald Pohl to Himmler, reporting that there was a total of 67,000 inmates in the Auschwitz camp complex, of whom 18,000 were hospitalized or disabled. Cf. M. Weber, ibid. 263 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST It is now possible to search the death books Table 11: Ages of registered online by name, dates of birth and death, prisoners who died at place of birth, and place of residence. How- Auschwitz ever, you must have valid names in order to AGE GROUPE % NO. search the database.593 >90 2 0.0 Table 11 contains statistical evaluation of the 80-90 73 0.1 death books, according to the age groups 70-80 482 0.7 listed.594 In order to better illustrate this, I 60-70 2,083 3.0 have listed the details of all registered deaths 50-60 8,040 11.7 of persons aged 80 or above in Table 24 in 40-50 15,512 22.5 the Appendix (p. 331).595 30-40 18,430 26.7 L: There are a great many non Jews among 20-30 14,830 21.5 them as well. 10-20 6,715 9.7 R: There certainly are. Jews were only one 00-10 2,584 3.7 group of prisoners at Auschwitz. Note that 68,751 99.6 the category "confession" does not necessar- ily tell us about how these prisoners had been categorized by the National So- cialists, since baptized Jews were still classified as Jews by the German au- thorities in those years. Confession and race are different categories. The Jews were persecuted as a race, not as members of a religion. At any rate, it is unlikely that there were many resistance fighters, hardened criminals, or politi- cal prisoners among those 80 years and older. So they were 20000 probably mostly Jews as de- 18000 fined by the National Social- Number of Victims 16000 14000 ists. 12000 According to these statistics, at 10000 8000 least 10% of all registered pris- 6000 oners belonged to age groups 4000 that should have been gassed 2000 0 on arrival, without registration. 00-10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 50-60 60-70 70-80 80-90 >90 It is also noteworthy that the Age Group distribution of victims follows a harmonic curve through the Ill. 76: Distribution of Auschwitz victims from the death books, according to age groups. various age groups, as is seen in Ill. 76. If almost everyone above a specific age or children below a specific age, had been selectively murdered without registration, the curve would fall sharply at the borderline ages. But it doesn't do that. 593 www.auschwitz.org.pl/szukaj/index.php?language=DE 594 Our distribution differs a little from that by the Auschwitz Museum, op. cit. (note 51), vol. 1, p. 248, probably based on a different definition of the ages. 595 Here also three examples of children: ­ Weiss, Adolf *6.6.1934 2.11.1943 = 9 years ­ Weiss, Adolf *8.5.1942 10.4.1943 = 11 months ­ Weiß, Waldtraud *13.3.1939 25.3.1943 = 4 years 264 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST In addition, we have to keep in mind that initially, only adult Jews of young and medium ages were deported to Auschwitz for forced labor purposes. These made up most of the victims of the initially catastrophic hygienic conditions, including the typhus epidemic that broke out in the summer of 1942. Children and elderly people were deported only later. Hence, we have to expect that the portion of children and old people under the victims of the first catastrophic ty- phus epidemic of 1942 would be rather low. From the death books we also perceive indirectly why after the summer of 1942, not all prisoners continued to be registered. Until mid July of that year, nearly all Jews deported to Auschwitz were registered there. That changed drastically on July 23, 1942, when a total camp lock-down (vollständige Lager- sperre) was announced on account of the typhus epidemic.596 After that, only a few were accepted into the camp. In view of the evidence, we must conclude that the SS stopped directing new arrivals to Auschwitz because of the raging epidemic. They transferred most of the arriving prisoners to other camps in- stead.597 L: From what you have just explained, it seems that the witnesses disagree with you only about the reason for selections. R: I have no doubt that the prisoners were subjected to a sorting process on arri- val, especially those who were sick or weak. In view of the information pre- sented here, however, the point of the sorting was not "gas chamber" or "forced labor," but rather the question of whether the prisoners should be allowed into the camp; and if so, in which part of the camp; or whether they should be sent further to other camps or ghettoes. Even mainstream historians agree that many prisoners not registered at Ausch- witz were not gassed on arrival. For example, Shmuel Krakowski, the head of Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, stated:598 "The Germans did not register the prisoners who were sent to quarantine; nor did they compile statistical data on the number of prisoners sent there. Those who were transferred to other concentration camps were not regis- tered, either. Only those prisoners who were selected for work in the Ausch- witz satellite camps were registered and tattooed with Auschwitz concentra- tion camp numbers." R: Similar mainstream historian Gerald Reitlinger:599 "[...] very large groups of Jews in 1944 stayed in the camp without registra- tion, awaiting transfer elsewhere, and they stayed long enough to die of epi- demics." R: As revisionist scholar Richard A. Widmann correctly stated:600 "The issue is really not whether unregistered inmates were transferred elsewhere but rather just how many were transferred." 596 State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, D-Aul-1, Standortbefehl 19/42 of July 23, 1942. 597 Cf. E. Aynat, "Die Sterbebücher von Auschwitz," op. cit. (note 52). 598 S. Krakowski, "The Satellite Camps," in: I. Gutman, M. Berenbaum (eds.), op. cit. (note 250), p. 52. 599 G. Reitlinger, op. cit. (note 119), p. 460. 600 R.A. Widmann, "Transfers to the Reich," JHR 20(2) (2001), pp. 21-25. 265 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 77: Floor plan of HCN disinfestation wing of Building in Auschwitz- Birkenau, and of Building 5a (mirror symmetrical) before its conversion.601 R: Hence, the fact that not all deportees were registered upon arrival at Auschwitz does not prove at all that anything sinister happened to them. The documents also suggest that the subsequent return transfer of sick or weak prisoners from satellite camps to Birkenau did not mean their death, as is often suggested, but rather their admission into the large convalescent complex at Birkenau, where specialized medical treatment was available. L: Are you saying the Germans' primary consideration was for the welfare of the prisoners at Auschwitz? R: I don't think that one should go to the opposite extreme, just because one ex- treme turns out to be false or misleading. The truth usually lies somewhere in between. I have already mentioned the epidemics that were raging in Birkenau. Some of the listed causes of death in the death books also clearly point to lack of medical care. Moreover, the documented minimum victim number of this camp certainly proves that the Auschwitz prisoners were not properly taken care of. L: But there are Auschwitz documents that mention gas chambers. R: Allow me to add: there is an array of documents that mention gas chambers and airtight doors and windows, and such things. The Polish expert report on gas chambers made in 1947, which I mentioned earlier, includes many such things (see p. 246). In 1989, Jean Claude Pressac listed them anew and dubbed them "criminal traces."251 The problem is simply that none of these documents refer to homicidal gas chambers. No one disputes that there were a lot of gas cham- 266 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 78: Typical advertisement of the DEGESCH firm for the wide area of ap- plications for the fumigation methods offered: Gristmills, ships, warehouses, granaries, houses, freight trains, lorries ­ and GAS CHAMBERS!602 bers at Auschwitz. Take a look at the floor plans of the two hygienic buildings at Birkenau construction sector 1, Illustration 77.601 What do you read there? L: Gas chamber ("Gaskammer"). R: That's right. It was one of the hydrogen cyanide delousing chambers used to combat typhus. The use of the expression "gas chamber" in construction plans for delousing chambers is very significant, because it proves that this term was used exclu- sively to indicate delousing facilities. This was true not only of the architects who planned the buildings, but of the professional exterminators as well. A good example for this is the title of a leading German war-time publication on fumigation written in 1943: "Hydrogen Cyanide Gas Chambers for Combat- ing Typhus." (Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr).603 A typical ad- vertisement of the DEGESCH firm, which produced Zyklon B, also contains the term "gas chambers" to refer to delousing chambers as we see in Ill. 78, p. 266. Therefore, this term "gas chamber" was nothing more than the usual de- scription for delousing chambers! Unless and until there is proof to the contrary, we must logically assume that the term "gas chamber" refers to delousing chamber when it appears in a Ger- 601 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 55-58. The numbers drawn into this plan indicate samples taken by me as listed in my expert report, cf. Table 10, pp. 237. 602 Der praktische Desinfektor, issue 2, Erich Deleiter, Berlin 1941, inside cover; cf. F.P. Berg, op. cit. (note 516). 603 F. Puntigam, H. Breymesser, E. Bernfus, Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr, Special Print of the Reichsarbeitsblatt, Berlin 1943. 267 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST man document of the period, since that is the only documented meaning of the term before the end of the war. L: Today the situation is a bit different. R: No wonder, considering the relentless propaganda about mass murder since the end of WWII. But this does not change the fact that the situation was radically different before 1945. But let us get back to Auschwitz. When the typhus epidemic got out of control in the summer of 1942, the administration made plans to expand its delousing facilities. Because their construction would take too long, they considered out- fitting the crematories with hygienic facilities as a provisional measure. This was because construction was more advanced there. A series of documents specifically discussed the inclusion of prisoners' showers in one of the cellars of Crematories II and III.604 Space restrictions do not allow me to cover the whole palette of alleged "crimi- nal traces" concocted by Prof. Roman Dawidowski followed by J.-C. Pressac, Prof. Robert von Pelt, and god knows who else.605 These have been refuted in various ways, so I will simply refer to these articles and their supporting sources.606 However, I would like to give you two examples of their method of arguing that certain documents were "criminal traces" of mass murder. It shows the low intellectual level to which one has to stoop in order to accept such traces. It is a fact that during planning for Crematories II and III, the original building plans were changed in late 1942 to include, among other things, additional en- try steps to the cellar. In contrast to the originally planned cellar entrance, the new auxiliary entrances do not have built in ramps or chutes for sliding in corpses. On account of this change in plans, Jean-Claude Pressac concluded that con- struction of new steps without corpse chute could have only one explanation: From now on, no more bodies would be slid into the cellar. Instead, the victims would henceforth walk to the cellar and be murdered there. For Pressac, this was proof of the intention for mass murder.607 To prop up his contention, he also alleged that the corpse chute in the original entranceway had been disman- tled. This was not true, as Carlo Mattogno demonstrated:608 the body ramp is still present on all the crematory maps throughout 1943. 604 C. Mattogno, "Leichenkeller von Birkenau: Luftschutzräume oder Entwesungskammern?" VffG 4(2) (2000), pp. 152-158 (Engl.: "Morgue Cellars of Birkenau: Gas Shelters or Disinfesting Chambers?"; www.vho.org/GB/c/CM/leichen.html); cf also Samuel Crowell, "The Basement Showers of Cremato- rium III," JHR 20(2) (2001), pp. 17-20. 605 Cf. the plagiarizers Michael Shermer, Alex Grobman, Denying History. Who Says the Holocaust never Happened and Why Do They Say it?, University of California, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2000; cf. the critique by Carlo Mattogno, "Denying Evidence," in G. Rudolf, C. Mattogno, Auschwitz-Lies, op. cit. (note 9). 606 Cf. for this my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), pp. 94-134; G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 9). 607 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 213, 218; also in the Judgment of judge Charles Gray, op. cit. (note 347), §7.61, 13.76, 13.84, based on the testimony of expert Prof. van Pelt, op. cit. (note 553). 608 Carlo Mattogno, "Architectonical Bunglings...," op. cit. (note 324). 268 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 79: Schematic location of the new Ill. 80: Schematic location of crema- crematory as originally planned for the tory II, altered plan. To adjust it to the Auschwitz main camp. higher location of the morgue and the access in Birkenau from the other side (mirroring crematory III). Furthermore, the plans for constructing additional entrances give the reason why they had become necessary, since the plans bear the following title:609 "Relocation of basement entrance to street side." The fact is, as Pressac himself admits, that the twin Crematories II and III both evolved from a single new crematory, which was meant to be built in the main camp rather than Birkenau. When the SS decided to build two mirror identical crematories of the same type in Birkenau instead, they obviously had to change their plans in a number of ways. Among these was that the morgues could no longer be built completely underground. Because of the higher level of ground water in the swampy area of Birkenau, it had to be somewhat higher. This higher elevation of the morgues cut off the direct path to the original entrance- way, since the access road in Birkenau lay on the opposite side from that in the main camp (see Ill. 79f). L: And did Pressac know all that? R: He published the plans, but that obviously did not enable him to think logically. But even if the corpse chute would have been dismantled, would that really mean that from then on no more bodies could be brought into the cellar? L: They could not be slid in, at any rate. R: That is true, but sliding is not the only way to transport corpses. How did the corpses get from their place of death to the cellar entrances of the crematories? And how did they get from the cellar steps to their repositories in the morgue? And then, from there to the crematory ovens? Did they slide all the way? L: Of course not. They had to be carried or else transported on some kind of vehi- cle. R: Sure. But how could the hypothetical removal of a corpse chute at an en- tranceway, which could only made access a little more difficult, possibly be an indicator for mass murder? 609 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 183f., 302f.; reg. the original plans by Walter Dejaco see J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 253), document 9. 269 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Anybody who reasons like that is demonstrating merely the mass mur- der of his own brain cells. R: Keep it serious, please. Anyway, since the chute had not been re- Ill. 81: Reminder for a "gas door 100/192."610 moved at all, the amount of brain matter wasted on this issue by Pres- sac and his followers is truly mind- boggling. It shows the total lack of any incriminating evidence, if the Holocausters focus on such triviali- ties and have to blow it so out of proportion with such nonsensical ar- guments. The other so-called "criminal traces" are just as inadequate. The reason why they are constantly repeated by Ill. 82: Cross section of morgue 1 of mainstream historians is primarily crematory II. The cellar was 7 m wide 612 inside, the door was 2 m wide. because these people do not follow the scientific maxim of considering arguments to the contrary. They simply ignore that their arguments have been refuted many times. The second instance we want to discuss here concerns a document of the Central Construction Office to the Deutsche Ausrüstungs-Werke Equipment Ill. 83: "Relocation of basement entrance (D.A.W., German to street side": double-winged access Works), an inmates' workshop, with door to morgue 1 of crematory II, per- 610 the following content: haps even swinging through.613 "At this opportunity we remind you of an order of March 6, 1943, about the delivery of a gas door 100/192 for underground morgue I of crematory III, Bw 30 a, which is to be made in type and measures exactly like the basement door for crematory II at the op- posite side with peep hole and double 8-cm glass with rubber sealing and iron fittings." L: I wonder how you are going to explain away this criminal trace! R: So you think that homicidal gas chambers were installed in these morgues and equipped with gastight doors? L: Well, that document sounds like that, does it not? R: Pressac thought that as well.611 The facts tell a different story, however. First of all, the document expressively states that the door was for a morgue, not for a 610 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 436, Letter by K. Bischoff to the Deutschen Ausrüstungswerke of March 31, 1943. 611 Cf. previous note; cf. judgment by Gray, op. cit. (note 347), §13.84. 270 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST gas chamber. Next, the entrance door to morgue 1, the alleged homi- cidal gas chamber, is two meters wide in all the surviving building plans (see Ill. 82).612 Furthermore this morgue had a double-winged door (see Ill. 83).613 The door men- tioned in the above document, how- ever, was only one meter wide. Therefore, it could not have been in- stalled in this opening. In addition, all the so-called "air- tight" doors found in Auschwitz, which had been manufactured by the inmates workshop D.A.W., looked like the one in Illustration 84.614 L: What is that written on the door? R: It says "Poison Gas! Dangerous!" That is the door of a hydrogen cya- nide delousing chamber in Ausch- witz. Pressac shows us a whole se- Ill. 84: Makeshift airtight wooden door of ries of such doors found at Ausch- a delousing chamber in Auschwitz with witz. Every one of them was made peephole and metal grill in front. We are of simple wooden boards and tem- told that this is what airtight doors of homicidal "gas chambers" looked like. porarily sealed with strips of felt Note the flimsy latch! when in use.615 L: But why would delousing chamber doors have peep holes with glass and iron fittings? R: Because this was the law in Germany. After all, hydrogen cyanide is a danger- ous poison. Hence, it was prohibited during those years to enter a delousing gas chamber without someone watching from the outside. In case of an emergency, this observer could come to the rescue.616 In this context, the engineers Nowak and Rademacher have pointed out what is quite important: These so-called "gastight," wooden doors at Auschwitz were not really gastight in the technical sense. The boards were not sealed, the hinges were fastened with bolts going through the wood, and the felt gaskets al- lowed huge amounts of gas through!617 612 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 308 (March 19, 1943), 311 (March 20, 1943), 322 (Sept. 21, 1943, cf. Ill. 82). 613 Ibid., pp. 285, 302 (Dec. 19, 1942, cf. Ill. 83). 614 Ibid., pp. 49. 615 Ibid., pp. 15, 28f., 46-49, 425-428, 486, 500. 616 "Dienstanweisung für die Bedienung der Blausäure-Entwesungskammer im K.L.M. Unterkunft Gusen," Public Memorial and Museum Mauthausen. Archive, M 9a/1. 617 See Hans Jürgen Nowak, Werner Rademacher, op. cit (note 520), pp. 324-335. 271 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 85: Door to an execution gas chamber Ill. 86: Door of a professional delous- for one single person (Baltimore, USA, ing chamber (DEGESCH circulation 1954, technology from the 1930s). procedure) at Dachau concentration camp."618 L: It might work for fumigating lice, but the idea that such a door could contain hundreds of humans while they were being murdered is rather illusory. R: How is that? L: Well, it is just ridiculous to think you could contain hundreds of people in a mortal panic with a door made of wooden boards, ordinary hinges and a flimsy latch. The least one would expect in a mass execution chamber would be an or- dinary steel prison door. R: That is absolutely correct. Consider that hundreds of people are capable of tearing down steel posts and even concrete walls, when they panic in a sports stadium. Consider also that a door to any hypothetical mass execution chamber would have to open to the outside. Obviously, if it opened to the inside, it would be blocked by the dead bodies piled against it. Can you imagine how strong a door that opened to the outside would have to be, in order to withstand the pressure of hundreds of panicking people? L: It would have to be made of solid steel. It would have to be strongly anchored, sealed with bolts. R: The flimsy wooden doors made temporarily "airtight," such as those found at Auschwitz, would never have withstood those conditions. And double doors opening outwards, such as those obviously installed in the morgues of Crema- 618 U.S. Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 206194. 272 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST tories II and III, would have been even less able to withstand the mas- sive pressure. They would have sprung open in a few seconds. The least one would expect in the way of gastight doors for mass mur- der chambers can be seen in Illustra- tions 85 and 86. On the left is the kind of door used in gas chambers for executing individuals in the USA. On the right is the door of a professional hydrogen cyanide de- lousing chamber at Dachau. L: And there was nothing similar at Auschwitz? R: No. No steel doors, no records documenting steel doors, and no witness statements about steel doors. All the evidence suggests that there were no doors except the common wood doors described above. Ill. 87: Construction drawing of the Bern- But the story gets even wilder than inghaus company made March 20, 1942, for a gastight steel door for a Degesch that. In summer 1942, the camp ad- ministration did in fact ask for an of- circulation disinfestation chamber. From the Auschwitz correspondence of the fer for solid, technically airtight steel Beringhaus company we learn that these doors to be installed in DEGESCH doors were ordered in May 1944; but by delousing chambers, which were November they still had not been deliv- 617 then still in a planning stage. An of- ered. fer was sent by the Berninghaus firm on July 9, 1942 (see Ill. 87), but the camp administration ordered them only in May 1944. As can be seen from a letter by Berninghaus, these doors had still not been delivered in Nov. 1944.617 So with the exception of the air raid shelter door that was installed toward the end of 1944 in the air raid shelter in the for- mer crematory I (main camp), there is no evidence that the camp administration ever received such doors, so we must assume that they had no real need for them. L: Well then what was the purpose of the "gas door" that was ordered for the morgue in crematory II? R: As I already explained, in early 1943 it was planned to convert at least one of the basement rooms of crematories II and III to hygienic facilities including showers for inmates (see page 267). There are also indications that installation of delousing devices was considered, although this was not carried out.604 Thus the order for this gas door could be connected with that. L: But if these morgues were used as showers, where were all the victims of the typhus epidemic kept? 273 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: They would have used one or the other of these cellars to overcome a bottle- neck. Such use would have been for a limited time only, as it went against the purpose for which the morgues were built. However, your question is the cor- rect approach. The logistical problem which it implies would have been much greater if all the cellar morgues ­ rather than just a few ­ had been used not just occasionally, but constantly as gas chambers and undressing cellars, respec- tively. Let us not forget: We are told that the cellar morgues of both crematories II and III were used as homicidal gas chambers and undressing rooms immediately af- ter going into operation. But at the same time there were thousands of corpses due to the typhus epidemic raging in camp, which likewise had to be stored and cremated. The cellars cannot have served both purposes: homicidal gas cham- ber or undressing room on the one hand and morgues on the other. But in view of the heavy casualties caused by the epidemic, at least one of the cellars had to be used as a morgue. German mainstream historian Prof. Nolte already alluded to that fact, as I mentioned on p. 136. L: Well, that seems to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. R: But there is still another harmless explanation for the installation of a gastight door in those cellar rooms: Maybe the door was there in conjunction with the fact that they wanted to use the only solid concrete cellars of the camp as air raid shelters as their secondary function. Thus for example Walter Schreiber, the chief engineer of Huta firm, the company which constructed the cremato- ries, explained in an interview with Walter Lüftl:619 "L: Do you know anything about insertion holes in the concrete roofs [of Morgues No. 1 of Crematories II and III?] S: No I cannot remember anything about that. But since these cellars were supposed to serve also as auxiliary air raid shelters, insertion holes would have been counter productive. I would certainly have advised against such an arrangement." R: These cellars were in fact used as air raid shelters for prisoners, as several wit- nesses have emphasized.620 This approach explains other, lesser "criminal trace" as well, with which we cannot deal in detail here. In a number of articles, Samuel Crowell demonstrated the extent to which the SS did in fact provide air raid protection both for the prisoners as well as for themselves.621 But whatever 619 Werner Rademacher. "Engineer's Deathbed Confession: We Built Morgues, not Gas Chambers," TR 2(3) (2003), pp. 296f. 620 Miklos Nyiszli claims that the inmates sought shelter in the gas chamber during air raids: op. cit. (note 376), p. 128. Martin Gilbert, op. cit. (note 138), p. 309, contains the statement of a female survivor who claimed that she was led into a dark room together with many other women in order to stay there during an air raid. Another survivor reported that inmates were repeatedly led into air raid shelters during air raids in 1944: Colin Rushton, Spectator in Hell. A British soldier's extraordinary story, Pharaoh Press, Springhill (Berkshire) 1998. 621 Samuel Crowell, "Technik und Arbeitsweise deutscher Gasschutzbunker im Zweiten Weltkrieg," VffG 1(4) (1997), pp. 226-243 (Engl.: "Technique and Operation of German Anti-Gas Shelters in WWII: A Refutation of J.C. Pressac's `Criminal Traces,'" www.vho.org/GB/c/SC/inconpressac.html); S. Cro- well, "Defending Against the Allied Bombing Campaign: Air Raid Shelters and Gas Protection in Germany, 1939-1945," JHR 20(4) (2001), pp. 15-41; Crowell, "Bombenschutzeinrichtungen in Birke- nau: Eine Neubewertung," VffG, 4(3&4) (2000), pp. 284-330 (Engl.: "Bomb Shelters in Birkenau: A 274 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the purpose of the doors: They were obviously not made of solid steel, and solid steel doors would have been indispensable for any chamber used to com- mit mass murder. L: Then the SS used "gastight" doors to protect prisoners from air raids? R: Or as doors to delousing chambers, which were likewise used to save the lives of prisoners. L: Well then, once again a device to save lives, which is "gastight doors," is rede- fined as indications for mass murder. R: That is right, just like Zyklon B. Let me summarize: The SS is claimed to have made changes to the crematories II and III in Birkenau in late fall or early winter 1942 in order to convert them from objects of sanitation to objects of mass murder. If such conversion took place, we have to expect mainly three things to be addressed by the SS: 1. Getting the poison into the alleged gas chambers. 2. Keeping potentially panicking victims inside the gas chamber. 3. Getting the poison out of the gas chamber. Truth is that none of these issues were address by the SS: 1. The alleged Zyklon B introduction holes were not part of the changed plan- ning. It is claimed that the SS forgot to include them and thus chisseled them through the roof later. However, there are no traces of such holes (see chap- ter 3.4.7.). 2. There is no evidence that the SS ordered, received, or installed gastight and panic-proof massive steel doors locking the rooms alleged to have contained one thousand or more panicking victims. 3. The original planning of the underground morgue alleged to have been con- verted into a gas chamber did not receive a more powerful ventilation system than the one originally planned for that morgue. Its capacity is standard for morgues, but substandard for Zyklon B delousing chambers. That very sys- tem actually is the weakest of all ventilated rooms in those buildings (see p. 235). Hence, the evidence clearly refutes that a conversion took place. All the alleged "criminal traces" highlighted by Holocausters are based on false interpretations of completely irrelevant details. 3.5. Treblinka 3.5.1. Scenes of Mass Murder R: Now let's take a big leap over to the alleged "extermination camp" Treblinka. When summarizing what has been reported about that camp, I resort to a study which attempted to bring together all sources relating to the camp and to criti- Reappraisal," www.vho.org/GB/c/SC/inconbsinbirk.html); cf. the critique by Carlo Mattogno, op. cit (note 604); Crowell's response: "Comments on Mattogno's Critique of the Bomb Shelter Thesis" (www.vho.org/GB/c/SC/inconscrmtgno.html); Mattogno's counter-reply: "Auschwitz: The Samuel Crowell Bomb Shelter Thesis: A Historically Unfounded Hypothesis" (www.vho.org/GB/c/CM/Crowell-final-eng.html). 275 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 12: Victim numbers claimed for Treblinka 3,000,000 Wassili Grossmann623 2,775,000 Samuel Rajzman624 1,582,000 Ryszard Czarkowski625 1,200,000 Franciszek Zabeki626 1,074,000 Rachel Auerbach627 974,000 Frank Golczewski628 912,000 Manfred Burba629 900,000 Wolfgang Scheffler630 881,390 Yitzhak Arad631 870,000 Encyclopedia of the Holocaust632 731,600 ­ 800,000 Zdzis aw ukaszkiewicz,633 Stanis aw Wojtczak634 750,000 Raul Hilberg39 700,000 Helmuth Krausnik,635 Uwe Dietrich Adam636 200,000 ­ 250,000 Jean-Claude Pressac637 cally analyze them.622 We are told that between summer 1942 and summer 1943 at least 700,000, if not even as many as three million persons, practically all belonging to the Jewish faith, were murdered in the eastern Polish camp of Treblinka. L: That's a pretty broad span. R: Yes, like Auschwitz. I have listed some of the numbers in Table 12. As murder weapon, various witnesses alleged the following: Mobile or station- ary gas chambers; poison gas, both fast and slow acting; quicklime; steam; 622 Cf. C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit (note 198). 623 Wassili Grossmann, Treblinski Ad (Die Hölle von Treblinka), Verlag für fremdsprachige Literatur, Moskau 1946. 624 USSR-337. GARF, 7445-2-126, p. 240. 625 Ryszard Czarkowski, Cieniom Treblinki, Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Oborony Narodowey, Warsaw 1989, pp. 189-202. 626 Head of railway station in Treblinka, acc. to Gitta Sereny, in: Eberhard Jäckel, Jürgen Rohwer, op. cit. (note 151), pp. 158. 627 Rachel Auerbach, "In the fields of Treblinka" in: A. Donat, op. cit. (note 198). 628 In: W. Benz (ed.), op. cit. (note 42), p. 495. 629 Manfred Burba, Treblinka. Ein NS-Vernichtungslager im Rahmen der "Aktion Reinhard," Göttingen 1995, p. 18. 630 Expert report for the Düsseldorf Schwurgericht, A. Rückerl, NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, dtv, Frankfurt 1977, p. 199; Ino Arndt, Wolfgang Scheffler, "Organisierter Massenmord an Juden in nationalsozialistischen Vernichtungslagern," in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeit- geschichte, 24 (1976), pp. 127f. 631 Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 198), pp. 392-397. 632 I. Gutman, op. cit. (note 112), vol. 4, p. 1486. 633 URSS-344. GARF, 7445-2-126, pp. 323-323a (p. 9f. of the report); Zdzis aw ukaszkiewicz, "Obóz zag ady Treblinka," in: Biuletyn G ównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce, no. 1, Poznan 1946, pp. 133-144, here p. 142. 634 Stanis aw Wojtczak, "Karny obóz pracy Treblinka I i o rodek zag ady Treblinka II," in: Biuletyn G ównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, Warsaw 1975, XXVI, pp. 151f. 635 Expert Report for the Düsseldorf Schwurgericht, A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 630), pp. 197f. 636 Uwe Dietrich Adam, "Les chambres à gaz," in: l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, op. cit. (note 151), pp. 248f. 637 V. Igounet, op. cit. (note 414), pp. 640f. 276 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST electricity; machine guns; vacuum chambers; chlorine gas; Zyklon B; and ex- haust from diesel engines. L: Stop! That is enough! Such a mish-mash makes no sense at all. R: I didn't say that it makes sense. I just report, you decide! According to the witnesses, the bodies of the victims were piled up as high as multistory buildings and then burned, with little or no fuel. L: What was that? Without fuel? R: Ich merely report,... L: But there is no way that could work! R: Just let me finish summarizing the picture that arises from witness testimonies. Then we can discuss it later. The concept of Treblinka that finally prevailed in mainstream historiography is summarized in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.638 According to this they as- sume today that the exhaust of diesel engine was used as murder weapon. When the deportees arrived at Treblinka, the victims are said to have been sent directly to the gas chambers under the pretense of having to shower. We are told that there were 13 of these in Treblinka, three in an old building (160 square feet each) and after 1943 ten more in a new building (around 320 square feet each). Until the beginning of 1943, the corpses were said to have been bur- ied in mass graves. These bodies were exhumed early in 1943, however. The old corpses as well as those of newly murdered victims were then burned on huge bonfires. These bonfires were placed in deep trenches and the bodies were laid on a grill made of railroad tracks. 3.5.2. The Murder Weapon R: In today's mainstream accounts, you won't find the above mentioned confusion about the alleged murder weapon used at Treblinka. The mainstream literature censors out all the witness statements that dispute the present dogmatically pre- scribed picture639 as Prof. Nolte had already noted (see page 135). One of the alleged methods of execution was said to have been pumping out all the air from the gas chamber thus creating a vacuum. However, creation of a deadly vacuum inside simple masonry walls is a technical impossibility, since the walls would give way to external pressure and the structures would immedi- ately collapse. The statements given by witnesses during and after the war overwhelmingly agree that people were murdered at Treblinka with steam. L: Now saunas have turned into weapons for mass murder. R: That is right. Interestingly enough, there was a sauna for prisoners at Ausch- witz640 and possibly elsewhere. This could be the source of the rumor. Con- cerning this the British Jewish mainstream historian Gerald Reitlinger made the following remark:641 "It is difficult to see how people could be exterminated by steam, [...]" 638 I. Gutman, op. cit. (note 112), vol. 4., pp. 1483-1485. 639 Cf. foremost Alexander Donat (ed.) and Yitzhak Arad, op. cit. (note 198). 640 In the delousing building BW 5b, cf. note 601. 641 Gerald Reitlinger, op. cit. (note 119), p. 149, footnote. 277 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 13: Usage of gas chambers at Treblinka camp NO. OF NO. OF VIC- CLAIMED AREA CHAMBERS UTILIZATION PERIOD TIMS Until End of 480 ft2 3 694,000 100% October 1942 Starting November 3680 ft2 10+3 187,390 3,5% 1942 R: For this reason the steam chamber was then also replaced in the mainstream literature step by step by diesel engines. We are now told that diesel exhaust gas was used as a murder weapon.642 I will skip over a detailed discussion of the claimed technique of the gas cham- bers at Treblinka, since the witness testimonies concerning these buildings are too self-contradictory and ineffectual to allow any logical conclusions.643 I will, however, refer to a little Treblinka curiosity. It arises from the allegation that on account of overloading the first "gas chamber" building, which had only three execution chambers, an additional large building was built contain- ing ten additional chambers. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, construction of the new building continued into October of 1942. Therefore we assume that this system went into operation in November 1942.632 According to this same Encyclopedia, the chambers in the old building had a total area of (3×4×4 m2=) 48 square meters while the new one had an area of (10×8×4 m2=) 320 square meters. Thus after November 1942 there was allegedly a total area of (48 m2+320 m2=) 368 square meters available for mass executions in camp. Therefore the ratio of surface area available for mass murder before and after November 1942 was 48 square meters to 368 square meters, which gives a ratio of 1:7.66. According to the official version, 694,000 persons had been murdered in Treb- linka by the end of October 1942, but afterwards "only" 187,390 more.644 Thus the ratio of persons murdered until the end of October 1942 to persons mur- dered subsequently is 1:0.27. And if one assumes that the three small original "gas chambers" had been utilized at 100% capacity through October 1942 (oth- erwise there would have been no need to build bigger ones), then the rate of utilization of the 13 chambers after November 1942 was only (0.27÷7.66=) 3.5%! (See Table 13.) L: According to this, the ten big new "gas chambers" were not even needed. R: That is exactly right. There is contradiction between the alleged mass murders in the time periods listed and the massive expansion of extermination capacity alleged by witnesses. This is a strong indication that the allegation of construc- tion of a larger gas chamber does not rest on facts, but that it has a propagan- distic origin instead. Three "gas chambers" were not considered monstrous 642 Cf. for this C. Mattogno, J. Graf, "Chapter II: The Development of the Idea of Treblinka as an Exter- mination Camp," op. cit. (note 198), pp. 47-76. 643 Those interested in the details may read them here: C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit. (note 198), pp. 116- 121, 133-138; as well as A. Neumaier, op. cit. (note 209). 644 Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 198), pp. 392-397. 278 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST enough. The infernal nature of the National Socialists even here had to be rein- forced with ever more "data." 3.5.3. How Poisonous are Diesel Engines? L: Another reason diesel engines were chosen is probably because diesels are considered typically German, since the diesel engine had been invented in Germany in the 1920s. R: We can assume that. The problem is that diesel exhaust is unable to cause the alleged murder. In the second lecture I already quoted several personalities on this (see pp. 104, 127.) I want to come back to one of these personalities, Wal- ter Lüftl. In his paper "Holocaust ­ Believe versus Facts," which caused him to lose his position, he explained the following regarding the problem of diesel motors:268 "What the Holocaust writers have obviously overlooked is the fact that die- sel motors are particularly unsuited for the efficient production of carbon monoxide (CO). The SS would have gone over to spark-ignition [gasoline] engines immediately after the first alleged attempts to kill the victims with diesel exhaust gases. Spark-ignition engines can certainly produce eight percent carbon monoxide by volume with poor idle adjustment, but diesels are practically CO free. [...] Just what does this mean in plain language? It means that nobody can be gassed with diesel exhaust. Instead, victims would more readily suffocate from using up the oxygen in the `gastight' chambers. [...] The victims ­ who would otherwise die quickly [of suffocation] ­ would eas- ily live longer as a result of `gassing' with diesel exhaust, because of its high oxygen content. This means that the diesel engine is not suited for quick kill- ing, assuming this could be done at all. [...] This proves that the testimonies about mass killings with diesel exhaust gas [...] are objectively untrue." R: It must be said that Expert Witness Lüftl is not a specialist in motor exhausts. Nevertheless we can have confidence in this competent engineer that he always makes certain he is correct in such critical question before he makes such a statement.645 On account of this and other similar statements, criminal investi- gations for "Holocaust Denial" were initiated against Lüftl. In November of 1992, he was advised per telephone that the charges had been dropped, since it had been established that he was scientifically correct. Lüftl's telephone mes- sage from the bureaucrat is a notable exception. In the written notification of dismissal, the grounds were not named. In official documents the authorities would always avoid writing down a statement that could have serious conse- quences, like admitting that revisionists are right after all. 645 Cf. his contribution, op. cit. (note 274); see also the critique of Lüftl's statements by J. Bailer, in: Brigitte Bailer-Galanda et al. (ed.), op. cit. (note 496), pp. 100-105; cf. my reply to this, "Lüge und Auschwitz-Wahrheit," op. cit. (note 538). 279 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: And how do you know the contents of Lüftl's telephone conversations with this or that bureaucrat in Vienna? R: Mr. Lüftl advised me of this by telephone, and I assume he was telling me the truth. Of course, a telephone message from a bureaucrat does not prove that Lüftl was correct in his statement regarding the diesel problem. If he had been Ill. 88: Carbon monoxide content of exhaust mistaken, however, the au- gases from spark engines and diesel engines as a function of engine load (air-/fuel ratio) thorities would certainly have jumped on it. As early as the mid 1980s the U.S. engineer Friedrich P. Berg investigated the question of the conditions under which diesel exhaust could be deadly.646 Berg's work laid the groundwork for the statements of Buchanan and Lüftl which I quoted previously. As Lüftl correctly pointed out, diesel engines operate with an excess of air. Carbon monoxide (CO), however, is produced only when inadequate oxygen is present to burn all the fuel. Illustration 88 shows the change in CO content in typical diesel and gasoline engines with increasing engine load (sinking air to fuel ratio).647 We can see that a diesel motor produces measurable amounts of carbon monoxide only under extreme loads. L: It is the exact opposite of what one would expect. R: Diesel motors have a bad reputation because they smoke and stink. This results from the relatively unrefined diesel fuel, which is incompletely burned under heady loads for kinetic reasons, that is, for a lack of time of the heavier hydro- carbon molecules to combust completely. However, the smoke and stench of diesel exhaust has nothing to do with its carbon monoxide content. I would like to skip over the discussion of the toxic effects of diesel exhaust under varying conditions and go directly to an animal experiment, which Brit- ish researchers carried out in 1957.648 These experiments simulated heavy mo- tor load by limiting the oxygen supply artificially. This was achieved by re- stricting the air supply at the intake manifold as much as possible without com- pletely killing the motor.649 This was necessary because the exhaust fumes 646 F.P. Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth," JHR 5 (1), 1984, pp. 15-46; updated: "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Ideal for Torture ­ Absurd for Murder," in: G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 435-469. 647 David F. Merrion, "Effect of Design revisions on Two Stroke Cycle Diesel Engine Exhaust," Society of Automotive Engineers Transactions 77 (1968), paper 680422, p. 1535. 648 R.E. Pattle, H. Stretch, F. Burgess, K. Sinclair, J.A.G. Edginton, Brit. J. industr. Med. 14 (1957), pp. 47-55 (www.vho.org/GB/c/FPB/ToxDiesel.html). 649 Since in contrast to gasoline engines diesel engines do not have a carburetor, the fuel-air ration cannot be adjusted this way. 280 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST simply did not cause poisoning in any of the test animals while the engine was idling or operating under light loads. After the gas chamber had been filled with exhaust gas 40 mice, 4 rabbits, and 10 guinea pigs were exposed to it. The last of the animals had died of a combination CO poisoning after three hours and 20 minutes. L: Hence the executions at Treblinka must have lasted at least three hours? R: No, we are told that the motors were not started until the victims were already in the "gas chamber." In order for the victims to die within three hours from the exhaust gases alone, the room would have to already be filled with exhaust gas when they entered it. L: Then it would have taken more than three hours? R: That is still not right, because the victims in those gas chambers are said to have been so tightly packed that they would have deprived themselves of oxy- gen fairly quickly. Mattogno has established that the victims locked into a Treblinka-type gas chamber would have used up so much oxygen after 20 to 30 minutes that they would have suffocated even if no poisonous gas had been in- troduced.650 Walter Lüftl was therefore right when he stated that channeling diesel exhaust gases into such a chamber would probably have prolonged the lives of the victims rather than accelerated their death, because 20 to 30 min- utes after the chambers had been closed, there would have been more oxygen in the exhaust gas than in the chambers (see p. 278). L: What did the witnesses say about the duration of execution? R: They mention around half an hour. L: So perhaps they simply suffocated them by closing the doors and doing noth- ing? R: That wouldn't have been very efficient either: Although it may be possible to kill most of the victims that way, those who live longest my suffer for hours be- fore they finally die, since the oxygen content in the chamber will hardly sink anymore once most victims are dead and stopped breathing. So the SS might have ended up with, let's say, 260 out of 300 prisoners in a chamber being dead, but 40 being merely unconscious, some of whom might wake up again once the chamber doors are opened. The knowledge that diesel exhaust fumes are relatively harmless is not new. Scientists have always known that diesel exhaust is not dangerous, as F.P. Berg reported.651 In Germany, diesel motors were installed in the mines as early as 1928, since their exhaust can be released underground without danger.652 In 1974, British accident statistics on diesel motors installed underground were analyzed with the following results:653 "An examination of all safety records has revealed that no person has suf- fered any harmful effects either temporarily or permanently as a direct re- 650 C. Mattogno, J. Graf, "Gas Chambers or Asphyxiation Chambers?," op. cit. (note 198), pp. 133-136. 651 F.P. Berg, "Posion Gas über alles," TR, 1(1) (2003), pp. 37-47. From this the next five sources. 652 H.H. Müller-Neuglück, H. Werkmeister, "Grubensicherheit der Diesellokomotiven," Glückauf, Aug. 23, 1930, p. 1145. 653 S. Gilbert, "The Use of Diesel Engines Underground in British Coal Mines," The Mining Engineer (GB), June 1974, p. 403. 281 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST sult of breathing any toxic gas emitted from any vehicle powered by a diesel engine" (emphasis added) R: Under the paragraph heading "Over 20 studies find no significant danger to humans" of a 1981 scientific study on the health effects of diesel exhaust fumes, it plainly states:654 "A number of studies evaluating human response to exposure of diesel have included experience among diesel bus workers, diesel railroad workers, and metal and non-metal miners working with diesel production equipment and underground. There are more than 20 human health studies in- volving working populations ex- posed to diesel exhaust emissions. Ill. 89: The Imbert Generator was the As can be seen from a careful re- most common wood gas generator of the view of these studies, no signifi- Third Reich, here during its mass pro- cant health hazards have been as- duction on a conveyor belt in Cologne during 1943.655 sociated with exposures to diesel exhaust emissions." (emphasis added) R: In 1998, Dr. Eran Sher of the Ben Gurion University in Israel published an engineering handbook on motor exhaust fumes. In the chapter on diesel motors it states very clearly:656 "Although carbon monoxide (CO) emissions are regulated, they will not be considered here, as the diesel engine combustion process by definition inhib- its the production of CO." L: Well then, has anyone ever died from diesel exhaust poisoning? R: Yes indeed, one person! In 1998 a study was published on an 83 year old geri- atric suffering of a heart disease, who managed to kill himself with the exhaust gases of his diesel car. But not even that man died as a result of carbon monox- ide poisoning, but because he had inhaled a lot of soot over an extended period of time. The soot clogged up his lungs so that finally his heart failed. It is not known how long that suicide took, but since the motor was running on ideal and because a thick layer of soot had covered the inside of the car, it may well have taken hours. At any rate, this study indicates that this is an extraordinary 654 Dennis S. Lachtman, "Diesel Exhaust-Health Effects," Mining Congress Journal, January 1981, p. 40. 655 Motortechnische Zeitschrift, no. 6/7, 1943, p. 3A. 656 Eran Sher (ed.), Handbook of Air Pollution from Internal Combustion Engines: Pollution Formation and Control, Academic Press, Boston 1998, p. 288. 282 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST case, because the author knows of no other case of a poisoning with subsequent death caused by a diesel engine.657 L: It is already a nuisance just to drive behind a diesel truck. It must have been quite a torture to be locked into a room with thick diesel ex- Ill. 90: The Austro-Fiat 4 D 90 haust fumes. At the end of such an execution, A, manufactured with wood 658 the victims themselves must have been cov- burning gas generator. ered in soot. Do witnesses state anything in this regard? R: No, nothing. L: Except for the uncounted hundreds of thou- sands of victims in German extermination Ill. 91: The Saurer BT 4500 camps, one should add. with a gas generator. A Saurer truck is supposed to R: If these claims are true. But considering the have been used for mass experiment with animals as quoted above, dur- murder at the Kulm- ing which the engine produced much more hof/Chelmno camp ­ yet not soot than an engine running on idle, we must by using generator gas, but allegedly its exhaust gas!658 assume that any attempt to kill healthy humans of an average age with diesel soot would take many hours. L: But people are dying all the time from automobile exhaust fumes not equipped with efficient catalysts. R: But those are exhaust gases of gasoline motors. L: Then, were there no murders with diesel exhaust fumes at all? R: Before we make a hasty conclusion, let me mention a few additional argu- ments. First of all, of course, the question naturally arises: If the Germans had in- vented the diesel motor and used it in the mines since 1928, because it was relatively safe, and if they were aware of the dangers posed by gasoline motors ­ Mattogno found a German technical study from 1930 proving just how aware the Germans were of the toxicity of gasoline motor exhaust659 ­ how then can anyone seriously suggest that the SS would have tried to do something that was technically impossible? L: Well then, gasoline motors. R: Not too fast. After 1942/43 the Germans converted all their transport trucks to run with generator gas, since petroleum was scarce. By the end of the war hun- dreds of thousands of trucks in central Europe were running around with these wood gas generators. Even some armored tanks were converted. Generator gas is generated in a simple oven by burning moist coke, coal, or wood with only 657 S. Sivaloganathan, "Death from diesel fumes," Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine, 5 (1998), pp. 138f. (www.vho.org/GB/c/FPB/DieselDeath.html) 658 Walter J. Spielberger, Kraftfahrzeuge und Panzer des österreichischen Heeres 1896 bis heute, Motor- buch Verlag, Stuttgart 1976, pp. 207, 213. 659 E. Keeser, V. Froboese, R. Turnau, et al., Toxikologie und Hygiene des Kraftfahrwesens, Springer, Berlin 1930; cf. C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit. (note 198), pp. 123-125. 283 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 92: Design of an Ostmark Gas Generator. little oxygen. This gas contains little or no oxygen, and 18 to 35 percent carbon monoxide. This is a highly toxic, fast acting gas. All the political and military heads of the Third Reich, including those involved with Jewish deportations, were well aware of these hundreds of thousands of wood gas generators and their toxicity.660 It must be assumed that such technology would have been ap- plied to attempts at mass murder, if there had been any such attempts. And yet there is no mention anywhere of its use. We have to consider also that wood gas generators were widely used in those days to fumigate rats and other pests. They were considered "very widespread." Thus they would inevitably have been used in any scheme of mass murder, but they were not used.661 And last but not lease: Because of the oil shortage, the Third Reich relied on the above mentioned coal refining technology (page 203). This technology 660 Cf.: Automobiltechnische Zeitschrift 18 (1940) and 19 (1941); W. Ostwald, Generator-Jahrbuch, Jahrgang 1942, J. Kasper & Co., Berlin 1943; H. Fiebelkorn, Behandlung und Instandsetzung von Fahrzeug-Gaserzeugeranlagen, W. Knapp, Halle 1944, p. 189; E. Eckermann, Alte Technik mit Zu- kunft, Die Entwicklung des Imbert-Generators, Oldenbourg, Munich 1986; cf. also F.P. Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Ideal for Torture ­ Absurd for Murder," op. cit. (note 646). 661 First mentioned by Conrad Grieb (=F.P. Berg), "Holocaust: Dieselmotorabgase töten langsam," VffG, 1(3) (1997), pp. 134-137; on the fumigation technology produced by the Nocht-Giemsa company cf. L. Gaßner, op. cit. (note 124). 284 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST produced products similar to natural gas and petroleum. The initial step pro- duced a process gas, which contained a mixture similar to that described above. There was in fact enough carbon monoxide gas everywhere in the Third Reich to exterminate the whole human race. And yet, not a gallon of this gas was used to commit murder. L: And one of these poison gas factories was located right next to Auschwitz camp at the I.G. Farbenindustrie plant at Monowitz. R: That is correct, and yet we are told that nothing except Zyklon B was used at Auschwitz. L: But we cannot rule out the possibility that diesel exhaust was used at Treblinka. R: If we apply the rules of logic, we can rule out that possibility. In fact, we have to rule it out. Unless of course we cast reason overboard and assume that the SS was the greatest gathering of dimwits the world has seen since the Neanderthals died out. L: Just what are the consequences of abandoning the notion of diesel motors as murder weapons? R: Without diesel exhaust as murder weapon, the witness reports about Treblinka and other alleged extermination camps claiming such use of diesel exhaust (Belzec, Sobibor, and Chelmno) are incredible and untenable. The same holds true for the research results of a whole school of historiography which currently enjoys official sponsorship and protection. In order to assert and reinforce its capricious allegations throughout the world, this peculiar school of historiogra- phy openly contradicts the known facts of science and technology and ignores universally accepted principles of logic. 3.5.4. Burning Corpses without a Trace R: I would now like to address the assertion that at Treblinka the bodies of mur- dered victims were burned without a trace.662 According to official historiography most of the victims killed at Treblinka are supposed to have been buried in mass graves before being burned. The ques- tion then arises regarding what characteristics these mass graves would have had? Based on the investigations made of the mass graves at Hamburg ­ Anglo- American carpet bombing of July 1943 ­ Katyn ­ the 1940 Soviet mass murder of Polish officers ­ as well as Bergen-Belsen ­ mass deaths because of typhus epidemic in the spring of 1945 ­ John Ball concluded that one may assume the maximum density to be six corpses per cubic meter.663 Based on this calcula- tion, Table 14 reveals the resulting characteristics of these mass graves. 662 I am summarizing here sections IV.9-12 of C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit. (note 198), p. 137-154; see also A. Neumaier's calculations, op. cit. (note 209). 663 J.C. Ball, op. cit. (note 304), p. 270. 285 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 14: Characteristics of mass Graves in Treblinka size of the camp664 14,500 m2 no. of corpses 860,000 space required 145,000 m³ grave dimensions665 120 m × 15 m × 6 m (length×width×depth) volume per grave666 8,300 m³ corpses per grave ca. 50,000 no. of graves ca. 17 total net surface ca. 30,600 m² 667 back-dirt ca. 160,000 m³ dimensions of a single 45°:668 106 m , 53 m high, 8,800 m² soil cone 30°: 154 m , 44 m high, 18,600 m² soil mounts beside 45°: 120 m × 16,6 m × 8,3 m, 17×2,000 m² (34,000 m²) graves 30°: 120 m × 21,8 m × 6,3 m, 17×2,600 m² (44,200 m²) working space: 2 m around each grave: 10,000 m² gross space needed: 30,600 + 34,000 + 10,000 m² = 74,600 m² The reports about the area where the gas chambers and graves are supposed to have been located ­ and later the burning pits ­ indicate that what is asserted to have occurred there would have needed five times as much space than what is claimed. The graves and the excavation mounds would have actually covered half of the entire camp. L: Perhaps the witnesses simply got it wrong. R: Well, let's see what the gigantic open air fire grates would have looked like, on which it is claimed that 870,000 corpses were burned. L: Treblinka therefore did not have any crematories like Auschwitz? R: No. The Polish examining magistrate Zdzislaw ukaszkiewicz, who investi- gated Treblinka after the war, stated:669 "In Treblinka there were no crematories in the form of furnaces, only primi- tive provisions of fire grates." L: But if Treblinka had been a pure "extermination camp," would it not have been more important to build crematories there than for example at Auschwitz? R: That would appear to be logical. All important concentration camps ­ Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg, Neuengamme, Groß- Rosen, Niederhagen, and Ravensbrück ­ were equipped with fixed or mobile cremation furnaces. Lublin/Majdanek and Auschwitz Birkenau, which served 664 "Camp II," the area of Treblinka II where the extermination is said to have occurred (gas chambers, graves, cremation pits). The entire camp had a surface area of 141,500 m². 665 Elias Rosenberg, Tatsachenbericht. Das Todeslager Treblinka, Vienna, Dec. 24, 1947, p. 5 of the report. This document was reproduced by H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 196), pp. 133-144. 666 Minus a cover layer of 50 cm. Mattogno assumed vertical walls of the pits, which is technically impos- sible with the soil rich in sand as found in Treblinka. I therefore assumed a wall angle of 70°. As a re- sult the pit loses 2 m in width and length on all sides at a depth of 6 m, or some 1,600 m³. 667 10% increase in volume of the loosened soil. 668 Angle of the piled-up soil. 669 USSR-344, GARF, 7445-2-126, p. 321 (p. 5 of the report). 286 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 15: Characteristics of the cremation pyres of Treblinka no. of corpses 870,000 673 total mass 39,150,000 kg 39,150 m3 volume duration of cremation April ­ July 1943, 122 days corpses per day 7,250 dimension of cremation grills674 30 m × 3 m (90 m²), 0.75 m above ground no. of grills 2 corpses per grill and day 3,625 = 163,125 kg time require per load675 one day (but probably considerably more) corpses per m² and layer676 11/3 corpses per layer 120 height per layer 0.30 m no. of layers 30 677 height of pyre 9m wood needed per kg flesh506 3.5 kg wood needed per grill & day 570,937,5 kg space needed for wood678 1,679 m3 67.5 m3 = 22,950 kg wood space under grills wood between each layer (570,937.5 ­ 22,950)/29 = 18,896 = 0.60 m height with corpses and wood 26.4 m (a 9 storey house!) total required wood 137,025,000 kg total wood ashes679 10,962,000 kg, 32,241 m3 total human ashes680 1,957,500 kg, 3,915 m3 681 51,156 m3 excess volume 682 height of ash layer in camp 3.5 m allegedly at the same time as concentration and extermination camps, had sev- eral crematories. Even for a simple prisoner of war transit camp in Russia a crematory was established.670 And then to top it off: When it turned out that the SS had bought a few too many cremation furnaces, all camps were asked if such furnaces were needed there.671 But neither from Treblinka nor from Bel- zec or Sobibor did anyone request a need for such furnaces.672 But now let's list some of the characteristics, which the legendary fire grates are supposed to have had according to witness testimonies. In view of the strongly varying testimonies, the values shown in Table 15 are to be regarded only as rough estimates. They are only to help us gain a picture of what is be- ing claimed about Treblinka. 670 Letter from Hauptamt Haushalt und Bauten to the firm Topf, December 4, 1941, RGVA, 502-1-328, p.347f. 671 WAPL, Zentralbauleitung, 268, p. 132. 672 See for details C Mattogno, J Graf, op. cit. (note 198), pp. 143-145. 673 Average weight: 45 kg; reduction of weight due to decomposition. 674 Consisting of 5 to 6 parallel rails; acc. to the verdict of the Düsseldorf Treblinka trial, A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 630), p. 205. Other witnesses have given other, contradictory data, which are technically im- 287 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Without wood between the corpse layers each pyre would have been 9 meters high, and with wood between the layers over 26 meters, making it a total of over 700 metric tons per pyre for a successful cremation. L: You mean 700 metric tons on a few rails? Well, the fire would have soon bent them. L: For that to happen you don't need fire because the rails would have bent even before lighting the pyre. But how could you have done this stacking of corpses without a huge crane? Or did they have such cranes? R: It is maintained that in Treblinka there were excavators that did this work. There are even pictures of an excavator in Treblina, which is just an ordinary excavator as one would find at any gravel pit.683 L: Therefore not with a reach of nine or even 26 meters? R: No, perhaps four meters. One must know that there was another camp in the vicinity of this alleged extermination camp, a penal labor camp where workers extracted gravel from a pit. The pictures of the excavator probably originate from this camp. L: But even if you had such cranes, how do you keep a pile like that from collaps- ing? I mean, these pyres are claimed to have been just 3 m wide, but 9 or even 26 m high? That would never work! R: Even if you manage to build such a pile, as soon as you light the fire, it is only a matter of time when the corpses fall over to one side, because fires never burn evenly. Realistically seen, therefore, you cannot really build a stable pile that is higher than it is wide. L: As to the time required to burn down such a pyre and clear the ashes, I doubt very much that it can be done in a day. R: You are right. Experiences with large-scale cremations of cattle on pyres indi- cate that it takes at least a week before such huge fire places can be cleared, as I already mentioned in connection with open air incinerations in Auschwitz (see p. 212). Of course, if we increase the time required to seven days, but keep only two pyres, the height of each load would rise by the factor seven, which would be utterly absurd. Or we have to increase the number of pyres to 14, which contradicts both the witness statements and the space available. possible, however, so for instance in Arad, claiming that the grill was 30 m wide, op. cit. (198), p. 174. A fire under such a wide grill could have been maintained only at the edges. 675 That is to say: Piling up corpses and fire wood, lighting the fire, burning it completely down, cooling down of the remains, clearing of the ashes and unburned remains. 676 1.75 m × 0.50 m per corpse + necessary space in between to allow combustion gases to pass. 677 Acc. to other witnesses the pile is supposed to have been even higher. 678 The density of piled-up wood is between 340 and 450 kg per m3. Since wood which is stacked together too closely does not burn well, I assume the first value here. 679 8% of the wood, 0.34 g/cm3. 680 5% of the body, 0.5 g/cm3. 681 Ash (32,241 m3 + 3,915 m3) + excess of loosened soil from the mass graves (15,000 m3). 682 51,156 m3 on 14,500 m2 of the extermination area of the camp. 26% soil from the excavation excess. 683 Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 198), p. 95; G. Sereny, Into that Darkness, Mc Graw-Hill, New York 1974, photo on unnumbered page; Ernst Klee, Willi Dreßen, Volker Rieß, Schöne Zeiten. Der Judenmord aus der Sicht der Täter und Gaffer, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1988, p. 222; R. Czarkowski, op. cit. (note 625), photo on unnumbered page. 288 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST A further very interesting point is the fuel requirement to maintain the claimed pyres. I must add here that some witnesses claimed the SS developed a method of cremating corpses without using any kind of fuel. This is, of course, pure nonsense. In the next lecture I shall quote some of these statements. If that were true, then, for example, one of India's main problems would be solved, where the deceased are usually cremated on wooden funeral pyres. In the last decades this has almost completely denuded India of wood. L: But I heard that bodies can spontaneously and without a fuel burn up com- pletely. R: What you are referring to is often called "spontaneous human combustion," and only recently this phenomenon has been explained. It is not a spontaneous combustion but rather accidents where a small fire burns close to a corpse with a high fat content. If there is an object on this corpse that can act like a candle wick ­ cotton clothes for example ­ then it can happen that the fat-rich trunk burns slowly like a candle. However, this procedure takes many hours and burns only the trunk but not the limbs which have less fat content. It does also not burn the head.684 L: So humans can burn without fuel after all. R: Not completely, not fast, and certainly not with a low body fat content. This method is certainly not suited for a speedy cremation of thousands of corpses in few hours. Such large quantities require an additional fuel source, and then in huge quantities: here about 140,000 metric tons. According to witnesses this wood supply was procured by a wood felling commando.685 This would have had to work every day for 122 days, cut 1,148 metric tons of wood, saw it up and transport it into the camp! That is at least 760 trees per day, which would have filled up 76 fifteen-tonner trucks. Richard Glazar claimed he was one of the inmate wood cutters, and there were 25 of them at Treblinka according to his testimony.686 L: That is 30½ trees per man, per day, or 2½ trees per hour for a 12 hour day ­ cut the trees down, cut the branches off, saw the trunks into transportable lengths, and then transport these to the camp. That is quite impossible. Two men can perhaps cope with one tree per day. That means that hundreds of wood cutters had to have been at work. R: And this means that about 280 hectares of forest (2.8 km2, a little more than a square mile) would have been cleared.687 There is not the slightest trace to be found on air photos taken of Treblinka.688 Also missing are the huge mountains of ash that such cremations would have created. If one would have distributed 684 Cf. see episode "Spontaneous Human Combustion" of the U.S. popular science TV station Discovery Channel on Nov. 3, 2004, 20:00 eastern standard time (http://media.science.discovery.com/video/skepticalinquirer/skepticalinquirer.html). 685 A. Donat, op. cit. (note 198), p. 97. 686 R. Glazar, Trap with a green fence, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1995, pp. 56, 127f. 687 A spruce forest of 50 years of age yields some 500 metric tons of wood per hectare; G. Colombo, Manuale dell'ingegniere civile e industriale, Enrico Hoepli Editore, Mailand 1926, p. 161. 688 J.C. Ball, op. cit. (note 457); U. Walendy, "Der Fall Treblinka," HT no. 44, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1990, p. 33. 289 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the ash evenly within the camp where the extermination is alleged to have hap- pened, as it is claimed, then this whole area would have been raised by almost four meters. One can also not assume that such cremation method would completely reduce all corpses to ash. Large quantities of bone fragments and charred corpse parts as well as wood and charcoal remnants would have been left over ­ uncounted millions of such fragments. 3.5.5. The Search for Traces L: Did anyone ever look for these traces? R: Certainly. Both the Russians and the Poles conducted investigations there. The Soviets did this from August 15-23, 1944, thus still during the war. However, one can see from the report that not even a small piece of evidence was found that would prove Treblinka was an extermination camp. In their report, dated August 24, 1944, it is openly admitted:689 "Currently it is difficult to reveal the traces and the secrets of this human cremation furnace [...]." R: As the Nuremberg trials began, the camp again gained prominence, so the Poles conducted their own investigations. The already mentioned Polish examining magistrate ukaszkiewicz conducted excavations on November 9-13, 1945, in the area of the alleged extermi- nation camp and wrote a re- port.690 But not even u- kaszkiewicz found anything. His excavation of sites where witnesses said the mass graves were located remained fruitless, just as the search for the foundations of the gas chambers yielded nothing. He found only "lay- ers of intact earth," and some unburned corpse parts. There Ill. 93: Air photo of Treblinka, November 1944. 689 Investigation Report of Soviet and Polish Authorities, Document of August 24, 1944. GARF, 7021- 115-9, pp. 103-110. 690 Photocopy of this document reproduced in S. Wojtczak, op. cit. (note 634), pp. 183-185. Cf. the com- plete translation in C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit. (note 198), pp. 84-86. See there also references to, and excerpts of, ukaszkiewicz' protocol as presented to the IMT, as well as about ukaszkiewicz's re- search in the penal labor camp. 290 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST simply was no proof of mass mur- der, let alone many hundreds of thousands of humans. It is worthwhile mentioning that within the area of the alleged exter- mination camp ukaszkiewicz found several meter deep bomb craters. Since these craters are not visible on the air photos of 1944,691 after the German retreat, one must assume Ill. 94: Treblinka, stone memorial on a huge concrete area in the center of the that the Red Army bombed the area former camp. © Carlo Mattogno, 1997. after they occupied it. That would explain why ukaszkiewicz found few remains of corpse parts littered over a wide area, but no complete corpses. L: Why should the Red Army have bombed the area? R: The bombs scattered the few existing decayed corpse parts over a large area and thereby created a horrible effect superficially giving the impression of an "extermination camp." Indeed the corpse parts found were then fully used for propaganda purposes. L: And is there a chance to conduct investigations today? R: The area of the alleged extermination camp was partly sealed with concrete, into which large stone blocks were placed to serve as a memorial. In order to accomplish excavations there, one would have to tear up all this concrete. It probably requires a revolutionary upheaval in the historiography before that happens. 3.5.6. Documentary Evidence L: So prisoners did die in Treblinka? R: Of course. For example in autumn 1943 a typhus epidemic broke out in the penal labor camp, causing 148 prisoners to die between November 12 and De- cember 12, 1943.692 The graves of these victims were also found by ukasz- kiewicz. L: So the SS did not even bother to cremate these bodies. R: Correct. L: What documentary proof exists that supports the mass murder thesis? R: Very few documents about Treblinka have been preserved. There is no docu- mentation about the plan, organization, procuring of materials, personnel, budget, etc. that would support the gigantic act of extermination. Nothing, ab- solutely nothing at all. Concerning the deportations to Treblinka a whole set of documents exists, which speak of "evacuation" and/or "resettlement" to the east, however. L: These are camouflage terms for murder. 691 U.S. National Archives, Ref. no. GX 12225 SG, exp. 259; the exact date of this photo is unknown. First published by John C. Ball, op. cit. (note 457), p. 87. 692 Photocopy of this document in S. Wojtczak, op. cit. (note 634), pp. 159-164. 291 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: So the prevailing view. An interesting demographic study of what really hap- pened to the Jews during that time was written in 1943 by mainstream Profes- sor Eugene Kulischer in Canada. In his detailed investigation Kulischer relied on the data provided by many respected global organizations, all of which were hostile towards the Third Reich. This is how Eugene Kulischer sums it up:693 "For the Polish ghettos are not the last stage in the forced eastward migra- tion of the Jewish people. On 20 November 1941, the Governor General, Hans Frank, broadcast the information that the Polish Jews would ulti- mately be transferred further east. Since the summer of 1942 the ghettos and labour camps in the German-occupied Eastern Territories have become the destination of deportees both from Poland and from western and central Europe; in particular, a new large-scale transfer from the Warsaw ghetto has been reported. Many of the deportees have been sent to the labour camps on the Russian front; others to work in the marshes of Pinsk, or to the ghettos of the Baltic countries, Bielorussia [Belarus] and Ukraine." R: Kulischer had nothing to report about any extermination camps. 3.6. Belzec and Sobibor R: Now let's imaginatively venture into the next "extermination camp," i.e. Bel- zec. In my summary of the information available on this camp I rely once more on a study, which tried to critically analyze all available sources of this camp.694 Situated in east Poland, at least 300,000, if not up to three million humans mainly of the Jewish faith are alleged to have been killed there between March and December 1942. L: Haven't I heard something like that before? R: Yes, that is the nature of our subject matter, and so as not to repeat myself, I shall be brief here. In Table 16 a number of figures are listed that do not need a commentary. For Belzec as well, wildly differing murder methods are claimed: diesel gas chambers; quick lime; electric current; vacuum chambers. The corpses were then burned on huge pyres ­ leaving no traces. L: Thus essentially the same what is said about Treblinka. R: Generally, yes, except for some revealing differences. In Belzec the diesel en- gine emerged rather late as the murder weapon of choice. Initially there were more statements made about electric chambers. The most detailed and at the same time the most famous comes from Stefan Szende, from which I select some quotes:695 "One had to work several months and build. [...] Hundred of thousands of working hours were spent on it, and tens of thousands of tons of valuable 693 E. Kulischer, The Displacement of Population in Europe. Published by the International Labour Office, Montreal 1943, pp. 110f. 694 C. Mattogno, Be ec in Propaganda, Testimonies, Archeological Research, and History, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/b). 695 Stefan Szende, Der letzte Jude aus Poland. Europa Verlag, Zürich 1945, pp. 290-292. 292 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 16: Victim numbers claimed for Belzec 3,000,000 Rudolf Reder.696 2,000,000 Zeuge Eugeniusz G.697 1,800,000 Eustachy Ukrai ski698 and T. Chró ciewicz699 1,000,000 Michael Tregenza700 800,555 Robin O'Neil701 600,000 Polish Central Commission,702 Y. Arad,703 W. Scheffler704 550,000 Tatiana Berenstein705 300,000 Minimal number of the Jury Court Munich706 100,000 ­ 150,000 Jean-Claude Pressac637 material were required to establish the human mill in Belcec. [...] The hu- man mill covers an area of approximately 7 square kilometers. [appr. 2.7 sq miles...] The trains full of Jews would travel through a tunnel into the un- derground rooms of the execution place. There the Jews disembarked. [...] The naked Jews were brought into enormous halls. Several thousand hu- mans at one time could fit into these halls. They did not have windows, and they were made of metal with a floor that could be lowered. The floors of these halls with thousands of Jews standing on them were lowered into a wa- ter basin below it ­ but only so far that the humans standing on the metal place would not be completely submerged. When all the Jews standing on the metal were submerged in water up to their hips a strong electric current was sent through the water. After a few moment thousands of Jews were dead. Then the metal floors were raised out of the water and on them lay the exe- cuted corpses. Another electric cable was switched on and the metal plate was turned into a crematory coffin, white-hot, until all corpses were burnt to ashes. Massive cranes then lifted the enormous crematory coffins and emptied the ash. Huge factory chimneys eliminated the smoke." L: I assume there is nothing left of this enormous underground plant. 696 GARF, 7021-149-99, p. 18. 697 ZStL, 252/59, vol. I, p. 1136 698 Ibid., p. 1118. 699 Ibid., p. 1225. 700 M. Tregenza, "Das vergessene Lager des Holocaust," in I. Wojak, P. Hayes (ed.), "Arisierung" im Nationalsozialismus, Volksgemeinschaft, Raub und Gedächtnis, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/Main, New York 2000, p. 242. 701 R. O'Neil, "Be ec: A Reassessment of the Number of Victims," in East European Jewish Affairs, 29(1-2) (1999), p. 104. 702 Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, cf. E. Szrojt, "Obóz zag ady w Be cu," in Biuletyn G ównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce, Poznan 1947, III, pp. 43f. 703 Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 198), p. 177. 704 Ino Arndt, Wolfgang Scheffler, op. cit. (note 630). 705 T. Berenstein, "Eksterminacja ludno ci ydowskiej w dystrikcie Galicja (1941-1943)," in Biuletyn ydowskiego Instytutu Historicznego w Polsce, 61, 1967, p. 29. 706 A. Rückerl (ed.), op. cit. (note 630), p. 136. 293 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 17: Characteristics of mass graves in Belzec, claimed and found Claimed Found no. or corpses 600,000 ??? 21,000 m3 [707] space required 100,000 m³ 100 m × 25 m × 12 m708 40 m 10 m 5m709 dimensions of graves 710 volume per grave 22,750 m³ corpses per grave ca. 136,500 scattered no. of graves ca. 4.5 33 total net surface ca. 11,250 m² appr. 6,000 m² back-dirt667 23,100 m3 ca. 110,000 m³ Mass of corpses673 27,000,000 kg 27,000 m3 volume duration of cremation Dec. 1942 ­ March 1943, 121 days corpses per day711 4,959 570,937.5 kg506 wood needed per day total wood needed 94,500,000 kg wood ashes679 7,560,000 kg, 22,235 m3 human ashes680 1,350,000 kg, 2,700 m3 712 ca. 35,000 m3 excess volume 713 height of ash in camp 56 cm R: Of course, neither documents nor material traces remain. These and other simi- lar outrageous stories about the high voltage executions in Belzec are today re- jected as false, and established historians willfully ignore them (see Prof. Nol- te's remark, quoted on p. 135). L: So they are telling us only half the truth about what has been reported about Belzec. R: Well, I would say they are only telling us a fraction of it, just like they do about Treblinka. For example, there are statements that report on a soap factory in Belzec where the fat from murdered Jews was allegedly turned into soap. And the other killing methods ­ quick lime, which killed the deportees while travel- ing in trains, as well as vacuum chambers ­ were also secretly dropped.714 The diesel engine story emerged mainly because of Kurt Gerstein's statements, a mining engineer who was responsible for the SS hygiene, and in this role had 707 Ignoring the question if these pits were actual graves or if they were dug after the war. 708 Length×Width×Depth; acc. to witness statements, cf. C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 694), pp. 74f. 709 The dimensions of the graves found are extremely irregular. 710 Minus a cover layer of 50 cm; wall angle: 70°. Due to this the pit loses 4 m in width and length on all sides at a depth of 12 m, or some 6,000 m³. 711 There are no witness statements regarding the cremation arrangement used. Cf. the resp. calculations for Treblinka, p. 286 of this present book. 712 Ash (22,235 m3 + 2,700 m3) + excess of loosened soil from the mass graves (10,000 m3). 713 35,000 m3 on 62,000 m2 (area of the entire camp). 714 Cf. for this chapter 1 "Literary Origins and Development of the Alleged Methods of Murder" in C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 694), pp. 9-34. 294 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST visited Belzec and is alleged to have witnessed a diesel motor gassing. We shall return to Gerstein in our next lecture. L: And were there any forensic investigations undertaken at Belzec? R: The first forensic investigations at Belzec were undertaken in October 1945 and then again in 1997 and 1999, whereby the latter were far more thorough: Core samples were drilled out of the soil at five meter intervals covering the whole camp site, which altogether resulted in 2,227 samples.715 Of these samples, 236 revealed a disturbance of the earth layer in 33 different, highly irregular shapes.716 And of these, 137 were "relevant" enough to have their data pub- lished. However, only six of these contained human remains, that is a mere 3% of all samples with a disturbed earth layer or only 0.3% of all samples taken. The largest corpse layer found was only 75 cm thick (2.5 ft). What one gener- ally found was a scattering of thin layered ashes largely mixed with earth rich in sand. L: Which means it is proven that at Belzec humans died and their bodies were cremated. R: True, but no one denies this. But this does not clarify to what extent this hap- pened, nor what caused the deaths. For that we have to analyze the results more closely. The drillings determined that approximately 21,000 m3 of soil had been disturbed. According to the official version, 600,000 corpses would have had to fit into this area, because in Belzec the burning of corpses is said to have begun after the murder phase had allegedly ended. Similar to Treblinka, Table 17 lists the data derived from witness statements about the mass graves and the mass cremations in the center column, whereas the right column gives data derived from the sample drillings mentioned. L: According to this information, then, only 21% of the number of alleged victim would have fitted into these discovered pits, thus about 126,000, something that would confirm Pressac's estimate of the number of victims at Belzec. R: That would be the case if these graves had been full of ash, but that is not so. Only occasionally one finds soil mixed with ash. L: But why are there so many pits in Belzec, if they were not used? R: The solution of this mystery lies in what happened in the camp area between 1945 and 1965. The Polish researcher Andrzej Kola wrote:717 "Additional disturbances in archeological structures were made by intensive dig-ups directly after the war while local people were searching for jewel- lery. The facts make it difficult for the archeologists to define precisely the ranges of burial pits." R: On April 11, 1946, the public prosecutor of Zamosc had already explained what some witnesses confirmed:718 715 A. Kola, Be ec: The Nazi Camp for Jews in the light of archeological sources: Excavations 1997- 1999, The Council for the Protection of Memory and Martyrdom, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Warsaw-Washington 2000. 716 My subsequent description is based on C. Mattogno's analysis of Kola's paper, ibid.: C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 694), Chapter IV, "Be ec in Polish Archeological Research (1997 to 1999)," pp. 71-96. 717 A. Kola, op. cit. (note 715), p. 65. 718 ZStL, 252/59, vol. I, pp. 1227; cf. pp. 1119, 1132-1133, 1135. 295 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "At this time the camp area has been totally turned upside down by people coming from the surrounding district to search the area for precious articles. As a result of this activity ash and human body parts and wood, charred bones as well as partly charred bones came to the surface." R: In other words: the pits found through the sample drillings are not only mass graves, but to a large extent the remnants of wild excavations made by treasure hunters after the war. This also explains why the pits found are completely ir- regular both concerning their sizes, shapes, and orientations as well as their contents and the position, arrangement, and composition of the earth layers in them. If one considers that at least 90% of the material of the sample cores exhibited neither human remnants nor ash, then the maximum number of the corpses that could have been buried in these pits ­ 126,000 ­ is at least to be reduced by a factor of 10, because the number 126,000 is based on the premise that the corpses were packed as tightly as possible in all of these pits. L: Therefore the mass murder at Belzec is a maximum of 126,000, but realistically probably only a few ten thousand? R: Or only in the thousands, whereby I would rather talk of "mass dying" instead of "mass murder," because the most frequent causes of death at Belzec were probably diseases, exhaustion, etc. The results of these forensic investigations have consequences beyond the mere reduction of the victim number. Owing to a British secret service intercept of an SS secret radio report of January 1, 1943, we know that 434,500 Jews were deported to Belzec.719 If, however, not more than 126,000 could have been buried at Belzec ­ but probably much less than that ­ what happened with the majority of these deported Jews, which were not buried at Belzec? They were obviously not killed in Belzec. L: Then they must have been brought elsewhere. R: Correct, which confirms the revisionist thesis that Belzec was a transit camp. By the way, during the sample drillings a search for the remains of the gas chambers was also made. However, no traces of buildings approximated any- thing that resembled what witnesses reported. What was found were the ruins of a multiple car garage. L: A garage building? R: Correct, recognizable by a repair pit. L: After the graves were located through the drillings, did one actually exhume the mass graves and examine their contents? R: Surprisingly, no. L: But that would have been the only possibility of determining the accurate size of the graves and the number of the corpses lying in them. R: It appears that once the gigantic mass graves containing hundreds of thousands of victims or their remains were not located, there was little interest to do any- 719 Peter Witte, Stephen Tyas, "A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of the Jews during `Einsatz Reinhardt' 1942," in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, no. 3, Winter 2001, pp. 469f.; cf. C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 694), pp. 103, 127. 296 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST thing else. Anyway, in 2004 a monument was built at Bel- zec,720 which says as much that from now on there is not to be any more research done here, something that would disturb the dead, but now it is time to grieve, pray, and sob. L: And what do the documents say Ill. 95: Photo of the ruins of a garage building with repair pit in Belzec.721 about Belzec? R: The few documents discovered or released so far state that at its beginnings Belzec was a labor camp, wherein harsh discipline against the Jews was main- tained. They were badly treated, and it did happen that the sick and the weak were summarily shot. However these procedures are embedded in the contexts of the usual language used when talking about forced labor and deportations, and they contradict the thesis of systematic extermination at Belzec. Why would you, if you are intent on kill- ing all Jews, go to the trouble of tak- ing out and executing the sick and weak?722 L: And what about the last of the claimed extermination camp close to the Polish town of Sobibor? R: There is so far no detailed critical study available on Sobibor, but in their critical study of Treblinka, Carlo Mattogno and Jürgen Graf in passing dealt with Sobibor. The dis- covered documents also embed this camp within the German deportation and forced labor politics. Finally I would like to mention that all three camps discussed here were situated on the demarcation line be- tween German and Soviet occupied Poland (see Ill. 96). From this geo- Ill. 96: Location of six NS camps gener- graphic fact it can be assumed that ally referred to as "extermination camps": these camps served as transit camps Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec and Auschwitz; Chelmno was for the deportation of Jews "into the allegedly the smallest and "most insig- east." It must be noted that in con- nificant" of them all.723 720 Jewish Telegraph Agency, June 3, 2004; cf. TR 2(3) (2004), p. 359 (www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?strwebhead=Belzec+memorial+opens&intcategoryid=5). 721 A. Kola, op. cit. (note 715), p. 56. 722 C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 694), chapter V, " Documented History of the Be ec camp," pp. 97-108. 723 Taken from Christian Zentner, Der große Bildatlas zur Weltgeschichte, Unipart, Stuttgart 1982, p. 522. 297 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST trast to the rest of Table 18: Three victim numbers claimed for Sobibor 2,000,000 Zelda Metz724 Europe the Soviets 200,000 W. Scheffler704 used broad gauge 30,000 ­ 35,000 Jean-Claude Pressac637 railway tracks. There- fore, each transport towards the east had to transfer its people at this demarcation line from trains of the Europeans system to those of the Russian system. To my knowledge it is revisionist researcher Steffen Werner in his study of the Jewish deportations who was the first one to point this out.427 This would also explain why so many witnesses talked about delousing and showering procedures, that is, hygienic measures during the interruption of their deportation, which today are falsely regarded as deceptive measures preluding the mass murder. L: But if the Jews were deported by the hundreds of thousands, or even millions to Belarus, as Mr. Werner asserts and as quoted by you, where are they then to- day? R: Let me quote from three documents. There is first the indictment speech of the Soviet general R.A. Rudenko before the IMT, according to which the Germans had left hundreds of thousands of unfit children, women, and the aged in camps during their retreat from the Soviet Union.725 The Soviet chief prosecutor Smirnov submitted to the IMT a document, which elaborated further on these camps in Belarus.726 Carlo Mattogno collected a series of documents, which gives further information on "the final goal of the Jews" deported to the east.727 A particularly illuminating example is the following message of the French- Jewish underground paper Notre Voix, which in 1944 reported the following:728 "Thank you! A message, which will please all Jews in France, was spread by Radio Moscow. Who of us doesn't have a brother, a sister, relatives of those deported from Paris? And who will not feel a deep joy, if he remem- bers that 8,000 Paris Jews were saved from death by the glorious Red Army! [...] They were all in the Ukraine, when the last Soviet offensive began, [...] they were immediately welcomed by the Red Army and all are at present in the Soviet Union." L: Werner's thesis that many Jews were actually settled in the east turns out to be correct. But that does not answer my question. R: I think that at the end of war a part of these Jews went towards the west, fol- lowing the usual flow of emigrating Jews. Another group was taken by Stalin's executioners to the GULag, where most of them perished. The rest may have been scattered throughout the Soviet Union. It might be difficult to determine the exact fate of these deported Jews. There is without a doubt room for more research. 724 Testimony by Zelda Metz, in N. Blumental (ed.), Dokumenty i materia y, vol. I, ód 1946, p. 210. 725 IMT, vol. VII, p. 196, Feb. 8, 1946. 726 IMT, vol. VII, pp. 635ff., Feb. 19, 1946; cf. document USSR-4, not included in the IMT document volumes. 727 C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit. (note 198), chapter VIII.6., pp. 253-261. 728 Notre Voix, no. 71, April 1944; reproduced in: A. Raisky, David Diamant, Charles Ledermann, La presse antiraciste sous l'occupation hitlérienne, U.J.R.E., Paris 1950, p. 179. 298 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 3.7. Majdanek, the "Auxiliary Extermination Camp" R: Since the end of the war the concentration camp Lublin-Majdanek has contin- ued to lose its significance in Holocaust propaganda.731 Majdanek was the first concentration camp, which was occupied by the Red Army in summer 1944. The press frenzy was accordingly huge, because in Majdanek they found cre- mation furnaces, delousing chambers, cans of Zyklon B as well as the huge pile of shoes, about which I spoke at the beginning of the first lec- ture. Although all these objects had life-saving functions ­ ex- cept for the shoes, of course ­ Soviet propaganda turned them into their opposite. A particu- larly horrible picture of the Ma- jdanek cremation furnaces did the rounds, see Ill. 97. L: There are human skeletons scattered about. That is really gruesome. R: Yes, but the question to ask is: Did the Germans really leave behind such a scene, or was it fabricated by the Soviets in or- der to indict the Germans through such a gruesome scene. There was certainly no shortage Ill. 97: The crematory in the camp Majdanek, of corpses on the eastern front. as by the Soviets.729 L: But doesn't it take months, if not years, before a corpse de- cays into a skeleton? And you cannot really pull skeletons out of a cremation oven in one piece. So it may be assumed that this scene was staged. R: That is quite plausible. The destruction of the crematories at Auschwitz by the Germans be- Ill. 98: Empty Zyklon B cans in Majdanek fore their retreat, by the way, camp as photographed by the Soviets.730 may have been done as a result 729 US-National Archives, 208-AA-132H-1. 730 "Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust," http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/gallery2/50575.htm (Original from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum). 731 For details cf. the study by J. Graf, C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 523). The term "auxiliary extermination camp" was used by Polish propaganda literature for the Stutthof camp, cf. J. Graf, C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 525). 299 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 19: Victim numbers claimed for Majdanek 1,700,000 Penal Court Lublin734 1,500,000 IMT735 1,380,000 Lucy Dawidowicz40 360,000 Zdzislaw ukaszkiewicz,736 Israel Gutman737 250,000 Wolfgang Scheffler,738 Enzyklopädie des Holocaust739 235,000 Czes aw Rajca15 160,000 Józef Marsza ek740 125,000 Martin Gilbert (Jews only)741 100,000 Jean-Claude Pressac637 50,000 Raul Hilberg (Jews only)39 of this picture and similar Soviet propaganda photos, because no one in Ger- many wanted to see more of such photos from appearing.732 In Table 19 the number of victims said to have died at Majdanek is listed. The only number of victims based on documents, which was ever mentioned in a study on Majdanek, states about 42,200.733 L: And how many of these dead were Jews? R: This cannot be determined exactly, but probably more than half. By the way in the orthodox historiography of Majdanek there is also mention of mass murder through shooting: On November 4, 1943, 17,000 Jewish armament workers are supposed to have been shot there. For some unknown reasons Holocaust literature has set in concrete this alleged massacre. L: Imagine, at the end of 1943 Germany was desperate for workers in the armament factories and the Nazis shoot 17,000 of them? R: Yes, it is indeed absurd. More likely the Germans would have killed old peo- ple, the sick, or others not capable of working! In Chapter 9 of the Majdanek book co-written with Jürgen Graf, revisionist historian Carlo Mattogno gath- ered a large number of arguments, which point out that the alleged mass shoot- ing of November 1943 is indeed a figment of someone's imagination.742 L: It appears that exaggeration and lies were told about nearly all of the camps. 732 See Andrew Allen, "Auschwitz: Krema-Zerstörung als Propaganda-Bremse," VffG, 2(2) (1998), p. 130 (Engl.: "Why the Germans Destroyed the Crematoria but left the `Gas Chambers' Intact," www.vho.org/GB/c/AA/gcgvdest.html). 733 J. Graf, C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 523), p. 79. 734 Verdict Lublin, Dec. 2, 1944, APMM, sygn. XX-1, p. 100. 735 Dokument USSR-29, IMT, vol. VII, p. 590. 736 Zdzislaw ukaszkiewicz, "Obóz koncentracyjni i zag ady Majdanek," in: Biuletyn G ównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce, vol. 4 (1948), pp. 63-105. 737 Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, op. cit. (note 112), vol. III, p. 939. 738 Wolfgang Scheffler, Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich, Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1964, p. 40. 739 Eberhard Jäckel, Peter Longerich, Julius H. Schoeps (eds.), Enzyklopädie des Holocaust. Die Verfol- gung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, Argon Verlag, Berlin 1993, vol. II, p. 918. 740 J. Marsza ek, Majdanek. The Concentration Camp in Lublin. Interpress, Warsaw 1986. p. 125. 741 Martin Gilbert, op. cit. (note 138), p. 329, fn. 2. 742 Ibid., pp. 209-230. 300 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: You are absolutely right. After Auschwitz and the "pure extermination camps" had moved into the foreground of Holocaust propaganda step by step, the number of vic- tims claimed for Majdanek was reduced. Let me now look at the alleged homicidal gas chambers at Majdanek in somewhat more detail. Since the middle of 1942, al- lied propaganda had reported that in the concentration camps mass extermination of prisoners was being carried out with poi- soned gas. Not surprisingly, when the Sovi- ets liberated the first camps, they would as- sert this extermination was a fact. It there- fore does not surprise that the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Majdanek was "confirmed" by a Polish-Soviet investiga- tion commission in August 1944.744 How- ever, in order to sell the gas chambers suc- cessfully to future generations, the Polish and Russian propagandists had to overcome Ill. 99: Section of a plan of the two obstacles: hygienic building 41 in Majdanek, 1. All documents by the Central Construc- drawn by the Polish-Soviet Inves- tion Office of the Majdanek camp found tigation Commission. I-VI: alleged gas chambers.743 so far refer to the rooms labeled as "homicidal gas chambers" by the Soviets as delousing or disinfestation rooms. 2. In contrast to Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Belzec, there are no witness testi- monies that describe the claimed homicidal gassing procedure for Majdanek. The first problem was solved by the Polish historians in the old fashion way: Without any kind of evidence it is claimed that the Germans had used a code language for Majdanek. Since the second problem could not be solved, one simply used a semantic trick of circular reasoning: They claimed that the existence of the homicidal gas chambers is simply proven by the fact that the rooms, which are claimed to have served as homicidal gas chamber, do indeed exist. Contrary to what hap- pened at Auschwitz and at the three pure extermination camps Treblinka, Bel- zec, and Sobibor, at Majdanek the complete buildings continue to exist to this day in their (almost) original state. Finally, the fact that Zyklon B was supplied to Majdanek serves as supporting circumstantial evidence for homicidal gassing. 743 GARF, 7021-107-9, p. 251. 744 Communiqué of the Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission for investigating the crimes committed by the Germans in the Majdanek extermination camp in Lublin, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1944; USSR-29, cf. IMT, vol. VII, pp. 379f., 451f., 565. 301 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: If the Poles and Soviets were so clever in changing Majdanek's delousing chambers into extermination chambers, then why didn't they do that at Ausch- witz as well? R: That is a good question about which I can only speculate. The fact is that for the Soviet propaganda the cremation ovens were extremely important because of the horror pictures and imaginations that could be linked to them: cremations of living persons, pictures of half-burned bodies or decaying corpses lying next to the ovens. That may have been a reason why it was decided that at Ausch- witz the rooms within the crematories were designated to be homicidal gas chambers. L: If hydrogen cyanide was used in the Majdanek delousing chambers as an agent, then should one not find the famous blue colorations on the walls of these rooms? R: Absolutely. The walls of these chambers are stained blue just like the walls of the delousing chambers at Auschwitz or Stutthof.745 L: How does one prove that these remnants were not caused by homicidal gas- sings? R: With chemical analyses that could not be done. One can logically undermine the homicidal gas chamber thesis, because the large building, in which most of these gas chambers are claimed to have been located, was one of the most im- portant buildings in Majdanek according to all documents: the hygienic- sanitary complex with delousing and disinfestation facilities and prisoner showers. Here the relevant rooms were part of the "delousing complex for the Lublin fur and clothing workshop," to which clothes were originally meant to be sent from the Lublin clothes workshops for cleaning and disinfestation.746 L: So in Majdanek not only were shoes repaired and cleaned but also clothes? R: Exactly. The functioning principle of the Zyklon B delousing chamber with air heater resembles a primitive kind of DEGESCH circulation device that I men- tioned earlier. The fact that these rooms actually served sanitary purposes as claimed in the documents is also confirmed by the condition of the buildings, that is, by the material evidence itself. There is thus no doubt that the delousing chambers were used as such. L: But it does not mean that they were not also used for homicidal gassings in a secondary function. R: Although that is correct, there is other evidence that permits us to exclude kill- ings in these rooms. Let us look at all five rooms that are claimed to have been misused as homicidal gas chambers, which to this day still exist.747 ­ Room III (see Ill. 99), equipped with the air heater referred to above and without a doubt exposed to hydrogen cyanide ­ recognizable by the blue- colored walls ­ has no device through which Zyklon B could have been in- 745 Cf. Ill. 56-59, pp. 232, and the color images on the back cover of the present book, as well as in J. Graf, C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 523), pp. 307-310. 746 WAPL, Zentralbauleitung, 141, p. 5; 8, p. 22; 145, pp. 1f., 5f. 747 Two more rooms are sometimes claimed to have been used as gas chambers, but no documentary or material trace exists of them, and statements as well as claims about them are contradictory and non- sensical. 302 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST troduced from the outside. Zyklon B was obviously scattered inside by a person wearing a gas mask, which is possible during delousing, but not during execu- tions. ­ Room IV, which shows blue wall discol- orations like Room III, is labeled in all documents as a delousing chamber, has a normal window that panicking prisoners Ill. 100: Barred opening in the would have broken (see Ill. 101) as well wall of room I in disinfestation as a door, whose lock can be opened from building 41, Majdanek camp (cf. the inside. plan section Ill. 99) L: What proves that this window was already © C. Mattogno there at that time? R: The window frame is discolored blue and was therefore exposed to hydrogen cyanide. But further: ­ Of the two doors of Room IV, the northern one can be opened and locked only from the inside. The prisoners could thus not have been locked in. ­ It is documented that the two openings in the ceiling of Room IV served as ventilation ducts. Today it is falsely claimed that they served as Zyklon B in- troduction holes. These holes were, however, connected by means of shafts to a chimney. If Zyklon B would have been thrown into the chimney, it would have landed at the bottom of the chimney, and not in the shafts. ­ If the shafts of these openings had been removed to allow the insertion of Zyklon B ­ as it is the case today after the building had been changed by the Soviets ­ then the room would have had no ventilation. The southern door opened to the shower room and could therefore not have been used for venti- lation purposes, because the whole building would thereby have been flooded with poison gas. The northern door opened to the inside. Even if it could have been locked from the outside, it would have been impossible to open it after the gassing, because of the mountain of corpses pressing against it from inside. ­ The Rooms I and II did not have any provisions for ventilation. ­ The Rooms I and III are said to have been converted to gassings using carbon monoxide after their initial use for murder with Zyklon B. It is claimed that carbon monoxide from gas bottles has been introduced by means of a metal pipe still in place today. Carbon monoxide is, however, not readily available as bottled gas and it is very expensive.748 One would probably have fallen back on exhaust gases from gasoline engines or generator gas (see p. 282). L: If mass murder with Zyklon B was so efficient, as is always asserted, then why should the chambers have been converted to taking carbon monoxide? R: There is no logical reason. And as a matter of fact, the conversion thesis is wrong, because: 748 CO from pressurized bottles was roughly 100 times more expensive than city gas, information commu- nicated by the Messer Griesheim company, Frankfurt. 303 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 101: Window at the east wall of the Ill. 102: Crematory Majdanek camp, al- chamber IV, barrack 41, (delousing leged homicidal gas chamber, opening in chamber), Majdanek camp (see plan the ceiling. © C. Mattogno Ill. 99). © C. Mattogno ­ two of the five gas bottles found in another area of Majdanek were set up in an area close to these rooms. However, they carry the clearly readable in- scription "CO2," thus carbon dioxide. L: Therefore one gassed there with carbon dioxide? R: No, that would have been really inefficient, since CO2 is not poisonous. Carlo Mattogno suggested that these rooms were temporarily used as mortuaries, when the number of deaths in the camp far exceeded the capacity of the old crematory in summer 1942, similarly as at Auschwitz. According to Mattogno, the room was filled with CO2 in order to delay the decaying process of the corpses.749 But now let me continue with my overview of the most important characteris- tics of the alleged gas chambers of Majdanek: ­ Room I has an opening in a wall, into which an iron grate is let in, but no provision for a window (see Ill. 100). Poisonous gas would therefore have escaped outwards. Likewise in the concrete ceiling of this room there is a roughly cut hole, which cannot be sealed. ­ Like Room I, Room II also has a rough hole cut through the steal-reinforced concrete ceiling. Both holes were probably only made after the war. ­ Finally, the room labeled as a gas chamber in the new crematory is com- pletely surrounded by other rooms, has two openings to the mortuary that cannot be closed, and has no ventilation system. One opening in the concrete ceiling was made where the reinforcement rods were not even removed. (see Ill. 102). In view of this situation it does not surprise that even French mainstream histo- rian Jean-Claude Pressac is very skeptical whether these rooms were ever used 749 J. Graf, C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 523), p. 148. Such a use would have cooled the area around the pipes, resulting in moist walls. Since the walls are full of Iron Blue around the pipes, and Iron Blue preferably develops and accumulates in the presence of humidity, this may be an indication that such a process did indeed occur. 304 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST as gas chambers.750 As a matter of fact, none of them could ever have been used as such for very obvious technical and architectural reasons. L: Therefore at Majdanek the fraud is easier to expose than in Auschwitz. R: Owing to the essentially intact buildings and plants. Thank God! 3.8. Chelmno and the Gas Vans R: Stéphane Courtois described in detail the world-wide terror unleashed by the communists since the October Revolution.753 There was hardly a means, which was not used to terrorize dissidents. It therefore does not surprise if the Soviet dissident Piotr Grigorenko re-tells a report in his Memoirs of a friend, who claimed that at the end of the 1930s, he observed from his prison cell, how a group of prisoners entered a prisoner transporter called a "black raven." When the van returned after approximately a quarter of an hour, the following hap- pened:754 "The attendants opened the door: Black smoke clouds and lifeless bodies issued forth, one falling over the other to the ground." R: According to F.P. Berg,755 in the spring of 1993 in the USA a four part televi- sion series was screened that dealt with the Soviet Union. The title read Monsters. A Portrait of Stalin in Blood. In the sec- ond part of the series sub-titled "Stalin's Secret Police," former KGB officer Alex- ander Michailow is quoted as saying that gas trucks for killing prisoners had been invented by Isai Davidovich Berg, and the Soviet NKVD, the KGB's predecessor Ill. 103: Allegedly a "Gas van used organization, had used them before the to liquidate Jews at the Kulmhof Second World War in Moscow to kill dis- (Chelmno) extermination camp and near Konitz." This labeling fraud sidents. committed by Gerald Fleming751 L: I thought it is not possible to kill humans was already exposed by Ingrid with Diesel exhaust gases. Weckert in 1988: The source of this R: Interestingly enough the Soviets produced illustration of a damaged German Ford trucks under license, and those were truck of unknown use is likewise 752 unknown. at that time equipped with gasoline en- 750 Jean-Claude Pressac, "Les carences et incohérences du rapport Leuchter," Jour J, December 1988, pp. VII-X. 751 Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, University of California Press, Berkeley 1984, plate 7, after p. 92, with the rather undefined source: "Archives of the Polish Ministry of Justice." With the same fraudulent caption on www2.ca.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/chelmno/images/chelmnovan.jpg. 752 Cf. the letter by Yad Vashem to I. Weckert from March 16, 1988, reproduced in: Pierre Marais, Les camions à gaz en question, Polémique, Paris 1994, p. 300 (Mrs. Weckert's address was whitened). 753 Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism, Harvard University Press, London 1999. 754 Piotr Grigorenko, Erinnerungen, Bertelsmann, Munich 1981, pp. 275f., first mentioned by Udo Wal- endy, "Das verbrecherische System," HT no. 48, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1991, pp. 35f. 755 F.P. Berg, " The Diesel Gas Chambers: Ideal for Torture...," op. cit. (note 646), pp. 465. 305 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST gines. Table 20: Victim numbers claimed for Chelmno 360,000 Martin Gilbert741 German propaganda 340,000 L. Dawidowicz,40 B. Nellessen, 757 IMT758 over the Soviet's 300,000 Polish Historians,759 Heinz Höhne760 mass murders of 145,500 Jury Court Bonn759 members of the Pol- ish elite in Katyn 150,000 Raul Hilberg39 began after the ex- 761 Ernst Klee762 >100,000 Raul Hilberg, humation in April 54,990 Faschismus ­ Getto ­ Massenmord763 1943. As previously 34,000 Jacques Delarue764 mentioned, the Eng- lish immediately started a counter-propaganda offensive, as did the Soviet Un- ion. After the fall of Stalingrad the eastern front moved westwards, and the So- viets gained larger areas, which enabled them to accuse German soldiers of war crimes. Such a trial took place on July 14-17, 1943, in Krasnodar (Ukraine), where Ukrainians, who had cooperated with the Germans, were brought before court. During the trial the accusation was raised that Germans killed innocent Soviet citizens in "murder vans" by means of Diesel exhaust gases.756 L: What a slip-up! That should probably have sounded particularly German. R: Most likely. The trial was held in typical show-trial manner: The defendant admitted their guilt, enthusiastically incriminated themselves further, and made propaganda speeches as if they themselves were Stalin's executioners.765 The core of the statements made at that time today structures the official histo- riography: Units of the German Einsatzgruppen operating behind the Russian front as well as in Poland and Yugoslavia are said to have killed thousands of Jews in hermetically sealed Diesel trucks with the exhaust gas flowing into the freight compartment. A second show trial was then conducted on December 15-17, 1943, in Charkow, where three German soldiers and Ukrainian workers were accused and sentenced to death.766 Again the accusation was mass murder through die- sel gassings in sealed trucks. L: Was any material or documentary evidence ever presented during the trial? 756 Pravda, July 15-19, 1943; cf. The Trial in the Case of the Atrocities Committed by the German Fascist Invaders and their Accomplices in Krasnodar and Krasnodar Territory, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moskau 1943; cf. also the indictment of the Soviets at the IMT, vol. VII, pp. 571-576. 757 B. Nellessen, Der Prozess von Jerusalem, Econ, Düsseldorf/Vienna 1964, p. 57. 758 IMT, vol. VIII, p. 331. 759 E. Kogon et al., op. cit. (note 96), p. 101. 760 H. Höhne, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf. Die Geschichte der SS, Bertelsmann, Munich 1976, p. 431 761 R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Harper & Row, New York 1983, p. 572. 762 E. Klee, op. cit. (note 511), p. 371. 763 Jüdisches Historisches Institut Warschau (ed.), Faschismus ­ Getto ­ Massenmord, Röderberg, Frank- furt/M. 1962, p. 285. 764 J. Delarue, Geschichte der Gestapo, Athenäum, Königstein/Ts. 1979, p. 257. 765 Cf. Arthur Koestler, Der Yogi und der Kommissar, Bechtle, Esslingen 1950, pp. 259f. (Engl.: The Yogi and the Commissar, Macmillan, New York 1965). Even A. Rückerl confirmed the show trial character of these trials: NS-Verbrechen vor Gericht, 2nd ed., C.F. Müller, Heidelberg 1984, pp. 99f. 766 Cf. the Soviet publication on that: Ignatz Fedorovich Kladov, The People's Verdict, Hutchinson & Co., London 1944. 306 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: No, only theatric witness statements and enthusiastic confessions. To this day there is no trace of these alleged gas vans. Not even a picture exists. Sometimes one finds photos of German war-time trucks, see Ill. 103. However, here we are dealing with photos of unknown origin, and what they show is a normal Ger- man truck of the war era. L: But you have shown pictures of some gas vans, Ill. 90f. R: Correct, those are generator gas vehicles. Their fuel gases ­ not however their exhaust gases! ­ were actually extremely lethal. But such pictures were never submitted as evidence, and what would they prove? At the end of the war in Germany nearly all trucks were equipped with gas generators. To conclude that this is evidence for mass murder would imply that Germany wished to gas the whole world, including itself. German revisionist historian Ingrid Weckert summarized the research findings about gas vans, and she critically evaluated the few documents available on this matter.767 The core of this material consists of documents that mention "Son- derwagen" (special car) "Sonderfahrzeug," (special vehicle) "Spezialwagen," or "S-Wagen." L: Ahh, there we have again the code language! R: Yes, the problem is that all vehicles produced for the German military were called "special vehicle," and the "S-Wagen" was a designation for a truck with standard rear wheel drive in contrast to an all-wheel drive truck ("A-Wagen"). A special case in the context of the German gas van myth is the camp Chelmno in Poland, where mass murder is to have taken place with these Diesel gas vans. Ingrid Weckert evaluated all available sources and revealed the contradic- tions and impossibilities of established historiography.768 Chelmno is a combi- nation of the absurdities of the pure extermination camps discussed above with those of the gas vans. I select here for illustration only some of the claimed victim numbers, to ex- pose the confusion, see Table 20. L: Was Chelmno forensically investigated? R: No, but air photos have been found, which reveal that around Chelmno there were no mass graves as has been claimed.769 3.9. Mountains of Corpses L: If I understood you correctly, then you state that in the camps few humans died. How do you then explain the enormous corpse mountains, which the Allied found when they liberated the camp, and of which there are many photos? R: You probably misunderstood me. In Table 4 (p. 40) I listed numbers of docu- mented victims, and those are nearly 400,000 victims. The pictures that you mention we know only too well. I may reproduce some of them here. The cop- 767 I. Weckert, "The Gas Vans: A Critical Assessment of the Evidence," in: G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 215-241. 768 I. Weckert, "What Was Kulmhof/Chelmno?," TR, 1(4) (2003), pp. 400-412. 769 R. Krege, M. Dragan, in preparation. 307 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ies of Ill. 104-106 were made by the British in the Bergen-Belsen camp. The first pic- ture is probably also the most well-known and unfortunately also the most frequently misused, because it is used again and again in the media as proof for mass murder. These pictures actually show the victims of the typhus epidemic that occurred in Ber- gen-Belsen at the end of the war, which is evident from Ill. 106. Ill. 104: Photo of typhus victims taken after the English occupied What took place in the German camps at 770 the Bergen-Belsen camp. the end of the war is also visible in the mortality statistics. Ill. 108 details the number of victims at Dachau, Mauthausen, and Buchenwald for each year as well as the total of the three camps. One has to re- member that all three camps were liberated in spring 1945, and so for only a few months deaths occurred under German con- trol. Ill. 109 and Table 21 give the figures Ill. 105: Deceptive caption of the picture of Ill. 104 by the West of the Bergen-Belsen camp for the final German Quick magazine in 1979. months of the war. A more detailed graphic about the statistics of the Dachau camp, where a similar disaster unfolded as in Bergen-Belsen, can be found in the appen- dix (p. 333), which also illustrates the sky- rocketing death rates during the last months of the war. In all remaining camps the number of Ill. 106: Entrance gate to Belsen camp immediately after British deaths rocketed upwards toward the end of liberation: "Typhus."771 1944 and early of 1945. Reason for this lay on the one hand in the collapse of the German infrastructure and on the other hand in the fact that the remaining camps under German control were over- crowded, since prisoners from camps close to the front line were evacuated to camps in central Germany. By ordering these evacuations, Himmler had com- plied with an Allied request to move prisoners from the fighting front camps into Germany's interior,772 although he probably did not realize that this spelled disaster for the prisoners as well. Owing to the allied carpet bombing towards the end of 1944, Germany was almost completely paralyzed. Most of the large cities were bombed out, the im- portant traffic routes interrupted. The total devastation caused by the carpet bombings was not enough for the Allied commanders, though, as famous U.S. 770 Imperial War Museum, Horror 9 BU 3744. 771 Ibid., Horror 8 BU 4092. 772 A. Rückerl, NS-Prozesse, 2nd ed., C.F. Müller, Karlsruhe 1972, pp. 122ff. 308 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST fighter pilot Chuck Yeager described, when in the Fall of 1944 his fighter group was:773 "[...] assigned an area fifty miles by fifty miles and ordered to strafe anything that moved. [...] We weren't asked how we felt zapping people. It was a miserable, dirty mission, but we all took off on time and did it. [...] We were ordered to commit an atrocity, pure and simple, but the brass who approved this action probably felt justified because wartime Germany wasn't easily divided between `innocent civilians' and its military ma- chine. The farmer tilling his potato field might have been feeding German troops." R: Neither the soldiers in the field nor the inhabitants of the cities could even get the bare necessities to sustain their lives: food, clothing, medicines, even drinking water Ill. 107: Prisoner corpses in a became scarce. In addition to that, millions freight railroad car at Dachau. The prisoners died during their of east Germans fled towards the west at deportation. For weeks the train the beginning of 1945, clogging up many traveled aimlessly throughout traffic routes, and many other Germans fled Germany without food supplies the large, utterly destroyed cities. During because of bombed rail tracks.774 those months, more than two million Ger- mans died in particular in Victim numbers for various camps per year east Germany (East and West Prussia, Silesia, east 70000 Pommerania, east Bran- 60000 denburg) through the ex- 50000 cesses of the Red Army. 40000 What do you expect under 30000 these circumstances how 20000 the inmates of the various camps and prisons fared? 10000 Certainly they were still 0 T otal 1937 1938 Mautha worse off than all others. 1939 Buc hen use n 1940 1941 wald 1942 D ac ha 1943 The effect of this Allied u 1944 1945 Year policy of total warfare can be seen from the statement Ill. 108: Dramatically rising victim number with con- by Josef Kramer, who tinuing war and explosion at end of war. commanded the Bergen- 773 Chuck Yeager, Yeager. An Autobiography, Bantam Books, New York 1985, p. 79f. 774 U.S. Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 206191. 309 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Belsen camp during the final Number of Victims months of the war. While in- 20000 terrogated by the British, he 18355 18168 775 stated: 15000 "The camp was not really inefficient before you [Brit- 10000 ish and American forces] 6000-7000 crossed the Rhine. There 5000 was running water, regular meals of a kind ­ I had to 800-1000 350 0 accept what food I was Dec. 1944 Jan. 1945 Feb. 1945 March 1945 April 1945 given for the camp and dis- Ill. 109: Official death statistics of the final tribute it the best way I months of the war for the Bergen-Belsen camp could. But then they sud- as displayed at the camp museum today. The denly began to send me camp was liberated on April 15, 1945. After that, trainloads of new prisoners some 13,000 more inmates died as a result of from all over Germany. It the raging epidemics. was impossible to cope Table 21: Inmate statistics of the last months of the war for the Bergen-Belsen camp. with them. I appealed for Date Inmates of which deceased more staff, more food. I Feb. 1, 45 22,000 January ~900 was told that this was im- Mar. 1, 45 41,520 February 7,400 possible. I had to carry on Apr. 1, 45 43,042 March ~25,600 st Apr. 15, 45 60,000 1 half April ~34,600 with what I had. According to display at the camp museum. Increased number Then as a last straw the Al- of inmates due to evacuation of camps close to the front. lies bombed the electric plant that pumped our water. Loads of food were unable to reach the camp because of the Allied fighters. Then things really got out of hand. During the last six weeks I have been helpless. I did not even have sufficient staff to bury the dead, let alone segregate the sick. [...] I tried to get medicines and food for the prisoners and I failed. I was swamped." R: At that time Germany was like an enormous heap of corpses. Humans died by the thousands like flies every day and everywhere, and the camp inmates held the worse cards during this human catastrophe, especially if they had been de- ported from east to west. Like millions of civilian Germans, the inmates also went on a "forced journey," as former German federal president Richard von Weizsäcker called it. Today these deportations are also called death marches, and that they certainly were, because at that time death marched on all German roads. At the beginning of 1945 the remaining camps were not able to supply the pris- oners with the basic necessities: food, clothing, sleeping places. There was hardly any medicine available, and when in this chaos typhus and dysentery epidemics broke out, thousands died within a few weeks. There also was no fuel to cremate that many corpses. 775 Alan Moorehead, "Belsen," in: Cyril Connolly (ed.), The Golden Horizon, Weidenfels and Nicholson, London 1953, pp. 109ff.; see also Mark Weber, op. cit. (note 133). 310 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: This proves that the Nazis had not found a way of burning bodies without fuel. R: Well observed. And exactly that is what the Allies found upon the liberation of the camps: The result of their own policy of saturation bombing. L: You are thus making the Allies responsible for the mass deaths in the German camps? R: My first concern here is to conduct an his- torical analysis and not get involved in a moral blaming game. Let us leave the moral evaluation until we know accurately what happened. Otherwise we run the risk of dampening our critical faculties through moral feelings. But now that we have touched in this matter: A partial responsi- Ill. 110: Prisoner corpses in the bility lies without doubt with those who Nordhausen camp ­ victims of a imprison innocent humans ­ if they were U.S. bomb attack.776 U.S. media innocently locked up, which did not apply stated after the war those were to all prisoners. But the mass deaths of victims of the NS extermination politics.777 Germans caused through carpet bombings naturally is the Allies' responsibility. Death did not distinguish between the prisoners in the camps and the free ones outside of the camps. The information spread around the world about the alleged mass murder at Dachau and Bergen-Belsen rested on the infernal situation then prevailing in Germany in general. It is understandable that the uninformed viewer of such pictures gets the impression that here a policy of extermination was carried out, but that is not correct.778 Even the most adamant of the Holocaust believers admit this, for example Nor- bert Frei in the left-wing official German magazine for modern history Viertel- jahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. To the reaction of the western Allies at their dis- coveries in the camps he comments:779 "The shock over the discoveries led more often than not to factually wrong conclusions, which proved in parts to be quite persistent. Paradoxically, from such conclusions emerged historically-politically correct insights." L: What are "historically-politically correct insights"? 776 M. Broszat, Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager, Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte no. 21, Stuttgart 1970, pp. 194f.; cf. U. Walendy, HT no. 34, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1988, p. 37. 777 Life, May 21, 1945. 778 Cf. dazu Mark Weber, "`Extermination' Camp Propaganda Myths," in: E. Gauss (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, 1st ed., Theses & Dissertations Press, Capshaw, AL, 2000, pp. 285-309 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndWeber.html). 779 Norbert Frei, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 35 (1987) pp. 385-401, here p. 400. 311 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 111a-d: The true Holocaust. Victims: 600,000 Germans of the bombing war; perpetrators: the western Allies.780 R: There I must speculate. I suppose in his conclusion Frei alludes to the claims of mass murders in the western camps as being historically untrue but that it was true for the eastern camps. And the politics of this is that the propaganda lies, which were spread about Dachau and Bergen-Belsen with those horror pictures, were morally and politi- cally justified after all, because no propaganda could be made with the "real" horror of Auschwitz, Treblinka, etc., since no pictures exist from these camps depicting mountains of corpses. Under these circumstances, the pictures of the western camps were seen by the victorious powers ­ and apparently by some historians still today ­ as a gift sent from heaven, since it could be used to prop up their claim of National Socialism as the ultimate evil and to justify Allied war crimes: carpet bombings, automatic arrest, show trials, ethnic cleansing, slave labor of German POW and civilian deportees, patent theft, de-industria- lization, and so forth. And not to forget the subsequent re-education, that is, de- nationalization of the entire German people, which continues to this very day. L: There it is again, the anti-fascist lie, which "paradoxically" is good for the peo- ple anyway. R: Exactly. In any case, the Germans had to be made to accept the million-fold mass murder of their own people and the carving up of their country as fair punishment. L: There are nevertheless pictures of corpses at Auschwitz! R: Two exactly, which are generally considered as proof of corpse burnings in open pits at Birkenau. They were allegedly taken by a member of the Ausch- witz camp partisans to document the crimes. L: The same people who claimed that they had been spreading propaganda about Auschwitz (Bruno Baum and his friends, see pp. 171, 363)? 780 Cf. Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand, Propyläen, Frankfurt 2002; J. Friedrich, Brandstätten. Der Anblick des Bombenkriegs, Munich 2003; cf. Maximilian Czesany, Europa im Bombenkrieg 1939 ­ 1945, 3rd ed., Stocker, Graz 1998. 312 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 112: Photo allegedly taken of the Polish resistance group at Auschwitz. This is supposed to be corpse burning to the north of Krema V. Right and below: Section enlargements. R: Probably so. L: So we are up for another ride now, aren't we? R: Well, let's see. The first of these two pictures is reproduced in Ill. 112.781 Ger- man revisionist political scientist Udo Walendy analyzed this picture already years ago.782 He states that from an aspect of light exposure the completely dark man in the left of the picture does not fit together with the other men in the photograph ­ view the upper left enlargement in Ill. 113a. Furthermore the second man from left has a much too long an arm with two elbows (right enlargement, Ill. 113b). Also the allegedly visible corpses on the ground would have impossible, non-human anatomies, particularly the corpse at the feet of the man with the two elbows. I do not wish to get involved in these details be- cause historians have stressed that the quality of this picture has been reduced through multiple copying. 781 APMO, neg. 277; J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 422. 782 U. Walendy, Bild-`Dokumente' für die Geschichtsschreibung?, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeit- geschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1973; cf. Walendy, "Do Photographs Prove the NS Extermination of the Jews?," in G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 243-267. 313 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 113a-c: Detail enlargements of Ill. 112. L: But that is nonsense! Multiple copying of a photograph does not change the human anatomy, nor does it change the lighting paradoxes. R: Is this your field of expertise? L: Yes, professionally I deal with such things. I recognize immediately that there is something wrong with this pic- ture. No exposure error would succeed in darkening one person and leaving the rest in a normal light. R: Even if he stood in the shade... L: Then the environment of this man would also have to be dark. But that is not the case! R: All right. Pressac explains the bad quality by claiming that these pictures are merely contact prints. L: This is absolute nonsense! Why are contact prints sup- posed to be of poor quality? They are not, at least not visible for the normal eye. If some people state that these Ill. 114 (above): are mere reproductions, then have they seen the origi- Original fence post nals? in Auschwitz Birke- R: No, in each case these pictures are shown. Possibly there nau. © Karl Philipp are no originals. It is interesting, however, that there are many variations of this picture. Thus there is a version that has the dark back- ground replaced by a lighter one; in another one the outline of the men to the right has been highlighted with a pen. L: Poor copies are often improved like that. 314 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 115: The original from the directorate of the Ill. 116: Retouched German Federal Railways Hamburg with the head- picture with the head- ing: "freight cars with refugees 1946. Fully occupied ing of "transport to train for the Ruhr district. In the background a dou- Ghettos and extermi- 783 ble story carriage to Lübeck." nation camps." R: Let us assume for a moment that this picture is actually based on a photo. L: That is nonsense. You cannot sell to me such a painting as a photograph! R: Just calm down and let me continue. I would like you to focus on the visible fence post in the background. It is angled, as you can clearly see. Now we compare this fence post (lower left cutout enlargement, Ill. 113c) with a typical fence post at Birkenau, Ill. 114. As you see here, the real fence posts in Birke- nau are gently rounded. From this era an enormous number of photographs ex- ists taken by the SS of camp life. Wherever there are fence posts, they look like this. In other words: If a photo is the basis for this picture shown here, then this did not originate at Birkenau or it has been tampered with. So at least the caption- ing of the picture is wrong. L: In my opinion it is a complete forgery. R: Perhaps. But even if the basis of this is a genuine picture: This picture may possibly show a pyre on which the victims of a typhus epidemic were burned because the crematories were not yet finished. Or, perhaps no corpses are burnt there at all but merely lice infested dirty clothes. L: You can see neither a pit nor a pyre. R: At any rate, this picture does not offer any proof of mass murder at Auschwitz. After all, if this picture is based on a real photo, it shows at most some 30 corpses or so, but not the many thousands as claimed by witnesses. L: But if these resistance fighters wanted to document the cremation of thousands of victims, why did they not take a picture from a different angle to document this? Does the second picture show more? 783 H. Eschwege (ed.), Kennzeichen "J," Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, East Berlin 1981/ Röder- berg, Frankfurt/Main 1979, p. 185; cf. p. 173. 315 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 117f.: The left picture appeared in Spiegel, 42/1966, with the heading "In the SS state perfect the slave system"; on the right a "variation" with the heading "SS Sadists `order' `tree hangings.'"785 R: No. The second picture shows basically the same scene.784 I put it into the Ap- pendix in order to make it available at maximum size (Ill. 126, p. 334). L: You cannot possible try to sell that as a photograph. That clearly is a painting. R: Well, I think it is a photograph, yet obviously not of an authentic scene, but either of a painting or heavily retouched,786 which of course means that the first picture analyzed here is probably a retouched photo or painting, too. So I think you are right after all. L: Thank you. R: You are welcome. In concluding this topic I would like to offer several more examples for the fact that not everything offered to us as pictorial evidence is authentic and can with- stand a critical examination. For example Illustration 115, which still today is displayed in Hamburg's main railway station: It shows a scene from 1946: a freight train in that station packed full of German citizens before their departure to the countryside in des- perate search for food, evidence for poverty and starvation reigning in Ger- many in those immediate post-war years. In Illustration 116 you see a picture, which was featured in the film "Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland" (Death is a master from Germany), part 3, shown on German public television on May 2, 1990. It allegedly represents the transportation of Rumanian Jews to Auschwitz. German mainstream historian Professor E. Jäckel was responsible for the historical accuracy of this film. L: Those are the same pictures! R: Exactly! However the picture by Prof. Dr. Jäckel was cut in such a manner that the station building has been cut out. Also it was cropped so much that the German luggage cart on the platform has disappeared. Furthermore the win- dows of the double-decker passenger train left in the background were re- 784 APMO, negative no. 278; J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 422. 785 Helmut Eschwege, op. cit. (note 783), p. 266. 786 A high resolution copy of this picture will be posted on the internet along with this book at www.vho.org/GB/Books/loth; see also the analysis of these photos by C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 486), chapter 7. 316 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST touched, since Romania did not have such trains at that time, but Germany certainly did have them. This picture is one of the most awkward and nasty forgeries ever dis- covered. Ill. 117f. are two pictures allegedly show- ing SS officers torturing prisoners. The state of Hessen government admitted in 1996 that they are from scenes out of a 1958 atrocity film of communist East Ger- many.787 L: But this does not disprove that such torture did not happen. R: If we are to consider an accusation as true, then it must first be proven. The burden of proof is with the prosecutor. But I am not concerned in asserting that the SS dealt sensitively with its prisoners. I would only like to show here that historians and the media do not always care about the truth, but willingly disseminate forgeries. The next example concerns the Berlin synagogue in the Oranienburger Street. Ill. Ill. 119: Large: The forgery; small: 119 is a widely circulated picture of the the original of 1948. synagogue when it was allegedly burning in 1938 during the so-called "Crystal Night." There cannot be any doubt about the fact that during this pogrom numerous arson attacks occurred. But this synagogue was not damaged during this pogrom. Since there was no photo available showing this synagogue in flames, someone helped out a little. He took a photo of the intact synagogue from after the war (1948) and simply added some flames and smoke. This forgery was discovered in 1990,788 and in 1998 the perpetrator was found.789 In concluding this small series, which could be extended particularly after the exposing of many falsifications during the exhibition against the Wehrmacht,790 I would like to present an especially perfidious Auschwitz lie, Ill. 121, which 787 W. Ayaß, D. Krause-Vilmar, "Mit Argumente gegen die Holocaust-Leugung," in Polis, Schriftenreihe der Hessischen Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, Wiesbaden 1996, pp. 22f.; with reference to H. Obenaus, "Das Foto vom Baumhängen ­ ein Bild geht um die Welt," in: Stiftung Topographie des Ter- rors Berlin (ed.), Gedenkstätten-Rundbrief no. 68, Berlin, October 1995, pp. 3-8. 788 Heinz Knobloch, Der beherzte Reviervorsteher. Ungewöhnliche Zivilcourage am Hackeschen Markt, Morgenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1990. 789 Berliner Morgenpost, Oct. 10, 1998, p. 9. 790 Cf. Udo Walendy, "Do Photographs Prove...," op. cit. (note 782), pp. 260-264. 317 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the Simon Wiesenthal Center published on its web site in 1999 with the following sub- title:791 "As these prisoners were being proc- essed for slave la- Ill. 120 and 121: On the left of the original, on the right the Simon Wiesenthal Center's falsification: Smoke bor, many of their comes from a fence post. friends and families were being gassed and burned in the ovens in the crematories. The smoke can be seen in the background." R: In the original photo taken in the spring of 1944 there is no smoke to be seen (Ill. 120).792 L: There probably was an over eager Holocaust fanatic who wanted to make come true what witnesses claimed to be "true" ­ smoking chimney stacks. R: Yes, but unfortunately he got a fence post instead of a crematory chimney. You can therefore see: The counterfeiters against Germany have the liberty to fool everyone. 3.10. Babi Yar and the Murders by the Einsatzgruppen R: Does anyone know anything about Babi Yar? Yes, the lady on the right, what does this catch word mean to you? L: At the end of 1991 I saw a report about it on television. I think the former president of the German Parliament, Dr. Rita Süßmuth, inaugurated a monu- ment there in memory of those Jews murdered by the Germans during World War II, but I cannot recall how many were killed. R: Indeed, it was in November 1991 that marked the 50th anniversary of the mas- sacre of Babi Yar. It commemorates the following: After the German troops took Kiev in September 1941, units of the so-called Einsatzgruppen are sup- posed to have gathered all Jews in and around Kiev and killed them. But that is all upon which the various reports about this alleged event can agree. One of the first critical studies of this alleged event indicates that the claimed death figure varies from 3,000 to 300,000.793 According to the established ver- sion the Jews of Kiev were driven to the edge of the ravine Babi Yar ­ old woman ravine ­ then were shot and thrown into it. 791 http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/gallery/pg22/pg0/pg22035.html; cf. VffG 3(2) (1999), p. 240. I saved a copy of this webpage in my site in case the SWC removes or changes its forgery: www.vho.org/News/D/SWCForgery.html. 792 Serge Klarsfeld, op. cit., (note 588), no. 165. 793 M. Wolski, "Le massacre de Babi Yar," Revue d'Histoire Révisionniste 6 (1992) pp. 47-58 (www.vho.org/F/j/RHR/6/Wolski47-58.html). 318 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 22: Victim numbers claimed for Babi Yar 300,000 Vitaly Korotych795 200,000 Vladimir Posner796 150,000 Speech during inauguration of memorial797 110,000 ­ 140,000 New York Times798 100,000 Western Encyclopedias799 80,000 Soviet Commission800 70,000 Soviet Encyclopedias801 52,000 Gerhard Riegner802 50,000 Genadi Udovenko803 38,000 Polish resistance804 33,771 Activity- and Situation Report No. 6805 30,000 Leni Yahil806 10,000 Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse807 3,000 Encyclopedia of Ukraine808 Other sources claim the murders occurred in a cemetery, outside a cemetery, in a forest, in the ravine itself, in a brickyard, in the city of Kiev, in gas vans, or in the river Dnjepr. The murder weapon was supposed to have been machine guns, submachine guns, automatic rifles, rifle butts, clubs, rocks, tanks, mines, hand grenades, gas vans, bayonets and knives, live burial, drowning, injections, and electrical shocks.794 L: Heavens above! That is worse still than the chaos around Treblinka! R: The parallels do not stop there, however. After conclusion of this action the ravine is said to have been blown up, whereby the corpses are claimed to have been buried under the rubble. When in autumn 1943 the war front moved again dangerously close to Kiev, the Germans are said to have forced Ukrainians to take all corpses out from under the rubble and to burn them on pyres within a few days, all without leaving a trace. That is why there is today no evidence of this horrible crime. 794 Cf. for this Herbert Tiedemann, "Babi Yar: Critical Questions and Comments," in G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 501-528. 795 John Dornberg, The New Tsars, Russia Under Stalin's Heirs, Doubleday, New York 1972, pp. 148f.; Oleh Kalugin, "KGB During Gorbachov's Era," The Hornylo, Lviv, vol. 4, 1991, p. 13. 796 V. Posner, H. Keyssar, Remembering War: a US-Soviet Dialogue, Oxford University Press, New York 1990, p. 206. 797 By an unnamed Jew, Ukrainian TV, Kiev, Dec. 6, 1991. 798 "Murder of 140,000 Upheld By Germany," The New York Times, May 1, 1945. 799 Encyclopaedia Judaica, Keter Publishing Ltd., Jérusalem, 1971, vol. 2, p. 27; Encyclopaedia Britan- nica, vol. 1, Chicago 1991, p. 769; also "Kiev Lists More Victims, Letter to Stalin Says 100,000 Were Massacred by Nazis," New York Times, Dec. 4, 1943. 800 "50,000 Kiev Jews Reported Killed," New York Times, Nov. 29, 1943; the article itself speaks of 50- 80,000 victims. 801 Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Moskau 1970, vol. 2, p. 501; Ukrainska Radyanska Encyklopedya, Kiev, vol. 1, 1959, p. 391; "At Babi Yar Only Four Spectators," New York Times, Dec. 14, 1968. 319 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Exactly the same as in Treblinka, Belzec, and in other places of murderous acts committed by the Germans ­ not leaving any evidence behind. R: Well observed. The logistic and technical problems with the cremations would have been the same. But that is not my concern here. What concerns me here is the analysis of air photos, which were taken between 1939 and 1944 by Ger- man reconnaissance planes over Kiev and which the Americans collected and stored in their National Archives after the war. The Canadian air photo inter- preter John C. Ball analyzed some of these pictures, one taken on May 17, 1939, another from September 26, 1943,809 and a third from June 18, 1944. These photos are interesting for two reasons. First of all, they are so good in their resolution that distinct objects can be recognized, like large shrubs, trees, and cars. Secondly, the first photo is made before the time the alleged Babi Yar massacre happened. The last photo analyzed was taken nine months after the Red Army reconquered the area. The most interesting photo, however, may be the one of September 26, 1943, because that was exactly the time, when the huge pyres are said to have been burning at Babi Yar, see Ill. 122. However, all these photos differ only in the fact that the vegetation in the meantime had grown, as is to be expected. There is nothing to be found that indicates any human activity. Nothing. Nichts. Nada. Niente. Rien. German mainstream historian Dr. Joachim Hoffmann wrote:810 "The NKVD introduced the previously unknown Ravine of the Old Woman into Soviet war propaganda in November 1943 for the first time in connec- tion with the desperate attempts at concealment in the Katyn case. Soon after the recapture of the Ukrainian capital, a party of Western press cor- respondents was invited by the Soviets to inspect the ravine of Babi Yar, now alleged to be the location of the massacre. Material proof, however, seems to have been a bit scanty. An evaluation of the numerous air photos in recent years apparently leads to the conclusion that, in contrast to the clearly visible, extensive mass graves dug by the NKVD at Bykovnia (Bykivnia), Darnica, and Bielhorodka, and in contrast to the clearly visible mass graves at Katyn. [...] the terrain of the ravine of Babi Yar remained undisturbed between 1939 and 1944, i.e., including the years of German occupation. To shore up the allegation that the Germans shot `between 50,000 and 80,000 Jewish men, women, and children with machine guns,' in the ravine of Babi Yar, the NKVD rehearsed three so-called witnesses in 1943, whose tales, 802 World Jewish Congress, "Nazi Execute 52,000 Jews in Kiev: Smaller Pogroms in Other Cities," Daily Bulletin of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Nov. 16, 1941. 803 Ambassador of the Ukraine at the U.N., acc. to "Infectious Nationalism," Washington Times, Sept. 5, 1991, p. G4. 804 Secret telex no. 346/KK of Nov. 13, 1941, sent by the Polish resistance in Lemberg to London, Hoover Library, File Komorowski, single page document, Box no. 3, Nov. 13, 1941. 805 Document R-102 in IMT, vol. 38, pp. 292f. 806 Leni Yahil, The Holocaust, Oxford University Press Inc., New York, 1990, p. 257. 807 Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse, Paris, vol. 1, 1982, p. 953. 808 Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1, 1988, p. 154. 809 J.C. Ball, op. cit. (note 457), p. 107, Ref. no. GX 3938 SG, exp. 104f. 810 J. Hoffmann, op. cit. (note 24), pp. 215f. 320 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 122: Babi Yar in September 1943: A peaceful valley without hu- man activity. however, merely aroused the skepticism of news correspondents, particu- larly Lawrence, the experienced representative of the New York Times. On November 29, 1943, the New York Times published an article, purged of the crudest Soviet untruths relating to `Soviet partisans' and `gas vans,' entitled `50,000 Jews Reported Killed,' nevertheless, accompanied by the remar- kable subtitle, `Remaining Evidence is Scanty,' indicating that the NKVD efforts to convince the world had been something of a failure." L: Did anyone search for traces there since the collapse of the USSR? R: No, no one ever search for anything. L: But the documentation of this murder of over 30,000 Jews in Kiev is set in concrete, particularly because several German documents refer to this number, though Babi Yar is not explicitly mentioned. So perhaps the murders occurred elsewhere. 321 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Well, yes, but then we must reject all statements in this regard as wrong regarding the location of this massacre. But the air photos do not show any mass graves of the claimed magnitude anywhere in the area. L: How can one seriously doubt the authenticity of the German documents? In the situation reports from the USSR, for example, everything is finely documented with letterhead and in parts even with the signature of the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller. There are over 2,900 typewritten pages, and each one was copied 30 times, and then sent to all possible places in the Third Reich.811 Therein are mentioned not only this massacre but hundreds of others with de- tailed victim numbers that are altogether in the hundreds of thousands. R: Thus we come to the problem of the Einsatzgruppen in general.812 Since this is a complex topic, let me offer you some background information. The German "Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD" (deployment groups of the security police and the security service) were officially created in order to carry out security missions in the occupied hinterland behind the east- ern front primarily to fight partisans. As is well known the defeat of the Ger- man armed forces in the east is in large part attributed to the Soviets' organized guerilla warfare.813 The number of partisans acting behind German army lines was at the beginning of 1942 approximately 80,000-90,000, a number that con- stantly rose, until it reached about half a million at the beginning of 1944.814 Concerning the German soldiers and civilians killed by partisans the data vary between 1.5 millions ­ from Soviet propaganda sources ­ and about 35,000- 45,000 from German sources, but the latter number is surely too low, since numbers are incomplete from the year 1944 because of the collapse of the German army group center in the summer of 1944.815 The German reaction to the expected guerilla warfare was extremely harsh from the outset: The political commissars of the Red Army, responsible for the USSR's816 cruel warfare in violation of international law, were declared non- combatants by a German order and executed immediately during the first months of the war. In addition to that, reprisal shootings of civilians from the affected areas were conducted, which was in accordance to international law at that time. 811 H. Krausnick, H.-H. Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges. Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1938-1942, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1981, p. 333. 812 The following passage is based on the article by Germar Rudolf and Sibylle Schröder, "Partisanenkrieg und Repressaltötungen," VffG, 3(2) (1999), pp. 145-153, as well as chapter VII, "The Role of the Ein- satzgruppen in the Occupied Eastern Territories," von C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit, (note 198), pp. 203- 231; for more details and further references see there. 813 Franz W. Seidler, Die Wehrmacht im Partisanenkrieg, Pour le Mérite, Selent 1998, pp. 24-37. 814 Bernd Bonwetsch, "Sowjetische Partisanen 1941-1944," in: Gerhard Schulz (ed.), Partisanen und Volkskrieg, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1985, pp. 99, 101. 815 Ibid., pp. 111f. 816 On the illegal warfare of the Red Army cf. J. Hoffmann, op. cit. (note 24); A.E. Epifanow, H. Mayer, Die Tragödie der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in Stalingrad von 1942 bis 1956 nach russischen Archi- vunterlagen, Biblio, Osnabrück 1996; Franz W. Seidler, Verbrechen an der Wehrmacht, 2 vols., Pour le Mérite, Selent 1998, 2000; A. de Zayas, Die Wehrmachtsuntersuchungsstelle, 4th ed., Ullstein, Berlin 1984. 322 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Are you saying that summary Table 23: Victim numbers claimed for the shootings of innocent civilians Einsatzgruppen as reprisal against partisan acts 3,000,000 Solomon M. Schwarz 818 2,200,000 H. Krausnick, H.H. Wilhelm819 were legal? R: That was the legal situation at 1,300,000 Raul Hilberg820 that time.817 In the meantime the legal situation has changed, but at that time the brutal fight against partisans was legal, as it was legal against non-combatants. Please understand. I am not condoning this at all. War is something cruel, and the term martial law is actu- ally a perversion because war is the ultimate breach of law, which consists of innumerable documented cruelties if it is viewed from civil or criminal aspects. The attempt to suppress the partisan movement in Russia by force backfired on the Germans, just as the German order to execute all Soviet political commis- sars without any legal ado only led to a strengthening of Soviet morale. That is why this so-called commissar order was cancelled in May 1942, after it had been largely ignored by the German troops anyway.821 And in a unique act of humanity the German armed forces even recognized regular partisan groups as ordinary combatants.822 Initially the strength of the Einsatzgruppen amounted to only 4,000 men, but by summer 1942 it had increased to approximately 15,000 Germans and 240,000 auxiliaries, which were mostly volunteers from other nations, for whom the German invasion of the Soviet Union came as liberation from Stalinist oppres- sion (Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, but also many Russians).823 This increase is not surprising, because the partisan activities also rose. In view of the relative failure of the battle against the partisans it is obvious that the Einsatzgruppen were completely overburdened in controlling this huge area ­ more than 1.2 million square kilometers (almost half a million sq miles) ­ through which important German supply lines went, which the partisans inter- rupted with ever increasing efficiency. These same Einsatzgruppen are also supposed to have killed Jews in large numbers and then buried them in countless mass graves. But even here the vic- tim numbers vary considerably, see Table 23. These same Einsatzgruppen are supposed to have dug up those mass graves created before in 1943, when the eastern front was in retreat, and then to have burned the partly decayed corpses on the usual gigantic pyres without leaving a trace. Babi Yar mentioned above is only the most well-known of all examples. 817 Karl Siegert, Repressalie, Requisition und höherer Befehl, Göttingen 1953; Engl.:"Reprisals and Orders From Higher Up," in: G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 529-555. 818 Solomon M. Schwarz, Jews in the Soviet Union, Syracuse Univ. Press., Syracuse 1951, p. 220. 819 H. Krausnick, H.H. Wilhelm, op. cit. (note 811), p. 621. 820 1,3 Mio.: Raul Hilberg, op. cit. (note 39), p. 1219; Hilberg considers only some 650,000 to 800,000 Soviet Jews to have fallen victim to "the Holocaust," ibid., p. 1218. 821 Franz W. Seidler, op. cit. (note 813), pp. 160-164. 822 Ibid., p. 127. 823 Cf. H. Höhne, op. cit. (note 760), pp. 328, 339; H. Krausnick, H.-H. Wilhelm, op. cit. (note 811), p. 147, cf. p. 287; Richard Pemsel, Hitler ­ Revolutionär, Staatsmann, Verbrecher?, Grabert, Tübingen 1986, pp. 403-407. 323 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST This gigantic action of evidence destruction, which is said to have begun in the summer 1943, allegedly ran under the cover name "Aktion 1005."824 L: And are there any traces left of these crimes? R: The official historiography comments succinctly:825 "Although burning the bodies from the mass graves did not efface the Nazi crimes, it did cause difficulties in determining the facts of the crimes and in drawing up statistics on the numbers of victims. In many cases, the commis- sions investigating Nazi crimes in the USSR and in Poland found no trace of the mass graves, and they encountered difficulty in reaching estimates." L: Thus in other words: There is no proof. R: To date I am not aware of a single case that has been presented to the world public where a mass grave or traces of graves of that magnitude have been dis- covered. L: Had I been in Stalin's place, I would also not have searched for these German mass graves, because even if those horrible deeds had been committed by the Germans ­ which he himself probably did not believe ­ then the two million murdered Jews would nevertheless only have made up a small percentage of the tens of millions of victims of communism, who were never cremated "without trace" and who fertilize nearly each square meter of Russian soil. L: And to that would have to be added the many mass graves of the ten million fallen German and Soviet soldiers, who also must lie somewhere. How do you distinguish in such an enormous mountain of corpses between Jews and non- Jews, between victims of the Einsatzgruppen and those of communism or the war? R: As time passes it will become more difficult, but where there is a will, there is also a way. That is what the city administration of Marijampol, Lithuania, must have thought when they decided in 1996 to build a monument to the tens of thousands of Jews allegedly murdered there. In order to establish the monument in the correct place, excavations were con- ducted where witnesses claimed the mass graves were located. A huge area was excavated, but unfortunately nothing was found.826 L: Well, how do you expect to find anything when the corpses were burned with- out a trace? R: Therefore within a year the members of the "Aktion 1005" dug up and burned one and a half to over three million corpses ­ depending on the source.827 That includes countless graves spread over 1.2 million square kilometers ­ and no material and documentary traces were left? L: Thus, the Einsatzgruppen must have kept exact account from the outset con- cerning all their mass graves and must have registered them in maps, so that they could find them later. 824 Cf. I. Gutman (ed.), op. cit. (note 112), vol. 1, pp. 11-14. 825 Ibid., p. 14. 826 Lietuvos Rytas (Lithuania), Aug. 21, 1996, as well as personal communication by Dr. Mirsolaw Dragan. 827 In addition to these mass graves, the victims of the German army and police were allegedly also "treated." 324 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Not only they, but also the armed forces, all police districts, and all the others who were involved in these murders, because their mass graves are said to have been opened and their criminal content made to disappear "tracelessly" as well. There are no such maps. And there are also no air photos available, on which these graves and the gigantic pyres are shown. German mainstream historian Thomas Sandkühler is almost spot-on when he writes:828 "On account of the strict secrecy `Action 1005' written sources are rare." R: There are actually no written sources for this Action, as C. Mattogno has shown!829 L: And this gigantic action was accomplished by only a few thousand Germans and their willing foreign auxiliaries, who at the same time had to fight the hun- dreds of thousands of partisans as well? R: So the dominant view. It sounds nearly ironically when German mainstream historian Heinz Höhne states:830 "Heydrich's death messengers started on their gruesome adventure: 3,000 men hunted Russia's five million Jew." R: Likewise Israeli "Nazi hunter" Efraim Zuroff is unwillingly comical when he writes:831 "The Einsatzgruppen [...] numbered a total of approximately 3,000 men. [...] These units had to cover an enormous area that stretched from the sub- urbs of Leningrad in the north to east of the Sea of Azov in the south, a front hundreds of miles long. [...] The means at their disposal to achieve this goal [of murdering all Jews] were in most cases solely conventional fire arms ­ machine guns, rifles and pistols. [...] Yet despite this limitation and the fact that the relatively small number of men in these units had to operate over such a wide geographical area, the Einsatzgruppen managed to murder ap- proximately 900,00 Jews within 15 months." R: It appears as if they fought the hundreds of thousands of partisans as a hobby, after a day's work so to speak. None other than the mainstream Holocaust ex- pert Gerald Reitlinger stated that this was completely unbelievable.832 As early as 1988, one of the most renowned experts on the Einsatzgruppen, German mainstream historian Hans Heinrich Wilhelm, stated that he is not cer- tain if the numbers in the Einsatzgruppen reports sent to Berlin are correct. These reports are the only existing evidence; hence they are used to compute the number of Jews killed. Wilhelm warned his colleagues:833 828 T. Sandkühler, Endlösung in Galizien. Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz 1941-1944, Verlag H.J.V. Dietz Nachfolger, Bonn 1996, p. 278. 829 Cf. C. Mattogno, J. Graf, "Operation 1005," op. cit. (note 198), pp. 217-229. 830 H. Höhne, op. cit. (note 760), p. 330. 831 Efraim Zuroff, Occupation Nazi-Hunter. The Continuing Search for the Perpetrators of the Holocaust, KTAV, Hoboken, NJ, 1994, p. 27; cf. I. Schirmer-Vowinckel, "Inverser Verfolgungswahn: Von Beruf Nazijäger," VffG 2(1) (1998), pp. 63-68. 832 G. Reitlinger, Die SS ­ Tragödie einer deutschen Epoche, Desch, Munich 1957, p. 186; Engl.: The SS, Alibi of a Nation, 1922-1945, Heinemann, London 1956, p. 185: "that such a force [of less than 3,000 men] should have executed [...] close on half a million Jews and gipsies in six months and hundreds of so-called commissars is pretty extraordinary." 833 H.-H. Wilhelm, paper presented at an international historical conference at the University of Riga, Sept. 20-22, 1988, p. 11. On the basis of this paper, Wilhelm compiled the article "Offene Fragen der Holo- 325 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "If the non-statistical reliability of [these reports] is not higher [than their low reliability concerning numbers], as could be confirmed only by a com- parison with other sources from the same region, then historical research would be well advised if in future it made less use of all SS sources." L: So Wilhelm, so foremost expert on these documents, basically doubts that they contain any reliable information. I wonder what we would dare to write if German penal law would not threaten him... R: Wilhelm's remark is consistent with what he wrote in his first book, where he doubted the reliability of these documents as well:834 "the fact that at least some ten thousand killed Jews were added to increase the total number of the otherwise unjustifiably low partisan numbers." R: In other places he notes the fact that one of the activity reports of the Ein- satzgruppen was obviously manipulated by inserting a zero, thus increasing the victim number from 1,134 11,034.835 Obviously the fabricators ­ that is what this is all about ­ must have had an interest in presenting a large number of vic- tims to someone. If the Einsatzgruppen falsified the numbers, then perhaps that was done because Berlin wanted to see as many Jews murdered as possible. L: After all we have heard here there is little likelihood of that. R: Then somebody else must have manipulated these numbers. L: Surely not some anti-fascist liars doing this out of some honorable demagogic motives to re-educate the people? R: Questions and more questions. It is a fact that all data on population statistic in areas once occupied by the Germans in the former Soviet Union indicate that no mass murders occurred there. Let me give you a final example in order to prove that this is indeed the case. In 1949, German General Field Marshal Erich von Manstein stood before a British military tribunal because as the commander in chief of the Germany's 11th Army he was accused as an accomplice to the murders of Einsatzgruppe D on the Crimea. Manstein's defense counsel, the British lawyer Reginald T. Paget, wrote in his memoirs:836 "It seemed to me that the S.D. claims [in the Einsatzgruppen reports] were quite impossible. Single companies of about 100 with about 8 vehicles were reporting the killing of up to 10,000 and 12,000 Jews in two or three days. They could not have got more than about 20 or 30 Jews who, be it remem- bered, thought they were being resettled and had their traps with them, into a single truck. Loading, travelling at least 10 kilometres, unloading and re- turning trucks would have taken nearer two hours than one. The Russian winter day is short and there was no travelling by night. Killing 10,000 Jews would have taken at least three weeks. caust-Forschung" in U. Backes et al. (ed.), op. cit. (note 167), p. 403-425, which does not contain this passage, however. I owe this information to Dr. Costas Zaverdinos, who owns a copy of the paper pre- sented by Wilhelm in Riga and who reported about it during his opening speech at a historical confer- ence at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, on April 24, 1995. 834 H.-H. Wilhelm, in H. Krausnick, H.-H. Wilhelm, op. cit. (note 811), p. 515. 835 Ibid., pp. 535. 836 Reginald T. Paget, Manstein. His Campaigns and his Trial, Collins, London 1951, p. 170f. 326 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST In one instance we were able to check their figures. The S.D. claimed that they had killed 10,000 in Simferopol during November and in December they reported Simferopol clear of Jews. By a series of cross checks we were able to establish that the execution of the Jews in Simferopol had taken place on a single day, 16th November. Only one company of S.D. were in Simfer- opol. The place of execution was 15 kilometres from the town. The numbers involved could not have been more then about 300. These 300 were probably not exclusively Jews but a miscellaneous collection of people who were be- ing held on suspicion of resistance activity. The Simferopol incident received a good deal of publicity because it was spoken of by the prosecution's only witness, an Austrian corporal called Gaffa who said that he heard anti- Jewish activities mentioned on an engineers' mess when he was [an] orderly and had passed the scene of the Simferopol execution. As a result we [Man- stein's defense team] received a large number of letters, and where able to call several witnesses who had been billeted with Jewish families and also spoke of the functioning of the local synagogue and of a Jewish market where they bought icons and similar bric-a-brac right up to the time that Manstein left the Crimea and after. It was indeed clear that the Jewish community had continued to function quite openly in Simferopol and although several of our witnesses had heard rumours about an S.D. excess committed against Jews in Simferopol, it cer- tainly appeared that this Jewish community was unaware of any special danger." 3.11. Homosexual and Gypsies L: What about the claims that the Nazis also attempted to exterminate homosexu- als and gypsies? R: Members of these groups were not sent to concentration camps because of their belonging to such a group, but because they fulfilled certain conditions. As in many countries in the world at that time, it was considered a crime to live openly as a homosexual. That was still the case after the war until the world- wide civil rights movement of the late 60s and early 70s of the 20th century be- gan to influence legal systems. A homosexual was sent to the camp because he broke the law, and after serving his sentence he was probably often deemed to be incorrigible. L: Does that mean you deny they exterminated homosexuals? R: The use of the word deny implies lying and by implication you are saying I am denying against better knowledge something that is common knowledge. It would be better if we agreed to use the word "dispute." L: All right. Do you dispute that homosexuals were murdered? 327 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Yes, for the simple reason that even established and reputable researchers do. Statements about a systematic extermination of gays are simply not true,837 just as it is not true to say gypsies were exterminated in the Third Reich. L: You thereby contradict official statements made by the German federal gov- ernment claiming that 500,000 Gypsies were murdered!838 R: How rude of me to contradict the German government! After good German tradition we must accept uncritically everything as gospel truth whatever the German government tells us, right? Fact is that the German federal government does not back up its statements about the total extermination of the gypsies. What is proven, however, is that before the beginning of war in Europe about one million Gypsies lived in the German occupied areas of Europe. Based on data supplied by the International Romani Union, which is the most influential organization of gypsies worldwide, the New York Times stated on September 27, 1992, that at the beginning of the 1990s there were more than ten million gypsies living in the same area.839 How can you then say the gypsies were ex- terminated? How do you in 40 years create out of a few survivors over ten mil- lion? I may quote from the German left-wing radical newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau:840 "Only through an extensive study of documents was it possible to discover that the number of the murdered Sinti and Roma [the two largest gypsy tribes] obviously lies well below that officially claimed: 50,000 instead of 500,000 murdered (Michael Zimmermann, Essen/Jena)." R: And I would still place a question mark after the verb "murdered" and after the number 50,000.841 They mainly died, as did other prisoners, owing to the catas- trophic conditions prevailing in the camps towards the end of the war. Many of these persons died in camps, especially in the final phase of the war. It is not correct to say that they died as a result of German policy, because condi- tions in the camps were subjected to higher forces. L: Somehow I cannot get rid of the suspicion that you want to sell us the Nazi concentration camps as holiday camps. R: Nothing is further from the truth and such an impression is easily dismissed if we remind ourselves of Paul Rassinier's works.80,85 But I may also recommend you compare two diaries written by Dachau prisoners; one prisoner remained 837 Cf. dazu Jack Wickoff, "Der Mythos von der Vernichtung Homosexueller im Dritten Reich," VffG 2(2) (1998), pp. 135-139. 838 German Federal President Dr. Roman Herzog, March 16, 1997, in his speech on occasion of the open- ing of the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg, Bulletin, Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, March 19, 1997, no. 234, p. 259: "Up to 500,000 murder victims, of which more than 20,000 German Sinti and Roma ­ this is a barbarity of outrageous dimensions." 839 Cf. on this in more detail Otward Müller, "Sinti and Roma ­ Yarns, Legends, and Facts," TR 2(3) (2004), pp. 254-259. 840 "Die Forschung fängt erst an," Frankfurter Rundschau, Feb. 13, 1997, p. 7; cf. Michael Zimmermann, Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet. Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik gegen Sinti und Roma, Klartext-Verl., Essen 1989. 841 See in this context also Carlo Mattogno's article on the fate of the gypsies deported to Auschwitz, "The `Gassing' of Gypsies in Auschwitz on August 2, 1944," TR 1(3) (2003), pp. 330-332. 328 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST there during the war,842 and the other was locked up after the war by the U.S. occupational force.843 In this comparison it becomes obvious that prisoners did better in that particular camp under the Germans during the war than under the U.S.-led occupation after the war.844 This is also confirmed by G. Favre, a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who wrote a report in August 1938 about his visit to the Dachau camp. In it he described the condi- tions in that camp as acceptable regarding work load, hygienic conditions, and nutrition.845 But it is not possible to generalize on this matter. For example, the large num- ber of deaths of those deported to Auschwitz early on and who were registered in the camp ­ over half of those registered died in the first three months596 ­ proves that during many months of the years 1942 and 1943 Auschwitz was ac- tually a camp where humans were killed in a completely different sense than what is prescribed as true in many European countries by criminal law: through criminal ruthlessness and neglect. You don't need a homicidal gas chamber to kill people. Similar things can be said about Majdanek, as stated by Jürgen Graf and Carlo Mattogno:846 "The concentration camp Majdanek was a place of suffering. The people imprisoned there suffered under catastrophic sanitary condi- tions, epidemics, at times completely insufficient rations, back-breaking heavy labor, harassment. More than 40,000 Majdanek inmates died, primar- ily from disease, debilitation and malnutrition; an unknown number was executed. The real victims of Majdanek deserve our respect, just as all victims of war and oppression deserve our respect, regardless what nation they belong to. But we are not doing the dead any service by inflating their number for po- litical and propagandistic reasons and by making utterly unfounded claims about the way they died." 842 Arthur Haulot, "Lagertagebuch. Januar 1943 ­ Juni 1945," Dachauer Hefte, 1(1) (1985), pp. 129-203. 843 Gert Naumann, Besiegt und "befreit." Ein Tagebuch hinter Stacheldraht in Deutschland 1945-1947, Druffel, Leoni 1984, pp. 139-199, 239-281. 844 Ingrid Weckert, "Two Times Dachau," TR 2(3) (2004), pp. 260-270. 845 Jean-Claude Favez, Das IKRK und das Rote Kreuz. War der Holocaust aufzuhalten?, Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zürich 1989, p. 538ff. 846 J. Graf, C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 523), p. 247. 329 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 3.12. Appendix north side Ill. 123: North side view and floor plan of crematory IV and V (mirror symmetri- cally) in the Auschwitz II/Birkenau camp. 1: alleged homicidal gas chamber, actual purpose unknown so far; 2: alleged Zyklon B insertion hatches; 3: heating furnace; 4: coke room; 5: physician; 6: morgue; 7: ventilation chimneys for morgue and oven room ­ but not for the alleged "gas chambers"!; 8: drains; 9: oven room; 10: cremation ovens 330 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 124: A crematory architect visits a special installation. 331 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Tab. 24: Dates of registered inmates that died in Auschwitz at age 80 and over (in dd/mm/yyyy) # NAME BIRTHDAY DEATH TOWN OF BIRTH LAST RESIDENCE CONFESSION 90 Königstein, Anna Sara 30/12/1852 27/12/1943 Poleschowitz Theresienstadt mosaic 90 Ruzicka, Marie 10/12/1852 12/05/1943 Klattau Gross Dobray catholic 89 Hoffmann, Josef 12/08/1852 22/06/1942 Vrutky Vrutky mosaic 88 Strauss, Arnold 29/12/1853 22/06/1942 Bobrow Banska Bystrica mosaic 88 Herzberg, Johann 25/12/1854 07/04/1943 Wöllnitz Gotenhafen catholic 87 Zagolkin, Nikifor ­/­/1856 05/12/1943 Styriki Styriki gr. orthodox 87 Horvath, Anna 07/03/1856 10/05/1943 Schreibersdorf Althodis catholic 86 Kannengießer, Leopold 10/08/1855 14/07/1942 Neu Sandez Presov mosaic 86 Strukow, Praskowja ­/­/1857 09/11/1943 Wierieczi Kalzy gr. orthodox 86 Strojny, Jozefa 23/02/1857 08/11/1943 Sulejow Litzmannstadt catholic 86 Kreutz, Elisabeth 03/04/1857 31/07/1943 Römershausen Dortmund evangelical 85 Zegolkin, Domna ­/­/1858 23/12/1943 Malchaty Lopatki gr. orthodox 85 Laski, Apolonia ­/­/1858 21/12/1943 Dubowik Sawin Dub gr. orthodox 85 Karpowicz, Wasilij ­/­/1858 09/11/1943 Borisow Borisow gr. orthodox 85 Berousek, Cecilie 04/10/1857 31/03/1943 Frauenberg Bistrowan catholic 85 Weiß, Eva 04/01/1858 04/05/1943 Gehaus Unterrückersbach catholic 85 Petermann, Maria 01/02/1858 26/05/1943 Sennheim Berlin catholic 84 Grysimienko, Achriem ­/­/1859 09/12/1943 Lipinki ­- unknown 84 Wesolowski, Malgorzata ­/­/1859 18/11/1943 Witonia Litzmannstadt catholic 84 Jonasz, Moric 17/06/1858 23/06/1942 Lest Banska Bystrica mosaic 83 Spindler, Blondina J. 22/07/1859 22/06/1943 Gnotzheim Filzingen catholic 83 Baranow, Anastasija ­/­/1860 01/11/1943 Dworiszcza Jakowlewo gr. orthodox 83 Schkomarovsky, Ester S. 00/03/1860 30/12/1943 Kyjov Theresienstadt mosaic 83 Bardaczow, Nikita 00/05/1860 08/10/1943 Plaszkowo Plaszkowo gr. orthodox 83 Weiss, Moritz 07/03/1859 14/07/1942 Ilwes Presov mosaic 83 Prager, Reinhold 02/02/1860 12/04/1943 Sankt Sanglow Munich-Bernsdorf evangelical 83 Schneck, Kreszentia 10/02/1860 16/04/1943 Rohrdorf Ravensburg-Um. catholic 83 Frank, Max 10/05/1859 25/06/1942 Velké-Surovce Piestany mosaic 83 Heiman, Ernestine 08/04/1859 22/04/1942 Banovce nad B. Trencin mosaic 83 Rostalski, Jadwiga 25/10/1860 01/11/1943 Falkenhof Litzmannstadt catholic 82 Friedrich, Theodor 04/10/1860 03/06/1943 Groß-Küdde Berlin catholic 82 Horvath, Ignaz 27/09/1860 06/05/1943 Zahling Zahling catholic 82 Buriansky, Marie 11/11/1860 16/03/1943 Brockesdorf Stadt-Liebau catholic 82 Knopf, Agnes Sara 28/11/1861 30/12/1943 unknown Theresienstadt unknown 82 Rosenberg, Elisabeth 21/04/1861 10/05/1943 Klein-Wanzl. Berlin-Marzahn catholic 81 Welkewitz, Chana Sara 20/01/1862 30/12/1943 unknown Theresienstadt unknown 81 Sommer, Luzie Sara 03/04/1862 30/12/1943 Raudnitz/Elbe Theresienstadt mosaic 81 Vohryzek, Leopold 30/03/1862 22/12/1943 Hermannstadt Theresienstadt mosaic 81 Richter, Chaim 18/08/1860 01/03/1942 Krenau Krenau mosaic 81 Herrmann, Katharina 28/03/1862 08/10/1943 Eisenau Sielanki catholic 81 Holomek, Johann 26/09/1861 31/03/1943 Napajedl Napajedl Zigeunerl. catholic 332 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST # NAME BIRTHDAY DEATH TOWN OF BIRTH LAST RESIDENCE CONFESSION 81 Bello, Martin 25/03/1862 21/07/1943 Niederfinow Halle/Saale catholic 81 Pollak, Josef 20/01/1861 26/04/1942 Rajec Rajec mosaic 81 Neumann, Betti 28/09/1862 30/12/1943 unknown unknown unknown 81 Szewczyk, Zdzislaw 27/10/1862 18/12/1943 Tarnobrzeg Moschin catholic 81 Gruszczynski, Maria 16/06/1862 21/07/1943 Klonowa Litzmannstadt-Ch. catholic 81 Subrt, Nepomucena 21/06/1862 25/07/1943 Swatoborschitz Tscheloschnitz catholic 81 Brüll, Johanna Sara 29/11/1862 30/12/1943 unknown Theresienstadt unknown 81 Eiser, Johanna 09/05/1861 02/06/1942 Nositz Rajetz mosaic 80 Sojka, Berta Sara 01/01/1863 27/12/1943 Jungbunzlau Theresienstadt mosaic 80 Stopnicki, Michal 31/08/1860 25/08/1941 Stare Stawy Jaslo catholic 80 Dirnfeld, Israel 00/07/1861 24/06/1942 Nitra Nitra mosaic 80 Pietrowicz, Anton ­/­/1863 18/12/1943 Suchopiatowa Suchopiatowa gr. orthodox 80 Waitz, Karl 15/06/1862 06/05/1943 Pleil Graz catholic 80 Spakow, Tatjana ­/­/1863 15/11/1943 Stiriki Lopatki gr. orthodox 80 Szubrow, Tatjana ­/­/1863 27/10/1943 Bobruszki Bielikow gr. orthodox 80 Orieszenko, Andriej ­/­/1863 07/10/1943 Chabaty Chabaty gr. orthodox 80 Stefaniak, Wiktoria 14/10/1862 19/06/1943 Garz Komsdorf catholic 80 Jelinski, Jozefa 12/03/1863 15/11/1943 Tschenstochau Litzmannstadt catholic 80 Pohl, Wilhelm 13/09/1862 07/05/1943 Beneschau Teplitz-Schönau catholic 80 Rotholz, Louis Israel 12/07/1862 13/02/1943 Pyritz Berlin mosaic 80 Stein, Rudolf 01/01/1863 03/07/1943 Breslau Bremen catholic 80 Graczek, Marja 16/07/1863 26/12/1943 Salzberg Jaworzno catholic 80 Karoly, Juliana 12/01/1863 20/06/1943 Mönchmeierhof Spitzzicken catholic 80 Daniel, Josef 16/02/1863 09/07/1943 Bilowitz Bilowitz catholic 80 Herzberger, Oswald J.H. 07/02/1863 23/06/1943 Striegau Neumünster evangelical 80 Serynek, Beatrix ­/­/1863 04/05/1943 Milschitz Pilsen catholic 80 Wagner, Emilie Sara 25/11/1863 28/12/1943 Slatina bei Kgtz Theresienstadt mosaic GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 333 Ill. 125: Death Rates of Dachau concentration camp according to evidence presented by the U.S. after the war. 334 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 126: Allegedly a photograph taken in Auschwitz-Birkenau from crematory V, showing the yard to the north of the building. But this is clearly either a photo- graphed drawing or a heavily retouched photograph.784 335 Fourth Lecture: Witness Testimonies and Confessions 4.1. Confessions of NS Leaders During the War R: On pp. 191f., we discussed why the testimonies of persons who might be prejudiced with regards to an event ­ either emotionally or ideologically ­ are usually less reliable than testimonies of entirely neutral and impartial observ- ers. Particular care must be taken also with regards to persons with some rela- tionship to the disputing parties. In regards to the Holocaust, this refers to the alleged criminals on the one hand, and the alleged victims on the other. L: But then there wouldn't be anybody left. Hardly anybody is a neutral impartial observer. R: Can anybody really remain neutral where the Holocaust is concerned? The problem is a basic one: Everything we hear about the Holocaust is so heavily loaded with emotion that hardly anybody can be a sober, detached observer. The whole Second World War split practically the whole world into good and evil as never before in human history. You could just as easily say, and quite correctly, that there can be no witness testimonies with regards to the Holo- caust, only testimonies by one or the other party to the matter in dispute. What I want is simply to make you aware that the testimonies of both sides must be viewed with skepticism, as is the case in any other civil or criminal case: One must expect the surviving victims to exaggerate or even invent things due to feelings of hatred and a desire for revenge. On the other hand, one must expect the criminals, out of self-preservation, to minimize or deny events. L: All the more reason for me to find the confessions of the criminals more con- vincing. R: And that is just where we wish to begin. Let us take a good look at the confes- sions of the "criminals" for once. Before we begin with some of the quotations of leading National Socialists frequently cited as proof of the Holocaust by or- thodox historians, we must first clarify the meaning of several German terms. The question is: What did leading National Socialists mean when they used words like "Vernichtung" (annihilation) or "Ausrottung" (extermination)? If you look into a modern German dictionary, things seem to be clear. In most cases, these words refer to a physical elimination, that is to say: to killings. But there are exceptions. "Vernichtung," for example, can also be used in a mere social or professional sense, were it means the loss or destruction of one's fi- nancial basis or social network of friends, for example. A "vernichtende Nied- erlage" (annihilating defeat) in sports does of course not mean that the athletes 336 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST of the defeated team were murdered. The term "Ausrottung" is less ambivalent, but it, too, does not have to mean murder. During the 1920s and early 1930s, the leaders of National Socialism, who later became Germany's leading politicians, evolved politically in an atmosphere of permanent civil war. The language used by the more radical parties involved in this struggle was quite often inflammatory and violent. Words said in the heat of the moment were not always considered to be taken literally. This, too, needs to be kept in mind. Let me now quote a few examples of statements made by leaders of NS Ger- many, in which words like annihilation or extermination did occur, but were they obviously did not mean murder: 1. Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy until 1941, remarked in a speech in Stockholm on May 14, 1935:847 "National Socialist legislation has intervened in a corrective manner against [Jewish] foreign infiltration. I say corrective, since [the fact that] Jewry is not, for example, being ruth- lessly exterminated in National Socialist Germany is proven by the fact that, in Prussia alone, 33,500 Jews are active in industry and handicrafts, 98,900 in trade and transport ­ and is further proven by the fact that, with a proportion of 1% of the population of Germany, 17.5% of all lawyers are still Jewish, and, for example, in Berlin, almost 50% of all non-Aryan phy- sicians are still permitted to participate in the social security system." The word exterminate (ausrotten) obviously cannot have been meant in the sense of murder in this connection, since in 1935 nobody had accused the Third Reich of ruthlessly killing the Jews in whole or even in part. This as- sumption was so absurd at that time, that it is inconceivable that the second most powerful man in the country after Hitler would have quasi-denied a partial physical extermination of the Jews by means of this statement of opinion. Hess' wording can only be taken in the social sense of the word: the National Socialists had not yet destroyed the Jewish influence in Germany using all means (ruthlessly), but had, rather, only begun to correct and re- strain their influence by moderate means of forced affirmative action. It is obvious that this repression cannot have occurred through any killing of the Jews, but rather in forcing them to have recourse to other professions or causing them to emigrate. 2. In a memorandum on the Four Year Plan in August 1936, Hitler remarked that the Wehrmacht and the German economy had to be ready in four years to wage war on the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union ever conquered Ger- many, that would mean the annihilation of the German people.848 Naturally, Hitler cannot have meant that the Soviets would have killed 80 million Ger- 847 Quoted from the publication of the Rudolf Hess Association, "Dokumentation no. 9: Rede von Herrn Reichsminister Hess am 14. Mai 1935 in der Deutsch-Schwedischen Gesellschaft in Stockholm," Post- fach 11 22, D-82141 Planegg. 848 Cf. W. Treue, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 3 (1955), pp. 184f. 337 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST mans in such a case. Rather, the meaning was that Germany would be elimi- nated as an independent, politically powerful and cultural factor. 3. On Nov. 10, 1938, Hitler remarked to the National Socialist press that there was a need to annihilate the class of German intellectuals.849 Here as well, he cannot have meant a physical extermination of the intellectuals, but rather, only the end of their influence. 4. Only a few days before the above mentioned Reichstag speech of Jan. 30, 1939, Hitler received the Czech Foreign Minister. During the conversation Hitler criticized, among other things, the liberal attitude of the Czechs with regards to the Jews, and referred to the Jewish policy of his government with the words "In Germany, they are being annihilated." It is obvious that he cannot have meant a physical annihilation of the Jews, since nothing of the sort is alleged to have been going on at the time.850 5. Felix Kersten, Himmler's masseur, quotes Himmler as follows in a diary en- try dated Dec. 12, 1940: "We must wipe out the Jews, that is the will of the Führer." On Apr. 18, 1941, Himmler, according to Kersten, is supposed to have said: "The Jews must be annihilated by the end of the war. That is the unambi- guous wish of the Führer." It was Yehudah Bauer of Jerusalem University, one of the most highly re- spected mainstream Holocaust historians, who noted that there was not yet any intention to exterminate the Jews, when these entries in Kersten's diary were made, and that they are thus extremely problematic.851 But in the con- text of the above examples, these entries are much less problematic than they may first appear: "Wipe out" (ausradieren) and "exterminate" (ausrotten) were not meant to mean physical extermination, but, rather, the removal of the Jews from Germany and/or Europe. 6. This becomes clear from a Hitler statement during a table talk in his head quarters on July 4, 1942, when he reported his threat relating to the expul- sion of the Czechs from Bohemia and Moravia, which he expressed to Czech President Hacha. According to this threat, Hacha declared that all persons advocating a pro-Soviet policy in the Protectorate would have to be "exter- minated" (ausgerottet). From the context, it is clear that this means removal from their positions and expulsion.852 Now to some statements of leading NS politicians which are frequently quoted to support the extermination thesis. Since these statements were made long be- fore the end of the war, this automatically eliminates in advance the possibility 849 Bundesarchiv, NS 11/28, pp. 30-46; cf. H. von Kotze, H. Krausnick (ed.), Es spricht der Führer, Gütersloh 1966, p. 281; VfZ 1958, p. 188; for a contrary opinion on National Socialist usage of words, cf. M. Shermer, "Proving the Holocaust," Skeptic, 2(4) (1994), pp. 44-51; cf. Shermer, Why People Be- lieve Weird Things, Freeman & Co., New York 1997, pp. 211-241. 850 See also, Joseph Billig's remarks in La solution finale de la question juive, Beate Klarsfeld, Paris 1977, p. 51. 851 Y. Bauer, op. cit. (note 434), p. 273, note 10. 852 H. Picker, op. cit. (note 435), p. 435; this example, as well as examples 2 and 3, were pointed out for the first time by D. Irving in, "On Contemporary History and Historiography," JHR 5(2-4) (1984), p. 277. 338 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST that they were extorted by force, as must be taken into consideration in the case of confessions of defendants given in Allied prisons. First of all, let us look at the oft-quoted passage from Adolf Hitler's speech of Jan. 30, 1939, i.e., seven months before the outbreak of the war:853 "Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!" R: Here you have Hitler's world view in a nutshell: Jews control international high finance and are the power behind Bolshevism; they intend to get financial and political control over the entire world, if necessary by gigantic wars, but Hitler sees himself as the driving force to prevent that and to annihilate the Jewish race in order to prevent the subjugation of the world under the Jewish yoke. But did he mean the annihilation of their physical existence or merely of their political and social influence? The continuation of this quote, which is regu- larly hushed up by mainstream historians, makes things clearer: "For the time when the non-Jewish nations had no propaganda is at an end. National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy have institutions which enable them when necessary to enlighten the world about the nature of a question of which many nations are instinctively conscious, but which they have not yet clearly thought out." R: So here you have it: Hitler will annihilate the Jews by enlightening the world about their evil plans and deeds. Even Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer contra- dicted the notion that Hitler meant physical murder in this speech. He empha- sized that this passage was no more than a vague, overly-dramatic threat, dia- metrically opposed to the rest of the speech.434 This speech was Hitler's reac- tion to Roosevelt's boycott threats in his so-called "Quarantine Speech," in which Roosevelt called Hitler's Germany a country infected by a dangerous, infectious bacillus, which deserved to be kept in quarantine, i.e., boycotted and avoided by other nations. Hitler's answering speech contains lengthy passages describing the implementation of his policy relating to the peaceful emigration and resettlement of the Jews. L: But the threat relates only to the case of a possible outbreak of war anyway. R: That is correct. But even if we assume that Hitler meant murder here, this overly-dramatic counter-threat in reacting to Roosevelt's threat cannot be used as proof of a crime committed at a later time, particularly when the following sentences say that the world will be enlightened as to the Jews. Yehuda Bauer himself provides more evidence against such an intention, namely, a document from May 1940, that is, after the outbreak of the war, in which Himmler re- jected "the Bolshevik method of physical annihilation of a people [...] as un- Germanic" and Adolf Hitler commented upon this by writing "Quite correct" in the margin.854 853 Max Domarus, Hitler Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945, Löwit, Wiesbaden 1973, vol. II, p. 1058. 854 Y. Bauer, op. cit. (note 434), p. 57. 339 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST On Jan. 30, 1941, Hitler himself, in a speech before the Reichstag, returned to his prophecy of 1939 and explained:855 "And I should like to repeat the warning that I have already once given, on 1. September 1939 [correct: Jan. 30, 1939], in the German Reichstag: namely, the warning that if Jewry drives the world into a general war, the role Jewry plays in Europe will be all over!" R: So once more: annihilation of the Jews in terms of ending the influential role Jewry played in economy, politics, and culture. Hitler made similar remarks on Jan. 30, Feb. 24, Sept. 30, Nov. 8, 1942, and on Feb. 24, 1943.856 According to this, he saw two possibilities for the outcome of the world war then in progress: either the extermination of the Aryan race or that of Jewry. That he did not mean that, in the event of defeat all the peoples designated by him as Aryan would be physically exterminated, may be considered certain. What Hitler un- derstood "annihilation of Jewry" to mean later, he commented to his closest confidants on October 25, 1941, i.e., after the expansion of the war into a World War. During a Table Talk, he came back to his speech of Jan. 30, 1939, and declared that he understood "annihilation" to mean the destruction of the political influence of the Jews in Europe through their deportation to the Rus- sian swamps:857 "This race of criminals has the two million dead of the [First] World War on their conscience, and now hundreds of thousands more. Let no one say: How can we ship them off into the swamps!" L: Maybe Hitler didn't want to call a spade a spade. R: I consider it very improbable that Hitler, even in the company of his closest confidants, would have felt obliged to use camouflage words or fail to refer to things by their proper name. But now to the statements of other prominent National Socialists on the "anni- hilation of Jewry" during wartime. First, there is the entry by Propaganda Min- ister Josef Goebbels of Mar. 27, 1942:858 "Beginning in Lublin, the Jews are now being deported from the General- gouvernement to the east. This is a somewhat barbaric procedure and not one to be further described here. There is not much left of the Jews them- selves. In general, one can state that 60 percent will have to be liquidated; only 40 percent will be able to be put to work." R: The problem with this quotation is the same as with the others. Namely when one regards the actual policy, one must conclude that the 60% "liquidated" Jews were those who were unable to work and were therefore "deported to the east." This is clear from a Goebbels diary entry, which he made only 20 days earlier:859 855 Max Domarus, op. cit. (note 853), p. 1663. 856 Ibid., pp. 1828f., 1844, 1920, 1937, 1992. 857 W. Jochmann (ed.), Adolf Hitler. Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941-1944. Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, Knaus, Hamburg 1980, p. 106. 858 Ralf Georg Reuth (ed.), Joseph Goebbels ­ Tagebücher, 2nd ed., vol. 4, Piper, Munich 1991, p. 1776. 859 Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel, Goebbels. Eine Biographie, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln-Berlin, 1960, p. 256. 340 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "The Jewish question must be solved within the framework of Greater Europe. There are still over 11 million Jews in Europe. They must first be concentrated in the east. Eventually, after the war, they can be sent to an is- land, like Madagascar. At any rate, there will be no peace in Europe until the Jews are completely excluded from the European territory." R: On the basis of documents from that time Carlo Mattogno has stated that, at that time, i.e., after the Wannsee Conference, a resettlement of the Jews began in the General Government, which was anything but an "annihilation action" (Vernichtungsaktion).860 Due to the significance of these documents, I would like to summarize them at this point. After the first transports of resettled Jews had arrived at their destinations, the receiving authorities had to be warned as follows in the beginning of 1942:861 "I am asking you to take great care to ensure that the Jews are received and correctly transported at their final destination, wherever you have decided that they should go; they should not, as has occurred in other cases, arrive at their final destination without any supervision at all, and then disperse themselves all over the countryside." R: If the transports were sent to extermination camps, something like this could never have happened. Another document has the following to say, among other things, on the treatment of the Jews at the destination:862 "After their arrival in their new settlement areas, the Jews are to be placed under medical supervision for 3 weeks. Every case of suspected typhus infec- tion must be reported to the responsible district physician without fail." R: Gassed Jews would hardly have had to be supervised for their health for three weeks. The "barbaric" methods of resettlement are revealed by a document dated March 22, 1942, five days before Goebbels' diary entry:863 "On March 22, 1942, there was an evacuation of 57 Jewish families, a total of 221 persons, from Bilgoray to Tarnogrod. Every family was provided with a vehicle to transport their furniture and beds. The arrangements and super- vision are to be taken over by the police and Special Service Command. The action went ahead according to plan and without incident. The evacuated persons were lodged in Tarnogrod on the same day." L: But if that is so, why should Goebbels have referred to this as a "barbaric pro- cedure" and that there was "not much left of the Jews"? R: The forced mass resettlement of human beings is "barbaric" according to West- ern standards, don't you think? The massive forced resettlement of the Ger- mans from their eastern territories after the Second World War is considered barbaric, too. I think that the images that always occur when we imagine the Holocaust have blunted us emotionally to the extent that we are no longer able 860 Cf. C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 605). 861 Józef Kermisz, Dokumenty i materia y do dziejów okupacij niemieckiej w Polsce, vol. II, "Akcje" i "Wysiedlenia," Warsaw-Lodz-Krakau 1946, p. 11. 862 Ibid., p. 15. 863 Ibid., p. 46. 341 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST to recognize the everyday barbarity of the world. In view of the horrors that we have all heard about the Holocaust, anything less doesn't seem so bad at all. L: With that kind of argument, you can sweep all kinds of barbaric treatment of our fellow human beings under the carpet as "not so bad," which is what hap- pens everywhere today, from the conflict in Bosnia and Kosovo or Chechyna, to the massacres in Rwanda and Darfur, to the oppression of the Palestinians. R: That is right. Let us not forget: Goebbels was not emotionally hardened by Holocaust propaganda. For him, the forced resettlement of entire families to the economically barren east was "barbaric," and he was quite right in this. His tes- timony that "not much is left" where the Jews were concerned can only have been intended to mean to refer to their political, economic, and social presence in Europe. He cannot have been referring to their murder. Thus, Goebbels understood the "liquidation" of 60% of the deported Jews to refer to their evacuation to the eastern territories and therefore the liquidation of any economic, political, and social influence of these people in western and central Europe. Accordingly, the expression "liquidation" in this Goebbels di- ary entry has the same meaning for Goebbels as "annihilation" and "extermina- tion" did for Hitler. The next thing worth mentioning is the speech of the Governor of Poland, Hans Frank, given on Dec. 16, 1941, that is, approximately one month before the Wannsee Conference. In this speech, Frank remarked:864 "[...] if the Jewish tribe in Europe survives the war, while we have sacri- ficed our best blood in the protection of Europe, then this war will only have been partly successful. Basically, therefore, with regards to the Jews, I must simply assume that they are to disappear. They will have to go." L: That's very clear as well. R: It looks like it. It was also quoted, for example, by Prof. Nolte as proof of a Holocaust.865 But Prof. Nolte has forgotten the rest of the quotation, which con- tinues: "I have initiated negotiations for the purpose of deporting them to the east. In January, there will be a big conference on this matter in Berlin [Wann- see], to which I will send State Secretary Dr. Bühler. This conference will be held in the Reich Security Main Office of SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich. A great Jewish migration will set in at any rate." L: It looks almost as if Prof. Nolte falsified the quotation by taking it out of con- text. R: Again I must say: not too fast! The quotation continues: "But what is supposed to happen to the Jews? Do you think they are going to be housed in settlement villages in the eastern territories? They've told us in Berlin: What's all the fuss? We cannot do anything with them, either in the eastern territories or in the Reich Commissariat [occupied Ukraine], liq- uidate them yourselves! [...] We must destroy the Jews, wherever we find them, in order to maintain the overall structure of the Reich here. [...] We 864 PS-2233, IMT, vol. 29, pp. 502f. 865 E. Nolte, Streitpunkte, op. cit. (note 263), p. 296. 342 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST cannot shoot 3.5 million Jews, we cannot poison them, but we will undertake measures leading to their successful destruction in some way or other, of course, in connection with the overall measures to be undertaken by the Reich, as discussed here. The Government General must become as free of Jews as the Reich. Where and how this happens is a matter of the authorities to be created in these areas, the jurisdiction of which I will inform you about in due time." L: So what does it mean? Resettlement or annihilation? R: Why not both? Frank is obviously speaking with relation to the same thing: resettlement and annihilation are synonymous. And he also says expressly: "We cannot shoot 3.5 million Jews, we cannot poison them." Can it be any clearer that they were neither to be shot nor to be gassed with poison? The fact is that this ambivalence disappears as soon as one views these text passages in the context of other documents, such as the Goebbels diaries entries or other documents by Hans Frank.866 These make it clear that both Frank and Goebbels had no doubt that Jews who were unable to work were to be resettled to the east, while the rest of them were to be used for forced labor. Lastly, I must refer to a Himmler speech of Oct. 4, 1943, which is generally referred to as his "secret speech." The following is an excerpt:867 "I am thinking now of the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easy to say: `The Jewish peo- ple will be exterminated,' says every Party comrade, `that is quite clear, it is in our program: deactivation [Ausschaltung] of the Jews, extermination; that is what we are doing.' And then they all come along, these 80 million good Germans, and every one of them has his decent Jew. Of course, it is quite clear that the others are pigs, but this one is one first-class Jew. Of all those who speak this way, not one has looked on; not one has lived through it. Most of you know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when 500 lie there, or if 1,000 lie there. To have gone through this, and at the same time, apart from exceptions caused by human weaknesses, to have remained decent, that has made us hard. This is a chapter of glory in our history which has never been written, and which never shall be written; since we know how hard it would be for us if we still had the Jews, as secret sabo- teurs, agitators, and slander-mongers, among us now, in every city ­ during the bombing raids, with the suffering and deprivations of the war. We would probably already be in the same situation as in 1916/17 if we still had the Jews in the body of the German people. [...] We had the moral right, we had the duty to our own people, to kill this people which wanted to kill us." L: There we have an explanation that evacuation was a camouflage word for physical extermination. 866 Cf. in this regard, and in more detail, C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 605); cf. also Germar Rudolf, "Some Comments about the NS-Language with Regards to Jews," TR 3, in preparation. 867 PS-1919, IMT, vol. 29, pp. 110-173, here pp. 145f. A short audio extract from the speech may be heard on line at www.vho.org/VffG/1997/4/Himmler041043_2.wav. 343 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: No, the other way around: For Himmler, "extermination" was a synonym for evacuation, since the Party Program of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) contained nothing relating to any physical extermination of the Jews, but rather, that they could not be citizens,868 which is equivalent to expul- sion from Germany. L: And what about the bodies mentioned by Himmler? R: This passage may relate to the Germans with the "decent Jews," who did not understand the hard measures against the Jews, because they had never seen hundreds or thousands of bodies lying side by side: "Of all those who speak this way, not one has looked on; not one has lived through it." This means that these could obviously not have been Jewish bodies, since if the Germans with their "first-class Jews" had ever seen hundreds of Jewish bodies, they would have been even less sympathetic to any anti-Jewish measures, and might even have taken to the barricades. But Himmler's audience, who were soldiers ­ all Higher SS and Police Leaders ­, understood the anti-Jewish measures, because they had seen these bodies. But seeing Jewish bodies wouldn't have made these men any more inclined to accept anti-Jewish measures either. You only accept harsh measures when you are convinced that they are justified, that they are a punishment. But a punishment for what? For the mass deaths of human beings; for responsibility for the war. Attention should be paid in this connection to Hitler's frequently-repeated warning to the effect that: "If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war," then woe to them! That Hitler and his followers blamed the Jews for both World Wars, can bee seen from a great many of their statements. Just read the one Hitler made on October 25, 1941, once more (p. 339). In it, Hitler blames the Jews for the victims of the war and right after that talks about their punishment: "ship them off into the swamps," which can only have meant the swamps of Belarus, in which German soldiers were also bogged down at that same time. It was these bodies ­ the victims of the war ­ which were to make those Ger- mans understand anti-Jewish measures, and which would also make Himmler's listeners understand why hard measures against Jews were allegedly necessary. This is why Himmler and his listeners adopted such a merciless attitude in those days. L: But at the end of the day, Himmler really claimed that he had the moral right to kill the Jews. R: That is what it says, but it makes little sense, since not even the most extreme National Socialist ever claimed that the "Jews" had planned to commit geno- cide against the entire German people. The National Socialist ideology and propaganda spoke of Jewish bolshevism and Jewish high finance, both of which wished to subjugate and enslave the German people. So if reciprocity 868 Point 4 of the Program: "Staatsbürger kann nur sein, wer Volksgenosse ist. Volksgenosse kann nur sein, wer deutschen Blutes ist, ohne Rücksichtsnahme auf Konfession. Kein Jude kann daher Volks- genosse sein." ­ Citizen can only be who is a member of the people. A member of the people is who is of German blood, with no regard to the confession. No Jew can therefore be a member of the people. 344 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST were to be restored, then "killing," in this context, would mean that he had the right to subjugate and enslave the Jews, which is exactly what happened at that time. This means that it is also incorrect to interpret this passage literally, be- cause Himmler speaks in the past tense: "we had [...] the duty [...] to kill this people [...]." But even according to mainstream historiography, the murder of the Jews was by no means a matter of the past in October 1943. At that time, there were still millions of Jews in Europe: The Hungarian Jews had not even been bothered yet; in Poland, nobody had yet been deported from the large ghetto of Lodz; in France, three fourths of the Jews remained until the end of the war, and almost 90% of the Jews with French citizenship were spared from deportation. L: Wasn't Himmler's speech also recorded? R: Passages from the speech were introduced on a phonograph record during the Nuremberg Trials. L: So Himmler's speech was recorded? R: The technical background to the phonograph record is a bit problematic. First, it doesn't seem very credible that Himmler would record a speech relating to strictly secret matters before top leadership personalities, such as statements on the military situation. There are also technical arguments against it. The re- cording introduced into evidence at Nuremberg was in fact a so-called "shellac disk," upon which recordings could be made by means of the so-called "needle tone technology." That is an extremely primitive recording technology from the early 20th century. The tone quality of such recordings is correspondingly bad. L: Is the quality sufficiently good to permit voice analysis? R: That is questionable. In any case, I don't know whether any such analysis was ever performed. L: So it could be the work of a voice imitator? R: I cannot exclude that. The fact is that the German electrical company AEG had already developed its process of tape recording technology to mass-production stage in 1939/1940, and that this technique was spreading like wildfire in Ger- many. So it seems more probable that the speeches of leading personalities in Germany after 1940/41 were recorded on tape ­ if at all. But no tape of this kind, with Himmler's speech on it, was ever found. L: The Allies probably couldn't have handled such a recording at all, since they weren't familiar with German recording technology at that time. R: That is correct. So they would have had to manufacture records from a tape, using a tape recording technology which they knew nothing about. L: Did anybody do any research during the Nuremberg Trials to find out where this shellac disk with Himmler's speech on it came from? R: The prosecution claimed to have found the disk in some German files, which is equal to the claim that the disk was made by some German authority, not by the Allies using a tape. But if the Germans taped the speech, they would never have produced a shellac disk from it. So the claim about the origin of that disk is at least fishy. Like with many other dubious documents, this piece of evi- 345 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST dence was simply filed away unchallenged. So, you see, there is a need to re- search the origin and authenticity of this recording. But even if you assume that the Himmler speech was held in the alleged form: C. Mattogno correctly states that, here again, Himmler's speech must be viewed in the context of all his other speeches and documents, for example, his declaration in Bad Tölz on November 23, 1942:869 "The Jewish question in Europe has completely changed. The Führer once said in a Reichstag speech: If Jewry triggers an international war, for ex- ample, to exterminate the Aryan people, then it won't be the Aryans who will be exterminated, but Jewry. The Jews have been resettled outside Germany, they are living here, in the east, and are working on our roads, railways etc. This is a consistent process, but is conducted without cruelty." R: In a general way, therefore, it is clear that the speeches and diary entries of leaders of the Third Reich can only be interpreted correctly in the context of all speeches. And even then these statements of leading NS politicians at most rep- resent the intentions or views of these leaders, but cannot provide information as to what actually happened. 4.2. A Thousand Reasons for False Testimonies 4.2.1. Rumors, Misunderstandings, and Hearsay "Q. Did you ever hear rumours? A. Constantly." R: These lines are quoted from the interrogation of former Auschwitz inmate Ar- nold Friedman regarding his experience in that camp.870 They indicate that Auschwitz was indeed a rumor factory. On p. 136, I quoted Prof. Dr. Ernst Nolte, who referred to a fact which should be known to all historians: "[...] no less does he [the historian] know that large crowds of people in ex- treme situations, and in the face of hardly comprehensible events, were and are breeding places for rumors." R: What Nolte means here ­ and Friedman confirms ­ is the fact that human be- ings, whenever they are deprived of the sources of information usually avail- able to them, tend to draw a complete picture of what is going on in the world based on the few facts available. The German concentration camps were no ex- ception in this regard. These camps contained inmates from all over the world, that is, people from many different cultures. Many of them hardly understood the German language or not at all. They hardly knew where they were, nor were they familiar with German civilian or military customs. It is not surprising that many inmates took rumor or hearsay for pure fact. This fruitful soil for the 869 Bradley F. Smith, Agnes F. Peterson (ed.), Heinrich Himmler. Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, Propyläen, Frankfurt 1974, p. 200. 870 Queen versus Zündel, op. cit. (note 64), p. 379. 346 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST preparation of rumors was of course heav- ily exploited by a variety of underground groups for the dissemination of Allied propaganda, as we shall see later. At this point, as a classic example of a rumor which arose from uncertainty, linked with mistrust of the enemy, I would like to quote a short passage from the book Die Todesfabrik (The Death Factory), in which the author reports on the sauna built for the inmates at Auschwitz-Birkenau:871 "Even without specialist knowledge, Ill. 127: Sauna in the hygiene anyone will recognize that the Nazi doc- building BW 5b in Auschwitz Birkenau.872 tors constantly committed crimes against humanity in the concentration camps. We cannot forget the SS officer, a doc- tor, who resided in Birkenau at the beginning of 1943. His little hobby-horse was the `Finnish sauna.' This bath, in Birkenau, consisted of two rooms, separated from each other which could be hermetically sealed off from each other by means of a door. The inmates had to undress in the corridor and give up their clothing and underclothing for delousing. In the first room was a gigantic brick oven, in which large stones were brought to white heat over a period of several hours before the beginning of the bath. Against the wall opposite the oven was an extremely primitive bench, arranged in steps, reaching almost to the ceiling. The naked inmates had to sit on these benches, as closely together as they could. One sat next to the other, the healthy ones pressed next to the sick ones, many of whom had infectious skin eruptions. Then the heated stones were doused with water. As a result of the heat, the emaciated, sick, ruined bodies of the inmates began to sweat heavily. The new arrivals, who had to climb to the highest benches, sweated most of all. Sweat, mixed with dirt and pus from suppurating sores, ran down in streams. When a few had already begun to lose consciousness, the hermetically- sealed door was opened to the second room, in which the naked inmates were driven under ice-cold showers with shouting and the blows of trun- cheons by the inmate trustees." L: A sauna as a torture chamber! R: Exactly. Saunas were generally introduced in Germany during the war to strengthen the immune system, in Auschwitz as well, as may be seen here, for the benefit of the inmates (see Ill. 127). To anybody who had never seen a sauna, and who was prepared to believe anything perverse about the Germans, this luxury installation naturally appeared as an instrument of torture. In con- 871 Ota Kraus, Erich Kulka, Die Todesfabrik, Kongress-Verlag, Berlin 1958, pp. 47f.; cf. Werner Rade- macher, "Sauna a `Crime'?," TR 2(4) (2004), pp. 371-373. 872 Section from plan no. 1715 of Sept. 25, 1942; J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 57. 347 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST nection with the murders claimed to have been committed with steam for the Treblinka camp, we had already encountered the sauna as a murder weapon (see p. 276). The testimony by a certain Dr. Henry Heller belongs into the same category of statements right from the rumor mill. Heller reported that he had been "saved" in Auschwitz by a former colleague, a German. Heller claims that this German colleague recognized him as Heller thought he was being led into a gas cham- bers. So this German colleague "mercifully turned on the water instead of the gas" according to Dr. Heller.873 This is, of course, nonsense, since not even the most dogmatic Holocauster claims that there was ever anything like homicidal gas chambers that allowed the choice between gas and water to come out of shower heads. Dr. Heller was lead into nothing else but a shower room that he only thought was a gas chamber, because the gas chamber camouflaged as a shower room, where gas comes out of the shower heads instead of water, is a cliché he has learned from rumors or media propaganda. The extent to which witness testimonies on the Holocaust are based on hearsay, that is, on things one has only heard about, is clear from an examination of the interrogation records of the preliminary investigations for the great Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt. They are full of hearsay testimonies, that is, reports not originating from one's own experience but rather from what one has heard from others, from "camp talk," a concept very frequently found among the statements of the witnesses.874 I would like to mention an experiment on the dynamics of hearsay, an experi- ment in which I took part. Two test subjects were shown one drawing each. One of them was shown a gravestone with the three letters "R.I.P.," surrounded by a few blades of grass. The second was shown a beach with two palm trees, a sailboat on the sea with the sun shining. Both test subjects were told to describe the drawings to a third person. The game went through five stages in this man- ner. The fifth test subject was then supposed to draw the particular drawing on paper. While the test subject who had been shown the beach scene was able to draw it fairly accurately, the gravestone, in several stages, became a broad meadow, surrounded by a dark forest with a dark sky. What does this show? L: Clichés don't need to be described so accurately, since we have all similar pic- tures in our heads already. R: You can say the same thing about political or historical clichés: something that we have in our heads doesn't need to be described so accurately, in order to be able to describe it fairly exactly, as if one had seen it oneself, while things or events which don't fit into the general heading of a cliché can only be de- scribed with difficulty. The "whispering telegraph" ­ since hearsay is nothing else ­ only works when it travels well-traveled paths. In relation to our present topic that means, of course, that, after decades of dissemination of Holocaust 873 Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1975. 874 Cf. G. Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial" on-going series, TR 1(1) (2003), and later editions. A separate publication is planned on the Frankfurt Auschwitz-Trial. 348 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST clichés through all the channels of information, today any "witness" is able to repeat these clichés, although it may be nothing other than a mere rumor. 4.2.2. Manipulating the Human Memory R: Another, more dangerous aspect of this whisper telegraph lies in the fact that we can be persuaded that we have experienced clichés that we all have in our head, although our "knowledge" does not originate in our own experience, but rather from sources of hearsay, that is, our relatives or acquaintances, media re- ports, or things we have learned in school, etc. Many of us know stories from our earliest childhood, stories we have heard over and over again, told by our mothers or other older relatives. We were very often shown supporting pictures or even films. Although in many cases it is almost impossible to have any per- sonal memory from this time of our early life, our memory was "trained" to view what we heard and the experiences of others as our own experiences. Since we cannot, of course, expect our parents to tell deliberate lies, there is no reason to objection to this. But the situation is radically different when someone attempts to persuade us of something, which may have dramatic results, such as, for example, the state- ments of certain psychiatrists attempting to explain their patients' reluctance to believe that they were sexually mistreated by their parents as children. The fact that their patients would initially have no memory of such events does not bother these "experts." They simply set about to persuade their patients, through suggestive questions and interview techniques, that they have merely "suppressed" these traumatic experiences, and that it is now the task of the psy- chiatrist to dig up this "lost knowledge." One of the world's leading experts in the research into the ability of the human memory to perform and the ability to manipulate the human memory is Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. In a great number of professional publications she shows that even very mild techniques of questioning are sufficient to manipulate the hu- man memory.875 In one experiment, for example, she succeeded, by means of suggestive questioning of test subjects, in persuading 36% of all test subjects that they had seen Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. But Bugs Bunny isn't a Disney character ­ he's a Warner Brothers character; so this is impossible. Dr. Loftus furthermore discovered that the human memory can be all the more easily manipulated the more emotional the circumstances are, under which the questioning takes place, and the alleged related experiences (sexual mistreat- ment, abduction by extra-terrestrials, etc.). Even emotional media reporting can lead to massive distortion of the human memory. L: That is absolutely shocking. That means that it is possible to make people "re- member" traumatic events that never even happened. 875 Elizabeth Loftus, The Myth of Repressed Memory, St. Martin's Press, New York 1994; Elizabeth Loftus, "Creating False Memories," Scientific American, vol. 277, no. 3, 1997, pp. 70-75 (http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/psych113/Loftus.pdf); cf. a series of articles on human memory in TR, 1(4) (2003), pp. 456-466. 349 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: According to the research findings of Prof. Loftus and many other experts.876 It is easier, in this connection, if the event that you want them to "remember" in- cludes aspects which the test subject can actually remember. These aspects thus act as a starting point for the rest of the lie, so to speak. L: What does that have to do with the present topic? R: Dr. Elizabeth Loftus is not only an expert on false memory, she is also a Jew- ess. As such, she was asked in the late 1980s to testify for the defense of John Demjanjuk on the reliability of the witnesses presented against him (see chap- ter 2.10.). Loftus herself says:877 "The file should have convinced me. A case that [a] relied on thirty-five- year-old memories should have been enough by itself. Add to those decaying memories the fact [b] that the witnesses knew before they looked at the pho- tographs that the police had a suspect, and they were even given the sus- pect's first and last name ­ Ivan Demjanjuk. Add to that scenario the fact [c] that the Israeli investigators asked the witnesses if they could identify John Demjanjuk, a clearly prejudicial and leading question. Add to that the fact [d] that the witnesses almost certainly talked about their identification af- terward, possibly contaminating subsequent identifications. Add to that [e] the repeated showing of John Demjanjuk's photograph so that with each ex- posure, his face became more and more familiar and the witnesses became more and more confident and convincing. Then factor into all of the above [f] the intensely emotional nature of this particular case, for the man these people were identifying was more than a tool of the Nazis, more, even, than the dreaded Ivan who ran the diesel en- gines and tortured and mutilated prisoners. This man, if he was Ivan the Terrible, was personally responsible for murdering their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, children." R: Instead of making herself available as an expert witness, Dr. Loftus said:878 "`If I take the case,' I explained, having talked this out with myself hundreds of times, `I would turn my back on my Jewish heritage. If I don't take the case, I would turn my back on everything I have worked for in the last fifteen years. To be true to my work, I must judge the case as I have judged every 876 Cf. auch David F. Bjorklund (ed.), False-Memory Creation in Children and Adults: Theory, Research, and Implications, Lawrence Erlbaum Ass., Mahwah, NJ, 2000; Terence W. Campbell, Smoke and Mir- rors: The Devastating Effect of False Sexual Abuse Claims, Insight Books, New York 1998; Tana Di- neen, Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry Is Doing to People, R. Davies, Montréal 1996; Eleanor Goldstein, Kevin Farmer (ed.), True Stories of False Memories, Social Issues Resources, Boca Raton, FL, 1993; Elizabeth F. Loftus, James M. Doyle, Eyewitness Testimony: Civil and Crimi- nal, 3rd ed., Lexis Law Pub., Charlottesville, VA, 1997; Richard Ofshe, Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria, 3rd ed., University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1996; Mark Pendergrast, Melody Gavigan, Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives, 2nd ed., Upper Access, Hinesburg, VT, 1996; Gary L. Wells, Elizabeth F. Loftus (ed.), Eyewit- ness Testimony: Psychological Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, New York 1984. 877 E. Loftus, Katherine Ketcham, Witness for the Defense, St. Martin's Press, New York 1991, p. 224; cf. the paper by John Cobden, "An Expert on "Eyewitness" Testimony Faces a Dilemma in the Demjanjuk Case," JHR 11(2) (1991) pp. 238-249. 878 E. Loftus, Katherine Ketcham, ibid., p. 232. 350 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Suggestion and imagination allow Suggestion and imagination allow the implantation in the memory of the implantation in the memory of events which did not take place in events which did not take place in the manner described or even at the manner described or even at all. For this reason, a great deal of all. For this reason, a great deal of testimony concerning traumatic testimony concerning traumatic experiences ­ such as, for exam- experiences ­ such as, for exam- ple, sexual abuse in early child- ple, relating to gas chamber ex- hood ­ should be viewed with periences during the "holocaust" skepticism. should be viewed with skepticism. Elizabeth Loftus, Standard statement typically made by internationally recognized expert, highly revisionists; punishable with up to 10 praised for her statements challenging the years imprisonment in Germany, Austria, reliability of human memory.880 Switzerland, France, Belgium, Poland, and Israel. case before it. If there are problems with the eyewitness identifications I must testify. It's the consistent thing to do.'" R: In a conversation with a Jewish friend, it became clear to her that all her Jewish friends, acquaintances, relatives, even all Jews would accuse her of treason to her own people, if she testified for the defense in the John Demjanjuk case:879 "[...] she [a friend of Mts. Loftus] believed I had betrayed her. Worse than that, much worse, I had betrayed my people, my heritage, my race. I had be- trayed them all for thinking that there might be a possibility that John Dem- janjuk was innocent." L: So Dr. Loftus considers the Jews a race! R: It looks like it. In any case, she decided not to appear for the defense. She ob- served the trial from the observer gallery, and gave detailed reports on how much she sympathized with the other Jews and with the witnesses who were struggling with their memories. But she expresses no sympathy with the defen- dant. In other words, Dr. Loftus, a U.S. citizen, left Demjanjuk in the lurch be- cause she felt a greater obligation to Jewry, of which she was a member, than to the truth, or to someone who was at least formally a fellow American citizen. She was prepared to allow the murder of an innocent person, although she did help locate a replacement expert for assessing the reliability of the witnesses' memory. That Demjanjuk was first sentenced to death, but not executed and then finally even released, was due solely to the commitment of his defense at- torneys and their support by various revisionist researchers.881 L: For that reason she will be even more indignant to be referred to by the "Holo- caust Deniers"! 879 Ibid., pp. 228f. 880 E. Loftus, "Creating False Memories," op. cit (note 875); here I quote a summary of Loftus' argument as published in the German version of this paper as published in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, January 1998, p. 62. This summary is not included in the English version. 881 Cf. Caroline Song, "Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Controversial Expert on Human Memory," TR 1(4) (2003), pp. 456-458; Robert H. Countess, "My Critique of Dr. Loftus' Behavior," ibid., pp. 459f. 351 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: You bet. This was her reaction after she was told that her work is quoted by revisionists:882 "She was shocked and had no idea about what was going on." L: Dr. Loftus is not, therefore, prepared to apply the consequences of her own research to criminal proceedings affecting members of her own religious group. R: Exactly. But this makes her all the more credible as a witness, since her find- ings cannot be dismissed as "anti-Semitic" or "Nazi." As we will see later, the proceedings against John Demjanjuk are only slightly different from other trials against real or alleged National Socialist criminals, in particular those which attracted broad publicity, such as the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem, the Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt, the Majdanek Trial in Düsseldorf, the proceedings against Klaus Barbie, Maurice Papon, Erich Priebke, etc. In addition to the factors listed by Dr. Loftus, which contribute to the deforma- tion of the memory of witnesses testifying against alleged National Socialist criminals (number a to f by me), I may add a number of additional factors: g. One may assume that Dr. Loftus possesses a higher sense of professional ethics and a greater respect for the truth than the average witness. But even she could not bring herself to introduce exonerating evidence, because this would allegedly be equivalent to "treason" to her "race." I wonder whether Dr. Loftus is aware of what she is saying? To the Jews, the truth is con- temptible if it fails to serve the Jews, while lies or mere indifference to injus- tice, on the contrary, are perfectly acceptable if they are useful to the Jews. So just how much love of the truth can one expect from "ordinary" Jewish witnesses who are in no way bound by professional ethics? h. The reports of experiences by various witnesses have always been dissemi- nated orally, in writing, and by radio and TV ­ and in particular among the witnesses themselves by personal exchanges or through aid organizations which sprang into existence in the camps immediately after the war. i. The topic of the "Holocaust" became omnipresent in all western societies since the end of the 1970s at the latest, needless to say in the most one-sided manner imaginable. j. In relation to the "Holocaust," it is considered not only extremely harmful to society ­ even criminal ­ not to know certain things, not to recognize certain things, or even to doubt certain things. There is therefore a far greater social pressure on witnesses to remember certain things and to blank out certain other things. All four factors contribute even more strongly to the factors already listed by Dr. Loftus to a massive deformation of the memory. L: That is still just theory. Is there any evidence that any such manipulation of the memory actually occurred? R: First please allow me to quote two of the world's best-known "Nazi hunters." The first is Efraim Zuroff from Israel. In his book Occupation Nazi-Hunter, he describes his hunt for Josef Mengele, who was active in Auschwitz as a physi- 882 M. Shermer, op. cit. (note 849), p. 183. 352 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST cian. Today, Mengele is known as the "Angel of Death" of Auschwitz who al- legedly carried out cruel experiments on innumerable inmates and is said to have participated in the murder of hundreds of thousands of people in the gas chambers.883 During his research, Zuroff stumbled upon the remarkable fact ­ remarkable to him ­ that extensive questioning of survivors immediately after the war did not describe Mengele as the same evil criminal described twenty years after that or even later:884 "The content of these articles[885] proved quite surprising because they clearly indicated that the Mengele of 1985, who had become a symbol of evil and the personification of the perversion of science, did not enjoy the same notoriety in 1947. [...Zuroff noted] that Mengele was not considered a very high-ranking criminal [in 1947], nor was his supposed arrest regarded as an event of exceptional significance. [...] This notice was, in effect, the first in- dication that the status of the infamous `Angle of Death' had grown by leaps and bounds over the years. [...Mengele was], in a certain sense, not the same person who was simultaneously hunted for in South America." L: Even though merely two years after the event their memories should still be fresh, in contrast to testimonies given after twenty or even thirty years. R: Exactly. This indicates that what the witnesses described as their own recollec- tions in 1980 or 1985 was not their own recollection at all, but rather clichés which had percolated into their memories as "false memories" after twenty years of mass suggestion. The second "Nazi hunter" whom I would like to mention is Adalbert Rückerl, long-time Chairman of the German Central Office of State Administrations in Ludwigshafen, founded in 1958 for the exclusive purpose of investigating the alleged crimes of National Socialists. After approximately 20 years of investi- gative activity, Rückerl mentions in passing that witnesses in Australia can no longer remember the details of what is supposed to have happened in the camps during the war, quite in contrast to witnesses in Europe, the USA, and Israel.886 Of course, he doesn't delve into the question of why this is so. The only real difference between Australia and the other continents is that the Holocaust wasn't a major factor in Australian society until the end of the 1970s. Neither the media, nor political life or the courts were concerned with the topic, and survivors who emigrated to Australia from the occupied countries were far less well organized in that thinly populated country than in Europe, Israel, or the U.S. What the investigators found in Australia, but did not recognize as such, was that the survivors residing there had been less subjected to manipulation. 883 Cf. Gerald L. Posner, John Ware, Mengele. The Complete Story, McGraw-Hill, New York / Queen Anne Press, London 1986; 2nd ed. Cooper Square Press, New York 2000. 884 Efraim Zuroff, op. cit. (note 831), pp. 127f. 885 Various newspapers published after the war by and for "survivors," which regularly asked for incrimi- nating testimonies against arrested or indicted German officials; here Zuroff refers to an article about the alleged arrest of Mengele in early 1997 published in the following papers: Jidisze Cajtung (March 21, 1947), Ibergang (March 30, 1947), Bafreiung (April 4, 1947), Undzer Weg (March 21, 1947), Undzer Wort (March 28, 1947), and Moment (March 24, 1947), 886 A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 765), pp. 258f. 353 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST In the meantime, of course, Holocaust propaganda has increased worldwide to such proportions that one can no longer think it possible to find anyone, any- where in the world, who has succeeded in escaping the suggestive power of the greatest propaganda campaign in human history. Last of all, I would like to mention a concrete example of how the suggestive power of the infallible Holocaust dogma has an effect on witnesses. The inves- tigations for the large-scale Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt, Germany, began in late 1958 with the indictment of Wilhelm Boger, who was an interrogation of- ficer for the German State Police at Auschwitz. A number of witnesses were immediately found who accused Boger of having committed innumerable cru- elties in Auschwitz ­ bestial torture, horrible murders, participation in arbitrary executions and mass gassings. Over the course of the investigations against Boger, a German Jewess by the name of Maryla Rosenthal, who had been one of Wilhelm Boger's secretaries in Auschwitz, was also interrogated. The first interrogation of Mrs. Rosenthal bogged down due to the fact that she was un- able to confirm the accusations against her former boss or to confirm the gen- eral allegations of cruelties in Auschwitz. Among other things, Mrs. Rosen- thal's testimony contained statements as to the good relationship with her for- mer boss and to the general working atmosphere:887 "Boger was polite to me, and I cannot complain about him with regards to my person. He even went so far as to passing on to me parts of his food in his dishes on a regular basis, with the pretense that I should clean them. Apart from this, he organized clothes for me from the Birkenau camp. [...] He was also very polite to the other Jewish female prisoners, who worked in the Political Department, and we Jewesses liked him very much. I also re- member that Boger had no distinct hatred against Jews. [...] To summarize it, I really cannot say anything bad about Boger in regards to my person and to the other female inmates of the Political Department." R: And now a very important passage on testimonies, pay careful attention now! Mrs. Rosenthal then reports the manner in which the other women in the Politi- cal Department gossiped on the toilet and exchanged the latest camp gossip. L: That is how the rumor factory worked! R: Exactly. Mrs. Rosenthal nevertheless reports that she kept her distance from this gossip. She was well aware of the content of this gossip, though: "We inmates talked that, when Boger came into the men's camp, massacres would occur on a regular basis. I did not find out anything specific about it. Boger never mentioned anything in this regard to me. I never saw Boger emotionally agitated. I therefore can absolutely not say when and where Boger had shot inmates. Except for his service pistol, which he carried at his belt, I never saw him carry any other weapon. I never saw any rifle or sub- machine-gun in the office. I could also not determine that his uniform had been soiled, which could have indicated executions." 887 Record of interrogation of Maryla Rosenthal on Feb. 21-22, 1959, Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frank- furt (Main), op. cit. (note 462); vol. 4, pp. 507-515: in more detail, cf. G. Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Part 5," TR 2(2) (2004), pp. 219-223. 354 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: During her second interrogation on Dec. 10, 1959, Mrs. Rosenthal was con- fronted with the contradiction between her exonerating testimony and the accu- sations made by other former inmates. She attempted to explain this by saying that her memory was not good enough, and that what she experienced in Auschwitz at that time888 "was simply too much for me. I could not grasp and process what I saw and heard there. This may be one reason for the fact that I can no longer recol- lect specific details today, which I might perhaps have known at that time. In Frankfurt/Main, I now came together with former colleagues from Ausch- witz, and we did, of course, talk about those times. I must say that I was re- peatedly stunned about the details my colleagues still knew. As I said before, I cannot remember that. I want to emphasize that I have not the slightest in- terest in protecting anybody. But on the other hand, I cannot say what I do not know." L: Here she uses the word "colleagues" for her former fellow inmates! R: Isn't that significant? Over and over again, whenever the investigative officials pressured her with questions about why she couldn't remember the details of any atrocities and the identity of the criminals, she claims that she lived through the horror in a sort of trance, refusing to take cognizance of anything going on around her.889 The abnormality of Mrs. Rosenthal's testimony ­ the only clearly exonerating testimony among all the testimony of former secretaries to the political depart- ment at Auschwitz ­ is generally recognized in the relevant literature. It is ex- plained away by the established Holocaust historians as well as by the Frank- furt Jury Court with the claim that Mrs. Rosenthal must have suppressed the horrible side of her experiences, wiping them out of her memory entirely, rele- gating it all entirely to her sub-conscious mind, as she herself claimed in her second interrogation.890 L: That is the same attempt at explanation made by psychiatrists with regards to allegedly suppressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. R: A good observation. But let us take a closer look. Mrs. Rosenthal was the first of the secretaries ­ in fact the first woman at all ­ who was interrogated on this subject during the investigation. During her first interrogation, she could re- member many details relating to preferential treatment by the kind-hearted Mr. Boger. She first (consciously) heard of the atrocities ­ at which she was alleged to have been present ­ from the interrogating officials. The officials were "tact- ful" and competent enough to have a convincing effect on the witness. She therefore excused the gaps in her memory for which she was reproached by 888 Staatsanwaltschaft..., op. cit. (note 462), vol. 20, p. 3183. 889 Ibid., pp. 3184f. 890 Rebecca Elizabeth Wittmann, Resistance Reconsidered: The Women of the Political Department at Auschwitz Birkenau, Report of Experiences of the Working Party "Jewish Resistance at the Concentra- tion Camps," Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1999, in cooperation with scientists from the Museums of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and There- sienstadt (www.interlog.com/~mighty/essays/wittmann.htm). 355 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST claiming that she had a bad memory and because she had allegedly refused to participate in trading gossip with the other inmates. Before she was interrogated a second time, she met a few of these former "col- leagues." Her use of the word "colleague" shows that she considered herself an ordinary employee at Auschwitz at the time concerned ­ not a slave in an ex- termination camp. Her "colleagues" (and possibly other "survivors") then told her their atrocity tales, which surprised her, since she couldn't remember any- thing of that kind. But since these stories matched what she heard from the in- terrogating officials and which they wished her to confirm, and since she seemed to be the only one who remembered a different version of things, she concluded that her memory must have been faulty. Searching for an explana- tion, the suggestion was made to her that she had simply suppressed the horrors of the past from her memory ­ into her sub-conscious. But she stood steadfast in her testimony that she could not remember any such things. As a secondary matter, the question now arises of how it came to pass that Mrs. Rosenthal was allowed to speak to several of her former fellow inmates and ex- change recollections with them before her second interrogation. Who organized this meeting? The relevant literature contains references to the fact that in- mates' associations organized such meetings, often with the effect of exerting a crucial influence upon the testimony at trial.891 Maryla Rosenthal's claim that she could not consciously remember any atroci- ties is explained away by the allegation that she experienced everything in a trance-like state. This is in obvious contradiction with the fact that she had very detailed recollections about the past, the positive nature of which did not at all concord with what she was supposed to have "suppressed" into her subcon- scious. This is exactly the same pattern used by patients, who have also been the victim of manipulated memories, to explain the paradoxical situation, in which their conscious recollections are in contradiction to what they have been persuaded to believe by the "experts." Even Mrs. Rosenthal's attitude ­ her positive description of Boger, her return to Germany because she didn't like Israel, her use of the term "colleagues" in reference to her fellow-inmates ­ indicate that she was not traumatized by events in Auschwitz. It may very well be, therefore, that it was not her experiences at Auschwitz that "traumatized" Mrs. Rosenthal, but, rather, intimidation on the part of memory- manipulating inmates' organizations, former fellow detainees, media reports, and the statements of the Prosecutor's Office and, later, the judge. This is also confirmed by the fact that Mrs. Rosenthal's claim that her absence of memories was due to "trauma" became more intense as she was subjected to more and more interrogations. L: It is frustrating to learn how unreliable human memory really is. 891 A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 765), p. 256; U.-D. Oppitz, Strafverfahren und Strafvollstreckung bei NS- Gewaltverbrechen, Selbstverlag, Ulm 1979, pp. 113f., 239; H. Laternser, Die andere Seite im Ausch- witzprozeß 1963/65, Seewald, Stuttgart 1966. 356 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: It is best to be aware of one's own deficiencies in this regard and not to place a frivolous trust in one's own memory. Much more troubling, in my view, is the fact that Mrs. Rosenthal's testimony was not considered exonerating during the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, but, rather, as accusatory! According to the judge, the atrocities in Auschwitz were so horrible that the witness ­ Mrs. Rosenthal ­ was so "traumatized" that she lost all recollection of these same atrocities; by this time, she was completely intimidated and no longer trusted her own memory at all. By this logic, one could turn just about any exonerating testimony into accusatory testimony. This turns all evidentiary logic and truth seeking on its head. Thus, once a thesis has been postulated, it can no longer be refuted. L: What is your opinion about statements by witnesses who appeared in public during recent years in order to tell their experiences during the war? R: In 1995 I interviewed such a witness myself. It was Dr. Hans Münch who had been an SS physician in Auschwitz during the war.892 The conclusion from my interview with Dr. Münch, who was 84 years old at that time, is that his state- ments are full of internal contradictions and that they contradict material reali- ties in decisive parts. After intensive questioning, Dr. Münch admitted that his initial claim was untrue that he himself had experienced all the things he re- ported. Such a devastating result regarding the reliability of the memory of geriatrics reporting about events, which they claim to have experienced many decades ago, should not be surprising to anyone, and not just because of the age of these witnesses. After all, Dr. Münch had been intensely involved in that is- sue for 50 years. He was repeatedly interrogated after the war, appeared as a witness at numerous trials, had an intensive exchange with organizations of former inmates, has been continuously reading the usual survivor literature for decades, and frequently volunteered to give interviews to various individuals and mass media. It is impossible that his memory remained untouched by all of these influences. Shortly after I had published my interview with Dr. Münch, Germany's largest political magazine Der Spiegel published a brief interview with Dr. Münch as well, perhaps in an attempt to repair the damage I had done to Münch's credi- bility. The Spiegel's interview, however, was very superficial and is distin- guished by its provocative, suggestive way of posing questions, which by itself is already a way to manipulate the memory of the interrogated person.893 Dr. Münch's answers were so outrageous that he was indicted by a French public prosecutor for inciting to hatred. Only because he had reached an advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease, he was spared from having to serve his sen- tence.894 L: That means in plain English that we are today confronted with Alzheimer pa- tience whose statements about Auschwitz we are told to take at face value. 892 G. Rudolf, "Auschwitz-Kronzeuge Dr. Hans Münch im Gespräch," VffG 1(3) (1997), pp. 139-190. 893 Bruno Schirra, "Die Erinnerung der Täter," Der Spiegel, 40/1998, pp. 90ff. (www.vho.org/VffG/1997/3/Spiegel.html). 894 Tageszeitung, Oct. 19, 2001, p. 11. 357 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: That is the way things are. The legendary unreliability of testimonies of geriat- rics about the experiences of their youth, however, does not stop the media to present such "miraculous witnesses" even 60 years after the war's end in a des- perate attempt to refute the revisionists.895 During the mid-1990s, several ambi- tious archival projects were initiated for the sole purpose of systematically col- lecting and recording the statements of Holocaust survivors who slowly be- come senile. One of these projects was inaugurated at the end of 1994 by Ste- ven Spielberg, another by the German-Jewish Moses-Mendelsohn-Zentrum in Potsdam (a suburb of Berlin) under the direction of German-Jewish historian Julius Schoeps and U.S. professor for literature Dr. Geoffrey Hartmann (Yale).896 How scientific such projects are is exemplified by the Steven Spielberg initia- tive. Volunteers conduct the interviews with witnesses. These volunteers re- ceive 20 hours of training. Most of these helpers are individuals who them- selves have been touched by the Holocaust ­ whatever that means.897 L: That probably means that they are not able to conduct critical interviews, since they have no background knowledge in history. R: Certainly not. Also, the fact that they themselves have been touched by the Holocaust means nothing else but that they are emotionally biased. That a criti- cal attitude toward the witnesses is not even desired, is revealed by a press re- lease of the Mendelsohn Center explaining their interview technique:898 "Questions without Guideline As hard as it is to scientifically evaluate individual memories, it is exactly the subjectivity of the accounts which promises to record historical experi- ence, which evades the brittle factuality of the usual historization. Similar to psycho-analytical interviews, one tries to leave room to the witness' own memories by a very unobtrusive interview technique, in order to guarantee the authenticity of the accounts." L: What is your objection against this method? R: Since when is it possible to approach the truth by being subjective? The interviewing technique used here is called "narrative interviewing" in so- ciology. During such interviews, the interviewer adjusts to the intentions of the interviewee. This technique is based on the human tendency to narrate, and it gives the narrator all the freedom he needs, even to tell fantastic stories. This way the interviewer can learn about the subjective thought processes of the in- 895 So for instance Oskar Gröning, a former SS man deployed in Auschwitz, who gave interviews on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the occupation of Auschwitz in early 2005 at the age of 83: "The Nazi's testimony," The Guardian, Jan. 10, 2005 (www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1386675,00.html?gusrc=rss); see also the TV documentary "Auschwitz. Inside the Nazi State" of the U.S. public broadcastion station PBS, Jan. 18 ­ Feb. 5, 2005 (www.pbs.org/auschwitz/40-45/victims/perps.html); Hans-Jörg Vehlewald, "Soll bloß keiner sagen, er hätte nichts gewußt: Ich war SS mann in Auschwitz," Bild, Jan. 25, 2005 (www.bild.t- online.de/BTO/news/2005/01/25/ss__mann/ss__mann.html) 896 Cf. Newsweek, Nov. 21, 1994; New York Times, Jan. 7, 1996; Geschichte mit Pfiff, Nov. 1996, p. 37; Welt am Sonntag, Nov. 17, 1996; cf. http://web.lemoyne.edu/~hevern/nr-shoah.html. 897 Stuttgarter Zeitung, Dec. 28, 1994. 898 "Archive der Erinnerung," Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 3, 1995. 358 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST terviewee. To achieve this, the interviewer must give signals to the interviewee to go on with his story, no matter how far he may go astray from the objective truth. This happens by more or less confirming the statements made, thus en- couraging the interviewee to carry on, or even by giving buzz words to get the interviewee going in a certain direction, like e.g. "gas chamber" in our case.899 Critical questions are not part of such interviews, as this would interrupt or even stop the narrative flow. The result of such an interview is an extremely subjective tale, which conforms to the objective truth only in rare cases. Who ever declares the result of such in- terviews as objective reality, commits at least an error that could hardly be more serious. Anyone who has some knowledge about the sociology of such interviews and still declares them as "truth" has nothing but deception on his mind. The fact is that only a critical analysis of the claims made by witnesses ­ and that includes most importantly critical questions during such interviews ­ can enable us to distinguish between what the witnesses experienced indeed and what they ­ consciously or unconsciously ­ have made out of that experience during the last 50 years. Criticism is the method of science. In this context this means to assess the testimonies for internal contradictions and to determine, if they are in accord with what we have found out to be true by other means. To simply give the witnesses a chance to uncritically tell their lores and to de- clare this as dogmatic truth gets us back into the Stone Age, where medicine men and shamans determined the truth with their sagas. Unfortunately, the projects mentioned above are not the only ones using this deceptive technique. As a matter of fact, almost all interviews with "Holocaust survivors," whether they happen in the media, during criminal investigations, in court rooms, or by mainstream historians and sociologists are conducted that way. Critically questioning survivors is a taboo (see the quotes on p. 174). German Public Prosecutor Helge Grabitz, to give another characteristic exam- ple, thinks that "survivors" should not be questioned critically, but one should be especially empathic and understanding,900 which is just a different way of putting it. Now imagine that these "Holocaust survivors" go through such interviews, many of them over and over again. What ever fantastic lore they tell, they are being encouraged and confirmed by their environment. What do you think is the impact of such story telling on the memory of these witnesses? L: They sure do not get more accurate. R: You can bet they don't. Such an interrogation technique has therefore nothing to do with historical science. I consider these projects to be dangerous, because it creates an indistinguishable mixture of facts, errors, and lies and gives it the 899 This in itself is manipulation, called the "interviewer effect," see cf. W. Fuchs-Heinritz, R. Lautmann, O. Rammstedt, H. Wienold (eds.), Lexikon zur Soziologie, 3rd ed., Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1994, p. 317. 900 Helge Grabitz, NS-Prozesse ­ Psychogramme der Beteiligten, 2nd ed., C.F. Müller, Heidelberg, 1986, pp. 12ff., 78, 87. 359 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST scientific label of "authentic" truth, which is then used to cement a dogma en- forced by penal law in many countries. Future scientists will tear out their hair when confronted with this mixture of incompetence, deceptive techniques, and dogmatic blindness of their predecessors. 4.2.3. The Phantom Disease R: In the witness reports on the events in the former German concentration camps and alleged extermination camps, one finds testimonies in which the inmates report how they fell ill with typhus.901 As we already saw, in various camps of the Third Reich typhus epidemics broke out over and over again, from which tens of thousands of inmates ­ as well as many guards ­ died. For our purposes, it is interesting to note how physicians having treated typhus describe the influ- ence of the disease upon human perception and memory. Dr. Otto Humm has given us a vivid description of the symptoms of the disease based on typical case histories.902 One characteristic of the disease is that the patient, at the height of the disease, acts like an extreme psychotic. He is in a state of delir- ium.903 Dr. Hans Kilian describes, for example, a case in his memoirs he had seen on the eastern front during World War II. Under the heading "The Phan- tom Disease" he writes, I quote a few extracts:904 "March 17th. Today I will be doing something unique; I will be driving to Chilowo in order to see cases of typhus with patients accommodated in a designated hospital. [...] The general practitioner whispers to me: `Don't be frightened, Professor, the men are terribly distraught, some are lunatics!' [...] Three men actually move about in stupor. One taps along gesticulating, mumbling about, going from bed to bed. He does not know what he is doing or saying, or where he is. Another tries opening a window, apparently want- ing to leave. An orderly holds him gently, trying to persuade him to stop, but he understands not a word. There is no reply, no reaction, the patient seems to follow his inner urge, and like an obstinate animal he will not alter his at- titude. A third with a swollen red discolored face and reddened eyes mean- ders about with threatening gestures but with an absolutely absent look to his eyes; he staggers towards us. While shouting, he keeps coming closer and closer. One gets the impression that he takes us for Russians. We quickly grab his arms, try to sooth him, to turn him around, to bring him to his bed. He screams in brute panic, thrashes about violently, and defends himself so that two other orderlies have to help us contain that insane man. We finally manage to lay the poor, totally disoriented chap down and to cover him with a blanket. An orderly remains at his side. [...] I keep getting the impression that the claim that typhus is predominantly a disease of the brain, i.e. a form of encephalitis, is correct because the most 901 Cf. the case of Jakob Freimark, described by Claus Jordan, op. cit. (note 576). 902 Cf. Otto Humm, "Typhus ­ The Phantom Disease," TR 2(1) (2004), pp. 84-88. 903 Robert Heggelin, Differential-Diagnose innerer Krankheiten, Thieme Verlag, Zürich 1951. 904 Hans Kilian, Im Schatten der Siege, Ehrenwirth, Munich 1964, pp. 220-225. 360 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST apparent symptoms are all related to the brain's malfunctioning. This would explain the senseless rounds, the total disorientation of the afflicted, the er- ratic speech and finally, the colossal stupefaction." R: Now, think of the following: A typhus epidemic broke out in Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, killing many thousands of inmates until it was brought com- pletely under control by the end of 1943. Thousands of other inmates, however, recovered from the disease while they were still interned in the camp, where thousands of typhus victims were first buried in mass graves, since the crema- tory was overloaded; where the half-decomposed bodies were dug up again and burnt on pyres because of the danger of pollution of the extremely high water table; where death sentences were constantly carried out against inmates after waiting months for decisions on appeals for clemency, but who were unable to communicate with other inmates, so that the executions must have appeared ar- bitrary to other inmates;905 where there were frequent selections of inmates who then disappeared from the recollections of other inmates. When some of these inmates suffered nightmare-like hallucinations due to infection by typhus, hal- lucinations which they could hardly distinguish from reality, if at all, when they recovered: what kind of "memories" would remain with these inmates when they were released from the camp at the end of the war? L: Do you mean to say that the witness reports of mass exterminations were hallu- cinations? R: None of the factors mentioned here to explain false testimonies make any claim to explain everything. But I believe that all the factors tending to diminish the reliability of testimonies must be taken into account. Not all testimonies can be explained by typhus delirium, but I believe that some of the thousands of bed- ridden inmates who suffered from typhus would have had hallucinations re- sembling the atrocity stories, which we hear over and over again about Ausch- witz. Finally, one cannot assume that the inmates of German concentration camps received the medical and psychiatric care which would have been re- quired to prevent the long-term physical and psychiatric effects of typhus. The above quote by Prof. Kilian makes it obvious that this epidemic had not even been correctly understood. At any rate, the hallucinations of sick inmates must have aggravated many camp rumors already current. 4.2.4. Deliberate Exaggerations and Lies L: Somehow, I cannot get over the suspicion that you are trying to persuade us that all the false and exaggerated stories about the Holocaust are only based on unfortunate errors, as if there were never any deliberate lies. 905 SS judge Konrad Morgen testified in front of the IMT that he investigated against Maximilian Grabner, head of the Political Department at Auschwitz, for 2,000 cases of arbitrary homicides during the war (IMT, vol. 20, p. 507). However, Morgen's testimony is not very reliable, as he testified under duress (see p. 381) and made numerous false statements, e.g., about soap made of human fat (see note 184). His claims might therefore be exaggerated. On the other hand, Boger himself claimed that he testified in proceedings initiated against his former superior Grabner on Oct. 13 and 14, 1944 (Staatsanwalt- schaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), op. cit. (note 462), vol. 5, p. 825). 361 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: I am not at all naive. On page 80, I raised the rhetorical question of how many pathological liars one could find among the 5,000,000 Holocaust survivors. It is quite permissible to ask this question, which is a serious one. How many do you think there would be, statistically? 100? Maybe 1,000? That is about equal to the number of witnesses who vouch for the existence of a mass extermina- tion. In the emotionally overheated atmosphere after WWII, it is impossible to assume, if one is serious, that nobody ever lied. Also, in chapter 2.22. I men- tioned Prof. Maser, who speaks at length about Allied propaganda lies. I also would like to mention Ernest Skalski once more, since he admitted that "anti- fascists" lied about the Holocaust out of "noble motives" (p. 116). The basic problem involved is described by German attorney Dr. Friedrich Grimm in one of his books. He describes an accidental meeting a short while after the end of WWII with a person who, during the course of the conversa- tion, revealed himself as an agent of an Allied propaganda agency. L: Maybe the British propaganda agency described by Prof. Maser, with all their professional liars, like Ellic Howe (see p. 170). R: That is quite possible. According to this conversation on the effects of Allied atrocity propaganda, Dr. Grimm remarked that now, after the end of hostilities, it was time to stop this propaganda and permit peaceful co-existence between the people of the world based on the truth. The answer of the Allied secret agent to this understandable opinion, according to Dr. Grimm, was:906 "No, atrocity propaganda is how we won the total war. [...] And we are only getting started! We will intensify it, until the last spark of sympathy for the Germans has been eradicated and the German people themselves will be so confused that they will no longer know who they are and what they are doing." L: What a thing to say! R: Dare we hope that it would be accurate to say that, therefore, much of what we hear is nothing but the sick child of Allied propaganda artists? A further indica- tion of the degree of freedom enjoyed by the Germans today is the fact that this book was withdrawn from circulation and prohibited in Germany by a German court in 1998 because of this very quotation.907 Let us now move on to concrete examples of such propaganda. A classic ex- ample of lies ­ or being polite, "black propaganda" ­ is the story propagated by Jan Karski about the Belzec camp,908 making him the principal witness, for decades, to that camp's "extermination program," although the methods of ex- termination described did not involve the use of "gas chambers" but, rather, "death trains," the floors of which were allegedly covered with quicklime, which then slowly ate the flesh off the bones of the Jews. But I don't want to spend too much time on that particular story. I prefer to discuss Karski's offi- 906 Friedrich W. Grimm, Politische Justiz, die Krankheit unserer Zeit, Scheur, Bonn 1953, pp. 146-148 (www.vho.org/D/pj); see also, F. Grimm, Mit offenem Visier, Druffel-Verlag, Leoni 1961, pp. 248f. 907 Due to a fear of possible consequences, the publisher refuses to provide any further information in this regard. 908 Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State, Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1944, pp. 339-351. 362 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST cial activity at that time. During the war he acted as a courier of the Polish gov- ernment in exile residing in London. The actual substance of this "courier" ac- tivity has been described by the British-Jewish mainstream historian Walter Laqueur as follows:909 "Karski lived underground in Warsaw in 1941-2, engaged in `black propa- ganda' among German soldiers, printing and distributing leaflets in Ger- man." L: And this makes him a trustworthy witness to alleged events in the Belzec camp? R: Objectively, of course, it would disqualify him. An analysis of his various statements on Belzec ­ which are highly contradictory and also contradict the idea accepted today ­ in fact indicate that Karski merely spread "black propa- ganda" about Belzec. After all, that was his official job at the time: black propaganda. In this connection, one can also understand why mainstream histo- rians Prof. Nolte and Prof. Raul Hilberg have referred to Karski as "an unreli- able witness" (see p. 137).910 L: So his courier activity consisted of bringing back more or less believable lies to London? R: Exactly. He was not alone in this. The Polish government in exile naturally maintained close relations with the resistance movement in occupied Poland, which, in addition to sabotage activities, had a dense network of agents, couri- ers, and propagandists. These propagandists, for example, sent atrocities stories about Auschwitz to London on a regular basis.911 Thanks to the confessions of one of the former leaders of this propaganda, we now know exactly what the origin of the propaganda reports from Auschwitz is. Bruno Baum, the last leader of the German communist youth organization of Greater Berlin before the war, was arrested in 1935, together with Erich Honecker, the later minister president of communist East Germany. For illegal activities and the dissemination of "propaganda material hostile to the State," Baum was sentenced to 13 years for high treason in 1937. In April 1943, Baum was transferred to Auschwitz. As a trained electrician, he was assigned to an inmate commando of electricians at Auschwitz. Baum immediately began to form underground cells and to spread communist resistance propaganda in the camp, an activity facilitated by his freedom of movement within the camp be- cause of his job as an electrician. In mid-1944, Baum rose to the leadership council of the Auschwitz camp partisans, to which Hermann Langbein (Aus- trian Communist Party, later Chairman of the Auschwitz Committee) and Jozef Cyrankiewicz (Polish socialist) also belonged. On behalf of the international socialist-communist camp partisan leadership, Baum and his colleagues gath- 909 W. Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: An Investigation into the Suppression of Information about Hitler's "Final Solution," H. Holt, New York 1998, p. 230. 910 Cf. the detailed analysis by C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 694), chapter I.3., pp. 22-33. 911 Cf. in this regard, Enrique Aynat, "Die Berichte des polnischen Widerstands über die Gaskammern von Auschwitz (1941-1944)," VffG, 8(2) (2004), pp. 150-166. 363 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ered espionage materials on German armament operations, which were then ra- dioed to London by the Polish underground. Atrocity reports on allegedly in- humane treatment by SS guards and the "monstrous crimes of the Nazis in Auschwitz camp, including the 4.5 million murder victims of all nationalities" were sent by short-wave radio to Radio London at the rate of two reports per week drawn up and transmitted by the editorial group of the camp under- ground.912 At the end of the war, Baum was transferred to Mauthausen camp, where he was liberated by the Americans. On May 16, 1945, a Soviet repatriation com- mando smuggled Bruno Baum and 30 other former communist party members, disguised as Soviet citizens, out of the camp and housed them in seclusion at the castle Wilhelminenburg near Vienna until approximately the beginning of August 1945. There they were "trained" and received directives for their future role as leadership cadres in the Soviet zone of occupation, which later became communist East Germany. Baum later became a leading communist official in East Berlin. His strict eco- nomic measures, however, contributed to the uprising of eastern Germans on June 17, 1953, against the Soviet occupation. In the wake of the still anti- Zionist policies of the Eastern Block, Baum ­ who had family members living in a kibbutz in Israel ­ was removed from the Berlin SED communist leader- ship in 1959 and transferred to Potsdam, where he died in 1971. Now, this same Bruno Baum, like many of his comrades, wrote reports for the Soviets immediately after the war. One of these reports, written in June 1945, was a "Report on the Activities of the Communist Party in Auschwitz Concen- tration Camp," which was coordinated and approved by a "Decision-making Committee" of the Communist Party collective. These consultations and report- ing arrangements, in connection with the Report of the Extraordinary Soviet Committee for the Investigation of War Crimes later formed the core of Soviet propaganda on Auschwitz until 1990, including the propaganda figure of four million victims. Three months after the end of the war, on July 31, 1945, this same Bruno Baum boasted as follows in an article entitled "We Were Radioing From Hell," pub- lished in the German newspaper Deutsche Volkszeitung¸ the central organ of the German Communist Party at that time:913 "All the propaganda that now began to circulate about Auschwitz in foreign countries originated with us, assisted by our Polish comrades." R: Since the Political Department at Auschwitz, that is, the camp Gestapo, were unsuccessful in discovering the identity of the camp partisans at that time, but 912 Cf. Neues Deutschland (Berlin) Dec. 15, 1971; Dec. 21, 1971, Feb. 13, 1980; Feb. 13, 1985; Peter Przybylski, Tatort Politbüro ­ Die Akte Honecker, vol. 1, Rowohlt, Berlin 1991, pp. 46ff.; the remarks on Bruno Baum are taken from the article by Knud Bäcker, "`Ein Kommentar ist an dieser Stelle über- flüssig,'" VffG 2(2) (1998), pp. 120-129, here Fn 26, 29, pp. 128f. For further references, cf. ibid. On the reports of the Polish underground on Auschwitz, cf. E. Aynat, op. cit. (note 911). 913 This article was an extract from a manuscript by B. Baum, "Bericht über die Tätigkeit der KP im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz" dated Juni 1945, Vienna, contained in the Hermann Langbein Collec- tion in the Dokumentationsarchiv des Österriechischen Widerstandes, Vienna. 364 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST wished to pre-empt any negative propaganda as far as possible, the SS camp leadership improved the working and camp conditions in Auschwitz to such an extent that ­ according to Bruno Baum himself ­ "Auschwitz became a model camp in the end." The way in which this communist propaganda actually worked is revealed from the changes made to the above quoted passage from Baum's article. In Baum's book Widerstand in Auschwitz (Resistance in Auschwitz) published in 1949, it still states clearly:914 "I believe it is no exaggeration if I say that the biggest part of Auschwitz propaganda, which was spread in the world around that time, has been writ- ten by us in the camp." R: In the 1957 edition of the same book, however, this reads as follows:915 "It is no exaggeration if I say that the largest part of publications about Auschwitz spread in the world around that time originated with us." R: For another example, there is the following passage from the 1949 edition: "We spread this propaganda to the public at large until the very last day of our stay in Auschwitz." (p. 35) R: In 1957, this in turn became: "Until the last day of our stay in Auschwitz we informed the public at large in this way." (1957, p. 89, and 1961, p. 88) L: But "writing propaganda ourselves" is something quite different than "inform- ing the public at large." R: Of course. In 1949, after the end of the war and when all the post-war trials were over, they thought they could write quite openly about these things. The flood of criminal trials which began in West Germany in the mid-1950s, how- ever, changed this situation: since Moscow quite correctly recognized these proceedings as an opportunity to take the moral high ground among political leftists through continuous accusations and the exaggeration of "fascist," i.e., "right-wing" crimes in West Germany. It was therefore decided not to admit that anything written during the war was just propaganda. We will discuss the exploitation of West German National Socialist crimes by the Eastern Block at a later time. L: It is highly interesting that this distinguished circle of propaganda-scribbling camp partisans also included Hermann Langbein, one of the most prominent representatives of the post-war Holocaust Lobby. R: That really gives us something to think about, doesn't it? The fact is that Lang- bein, as a communist and a long-time Chairman of the Auschwitz Committee, played a central role in terms of Auschwitz propaganda not just during the war, but afterwards as well. It is also interesting that the Auschwitz Committee was first headquartered in Polish ­ i.e., Stalinist-ruled ­ Krakow: it was therefore clearly a Stalinist organization. The headquarters of the Committee were later transferred to neutral Vienna, Langbein's home town. Langbein and his Com- mittee ­ as might be expected ­ played a central role in the investigation for the 914 Kongress-Verlag, Berlin 1949, p. 34. 915 Ibid., 1957, p. 89, und 1961, p. 88. 365 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST great Auschwitz Trial at Frankfurt. This trial opened with the testimony of a former Auschwitz inmate named Adolf Rögner, an incurable, pathological liar with multiple convictions for swindling, forgery, and perjury, who, like Bruno Baum, had been employed at Auschwitz as an electrician.916 L: You are making some very serious accusations against Rögner! R: The accusations are a matter of record: Rögner's convictions extended from the National Socialist period until deep into the post-war era. In this regard, Ger- man public prosecutor Schabel wrote to the Ministry of Justice of the German State Baden-Württemberg, with reference to Rögner's criminal record: "which shows that as prosecution witness in trials against concentration camp personnel Rögner has obviously lied for reasons of hatred and re- venge. Rögner was therefore sentenced to a prison term of 3 years and 6 months for false accusations, false testimonies while not under oath, and perjury. [...] In addition, Rögner's right to testify as a witness or expert in a trial has been revoked permanently." L: And people like that are allowed to initiate criminal proceedings in Germany? R: Yes, with a little help from Hermann Langbein and his friends. Rögner then accused the former interrogator for the Political Department at Auschwitz, SS Oberscharführer Wilhelm Boger, of committing horrible atrocities. Rögner was in close contact with the Auschwitz Committee, described himself as "100% eastern in attitude," i.e., a communist, and indicated that he wished to move to communist Poland, specifically Krakow, which at that time was the location of the headquarters of the Auschwitz Committee. After the war, Rögner appeared as a so-called "professional witness" in numerous trials, in which he acted as an "identifier," contributing, in his own words, to the "execu- tion of many a Nazi." Rögner collected documents and publications on all German camps and cooked up accusations against everyone imaginable, claim- ing to have witnessed hundreds, even thousands of crimes in detail. Rögner told the Auschwitz Committee that he had succeeded in starting proceedings, whereupon Langbein immediately turned to the acting public prosecutor and offered his assistance. In other words, Rögner and Langbein worked in tandem. In a file memo dated May 13, 1958, the public prosecutor working on the case in Stuttgart, Weber, called Rögner a "vindictive psychopath" and a "self- contradicting pathological professional criminal."917 L: And what did Rögner have to say about Auschwitz? R: The tales Rögner told about Auschwitz would fill volumes.918 I can only give two examples here: 1. He made concrete accusations against 1,400 to 1,600 people, approximately 160 of whom were known to him by name. 916 The following is based on the files of the Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), op. cit. (note 462), cf. G. Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial," TR 1(1) (2003), pp. 115-118; Rudolf, Part 2, TR 1(2) (2003), pp. 235-238; Rudolf, op. cit. (note 463); Rudolf, Part 6, TR 2(3) (2004) pp. 327-330, here p. 328. 917 Staatsanwaltschaft..., ibid., vol. 1, pp. 7, 106r, similar p. 85r. 918 Interrogation of Jan. 4, 1958, ibid., vol. 2, pp. 247-261. 366 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Nobody can know so much about so many people from one's own experience! R: Correct. Here we see again Rögner's real career: a professional (dis)informer and perjuring false witness. 2. Rögner claims to have hidden behind a tree at the ramp at Birkenau and claims to have seen the following: "Therefore I kept myself hidden behind a big tree and watched what was happening. Then I saw how Boger went off to the side with a Jewish girl about 15 years old who had just come in on the last transport. [...] When Boger and the girl were about 150 m. from his other colleagues ­ I myself was about 15-20 m. from the scene of the incident ­ Boger spoke to the girl and right afterward hit her powerfully, causing her to fall to the ground un- conscious. I could not understand what Boger said to the girl, but I assume that he wanted to use the girl for sexual purposes. After the girl had been stricken unconscious, Boger could no longer accomplish his shameful pur- pose, because the selection commando had come closer in the meantime and he would be afraid to be seen. Boger had torn some of the clothing from the girl's body, and some of it he had cut off with his pocket knife ­ or maybe it was a stiletto. After the girl was stripped down to her underclothes and stockings [...]. Then he drew his pistol and shot the girl once each in the left and right breast. Then he stuck the pistol barrel in the girl's genitals and fired one more shot." R: In reply to the comment of the interrogating official who obviously was not entirely stupid that Boger's actions could not have remained unnoticed as a re- sult of the shots, Rögner claimed to have heard shots "daily, at all hours of the day and night" in Birkenau, so that this particular murder, committed by Boger, was simply not noticed. They aren't supposed to have noticed the girl's body either. L: That's what I call Nazi-sado-porn. L: But what proves that it is all lies? R: Quite simple: There were no trees at the ramp in Birkenau behind which Rögner could hide. Of course, that does not prevent him from using these imaginary trees all over again shortly thereafter. Rögner then claimed to have witnessed 30 other individual murders, all com- mitted by Boger, in similar or even most sadistic ways. He also claimed to have witnessed acts of torture committed by Boger "without being noticed, through keyholes or windows." L: Oh my God, is this a Punch and Judy show? Did Rögner have nothing else to do in Auschwitz except hang around peeping through Boger's keyhole? R: Obviously not, since he claims to have witnessed thousands of murders in a similar manner. L: Rögner must have been the biggest liar in the country. R: All the more shocking is the fact that the official who interrogated Rögner, upon concluding the interrogation, remarked: "The interrogation record of Nov. 4, 1958, in which Rögner described new facts of the case with particularly sadistic features, on which he had previ- 367 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ously made no statement, was taken after Rögner requested that he be al- lowed to consult the confiscated green notebooks with the inscription `KZ Auschwitz' to help his memory. Rögner is allowed the opportunity to inspect these notebooks before the interrogation. In the years 1945/46 Rögner wrote descriptions in these notebooks of such events in concentration camp Auschwitz." L: Well, that is great! He isn't even speaking from his own experience, he's just embellishing material prepared by his propaganda comrades in the Auschwitz Committee. R: Read it again: Rögner provided "new information about the facts of the case." Any perverted, hare-brained story dished up by a pathological liar was turned into the "facts of the case" by a mere stroke of a pen! After which, as a reward, Rögner was interrogated all over again, whereupon he described another 75 "facts of the case." L: Good God! What kind of interrogator could that have been? He should have introduced Rögner's record, and not have permitted him to repeat hearsay! R: Yes, that is right, that contradicts all the rules of interrogation, despite the known fact that Rögner was a pathological liar. L: Well, at least that is one confirmed, neurotic, pathological liar out of the five million survivors. R: Yes. In addition to that, Richard Böck, a former driver for the SS employed in the Auschwitz motor vehicle fleet, states that Rögner ­ like Baum and Lang- bein ­ belonged to the so-called "camp underground."919 L: So that is the reason for the close cooperation between Langbein and Rögner! R: Right. In Auschwitz, Rögner had been assigned to the electrical division of the vehicle fleet and helped Böck after the war by organizing a series of sworn af- fidavits of former inmates to exculpate Böck. L: In other words: Böck and Rögner were friends? R: There can hardly be any other explanation for the fact that Böck repeatedly mentions Rögner in his testimony without any reason to do so. L: Birds of a feather... What did Böck say about Auschwitz? R: We will get back to Böck in greater detail later. But first let me discuss Rögner for a while, since he had another inmate as electrician colleague named Emil Behr in the Auschwitz vehicle fleet. During his interrogation Behr said:920 "After I was told about several incidents, which are claimed to have been committed by the political department and partly by Boger, I cannot tell more details. I did not hear about these events. [...] After I had been told that experiments were made with women in this Block 10, I must say that I did not know this. [...] It was known in the camp that shootings were performed in large amounts and almost daily by the political department at the Black Wall. But I do not 919 Re. R. Böck cf. G. Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Part 4," TR 1(4) (2003), pp. 468-472. 920 Cf. G. Rudolf, ibid., Part 6, TR, 2(3) (2004), 327-330, here p. 328. 368 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST know anything more specific about it. Individual events are unknown to me. [...] I sure did see how inmates were mistreated by SS men. [...] However, I cannot remember obvious killings. I also do not know about par- ticular cases, where inmates died after their mistreatment by members of the SS. [...] I was never present during selections of newly arrived transports. I have only heard and thus assume that selections were performed at all transports. I have never seen the crematories and the gas chambers. I do not know ei- ther, which SS man were on duty there." L: But this witness had the same sort of range of experiences as Rögner. Why doesn't he know anything? R: Well, in contrast to Rögner, Behr did not become a "professional witness" in the immediate period after the war, did not work for inmates' organizations, had not collected any files or literature on concentration camps and ­ last but not least ­ did not have a long criminal record for perjury. How do you think the public prosecutor's Office interpreted his testimony! L: If they were unprejudiced, they should have been even more skeptical with regards to Rögner. R: If. But obviously they weren't, since Behr's testimony indicates that Behr was put on the defensive for not knowing anything about any crimes: "I must admit that it appears almost incredible that I can say so little, even though I had been rather independent as an electrician and got around a lot in the camp. About this I must state that we could walk freely without guards only within the main camp." L: But that was true of Rögner as well! R: Of course. If Rögner had been honest, his testimony should have been very similar to Behr's. I would like to draw your attention to the only two witnesses to the alleged National Socialist gas chambers ever subjected to cross-examination in this re- gard: Arnold Friedman and Dr. Rudolf Vrba. L: The only two ever? R: That's right. There may be thousands of people who claim to have obtained knowledge about gas chambers in one way or another. A great many of these witnesses were examined by various courts during the decades after the war, but with the above mentioned exceptions these witnesses were never, I repeat: never subjected to cross-examination by judges, public prosecutors, or defense attorneys. L: But isn't it usual practice to cross-examine witnesses before a court? R: In ordinary murder trials, of course. But we are not talking about ordinary tri- als, as I will show at a later time. To date, the only trial in which any such cross-examination ever took place was the so-called "Zündel trial" in 1985, at which two Jewish witnesses, Arnold Friedman and Rudolf Vrba, were cross-examined by defense attorney Douglas Christie, advised by Prof. Dr. Robert Faurisson. 369 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Who were these two witnesses? R: Arnold Friedman was arrested during a raid in Slovakia and deported to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944. To my knowledge, he testified to his experi- ences at Auschwitz at great length for the first time during the first Zündel Trial. And here a few excerpts from what he had to say about the crematories at Auschwitz:921 "There was smoke belching from the crematoria, and it gave us a constant smell ­ the crematoria being close enough and low enough for the smoke to be dispersed through the camp rather than go straight up. [...] Well, there was ­ the building that I described as a crematorium is a cottage-type low building with a short chimney protruding from it. At nighttime you saw the flames shooting above the chimney about a meter or two meters, depending on the particular time. There was smoke coming out, [...] Well, it was the odour of burning flesh, and the flames were changing colours from yellow to a deep red on various occasions. [...] We were discussing various things and this was part of the discussion of the guesswork we kids had in guessing that these were Hungarian transports because they have these type of flames, and these are Polish transports, they're very skinny, [...]" L: Sounds like a fireworks display. R: Yes, and it is technically impossible nonsense, of course. During his cross- examination, Friedman finally admitted that he didn't really know any of that from personal experience, but that he had simply repeated what others have told him ­ as if he wouldn't have been able to see smoke and flames for him- self!922 Rudolf Vrba is considered one of the most important witnesses in support of the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. Vrba was interned in Auschwitz, but succeeded in escaping ­ like hundreds of other inmates. What is so special about Vrba, though, is that he was the only Auschwitz escapee who ever wrote a report about the gas chambers.923 L: The only one, out of hundreds? R: That's right. Vrba's report on the alleged mass exterminations in Auschwitz was published in November 1944 by the War Refugee Board, a U.S. propa- ganda institution founded by the Jewish U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau.924 This was the first report on Auschwitz officially sanctioned by the U.S. government. Vrba's testimony was therefore perhaps one of the most 921 Queen versus Zündel, op. cit. (note 64), pp. 315, 326, 407; more smoke: 344, 347; more flames: 402- 404. Cf. Michael A. Hoffmann II, The Great Holocaust Trial, 3rd ed., Wiswell Ruffin House, Dresden, NY, 1995, pp. 45-47. 922 Queen versus Zündel, op. cit. (note 64), p. 445: "Q. Well, I suggest to you [...] that crematoriums for human bodies [...] did not produce smoke at all, sir. You deny that? A. I don't know if I would have listened to you. Same time I would have listened to other people, maybe I would have attached more credibility to your portion [recte version] than theirs, but at that time I accepted theirs." 923 Krystof Duni-Wascowicz, Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 1933-1945, Warsaw 1982, p. 213. 924 War Refugee Board, German Extermination Camps ­ Auschwitz and Birkenau, Executive Office of the President, Washington, D.C., November 1944. 370 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST influential in this respect. 20 years later, Vrba published a book describing the same things, but he made the mistake of bragging about the exactitude and reli- ability of his recollections.925 In 1985, however, during his cross-examination, it turned out that his descrip- tion of the alleged gas chambers had little to do with reality.926 Increasingly on the defensive, Vrba finally admitted that he had not seen them himself, but rather only described them on the basis of hearsay, using "poetic license" in writing his report.927 L: But there is nothing wrong with using poetic license. R: That is true only as along as one doesn't claim to be telling the truth. A novel, after all, isn't a tissue of lies. It only becomes one when the author claims to be telling the truth, and that is exactly what Vrba loudly proclaimed since 1944. The prosecutor responsible for calling Vrba to the stand to testify about the gas chambers was so disgusted at Vrba's dishonesty that he interrupted Vrba's ex- amination personally on the grounds of Vrba's obvious unreliability.928 L: Well, Vrba's memory may not have been very reliable, but that doesn't make his testimony a lie. R: The story isn't over yet. In his book Pietà, Swedish Professor Georg Klein told of a conversation he had with Rudolf Vrba in 1987.929 Klein was a Hungarian Jew who had experienced the persecution of the Jews during the war, but he had no knowledge of mass extermination. In 1987, Klein talked to Vrba about the nine-hour film Shoa, produced by Claude Lanzmann a few years before.930 The topic of Vrba's experiences at Auschwitz naturally came up, since Klein was a Holocaust survivor, too. Klein asked Vrba whether his colleagues knew about his experience during the war. At first, Vrba didn't answer the question. But later, with a sarcastic smirk, he mentioned that one of his colleagues had gotten really excited upon unexpectedly seeing Vrba in Lanzmann's film. The colleague, of course, wanted to know whether Vrba's statements in the film were really true. Vrba's answer was to the effect that: "I do not know. I was just an actor and I recited my text." R: To which his colleague commented as follows: "Most extraordinary! I did not know that you were an actor. Seeing that, why was it said that the film was made without actors?" 925 Op. cit., (note 242); German: Ich kann nicht vergeben, Rütten & Loening, Munich 1964. 926 For a critique of the content of Vrba's report cf. E. Aynat, Los "Protocolos de Auschwitz": ?Una Fuente Historica?, García Hispán, Alicante 1990; updated in French as "Les `Protocoles d'Auschwitz' sont-ils une source historique digne de foi?", Akribeia, nr. 3, Oct. 1998, pp. 5-208 (www.vho.org/F/j/Akribeia/3/Aynat5-208.html); Carlo Mattogno, "Jean-Claude Pressac and the War Refugee Board Report," JHR, 10(4) (1990), pp. 461-486; J. Graf, Auschwitz. Tätergeständnisse und Augenzeugen des Holocaust, Neue Visionen Schweiz, Würenlos 1994, pp. 27-35 (www.vho.org/D/atuadh). 927 Cf. Queen versus Zündel, op. cit. (note 921), pp. 1244-1643, here, pp. 1447, 1636 (www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/vrba1.html); cf. Michael A. Hoffmann II, op. cit. (note 921) pp. 56-59; cf. J. Graf, op. cit. (note 921). 928 Queen versus Zündel, op. cit. (note 921), pp. 1636-1643. 929 Georg Klein, Pietà, Stockholm 1989, p. 141. 930 Op. cit. (note 408), cf. p. 179; cf. in this regard Ernst Bruun, "Rudolf Vrba exposes himself as a liar," TR 1(2) (2003), pp. 169f. 371 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: At this revelation, Klein was speechless and refrained from asking any further questions. In his book, he says he will never forget Vrba's mocking smirk. L: In other words, Vrba isn't just a witness using "poetic license," he's just a bald-faced liar. L: Well, Georg Klein only repeats what Vrba told him. But if Vrba was a liar, how do we know whether what he told Ill. 128: Vrba in 2000: The smirk of a liar. Klein was true or not? R: Once a liar, always a liar... L: So if Claude Lanzmann gave Vrba a "script" to repeat, what does this tell us about the credibility of the other witnesses in Lanzmann's film? R: Alright, now therefore to our next example of deliberate lying which I would like to mention, and that is, in particular, the greatest liar of them all ­ Claude Lanzmann. Perhaps you recall his strange statement that he would destroy any material or documentary proof of the existence of the gas chambers, if any such proof were ever found (see p. 179). Let us have a look at this case of apparent irrationality. As already mentioned, Claude Lanzmann created a monumental work with his 9½ hour film Shoah, in which he attempted to refute the revisionists. The film consists exclusively of interviews with witnesses. Some of these witnesses were former SS men. According to Lanzmann, several of these SS men only agreed to be interviewed on the condition that the interview was not to be re- corded. He is then said to have recorded these interviews using a hidden cam- era. One of the SS men allegedly taken in by this trick was Franz Suchomel, said to have been active as an SS Unterscharführer in Treblinka. An analysis of Suchomel's testimony shows that what he states cannot be true,931 but let's leave that aside here. I would prefer to examine Lanzmann's claim to have filmed this interview with a camera hidden in a bag. When you look at this in- terview, you note the following: ­ Suchomel often looks directly into the camera throughout long passages; ­ the camera is always correctly aimed and focused; ­ when both of them look at a diagram of the camp, the diagram is held up to the camera; the camera then enlarges the pointer and follows it exactly as it moves across the diagram. L: But that is impossible, if the camera was hidden in a bag! R: Well, not unless both people knew that the camera was there. L: So Lanzmann is just taking the movie-goer for a ride. 931 Cf. Jean-Francois Beaulieu, "Holocaust Movie Shoah Exposed as Propaganda," TR 1(2) (2003), pp. 166-168. 372 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Just so. But even worse: as early as 1985, in an interview, Lanzmann admitted to paying all his German witnesses the sum of 3,000 deutschmarks, after which the witnesses had to sign a pledge to keep quiet about the payments for 30 years. But money alone was not enough. To get witnesses to come forward at all, he invented a "Research Center for Contemporary History," with fake let- terheads from an "Académie de Paris" and fake identity documents in the name of "Claude-Marie Sorel," "Doctor of Historical Scholarship."932 In 2004, he even bragged about this before school children:933 "And then I paid them. No small sums, either. I paid them all, the Ger- mans." R: Let's sum up: the "novelist" Vrba, who must have "known what was expected of him," was given a "script" by Lanzmann, telling what to say! Question: what did the other "witnesses" receive during the making of the film Shoah? And what did the former SS men receive (perhaps in addition to a "script")? Answer: large bribes to make them testify the way Lanzmann wanted them to. And what was the alleged purpose of the "documentary film" Shoah? L: To tell the truth! R: Correct. But the "truth" doesn't need a "script," and you don't buy the "truth" like a whore. L: Maybe not, but what they tell in that movie could still be true. R: Hypothetically yes, but what is the probability of it? The actors' credibility is so profoundly destroyed that I wouldn't take anything for granted what they want me to believe about the Holocaust without independent corroboration. And now to my last example of lies. Sometimes it is quite simple to expose a liar. The case of Rudolf Kauer proves this. A former inmate of Auschwitz, he admitted that he lied when he accused former Auschwitz personnel of beating a Polish girl on her breasts with a bullwhip, ripping one breast of. "I lied," he said, "That was just a yarn going about the camp. I never saw it."934 Which proves that not all of those who spread rumors and clichés as their own experi- ence are unaware that they are untruthful. 4.2.5. Pressure, Fear, Threats, Brainwashing, Torture R: The American expert on witness testimony Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, mentioned above, discovered during her studies that human memory is most vulnerable to distortion when people are subjected to emotional stress (see p. 348ff.). This includes situations in which people are deliberately exposed to stress. Let us take a look at the various methods by means of which memory manipulation can be achieved. 932 Annette Lévy-Willard, Laurent Joffrin, Libération, Apr. 25, 1985, p. 22; "Ce que je n'ai pas dit dans Shoah," VSD, Interview with Jean-Pierre Chabrol, July 9, 1987, here p. 11; cf. Robert Faurisson, op. cit. (note 408), p. 87. 933 Virginie Malingre, "Claude Lanzmann explique Shoah à des élèves avant sa distribution dans les lycées," Le Monde, Sept. 16, 2004, p. 12. 934 Miami Herald, July 7, 1964. 373 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST First, let us have a look at what is going on during interrogations in our so- called "nations under law." In this regard, I would like to refer to a news report by the U.S. TV channel ABC on the manner in which innocent people can be made to confess to the crime of murder through the use of perfectly ordinary interrogation techniques, after which their confessions are deemed sufficiently probative to secure a murder conviction. The real murderers were only caught later, by accident, resulting in a scandal revealing the truth about certain com- mon methods of police interrogation:935 "Every year, thousands of criminals are convicted on the basis of confes- sions obtained from police interrogations. Experts say law enforcement in- terrogation techniques are so effective that they can break down the most hardened criminal ­ and even people who are innocent of the crime they are being accused of. Experts believe there have been hundreds of cases where innocent men succumbed to interrogation and confessed to crimes they did not commit." R: Rich Fallin, former police officer in Maryland, himself a specialist in interroga- tion, says: "You take someone who is vulnerable, like a grieving family member or someone who isn't used to being confronted by police. If interrogated long enough, they'll probably confess." R: The methods are quite simple: the interrogators confront the suspect with evi- dence, such as horrible photos of the crime scene or the testimonies of other witnesses, and simply suggest ­ mendaciously ­ that they can prove that he is guilty. The interrogation lasts many hours, often without interruption. Food and drinks are refused or restricted to very small portions, visits to the toilet are de- layed or refused. The interrogation room is deliberately designed to be uncom- fortable and is insufficiently heated. The interrogators take turns questioning the suspect until late in the night. The suspect is persuaded that they've "got the goods on him," that his denials will only get him a stiffer sentence, so that con- fession is the only way out. Under these conditions ­ exhaustion, fatigue, and emotional stress ­ most suspects break down, whether they are guilty or inno- cent. Due to a long series of unjust convictions based on this kind of extorted confes- sion, the state of Illinois, to set an example, instituted a moratorium on the exe- cution of death sentences in the year 2000.936 L: That is one good reason why lawyers tell you not to say anything without a lawyer present, whenever you get arrested or receive a summons. R: That is quite right, because everything you say will be used against you. Unfor- tunately, many people are naïve enough to believe that the police are invariably men of integrity. But that is not so. Police men in the crime squad deal with the most reprehensible sorts of people on a daily basis and act accordingly. 935 ABC, March 15, 2003: cf. the entire text: Manfred Köhler, "Forced Confessions: Why Innocent Defen- dants Admit their Guilt," TR 1(4) (2003), pp. 465f. 936 Cf. "Illinois suspends death penalty," CNN, Jan. 13, 2000 (http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/01/31/illinois.executions.02/). 374 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But that doesn't happen in Germany! R: You would have to be very naïve to believe that. A glance at the German media shows that Germany is no different. For example, in the summer of 1990 Spiegel-TV reported two cases in which the defendant in a murder case con- fessed after subjection to "extremely effective methods of interrogation," as well as to no less "effective methods of procedure." Although the forensic find- ings in both cases showed that both suspects were innocent, the court rejected the forensic evidence, claiming that the defendant's guilt was "self-evident due to confession." The actual criminals were caught a short time later, through a fortunate accident, and both suspects were released.937 You see, even judges are sometimes inclined to assign a higher value to confessions made under duress than to forensic evidence. But back to history. The interrogations on the Holocaust, which determined the version of history accepted today, occurred between 1944 and 1947, i.e., during the various war crimes trials, mostly in the Soviet Union, Poland, and Ger- many. Before entering into a detailed examination of these proceedings, I would like to mention a few cases in which the mere style of the confessions indicates that they were obviously extorted under pressure. We have already examined the case of Wilhelm Boger, an interrogations offi- cer for the Gestapo in Auschwitz. It was the investigative proceedings against Boger which led to the great Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt.938 Boger himself never disputed the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz during his interrogation by German police officers, although his remarks in this regard made little sense.939 I would like to draw your attention to a statement made by Boger in July 1945, two weeks after he fell into Allied captivity:940 "When the mass dying of Au.[schwitz] ­ the Auschwitz SS staff itself had, al- legedly due to epidemics, but in reality for transparent reasons, a camp quarantine for over 1½ years! The grey inmates before the wire [fence]! ­ came to the knowledge of the world over the heads of the clueless German people during the fall of 1943, suddenly the leading positions in the camp and at the State Police Kattowitz (criminal police) were restaffed by the Reich Criminal Police Office, on behalf of the Highest SS and Police Court, on order of Reich Leader SS Himmler an investigation was initiated! A ri- diculous theater, which thus had according success! Under strictest secrecy [...] the special commission of the infamous Highest Judge (on special re- quest) and representative of the prosecution, SS-Stubaf. Dr. Morgen with 6-8 manned [sic...] 4 months in Au. active to investigate `cases of corruption and murder.' [...] 937 Cf. for instance Spiegel-TV, RTL-Plus, July 15, 1990, 21:45. 938 Boger probably was the scape-goat for crimes committed by his superior at Auschwitz, Maximilian Grabner, see note 905. 939 Cf. for this G. Rudolf, op. cit. (note 920), pp. 328-330. 940 Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), op. cit. (462), vol. 5, p. 824. 375 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The total of all inmates killed in Auschwitz by means of gassings, shootings, hangings, and epidemics and also of members of the SS will never be deter- mined exactly, but certainly exceeds the cautious estimate degrees [sic] by SS Oberscharführer Erber (former Houstek), who was active in the `regis- try,' four (4) millions by far!" L: That is terribly disconnected language! R: Really remarkable, since until that time, Boger always wrote quite correct German. L: It didn't take him long to "absorb" the lie of the four million Auschwitz victims invented by his Allied captors. R: After two weeks, he had completely "absorbed" the vocabulary and style of his interrogators, and never wrote another correct German sentence. What kind of methods do you think the interrogators must have used to get Boger to write this kind of hysterical collection of disconnected exaggerations in "anti-fascist" rhetoric? L: Certainly not the "kid-glove" method. R: Another case is Pery Broad, one of the best-known SS witnesses, who provided a detailed description of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Broad was, at that time, one of Boger's colleagues in the camp Gestapo. He, too, made a "confes- sion" in Allied captivity, which was at least written in correct language. The following is an extract:941 "Auschwitz was an extermination camp! The biggest to exist in the history of the world. Two or three million Jews were murdered in the course of its exis- tence. [...] The first attempt at the greatest crime which Hitler and his helpers had planned and which they committed in a frightening way, never to be expi- ated, was successful. The greatest tragedy could then begin, a tragedy to which succumbed millions of happy people, innocently enjoying their lives!" L: That sounds like something written by a dedicated resistance fighter. R: That's right. After all, Broad was an SS man himself, and if what he says here is correct, then he must have been one of Hitler's "helpers" himself. This is why the late French mainstream Auschwitz expert Jean-Claude Pressac stated:942 "But the form and tone of his declaration sound false. His writings cannot be the faithful reflection of the thoughts of an SS man and indeed reading them gives the impression that they were written by a former prisoner. [...] Lastly, who wrote (page 172): `for these SS monsters, the spectacle of the suffering of ill treated Jews constituted an amusing pastime!' [...] The basis of P. Broad's testimony seems authentic, despite many errors, but its present literary form is visibly coloured by a rather too flagrant Polish patriotism. Furthermore, the original manuscript of his declaration is not known. [...] 941 Pery Broad, "Reminiscences," in: Jadwiga Bezwinska, Danuta Czech (eds.), KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS, H. Fertig, New York 1984, pp. 143, 174. The "first attempt" refers to the alleged first gassing at Auschwitz in late summer 1941. 942 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 128. 376 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST either Broad had adopted the `language of the victor' (hypothesis put for- ward by Pierre Vidat Naquet), or his declaration has been `slightly' re- worked by the Poles (present author's opinion)." (emphases in original) L: Does he mean that Broad didn't write this document at all? R: Broad never disputed that he made a similar statement, but during the Ausch- witz Trial in Frankfurt he restricted himself to claiming that he had merely re- peated hearsay943 and that this report had been manipulated:944 "`I have glimpsed at the photocopy handed to me. Some of it is from me, other parts might have been added by others, some things are also wrong. I wonder that such things are claimed to originate with me. [...] Several parts I recognize without doubt as my notes, but not the document in its entirety. [...] I believe there are more versions of this report. It seems to me there is much unfamiliar knowledge in this report." R: But then the presiding judge cornered him by pointing out: "The report is written in one style and it is homogeneous in character. Does it not seem that it was written by one man, that means by you?" R: With which Broad agreed. L: So he did write it. R: Well, maybe he did, but he certainly did not write it on his own accord and without having been massively influenced. At any rate, Broad did never deny that gassings were mentioned in his original report. But let me quote a few more paragraphs from this "document":945 "From the first company of the SS Totenkopfsturmbannes, stationed in the Auschwitz concentration camp, the sergeant-major SS Hauptscharführer Vaupel selected six particularly trusty men. Among them were those, who had been members of the Black General SS for years. They had to report to SS Hauptscharführer Hössler. After their arrival, Hössler insistently cau- tioned them to preserve the utmost secrecy as to what they would see in the next few minutes. Otherwise death would be their lot. The task of the six men was to keep all roads and streets completely closed around the area near the Auschwitz crematorium. Nobody should be allowed to pass there, regardless of rank. The offices in the building from which the crematorium was visible were evacuated. No inmate of the SS garrison hospital was allowed to come near the windows of the first floor which looked onto the roof of the nearby crematorium and the yard of that gloomy place." (p. 176) "The first lines [of victims] entered the mortuary through the hall. Every- thing was extremely tidy. But the specific smell made some of them uneasy. They looked in vain for showers or water pipes affixed to the ceiling. The hall meanwhile was getting packed. Several SS men had entered with them, full of jokes and small talk. They unobtrusively kept their eyes on the en- trance. As soon as the last person had entered, they disappeared without 943 Bernd Naumann, Auschwitz, Athenäum-Verlag, Frankfurt 1965, p. 200. 944 Hermann Langbein, Der Auschwitz-Prozeß, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt/Main 1965, vol. 1, pp. 537-539. 945 Pery Broad, op. cit. (note 941), pp. 174, 176f. 377 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST much ado. Suddenly the door was closed. It had been made tight with rubber and secured with iron fittings. Those inside heard the heavy bolts being se- cured. They were screwed to with screws, making the door air-tight. A deadly, paralyzing terror spread among the victims. They started to beat upon the door, in helpless rage and despair they hammered with their fists upon it. Derisive laughter was their only reply. Somebody shouted through the door, `Don't get burned, while you make your bath!' ­ Several victims noticed that covers had been removed from the six holes in the ceiling. They uttered a loud cry of terror when they saw a head in a gas-mask at one opening. The `disinfectors' were at work. One of them was SS Unterschar- führer Teuer, decorated with the Cross of War Merit. With a chisel and a hammer they opened a few innocuously looking tins which bore the inscrip- tion `Cyclon, to be used against vermin. Attention, poison! To be opened by trained personnel only!' The tins were filled to the brim with blue granules the size of peas. Immediately after opening the tins, their contents were thrown into the holes which were quickly covered. Meanwhile Grabner gave a sign to the driver of a lorry, which had stopped close to the crematorium. The driver started the motor and its deafening noise was louder than the death cries of the hundreds of people inside, being gassed to death. Grabner looked with the interest of a scientist at the second hand of his wrist watch. Cyclon acted swiftly. It consists of hydrogen cyanide in solid form. As soon as the tin was emptied, the prussic acid escaped from the granules. One of the men, who participated in the bestial gassing, could not refrain from lift- ing, for a fraction of a second, the cover of one of the vents and from spitting into the hall. Some two minutes later the screams became less loud and only an indistinct groaning was heard. The majority of the victims had already lost consciousness. Two minutes more and Grabner stopped looking at his watch. There was complete silence. [...]" (p. 176) Some time later the exhaust had extracted the gas and the prisoners, work- ing in the crematorium, opened the door to the mortuary. The corpses, their mouths wide open, were leaning one upon the other. They were especially close to one another near the door, where in their deadly fright they had crowded to force it. The prisoners of the crematorium squad worked like ro- bots, apathetically and without a trace of emotion. It was difficult to tug the corpses from the mortuary, as their twisted limbs had grown stiff with the gas. Thick smoke clouds poured from the chimney. ­ This was the beginning in 1942!" L: That's an extremely detailed description. So Broad really must have been one of the "six SS men" who carried out this task. R: Otherwise, he couldn't know what he was talking about. But I would like to compare it with the testimony that Broad made in 1959 after his arrest during the preliminary investigations for the Auschwitz Trial. The following is an ex- tract:946 946 Staatsanwaltschaft am LG Frankfurt (Main), op. cit. (note 462), vol. VII, p. 1086; cf. G. Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Part 8," TR 3, in preparation. 378 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "I myself never participated during gassing in the small crematory in Auschwitz. Only once could I watch a gassing procedure from the window of the upper floor of the SS hospital building, which was located opposite of the small crematory. However, I can only remember to have seen two SS men standing with gas masks on the flat roof of the gassing room. I saw how these two [men] first opened the Zyclon B cans with a hammer and then poured the poison into the opening. I want to mention that everything was cordoned off hermetically during the gassings, so that non-involved SS members could not get close either. I did not hear anything either, although I can imagine that the inmates screamed for fear of death after they had been led into the gassing room. But on the road in front of the SS hospital there stood a truck whose engine ran full throttle. I brought this in connec- tion with the gassing, so that one could not hear possible screams and shoot- ings." L: But if he only saw it just in passing like that, how could he give such a detailed account of it just after the end of the war? R: Either he lied in 1959 to avoid responsibility, or he lied right after the war to avoid being killed. Fact is that right after the war he had adopted the rhetoric style of the post-war victors as well as their content. So we can assume that this first statement was not truthful. But even if assuming that his first statement contained the truth, this would mean that Broad was one of these SS monsters himself. If that was so, why wasn't he tried and executed by the Poles like Höß was? The fact is that Broad constantly denied that he was one of the main cul- prits in the gassings. Later on, we will take a closer look at the content of Broad's testimony, showing that his statement is untrue on certain decisive points. It should be obvious enough by this time that Broad quite obviously did not make his post-war confession freely and without compulsion, since the style of the confession is not that of an SS man, but that of a dime novel from the point of view of the hypothetical victims. Now the real question: what kind of treatment (or mistreatment) does it take to make an SS man write a rhetoric-filled account, a few months after the end of the war, describing alleged atrocities from the point of view of the victims? To get closer to an answer to this question, let me mention a similar case pro- viding a vague indication of the methods employed: the case of Hans Aumeier. Aumeier was employed as a head of the Protective Custody Camp at Ausch- witz between mid-February 1942 and mid-August 1943. In his first interroga- tion by British prison guards dated June 29, 1945, he speaks quite naively of the crematories at Auschwitz, without mentioning any gas chambers. Unsatis- fied with this testimony, the interrogators demanded "exact data" on the gas- sings, with full details, including the number of victims per day, total numbers, and a "confession of his own responsibility" and that of the other perpetrators and persons responsible for giving the orders.947 Aumeier was not even asked whether or not there were any gassings or whether or not he participated; 947 Public Record Office, File WO.208/4661. "Freiwillige Aussage des Kriegsgefangenen Hans Aumeier." For all further source references, see C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 473), pp. 133-136. 379 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST rather, he was more or less commanded to provide the details and make a con- fession. The result of this subsequent "confession" by Aumeier was then com- mented upon by his British jailers in a "Report on the interrogation of prisoner no. 211, Sturmbannführer Aumeier, Hans" on Aug. 10, 1945:948 "The interrogator is satisfied that the major part of the material of this re- port is in conformity with the truth as far as the facts are concerned, but the personal reactions of Aumeier and his way of thinking may change a bit when his fate gets worse." L: So Aumeier wasn't interrogated to obtain information, but rather to make him confirm what the British already thought was the "truth." R: Exactly. The problem is that Aumeier's testimony on the gas chambers is full of untruths, and even contradicts the established version.949 In order to have anything to say about any gassings at all, as demanded of him, he described the first experimental gassing, and the placing into operation of the so-called Bun- kers at Auschwitz as having occurred about a year later than the established historical version assumes today. Instead of fall/winter 1941, the first experi- mental gassing ­ according to Aumeier ­ is supposed to have taken place in the fall/winter of 1942, and the initial gassings, usually alleged to have occurred in the Birkenau Bunkers in 1942, took place, according to him, in very early 1943. Aumeier had to say this, since he only arrived at Auschwitz in late Feb- ruary 1942. Otherwise how could he satisfy his interrogators' demands that he provide information on events which took place before he arrived at the camp? Aumeier's initial reluctance to tell the "truth," that is, his refusal to lie, was obviously broken by the fact that his fate looked grim, or that he had reason to be afraid, at the very least. L: What kind of threats do you think they used? R: This has been described by Nicolaus von Below, Hitler's Adjutant. He provides a detailed report on how the Allies kept him in preventive custody for a very long time after the war, until he "confessed" what they wanted to hear. In his own words, he "told the English a load of lies."950 Another example is Kurt Becher. As SS Obersturmbannführer he was a mem- ber of the SS leadership office in very early 1944 from which he was assigned to procure horses and strategic goods in Hungary. In this connection, he was part of the famous negotiations between Himmler and Zionist organizations to release Jews for the delivery of strategic goods.951 For his involvement in the deportation of the Hungarian Jews, Becher was arrested by the Allies and re- peatedly interrogated. Due to his readiness to cooperate, Becher finally suc- ceeded in being transferred to the "open wing" at Nuremberg instead of being treated like a possible defendant as before. L: Like Höttl, mentioned above (p. 19). 948 Ibid., Report no. PWIS Det (N)/18 Report on interrogation of prisoner no. 211 Stubaf. Aumeier, Hans; Akershus prison, Aug. 10, 1945. 949 Cf. G. Rudolf, op. cit. (note 382), here pp. 463f. 950 W. Maser, op. cit. (note 100), pp. 158f. 951 Cf. Y. Bauer, op. cit. (434), starting on p. 220. 380 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: That's right. With Höttl, Becher also had something to do in Hungary, and like Höttl, Becher was never brought to court. As is well known, there is no document ordering any extermination of the Jews. But it is claimed that a document did exist which is supposed to have or- der an end of the extermination. As proof of this, reference is made to the tes- timony of Kurt Becher, who testified before the Nuremberg IMT that he had obtained a Himmler order "sometime between mid-September and mid- October 1944" by means of which Himmler is said to have prohibited "any ex- termination of the Jews effective immediately."952 L: And was the document ever found? R: No, apparently no such document exists. Kurt Becher furthermore repeated this testimony 15 years later during his interrogation during the investigations to the Eichmann Trial.953 But it is in crass contradiction to his very detailed testimony about Himmler's other intentions and actions: if one were to believe Becher, Himmler was, at the time, anxious to procure as many Jews as possible for ne- gotiation purposes, so that they could be traded for as much strategic material as possible in exchange for their release. For Himmler to exterminate his bar- gaining power would obviously have been crazy. Becher's statements made in 1961 permit the assumption that Eichmann and other persons were apparently attempting to incriminate Becher as well. Becher obviously saw that he was in danger of ending up as a defendant, perhaps even in Israel, which would have been equivalent to a death sentence. Göran Holming, a Major of the Swedish army, got to know Kurt Becher in the 1970s by pure accident and managed to ask him years later about the story be- hind his testimony before the IMT. Becher suggested that Himmler's order meant that the concentration camps should be surrendered in an orderly manner upon the approach of the enemy, without casualties. In reply to the question of why he told the IMT something different, Becher replied ambiguously that Holming didn't understand the circumstances in Nuremberg at that time.954 L: And on the basis of this, the historians cooked up a story together that Himmler ordered Kurt Becher in the fall of 1944 to stop the gassings and to destroy the gas chambers at Auschwitz? R: That's right. Similarly extorted testimonies must have existed by the thousands after the war. There is the case of Friedrich Gaus from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose testimony was extorted by Allied prosecutor Robert Kempner by threatening to hand him over to the Russians, should he be unwill- ing to comply. The case of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski is similar to this.955 Fritz Sauckel, the Plenipotentiary for the Labor Service who was sentenced to 952 IMT document PS-3762; IMT, vol. XXXII, p. 68. 953 AG Bremen, ref. 19 AR 1851/61, interrogation of June 20, 1961 (www.kokhavivpublications.com/kuckuck/archiv/karc0005.html) 954 Göran Holming, "Himmlers Befehl, die Vergasung der Juden zu stoppen," VffG 1(4) (1997) pp. 258f. (Engl.: TR, in preparation) 955 M. Lautern, Das letzte Wort über Nürnberg, Dürer, Buenos Aires 1950, p. 24, 32; further references and similar cases in A.R. Butz, op. cit. (note 27), pp. 204f., as well as Maurice Bardèche, Nuremberg I... op. cit. (note 87), pp. 120ff. 381 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST death at Nuremberg, signed a self-incriminating statement only after being told that his wife and ten children would otherwise be handed over to the Rus- sians.956 L: That would have meant a life sentence in the Siberian GULag. R: Probably. Hans Fritzsche, Goebbels' right-hand man, signed an incriminating document during a KGB interrogation in Moscow, which he later expressly withdrew at Nuremberg.957 Baron Herbert von Strempel and Dr. Hans Thomsen of the German Embassy in Washington described, first, the court's intimidation tactics to which they were subject while in solitary confinement and under repeated interrogation. The IMT prosecutor Robert M. W. Kempner is said to have told Strempel that he would be placed before a court martial and sentenced to death, if he didn't make an incriminating statement. The intensive, uninterrupted interrogations, which lasted for days, without food, had the effect, according to Strempel, of making him feel "hypnotized." Thomsen described the manner in which his in- terrogators "informed" him how he ought to remember certain things.958 Dr. Konrad Morgen, an SS judge who had conducted war-time criminal pro- ceedings against SS men for abuses committed against inmates and whose tes- timony about alleged gassings at Auschwitz before the IMT and, later, before the Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt were of an importance which can hardly be underestimated, was told by the Americans that if he didn't testify the way they wanted, he would be handed over to the Soviets.959 Because of his exonerating testimony for Hermann Göring, Field Marshall Er- hard Milch was told that he would end up in the dock as a defendant himself. Shortly afterwards Milch was indeed indicted for invented war crimes and sen- tenced to life imprisonment.960 During the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, which the Americans conducted all by themselves after the IMT, the president of that tribunal, Lee B. Wyatt, stated the following during the trial against responsible members of the former Ger- man Race and Resettlement Main Office (Rasse- und Siedlungs-Hauptamt, Case 8):961 "During the course of the trial several witnesses, including some defen- dants, who made affidavits that were offered as evidence by the prosecution, 956 IMT, vol. 15, pp. 64f. The document in question is PS-3057. This and much of the following informa- tion is taken from Mark Weber's paper, "The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust," JHR 12(2) (1992) pp. 167-213. 957 IMT, vol. 17, p. 214, Document USSR-474; cf. K. Heiden, "Why They Confess," Life magazine, June 20, 1949, pp. 92ff. 958 New York Times, March 12, 1947, p. 6; March 13, 1947, p. 17; March 14, 1947, p. 12; March 15, 1947, p. 11; March 18, 1947, p. 4; March 19, 1947, p. 5; March 26, 1947, p. 4; Chicago Tribune, March 19, 1947, p. 20. 959 John Toland, Adolf Hitler, Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1976, p. 774. 960 Sworn affidavit of E. Milch, April 9, 1947, in: Erich Kern (ed.), Verheimlichte Dokumente, FZ-Verl., Munich 1988, p. 400. Cf. Robert S. Wistrich, Who's Who in Nazi Germany, Bonanza, New York 1984, p. 210. 961 Trials of war criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council law no. 10, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1949-1953, vol. 15, p. 879. 382 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST testified that they were threatened, and that duress of a very improper nature was practiced by an interrogator." R: Wilhelm Höttl and Dieter Wisliceny, the two principal witnesses for the magi- cal figure of the six million, also testified under compulsion. On the basis of his pliability on behalf of the victors, Höttl, who was similarly deeply involved in the deportation of the Jews as Wisliceny, succeeded in ending up not as a de- fendant at Nuremberg, but rather as a privileged witness.962 Wisliceny was convinced to cooperate with the Allies by threats that he would otherwise be extradited to communist eastern Europe. This made Wisliceny to turn against his co-prisoners and even to offer to turn in hiding comrades. As an additional reward, the Allies promised him security for his family against possible re- venge attacks by betrayed comrades.963 While the Allies kept their promise to free Höttl for his services, they were not so cooperative with regards to Wisli- ceny. Despite his cooperation he was later extradited to communist Czechoslo- vakia anyway, where he was eventually sentenced to death and hanged.964 Also worth mentioning are the circumstances, under which Höttl and Wisliceny as well as many other witnesses made their incriminating statements about Eichmann: They all thought that Eichmann, who had gone underground, was dead, and they hoped to exonerate themselves or to buy the benevolence of the Allies at the expense of Eichmann.965 Only during the later Eichmann trial in Jerusalem it turned out that all these witnesses had unjustly transmogrified the assumed dead Eichmann to the main responsible individual of the "final solu- tion" in order to exonerate themselves.966 L: Is there any evidence of physical mistreatment? R: Yes. So now let's come to "third degree interrogations," which really means torture. After the former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß was arrested by the Brit- ish, he was tortured for days, until he was finally ready to sign the "confession" presented to him. This is not only revealed by his memoirs, which Höß wrote in a Polish prison:967 "On March 11, 1946, at 11 p.m., I was arrested. [...] I was treated terribly by the (British) Field Security Police. [...] During the first interrogation they beat me to obtain evidence. I do not know what is in the transcript, or what I said, even though I signed it, because they gave me liquor and beat me with a whip. It was too much even for me to bear. [...] Minden on the Weser River [...]. There they treated me even more roughly, especially the first British prosecutor, who was a major. [...] I cannot really blame the in- terrogators [at the IMT] ­ they were all Jews. I was for all intents and pur- poses psychologically dissected. [...] They also left me with no doubt what- soever what was going to happen to me." 962 D. Irving, op. cit. (note 23), pp. 236f. Cf. W. Höttl, op. cit. (note 20) pp. 83, 360-387. 963 R. Servatius, op. cit. (note 19), p. 64. 964 H. Arendt, op. cit. (note 19), p. 257. 965 Ibid., p. 331, regarding D. Wisliceny, esp. also p. 339. 966 Ibid., pp. 339ff. 967 S. Paskuly (ed.), op. cit. (note 511), p. 179f. 383 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But who would believe a former Auschwitz commandant? R: We don't have to take his word for it. In the 1980s, his torturers personally described the manner in which they tormented him, providing independent cor- roboration:968 "Höss screamed in terror at the mere sight of British uniforms. Clarke yelled `What is your name?' With each answer of `Franz Lang,' Clarke's hand crashed into the face of his prisoner. The fourth time that happened, Höss broke and admitted who he was. The admission suddenly unleashed the loathing of the Jewish sergeants in the arresting party whose parents had died in Auschwitz following an order signed by Höss. The prisoner was torn from the top bunk, the pyjamas ripped from his body. He was then dragged naked to one of the slaughter tables, where it seemed to Clarke the blows and screams were endless. Eventually, the Medical Officer urged the Captain: `Call them off, unless you want to take back a corpse.' A blanket was thrown over Höss and he was dragged to Clarke's car, where the sergeant poured a substantial slug of whisky down his throat. Then Höss tried to sleep. Clarke thrust his service stick under the man's eyelids and ordered in Ger- man: `Keep your pig eyes open, you swine.' For the first time Höss trotted out his oft-repeated justification: `I took my orders from Himmler. I am a soldier in the same way as you are a soldier and we had to obey orders.' The party arrived back at Heide around three in the morning. The snow was swirling still, but the blanket was torn from Höss and he was made to walk completely nude through the prison yard to his cell." R: We can see from the same book that the former General Governor of Poland, Hans Frank, was also tortured by the British at Minden, Germany.969 Oswald Pohl, former head of the Economic Administrative Main Office (Wirtschaft- Verwaltungshauptamt) of the SS and, as such, responsible for all financial and administrative accessory matters related to the concentration camps, described the illegal methods employed at the interrogation center at Bad Nenndorf, where he signed his affidavit.970 The IMT transcript itself contains an informa- tive passage relating to the testimony of Julius Streicher. His testimony de- scribes the manner in which he was tortured. In response to a prosecution ob- jection, the passage was expunged from the transcript, but not the Court's dis- 968 R. Butler, Legions of Death, Arrows Books Ltd., London 1986, pp. 236f.; cf.: R. Faurisson, op. cit. (note 366); D. Irving, op. cit. (note 23), pp. 241-246. 969 R. Butler, ibid., pp. 238f. 970 O. Pohl, Letzte Aufzeichnungen, in: U. Walendy, HT no. 47, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichts- forschung, Vlotho 1991, pp. 35ff.; M. Lautern, op. cit. (note 955), pp. 43ff.; D. Irving, op. cit. (note 23), pp. 80f.; Pohl referred to himself as legally innocent, since he had never ordered or condoned any atrocities: see Credo. Mein Weg zu Gott, A. Girnth, Landshut 1950, p. 43. 384 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST cussion of whether or not the passage should be expunged.971 Karlheinz Pintsch, Adjutant to Rudolf Hess, was tortured for months by the KGB in Mos- cow.972 The Soviets also tortured a "confession" out of Jupp Aschenbrenner re- lating to the alleged gas vans on the eastern front.973 August Eigruber, former Gauleiter of Austria, was mutilated and castrated at the end of the war. Josef Kramer, last commandant of Bergen-Belsen camp, as well as other SS men and women, were tortured until they begged to be allowed to die.974 The British journalist Alan Moorehead reports as follows:975 "As we approached the cells of the SS guards, the [British] sergeant's lan- guage become ferocious. `We had had an interrogation this morning,' the captain said. `I am afraid they are not a pretty sight.' [...] The sergeant un- bolted the first door and [...] strode into the cell, jabbing a metal spike in front of him. `Get up,' he shouted. `Get up. Get up, you dirty bastards.' There were half a dozen men lying or half lying on the floor. One or two were able to pull themselves erect at once. The man nearest me, his shirt and face spattered with blood, made two attempts before he got on to his knees and then gradually on to his feet. He stood with his arms stretched out in front of him, trembling violently. `Come on. Get up,' the sergeant shouted [in the next cell]. The man was ly- ing in his blood on the floor, a massive figure with a heavy head and be- draggled beard [...] `Why don't you kill me?' he whispered. `Why don't you kill me? I cannot stand it any more.' The same phrases dribbled out of his lips over and over again. `He's been saying that all morning, the dirty bas- tard,' the sergeant said." L: That's pretty bad. R: That's only the beginning. In the next section, we will discuss the methods of the post-war trials: destroyed nail beds, tearing out fingernails, knocking out teeth, crushing testicles. More about that in a moment. L: And the findings of these criminal proceedings are supposed to represent the last word in historical truth today? R: If a semi-official body of German contemporary history like the mainstream journal Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte is any indication, then yes. Their at- titude is that the IMT was a fair trial striving for justice and that its only failing were its legal principles.976 So now let us examine the conditions of these proceedings and other trials prosecuting alleged German war crimes. When so doing, we will encounter more forms of pressure on witnesses and defendants. 971 IMT, vol. 12, p. 398; cf. Keith Stimely, "The Torture of Julius Streicher," JHR, 5(1) (1984), pp. 106- 119; R. Butler, op. cit. (note 968), pp. 238f.; cf. W. Maser, Nürnberg. Tribunal der Sieger, Droste, Düsseldorf 1988 (Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977). 972 Wolf Rüdiger Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess, London 1986, p. 62. 973 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago I-II, Harper & Row, New York 1974, p. 112. 974 Cf. Montgomery Belgion, Victor's Justice, Regnery, Hinsdale, IL, 1949, pp. 80f., 90. 975 Alan Moorehead, op. cit. (note 775), pp. 105f. 976 Lothar Gruchmann, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 16 (1968), pp. 385-389, here p. 386. 385 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 4.3. Testimonies Before Courts R: The treatment of witnesses and parties before a court, which is, at least theo- retically, extremely critical, is based on centuries of experience on the part of generations of jurists, and should, therefore, be accepted by historians as guide- lines, even if academic methods of establishing the truth necessarily differ from juridical methods. A court, for example, must arrive at a definitive judgment as to what is, and is not, true within a limited period of time. Scholarship, by con- trast, may not ­ and perhaps even cannot ­ ever reach a definitive judgment, if it wishes to remain true to its basic principles. In court proceedings, judgment may be seriously distorted by emotional factors, but the influence of emotional factors in scholarship is usually slight, or at least should be. Most Holocaust witness testimonies and confessions were given in connection with criminal proceedings. Private, unemotional witness testimonies are rare. This is inevitable because of the matters being testified to and the emotions with which these matters are associated. The veracity of witness testimonies and confessions therefore needs to be critically investigated by historical and forensic experts of the respective sciences acting as assistants of the court. But in the proceedings discussed thus far, this has never occurred.977 L: You told us before that during the proceedings against Demjanjuk an expert appeared (p. 350). R: This expert only judged the extent to which the memory of the witnesses might be unreliable. He expressed no opinions as to the correctness of the testimony itself. He wouldn't even have been competent to do so. This entirely uncritical attitude on the part of the courts with regards to witness testimonies raises the question of the extent, to which witness testimonies given during such uncritical legal proceedings could be of any use to scholarship, which depends on unemotional, verifiable reports in order to establish the truth. Attempting to base historical scholarship upon court witness testimonies and criminal proceedings based on these testimonies, even if they were made dur- ing trials strictly adhering to the rule of law, is questionable in itself. It is even more questionable, when witness testimonies are cited as proof by scholars, 977 The following remarks are based on my article published under the pseudonym Manfred Köhler, "The Value of Testimony and Confessions Concerning the Holocaust," in: G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), pp. 85-131. To keep the number of footnotes in this book within reasonable limits, please see the addi- tional sources cited therein. The following publications are recommended: D. Irving (note 23); M. Lau- tern (note 955); Alexander von Knieriem, Nürnberg. Rechtliche und menschliche Probleme, Klett, Stuttgart 1953; Rudolf Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Recht und Wirtschaft, Munich 1952; ders., Zur Frage einer Revision der Kriegsverbrecherprozesse, Selbstverlag, Nürnberg 1949; F. Oscar, Über Galgen wächst kein Gras, Erasmus-Verlag, Braunschweig 1950; O.W. Koch, Dachau ­ Landsberg, Justizmord ­ oder Mord-Justiz?, Refo-Verlag, Witten 1974; J. Gheorge, Auto- matic Arrest, Druffel, Leoni 1956; J. Hieß, Glasenbach, Welsermühl, Wels 1956; L. Rendulic, Glasen- bach ­ Nürnberg ­ Landsberg, Stocker, Graz 1953; M. Brech, W. Laska, H.R. von der Heide, JHR 10(2) (1990) pp. 161-185; R. Tiemann, Der Malmedy-Prozeß, Munin, Osnabrück 1990; Landesverband der ehemaligen Besatzungsinternierten Baden-Württemberg (ed.), Die Internierung im Deutschen Süd- westen, Selbstverlag, Karlsruhe 1960; L. Greil Oberst der Waffen-SS Jochen Peiper und der Malmedy- Prozeß, 4th ed., Schild, Munich 1977; G. Rauschenbach, Der Nürnberger Prozeß gegen die Organisa- tionen, L. Röhrscheid, Bonn 1954. 386 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST when it is not even clear if these statements were accepted by any court at all.978 Hence, particularly regarding the Holocaust historical scholarship therefore faces the dilemma that it must be content with testimonies, whose quality is for the most party highly questionable. It is therefore all the more important for scholars to consider the circumstances under which the testimonies were made, since the value of the testimonies depends, not least of all, upon the degree of fairness displayed by the prosecutors, court, media, and general public towards witnesses and defendants. 4.3.1. American Trials R: Immediately after the end of the war, the Americans placed all Germans having held leadership positions in Party, state, or the economy, under "automatic ar- rest" without trial. Hundreds of thousands of people were imprisoned in con- centration camps usually consisting of fenced meadows. Shortly after the end of the war, all German prisoners were denied POW status. As "civilian intern- ees" ­ according to orders from General Eisenhower ­ they enjoyed no legal protection. L: Sounds like Guantanamo Bay after 9/11. R: Quite so, but on a much, much larger scale. These prisoners, especially under American and French administration, were crammed together in camps with no buildings or facilities at all. They vegetated in holes in the ground they had dug themselves to give protection from sunshine and rain. They received only in- sufficient quantities of food, were refused all medical care, and neither the Red Cross nor other organizations or private persons were permitted to help them. As a result, prisoners in the American camps died by the hundreds of thousands like flies.979 According to Military Control Regulation No. 1, every German was obliged, under pain of imprisonment for life, to provide the Allies with any information desired. As a result of this obligation, German witnesses could be forced to make statements by being imprisoned, interrogated for hours, or threatened with extradition to the Russians.980 A special department called the "Special Project" was created for the sole purpose of procuring incriminating evidence against unwilling witnesses. The resulting material was used to "soften up" the witnesses, since any witness could be threatened with prosecution if he or she refused to make incriminating statements against other people. L: It sounds like the Germans had no protection under the law after the war. R: That was the result of the unconditional surrender. There were no restrictions upon arbitrary action. In the American zone of occupation, trials of various de- 978 E. Kogon et al., op. cit. (note 96), base their documentation, for example, on the various documents and testimonies of various prosecutor's offices contained in the files without providing any possibility of checking whether or not these were even accepted into evidence by the respective courts. 979 Cf. James Bacque, op. cit. (note 575); J. Bacque, Crimes and Mercies, Little, Brown & Co., Toronto 1996. 980 Freda Utley, The High Cost of Cengeance, Henry Regnery, Chicago 1949, p. 172 (www.vho.org/dl/ENG/thcov.pdf). 387 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST fendants were held in Dachau, Ludwigsburg, Darmstadt, and Salzburg under the authority of the American Army. These proceedings were preceded by in- terrogation of suspects and witnesses in various camps and prisons, which ac- cording to some right-wing German authors served as "torture centers," for ex- ample, Ebensee, Freising, Oberursel, Zuffenhausen, and Schwäbisch Hall.981 With regards to these trials, even West Germany's official top "Nazi hunter" Adalbert Rückerl remarks laconically:982 "Even the Americans themselves soon objected to the way in which some American military tribunals conducted their trials, particularly to the fact that what was repeatedly used as evidence in these trials were confessions of the defendant which had been obtained in preliminary hearings, sometimes under the worst possible physical and psychological pressure." R: Several official U.S. commissions investigated some of the claims of prisoner abuse in 1949, as they had been made by German and American defense attor- neys, particularly by the German Rudolf Aschenauer and by the Americans Georg Froeschmann and Willis M. Everett. However, these committees were accused by U.S. civil rights organizations of being merely symbolic fig-leaves for the U.S. Army and for politics alike, since they had served merely to cover up the true extent of the scandal. For example, the National Council for Preven- tion of War commented on the conclusions of the Baldwin Commission, which exonerated the Army from grave misdemeanors, as follows:983 "The Commission concluded its report with recommendations for reform of future proceedings of this sort ­ but these recommendations give the lie to all the excuses and exonerations making up the greatest part of the report. In effect, the bottom line stated, `Even if you didn't do it, we don't want you to do it again' [...]." R: One particularly dedicated investigator at that time was Senator Joseph McCarthy, active as an observer sent by the U.S. Senate, who resigned his post after two weeks and gave a moving speech before the U.S. Senate in protest against the collaboration between investigative committee members and the American Army during the cover-up of the scandal. His detailed list of abused inflicted upon German defendants in U.S. captivity is horrifying.984 L: Senator McCarthy is probably the worst witness for such abuse you can possi- bly quote, since he has lost all credibility due to the harm he inflicted with his communist witch hunt in the 1950s. R: I am aware of that, even though the core of his intentions ­ fighting communist infiltration of the U.S. administration that had escalated during the Roosevelt administration ­ was well-founded, as we know today.985 But that is, of course, 981 R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 977), pp. 71, 73; F. Oscar, op. cit. (note 977), pp. 77ff. 982 A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 765), p. 98. 983 R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 977), p. 181. 984 Congressional Record-Senate no. 134, 26.VII. 1949, pp. 10397ff., reproduced in its entirety in R. Tiemann, op. cit. (note 977), pp. 269ff. (http://vho.org/D/zferdk/4.html). 985 Cf. John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, In Denial. Historians, Communism & Espionage, Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2003. 388 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST no excuse for the persecution of innocent citizens, as it happened during the hysteria of what is today called McCarthyism. Still, I might point out that it is hard to see how McCarthy, a right-wing politi- cian, dedicated American patriot, and supporter of the U.S. Army would make such accusations against his country's military forces without having pretty good reasons for it. And so it was. Instead of quoting McCarthy, let my quote Edward L. van Roden, who served in World War II as U.S. Chief of the Military Justice Division for the European Theater. Together with Justice Gordon Simpson of the Texas Supreme Court, van Roden was appointed in 1948 to another extraordinary commission charged with investigating the claims of abuse during U.S. trials in Dachau. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote:986 "AMERICAN investigators at the U. S. Court in Dachau, Germany, used the following methods to obtain confessions: Beatings and brutal kickings. Knocking out teeth and breaking jaws. Mock trials. Solitary confinement. Posturing as priests. Very limited rations. Spiritual deprivation. Promises of acquittal. [...] We won the war, but some of us want to go on killing. That seems to me wicked. [...] The American prohibition of hear-say evidence had been suspended. Second and third-hand testimony was admitted, [...] Lt Perl of the Prosecution pleaded that it was difficult to obtain competent evi- dence. Perl told the court, `We had a tough case to crack and we had to use persuasive methods.' He admitted to the court that the persuasive methods included various `expedients, including some violence and mock trials.' He further told the court that the cases rested on statements obtained by such methods. [...] The statements which were admitted as evidence were ob- tained from men who had first been kept in solitary confinement for three, four, and, five months. They were confined between four walls, with no win- dows, and no opportunity of exercise. Two meals a day were shoved in to them through a slot in the door. They were not allowed to talk to anyone. They had no communication with their families or any minister or priest during that time. [...] Our investigators would put a black hood over the accused's head and then punch him in the face with brass knuckles, kick him, and beat him with rubber hose. Many of the German defendants had teeth knocked out. Some had their jaws broken. All but two of the Germans, in the 139 cases we investigated, had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was Standard Operating Procedure with American investiga- tors. Perl admitted use of mock trials and persuasive methods including vio- lence and said the court was free to decide the weight to be attached to evi- dence thus received. But it all went in. One 18 year old defendant, after a series of beatings, was writing a statement being dictated to him. When they reached the 16th page, the boy was locked up for the night. In the early morning, Germans in nearby cells heard him muttering. `I will not utter another lie.' When the jailer came in 986 E.L. van Roden, "American Atrocities in Germany," The Progressive, February 1949, pp. 21f. (www.corax.org/revisionism/documents/19490200vanroden.html). 389 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST later to get him to finish his false statement, he found the German hanging from a cell bar, dead. However the statement that the German had hanged himself to escape signing was offered and received in evidence in the trial of the others. Sometimes a prisoner who refused to sign was led into a dimly lit room, where a group of civilian investigators, wearing U. S. Army uniforms, were seated around a black table with a crucifix in the center and two candles burning, one on each aide. `You will now have your American trial,' the defendant was told. The sham court passed a sham sentence of death. Then the accused was told, `You will hang in a few days, as soon as the general approves this sentence: but in the meantime sign this confession and we can get you acquitted.' Some still wouldn't sign. [...] In another case, a bogus Catholic priest (actually an investigator) entered the cell of one of the defendants, heard his confession, gave him absolution, and then gave him a little friendly tip: `Sign whatever the investigators ask you to sign. It will get you your freedom. Even though it's false, I can give you absolution now in advance for the lie you'd tell.'" L: That is disgusting. Against that, the events of Abu Ghraib after the second war against Iraq seem quite harmless.987 L: Well, at least Abu Ghraib made me understand that Americans are indeed ca- pable of systematic torture, even if in that case it concerned a political system that was considered much less evil then Hitler's Nazi Germany. So I can imag- ine that the U.S. forces behaved even worse after World War II in Germany. R: Quite right. L: Wasn't it during one of these Dachau trials that U.S. prosecutors tried to estab- lish as "common knowledge" the claim that homicidal gas chambers were used at the Dachau camp (chapter 2.4., p. 73)? R: Well observed. With such methods, anything can be proven. But even worse than these so-called "third-degree" methods ­ according to Joachim Peiper, the main defendant during the Malmedy Trial ­ was the feeling of helplessness, of total isolation from the outside world and one's fellow men, as well as the often successful attempts to play the prisoners off against each other through the use of false incriminating statements to break the prisoners' resistance, born of comradeship, by means of threats and promises (so-called "second degree" in- terrogation). L: That reminds me very much at the interrogation methods used by U.S. authori- ties in Guantanamo Bay, as it was recently reported by Time magazine.988 So, all that happened after World War II seems to have become a tradition for the U.S. forces. R: A tradition that certainly needs to be broken. But my impression is that the methods used after WWII in Germany were much more widespread and brutal 987 For some photos from Abu Ghraib prison see www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444. 988 Adam Zagorin, Michael Duff, "Inside the Interrogation of Detainee 063," Time, June 20, 2005, pp. 26- 33. 390 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST than what happens today in Guantanamo Bay. After all, this camp is an excep- tion. In Germany after WWII, however, U.S. forces turned the exception into a rule. From the records and transcripts of these post-WWI interrogations, lasting hours or days, the prosecutors stitched together "affidavits," in which the exon- erating passages were deleted and the content was often distorted by rewording. In addition to these dubious "affidavits," the prosecutors used every trick in the book: for example, unsworn "copies" of documents and third hand statements (hearsay) were admissible as proof. By means of order SOP no. 4, it was finally promised that prisoners could buy their freedom by serving as prosecution witnesses against others. L: It looks like these outrageous methods were applied systematically. R: That is right. Everything was done more or less according to plan, in obedience to "orders from above." L: But why didn't the prisoners follow the advice usually given and refuse to talk without a lawyer? R: Quite simple: until the beginning of the trial, that is, during the months of inter- rogation, the defendants were entirely without legal advice. And even during the court proceedings, their lawyers rarely offered effective support, since the court-appointed attorneys were often members of the Allied powers them- selves, often with a defective knowledge of German, and often with only the slightest interest in defending the defendants. Sometimes they acted like prose- cutors, threatening the defendants and advising them to make false confessions. Even when the defendants were defended by committed counsel, such as, for example, U.S. lawyer Willis M. Everett, the job of defense lawyer was made almost impossible by the prosecutors and court: defense attorneys were granted access to files only in part, or reluctantly; conversations with the defendants were only permitted shortly before commencement of the trial and sometimes even only during the trial, and only in the presence of the Allied prosecution personnel! Most often, before trial, they were only informed of the main points of the indictment in terms of generalities. Motions to interrogate exonerating witnesses or to raise objections to evidence introduced by the prosecution ­ such as extorted statements ­ were usually rejected. This was entirely in keep- ing with the provisions of the U.S. prosecution authorities, since article 7 of regulation no. 7 of the Military Government for the U.S. Zone in Germany on the constitution of certain military courts states:989 "The Tribunals shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. [...] The tribunal shall afford the opposing party such opportunity to question the [...] probative value of such evidence as in the opinion of the tribunal the ends of justice require." L: In other words: "We will do whatever the hell we like, and we don't give a dam about legal procedure." 989 A. von Knieriem, op. cit. (note 977), p. 558. 391 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Exactly. The proceedings were absolutely arbitrary. Finally, there is another problem: how are the incriminating statements of former concentration camp inmates to be assessed? To obtain these statements, the prosecuting authorities used a particular procedure, the so-called "stage shows" or "reviews."990 The prosecuting authorities assembled former concentration camp inmates and placed them in an auditorium of a theater or cinema. The defendants were placed on an illuminated stage, while the former concentration camp inmates sat in a dark room and were allowed to make any kind of wild accusation, often in complete pandemonium. If ­ contrary to expectations ­ no accusations were made, or if the accusations weren't damaging enough, the prosecution "lent a helping hand," persuading the inmates to make accusations, often accompanied by the grossest intimidation and threats.991 And if no accusations were made at all, the "defendant" was put on trial anyway. Exonerating statements were de- stroyed by the prosecution.992 These "stage shows" only ended when an Ameri- can Army officer put on an SS uniform and appeared on stage with the defen- dants and was promptly accused of a long series of crimes by several former inmates.993 L: Did that happen during the IMT? R: No, not during the IMT, but during the trials held in the American zone of oc- cupation leading to the IMT, such as in Dachau and elsewhere. Defense wit- nesses from the concentration camps were simply told to shut up, or threatened, insulted, intimidated, sometimes even arrested and mistreated. Former inmates were threatened by former fellow inmates with reprisals against their families or even told that statements and indictments would be prepared against them should they refused to make the desired accusations or statements against the targeted defendants. Even threats of murder against such former fellow inmates were reported. The German "Association of those persecuted by the Nazi Re- gime" (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes, VVN) ­ later prohibited as an unconstitutional communist association ­ was allowed to decide which former inmates would receive food rations or be placed on a housing list, and that in a country that lay in ruins and was starving. Many former concentration camp inmates were thus prevented from appearing as defense witnesses. They were even expressly prohibited by threat of punishment by these survivor or- ganizations from making exonerating statements.994 Witnesses willing to make accusations were conspicuous by their frequent appearances at various trials, sometimes in groups, where they were paid in cash and received payments in kind. These witnesses were often "profession- als," openly coordinating their statements to ensure that criminals, who had been sitting in a German concentration camp due to severe crimes and who had 990 Cf. in this regard R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, op. cit. (note 977), pp. 18ff.; O.W. Koch, op. cit. (note 977), p. 127. 991 R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, ibid., pp. 24ff., 33f. 992 Ibid., p. 21. 993 Gesellschaft für freie Publizistik, Das Siegertribunal, Nation Europa, Coburg 1976, pp. 69f. 994 R. Aschenauer, Macht gegen Recht, op. cit. (note 977), pp. 42f.; F. Utley, op. cit. (note 980), p. 198; O.W. Koch, op. cit. (note 977), p. 53. 392 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST been promised impunity in exchange for incriminating statements, were actu- ally cleared of all wrong-doing. L: That reminds me of our friend Adolf Rögner. R: Yes, Rögner was truly a representative of the "scum of the earth," as these witnesses were called by judges G. Simpson and E.L. van Roden, members of a U.S. Army investigation committee.995 Witnesses were never prosecuted for perjury, even if caught in the act. On the contrary: if a witness informed the court of the methods by means of which his testimony had been obtained, and withdrew it, his life was made impossible by the prosecution. L: But Adolf Rögner had been prosecuted and sentenced for perjury in such cases. R: Yes, but by German courts several years after the war, not by Allied courts. Such prosecutions did take place only in the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany, when the Holocaust lobby was not yet that well organized. These prosecutions of witnesses for perjury seized altogether in the late 1950s. L: With methods like that, you can prove anything. But testimonies like that can- not be taken seriously by rational historians. R: Unfortunately, it is being taken seriously. Mainstream historian T.A. Schwartz, for example, writing in Germany's leading historical periodical in 1990, stated that the American trials were carried out in accordance with the Geneva Con- ventions, and that the main problem with these trials was merely the absence of appeal procedures and the uncertainty of future treatment of the judgments.996 4.3.2. British and Soviet Trials L: When one considers the above mentioned treatment of Höß, Frank, Kramer, and others by the British occupation authorities, one must assume that the Brit- ish used the same methods as the Americans. R: Right. The methods during the Stalinist trials in the east, whether in the Soviet zone of occupation, in Poland, Czechoslovakia, or the Soviet Union, were cer- tainly worse. But since the Eastern Block was no longer considered an "Ally" after 1949, the trials held in these zones were the topic of critical analysis by German jurists ­ criticism taken seriously by historians.997 4.3.3. The IMT and Subsequent NMT Trials R: The International Military Tribunal consisted of prosecutors and judges from the four victorious powers, trying 22 of the most important still living figures of the Third Reich. This trial was followed by 12 subsequent trials (Nuremberg Military Tribunals, NMTs) against various authorities and/or classes of defen- 995 Gesellschaft für freie Publizistik, op. cit. (note 993), p. 69. 996 T.A. Schwartz, "Die Begnadigung deutscher Kriegsverbrecher," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 38 (1990) pp. 375-414. 997 C. Roediger, Völkerrechtliches Gutachten über die strafrechtliche Aburteilung deutscher Kriegsgefan- gener in der Sowjetunion, Heidelberg 1950; R. Maurach, Die Kriegsverbrecherprozesse gegen deutsche Gefangene in der Sowjetunion, Arbeitsgemeinschaft vom Roten Kreuz in Deutschland, Britische Zone, Hamburg 1950; W. Eisert, Die Waldheimer Prozesse, Bechtle, Munich 1993. 393 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST dants from the Third Reich, but they were only conducted by the Americans, since the other victorious powers had lost interest in holding any more trials. The Allied victors had established the legal framework for these trials in the so- called London Agreement.998 Article 3 of this agreement stipulated that the ju- risdiction of the tribunal could not be disputed. Article 26 categorically ex- cluded any possibility of appeal. Article 13 stipulated that the tribunal could es- tablish its own rules of procedure. L: A trial without any possibility of appeal, accompanied by arbitrary rules of procedure, doesn't look like something you'd find in a "state of law." R: Right. These articles were therefore generally acknowledged as controversial, apart from the fact that some of the points on the indictment ­ such as, for ex- ample, crimes against humanity or crimes against peace ­ didn't even exist be- fore the tribunals were created, but were invented from scratch and then applied retroactively in violation of all legal standards. L: And these points in the indictment were only applicable to the Germans, al- though the Allies were guilty of the same crimes as the defendants: the Soviet Union, with its wars of aggression against Finland and Poland; the Western Al- lies, with their terror bombings, culminating in the horrors of Dresden, Na- gasaki, and Hiroshima. L: And while they sat arguing about real or imagined German crimes at Nurem- berg, the four occupation powers ­ together with their Polish, Czech, and Yugoslavian allies ­ committed the greatest act of ethnic cleansing of world history, that is, the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from eastern and central Germany. If that wasn't a "crime against humanity," then nobody can say what is and what isn't. R: At any rate, "hypocrisy" is too mild a word for it. But back to the IMT. The method of procedure is clearly revealed in Article 18, which stipulated that the tribunal was to "confine the trial strictly to an expeditious hearing of the issues raised by the charges" and that it could refuse any and all questions and expla- nations it deemed unnecessary or irrelevant. L: In other words, the defense more or less had its hands tied. R: The defense was only allowed to react to points made in the indictment ­ and not even at any great length. Article 19 says, and I quote: "The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and non- technical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value" L: No rules of evidence? Good God! R: It gets even worse. Article 21 stipulates: "The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof [...]" 998 Reproduced in its entirety in G. Brennecke, Die Nürnberger Geschichtsentstellung, Verlag der deutschen Hochschullehrerzeitung, Tübingen 1970, pp. 27ff. 394 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: This "common knowledge" included anything and everything established as fact by any authority or commission of any Allied country in documents, acts, reports, or other records. L: Does that mean that any judgment achieved in the show trials we talked about before by torture and threats was automatically considered "proof"? R: That is exactly what it means. Not only that, but every report of an Allied commission, that is, every phony report of a Stalinist commission on alleged German war crimes, was automatically considered proof as well. For example, the IMT considered the SS and Waffen SS to be "proven" criminal organiza- tions based on "proof" obtained during the Dachau trials described previously. L: So the Nuremberg Trial was really just an Allied lynching party. R: That's exactly what the Chief Justice of the United Supreme Court, Harlan Fiske Stone, called it:999 "[Chief U.S. prosecutor] Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynch- ing party in Nuremberg. I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old- fashioned ideas." R: This attitude on the part of the Allies can also be proven on the basis of docu- ments, since the Soviets, during the preliminary stages of the trial, unasham- edly expressed their wish to execute the defendants without trial, or after trial according to Soviet methods of summary trial, since the defendants' guilt was "already obvious." Among the Western Allies, of course, there were those who agreed, but it was finally decided that only a "fair trial" could have the desired propaganda effect on the German people.1000 The Allied chief prosecutor, R. Jackson, even said as much during the trial:1001 "As a military tribunal, this Tribunal is a continuation of the war effort of the Allied nations. As an International Tribunal, it is not bound by the pro- cedural and substantive refinements of our respective judicial or constitu- tional systems [...]." L: Well, at least he was honest about it. R: British historian David Irving referred to the preliminary investigations of the prosecution as a private creation of the American secret service OSS (predeces- sor of the CIA), before R. Jackson reduced the influence of that organization. Alexander von Knieriem, one of the leading defense attorneys before the IMT, provides a very detailed description of the consequences of the fact that the prosecution alone had recourse to the entire executive apparatus of all the oc- cupation powers, without any restriction whatsoever ­ such as, for example, the arrest of any witness they desired, the confiscation of all inventories of Reichs government documents, as well as complete access to the files of the victorious powers ­ while the defense was entirely without resources and funds. Since the IMT was conducted in the style of an Anglo-Saxon criminal trial, in which the 999 Alpheus T. Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law, Viking, New York 1956, p. 716. 1000 D. Irving, op. cit. (note 23), chapter "Lynch law" (pp. 31-56 in the Internet edition). 1001 IMT, vol. 19, pp. 398f. R.H. Jackson, 3rd prosecution speech of July 26, 1946. 395 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST prosecutors ­ in contrast to German proceedings ­ were not required to search for, or produce, any exonerating evidence at all, but merely attempted to prove the guilt of the defendants in a one-sided manner, the above-described inequal- ity of resources inevitably led to serious miscarriages of justice. Even the pre- siding judges, if they felt like it in exceptional cases, could hardly help the de- fense either, since the judges were de facto tools of the prosecution, who made all material and personal decisions. L: That's the reason for Stone's remark that Jackson was carrying out his "private lynching party" at Nuremberg. R: That's right. The presiding judge of the Nuremberg Tribunal in Case 7 (against the German generals in the so-called "Hostage Case"), Charles F. Wenner- strum, who only experienced what went on in the courtroom, published the fol- lowing devastating opinion on these proceedings immediately following the judgment:1002 "If I had known seven months ago what I know today, I would never have come here. Obviously, the victor in any war is not the best judge of the war crime guilt. [...] The prosecution has failed to maintain objectivity aloof from vindic- tiveness, aloof from personal ambitions for convictions. It has failed to strive to lay down precedents which might help the world to avoid future wars. The entire atmosphere here is unwholesome. [...] Lawyers, clerks, interpreters and researchers were employed who became Americans only in recent years, whose backgrounds were imbedded in Europe's hatreds and preju- dices. The trials were to have convinced the Germans of the guilt of their leaders. They convinced the Germans merely that their leaders lost the war to tough conquerors. Most of the evidence in the trials was documentary, selected from the large tonnage of captured records. The selection was made by the prosecution. The defense had access only to those documents which the prosecution con- sidered material to the case. [...] Also abhorrent to the American sense of justice is the prosecution's reliance upon self-incriminating statements made by the defendants while prisoners for more than two and a half years, and repeated interrogation without presence of counsel. Two and one-half years of confinement is a form of du- ress in itself. The lack of appeal leaves me with a feeling that justice has been denied. [...] The German people should receive more information about the trials and the German defendants should receive the right to appeal to the United Nations." R: So that second-class lawyer Jackson was lord of life and death not only over the leadership elite of a defeated nation, but also over this nation's self-esteem. The judges had no right to give instructions to any of the occupation powers as to the securing or introduction of evidence. 1002 Hal Foust, "Nazi Trial Judge Rips `Injustice,'" Chicago Tribune, Feb. 23, 1948. 396 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The conduct of the IMT was largely similar to the American trials described in chapter 4.3.1., but with less extreme excesses. Von Knieriem and many other sources describe all kinds of threats and psychological torture, prolonged inter- rogations and the confiscation of all the personal property of both defendants and witnesses compelled to appear; of tactics of intimidation ­ arrests, proce- dural persecution and other methods of compulsion utilized against witnesses for the defense; of distorted affidavits, twisted documents, and dishonest simul- taneous translations; arbitrarily rejected motions to introduce evidence, confis- cation of files, refusal to provide defense access to documents, and the system- atic obstruction of the defense's efforts by the prosecution. For example, travel- ing to foreign countries to obtain evidence or defense statements was impossi- ble; correspondence was subject to censorship by the postal authorities; profes- sional witnesses formerly imprisoned in concentration camps for serious crimi- nal offenses; and, finally, judgments handed down against the body of evi- dence, the "argumentation of which was unique in their primitivism." When U.S. defense attorney E.J. Caroll was refused permission to appear as defense council in the Krupp Trial, he sent a protest letter to General Clay, in which he made the following critical points of the IMT trials, among others: long, inhu- mane preventive detention; refusal by the prosecution and tribunal to permit the defense to examine documents, "proof" based on hearsay, documents of arbi- trary kinds; the withholding of defense witnesses; allowing defense lawyer to consult with the witnesses only in the presence of representatives of the prose- cution; the disappearance of exonerating evidence, confiscation of private property, forced testimony, and the intimidation of witnesses. Irving refers to the methods of interrogation utilized by the IMT prosecution as "Gestapo methods," since the defendants were denied medical care, despite iso- lation, hunger, cold, and injuries received as a result of mistreatment; even the defense attorneys were subject to arrest if they insisted on exercising their right to proper procedures; this happened, for example, to von Neurath's defense at- torney, and, in particular, during the Krupp Trial. Aschenauer sees strong paral- lels between the "concentration camp" trials conducted by the USA and the trial conducted against the SS Economic Main Office at Nuremberg with re- gards to the incriminating testimony of former inmates, since these were the same people: professional witnesses.1003 And, naturally, there was no shortage of threats and intimidation during the IMT of the VVN against former fellow inmates to prevent any exonerating testimony.1004 L: Were people tortured at Nuremberg, too? R: The IMT was conducted in a floodlight of publicity, so the prosecution, for the most part, refrained from torturing the defendants, if an exception be made of the already mentioned torture of Streicher. Of course, it was a different story with German prosecution witnesses appearing before the IMT or whose written statements were introduced into evidence ­ Rudolf Höß, for example. 1003 R. Aschenauer, Landsberg. Ein dokumentarischer Bericht von deutscher Sicht, Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Recht und Wirtschaft, Munich 1951, p. 32. 1004 F. Oscar, op. cit. (note 977), p. 85. 397 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: And these were the methods used to prove the Holocaust? R: That is the shocking truth. The atrocities allegedly committed in concentration camps and in eastern Europe were "proven" by the American show trials at Da- chau and comparable trials by other Allies. The SS and Waffen-SS have been considered "criminal organizations" ever since. The IMT itself reinforced this finding through repeated introduction of the "proofs" obtained mostly in the above-mentioned trials. One of the best descriptions of the effect of the evi- dence presented before the IMT is provided by Hans Fritzsche in his memoirs. All the major Nuremberg defendants insisted that they had known nothing of any mass murder of the Jews prior to the introduction of evidence before the IMT. After the introduction of dubious films depicting Dachau and other con- centration camps after their liberation, the psychological effect was very per- ceptible, but was still not entirely convincing. Most of the defendants got con- vinced only after the extorted statements by Rudolf Höß and Otto Ohlendorf were presented.1005 From there on, the claimed mass murder of the Jews had the effect of placing a curse on both the defense and defendants, and even on the German nation as a whole, a curse which no one dared and dares to contra- dict.1006 But the defendants still had the impression that the real investigative work had never been done:1007 "The incomprehensible was proven in a makeshift sort of way, but it was by no means investigated." 4.3.4. Trials in "Nations under the Rule of Law" L: Well, OK, the legal framework of the Allied victor's tribunals may have been questionable, but the trials held later in Germany, a nation of law, came to the same conclusions. At that time, Germany was not a sovereign state, but later, after the Transition Treaty of 1955, which gave West Germany partial sover- eignty, it was different. R: Well, Germany wasn't really all that sovereign at that time either. First, there are the Enemy State Clauses in the UN Charter, which are still applicable in 2005. These are Articles 53 and 107 of the Charter of the United Nations, in which the former enemies of the Allied victors in WWII, i.e., Germany, Japan, and their allies, were subjected to special law. While all other former "enemy states" concluded peace treaties with the victorious powers eliminating this special law, this never occurred in the case of Germany, not even after the re- unification of Germany in 1990. Article 53 permits the use of force against Germany by the victorious powers without the approval of the United Nations Security Council. The only re- quirement is that an agreement be reached between the victorious powers with regards to any "renewal of aggressive policy on the part of any such state." The decision-making power of whether or not, and when, Germany renews aggres- 1005 H. Springer, Das Schwert auf der Waage, Vowinckel, Heidelberg 1953, p. 87. 1006 Ibid., pp. 101, 112f. 1007 Ibid., p. 119. 398 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST sive policies, not "a war of aggression," is left to the arbitrary decision of the victorious powers. Article 107 reads as follows: "Nothing in the present Charter shall invalidate or preclude action, in rela- tion to any state which during the Second World War has been an enemy of any signatory to the present Charter, taken or authorized as a result of that war by the Governments having responsibility for such action." R: Among legal scholars, there is fairly widespread unanimity that this formula only extends to measures taken during wartime or during the occupation. The present form of this article however opens the door to re-interpretation. Conse- quently, the measures taken by the victorious powers, even today, are not re- quired to meet the standards of international law laid down in the UN Charter. But even so, all the measures taken against Germany during or after the war in violation of international law, such as expulsion, deportation, forced labor,1008 confiscation, and the disassembly of industry,1009 the kidnapping of human be- ings and the theft of patents, are subject to no legal objection. L: But surely you don't seriously think the victorious powers would make use of these clauses today. R: During the Cold War, the Enemy State Clauses were never a serious threat to Germany because of the disunity between the victorious powers. They were also a symptom of the unresolved German Question, and could as such even be useful in German politics, given a great deal of good will.1010 But today these clauses are like a ball and chain on Germany's freedom of action in foreign policy. The fact of the unassailability of the tribunals conducted by the victorious Al- lies, if seen under formal legal aspects, was made unusually and crassly clear in the Transition Treaty between the three victorious western powers and the Fed- eral Republic of Germany in 1955. Article 7, paragraph 1, of this treaty reads:1011 "All verdicts and decisions in criminal matters, which have been handed down by a court or a judicial authority of the three powers or any single one of them in Germany or which will be handed down later, remain legally binding and valid in every regard according to German law and are to be treated accordingly by German courts and authorities." R: Hence, one condition for the partial sovereignty of West Germany after the war was the recognition of the judgments of all criminal proceedings of the tribu- nals of the allied victor's as unassailable truth. It can also be interpreted as de- manding that all German courts and authorities in their judgments and decrees must be guided by the historical findings of the victor's tribunals. In the 1990 1008 See Emil Schlee, "German Forced Labor and its Compensation," TR 2(4) (2004), pp. 364-368. 1009 See in general the book by F. Utley, op. cit. (note 980) for a description of some of these measures. 1010 Cf. M. H. Forbes, Feindstaatenklauseln, Viermächteverantwortung und Deutsche Frage, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1983. See www.un.org/aboutun/charter/ 1011 "Vertrag zur Regelung aus Krieg und Besatzung entstandener Fragen," May 26, 1952, Bundesgesetz- blatt (BGBl) II (1955) pp. 405f. 399 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST treaty for the reunification of Germany, this paragraph was also expressly rec- ognized as remaining valid by the government of reunified Germany.1012 L: So the "truth" established by the IMT was set in stone as "unassailable" as early as 1955. R: That's right. This is the origin of the doctrine of the "common knowledge" of the Holocaust, which we will discuss later in more detail. In Germany today, this doctrine has simply run amok. But that is not all. I would like to quote Ar- ticle 139 of the Basic Law of Germany very briefly: "The laws and regulations enacted on behalf of the `liberation of the Ger- man people from National Socialism and militarism' are not affected by the regulations of the Basic Law." L: But you are not against the liberation of the German people, are you? R: It isn't a question of whether or not "liberation" of the German people from National Socialism and militarism was desirable, but rather, of whether or not Allied arbitrary law from the period of occupation should take precedence over the Basic Law of Germany and even over all the human rights guaranteed therein. After all, Germany cannot appeal to any supra-nationally valid interna- tional law, since the above mentioned Enemy State Clauses could eliminate precisely these rights for Germany as well.1013 One could rub one's eyes in astonishment at Article 139 of the German Basic Law and think that it must be a fossil left over from the early days of West Germany and that nobody cares about it today anymore. But consider the fol- lowing: In summer 1990, the so-called 2+4 Treaty between the two German postwar states and the victorious powers of World War II was ratified, which allowed the reunification of the two German states. At the same time, several articles of the West German Basic Law were amended, which is the surrogate constitution of West Germany. Thus, for example, the old article 23 of this Basic Law was deleted, which allowed other parts of the German people to join the jurisdiction of the Basic Law. Furthermore, article 146, the very last article of the Basic Law, was modified, which originally stated that this Basic Law loses its valid- ity at the very moment when a constitution becomes effective, which has been accepted by the reunited German people in a free decision. The background of this is the fact that the Basic Law was never approved by a referendum of the German people, but merely negotiated between the three western Allies and several German postwar politicians. From that point of view, this German Ba- sic Law ­ and thus also the entire system of the Federal Republic of Germany ­ have no democratic legitimacy and is in violation of international law. If such drastic changes of Germany's surrogate constitution were made in 1990, one might justly ask why the antagonistic Article 139 was not changed or deleted at the same time. A letter by the last minister president of the German Democratic Republic, Wolfgang de Maizière, and by West Germany's foreign 1012 BGBl, II (1990), p. 1386. 1013 For this see the comment by K.-H. Seifert, D. Hömig (ed.), Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2nd ed., Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft Baden-Baden 1985, pp. 603f. 400 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, addressed to the four victorious powers of WWII, gives us a clue. Point 2 of this letter states:1014 "The memorials erected on German soil, dedicated to the victims of war and dictatorship, will be honored and are protected by German laws." R: You might ask what is suspicious about that. A letter of the Bavarian admini- stration of State Castles, Parks, and Lakes clarifies this. Responding to an in- quiry of a German citizen, why the memorial plaques in the former concentra- tion camp Flossenbürg, which list vastly exaggerated victim numbers, have not been replaced with more accurate ones, this administration responded as fol- lows:1015 "Changing or exchanging all these memorial plaques and glass windows would lead to irresponsible expenses. Apart from that, an agreement exists between the Federal Republic of Germany and France from Oct. 23, 1954, (Bundesanzeiger No. 105 of June 4, 1957), according to which the memorial has to be permanently maintained in the state it was at the time of the agreement, so that changes are also impossible due to legal reasons." R: It can be assumed that similar bilateral agreements preventing changes to me- morials exist with other nations as well. Let me now summarize: ­ In case of an international crisis Germany is in danger of losing all features of a modern, sovereign nation due to national and international legal entitle- ments of the former victorious nations. ­ She is furthermore bound to historical "common knowledge" as established by allied vengeance tribunals by means of treaties, which granted her partial sovereignty. This obligation to uphold the victor's historical viewpoint as un- challengeable truth was renewed by the treaty to complete the German reuni- fication in 1990 as well as by several bilateral treaties. ­ A revision of the historical image would not only exonerate Germany regard- ing decisive issues, but would also be a tremendous historical burden for the victorious powers. Such a revision, which would resemble an act of liberation both for Germany's internal and foreign affairs, could ­ with a little bit of fantasy ­ be interpreted by the victorious powers as the resumption of an ag- gressive, revisionist policy of revenge. Germany would be accused that it in- tends to get rid of its historical burden in order to be able to demand material, economic, and territorial compensations for injustices of the past. Even if Germany would not make such demands, it would be suspected to prepare such a policy with the help of historical revisions. Official engagement or toleration of historical revisionism by the German government can lead the victorious powers to believe that this disturbs world peace and endangers the peaceful co-existence of nations. 1014 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 13, 1990. 1015 Bayerische Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlösser, Gärten und Seen, letter from March 20, 1981, ref. 238-3611/81 -Ib, Klaß to Reinhard Heuschneider. 401 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ If one adds to this horror image of Germany pictures of the early 1990s with burning residences of asylum seekers and skinheads hollering "Heil Hitler," one can understand the media witch hunt against Germany in those years.1016 In other words: If Germany does not want to be completely encircled and choked by the entire world as it had happened before and during both world wars, it is believed that Germany has to accept the image of history forced upon her. To prevent such a dangerous political development under any circumstances, the German authorities make sure with all means available that historical revi- sionism does not gain any decisive influence in Germany, unless the insights of revisionism have been accepted as valid by the allied countries themselves. It is of course dubitable if that will ever be the case. After all, the allied countries would have to voluntarily (!) join a choir of "mea culpa," which would be a unique historical event. There is of course another side to this issue. In 1990 an officer of the German armed forces was dishonorably discharged from service because he had uttered doubts about the Holocaust and Germany's alleged sole responsibility for World War II during a private conversation with some of his fellow offi- cers.1017 The second issue can be treated quickly by pointing out that the divi- sion of Poland in 1939 was a result of a treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union, which means a mutual responsibility of both these nations for the ini- tialization of WWII. But neither this issue nor the other one was open for dis- cussion during the civil proceedings against that German officer. He was sim- ply found guilty by the German Federal Court of Administration that he had violated his loyalty to the Federal Republic of Germany with these statements. This breech of loyalty allegedly consisted in the fact that he did not support the founding idea of modern-day Germany, which is both the indubitable fact of the Holocaust and Germany's sole responsibility for WWII. He thus was found guilty of a lack of loyalty to the liberal democratic basic order of Germany.1018 L: Such misinterpretation of law is quite astonishing. This implies nothing less than that the Holocaust is part of the raison d'état, that is, one main pillar upon which rests the Federal Republic of Germany. R: Exactly. This may sound perverse, but it is only logical when considering how this state was formed, and it has also been frequently repeated by numerous German media and politicians. Former German Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker, for example, is quoted as having said that "it is not NATO, but Auschwitz, that constitutes the [German] reasons of state."1019 This view was confirmed in 1999 by Josef Fischer, at the time I wrote these lines Germany's Minister for Foreign Affairs:1020 1016 For this see, e.g., the essay by the Italian A. Bolaffi, "Der herbeigeredete Feind," Der Spiegel no. 51/1992, pp. 28f. 1017 Das Freie Forum 1990, no. 4, p. 12; see also the German media reports of Nov. 17, 1990. 1018 K. Kunze, "Exklusivität deutscher Verbrechen als Staatsräson? Die Justiz und die `historische Wahr- heit,'" Junge Freiheit, July/Aug. 1991, p. 13. 1019 Der Spiegel, no. 28, 1987. 1020 Josef Fischer to Bernard-Henri Lévy, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Feb. 18, 1999, p. 46. 402 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "All democracies have a base, a foundation. For France this is 1789. For the USA it is the Declaration of Independence. For Spain it is the Civil War. Well, for Germany it is Auschwitz. It can only be Auschwitz. In my eyes, the remembrance of Auschwitz, the `never again Auschwitz,' can be the sole foundation of the new Berlin Republic." R: The German daily newspaper Die Welt, which once categorizes itself as con- servative, demanded in 1994 that revisionists should be convicted for the fol- lowing reason, among others:1021 "Anyone who denies Auschwitz [...] also shakes the very foundations of this society's self-perception." R: The leftist German weekly paper Die Zeit followed the same line of argument by explaining why disputers of the Holocaust must be silenced by the German justice system and Germany's Agency for the Protection of the Constitu- tion:1022 "The moral foundation of our Republic is at stake." R: A short time later, Rudolf Wassermann, a retired president of a German Upper District Court, wrote:1023 "Anyone who denies the truth about the National Socialist extermination camps betrays the principles on which the Federal Republic of Germany was built. This state is supposed to be a valiant democracy that defends itself when anti-democrats try to subvert it." R: In the German Bundestag (parliament) this view was expressed and confirmed with applause from all (!) parties:1024 "Anyone who trivializes or denies the National Socialist mass murder of the Jews ­ in other words, the Holocaust ­ must know that he is attacking de- mocratic foundations." R: The conservative German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also chimed in with this choir:1025 "If Deckert's [revisionist] `view of the Holocaust' were correct, it would mean that the Federal Republic of Germany was based on a lie. Every presidential address, every minute of silence, every history textbook would be a lie. In denying the murder of the Jews, he denies the Federal Republic's legitimacy." L: That reads like a collection of statements by fanatics or insane people. It is not one aspect of history that threatens modern day Germany, but to the contrary: Who ever attacks freedom of science and free speech also attacks the very foundation of the self-perception of the German republic and endangers the moral foundation of it! This way around it makes sense! R: Except the Federal Republic of Germany is not primarily defined by the civil rights as laid out in its Basic Law, but by the prevailing Holocaust dogma. Yet 1021 P. Philipps, "Quo vadis, BGH?," Die Welt, March 16, 1994, p. 6. 1022 K.-H. Janßen, "Die Rattenfänger," Die Zeit, Dec. 31, 1993, p. 51. 1023 R. Wassermann, "Die Justiz hat Klarheit," Die Welt, April 28, 1994, p. 4. 1024 Hans de With, Member of Parliament for the Social Democratic Party, May 18, 1994, Bundestagspro- tokoll p. 19669. 1025 Patrick Bahners, "Objektive Selbstzerstörung," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Aug. 15, 1994, p. 21. 403 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST before the German authorities can demand the German citizens to accept this, it ought to be written down as such in clear words in Germany's constitution ­ af- ter the German people has agreed to it in a referendum. L: Well, Germany now has a huge symbol of permanent subjugation under this dogma with a gigantic area of concrete blocks in the center of Berlin. Maybe it won't take long before a similar article of subjugation to this dogma will be in- cluded in Germany's Basic Law as well. But perhaps the anti-fascist article 139 is already sufficient. R: At any rate, the voice quoted above make it clear that all those who have a different view about this historical topic are considered to be anti-democrats and enemies of the state. L: But what in heaven's name do certain historical opinions have to do with de- mocratic views or with the loyalty to Germany's constitutional order? That is just as illogical as the statement that at night it is colder than outside. R: Nobody claims this to be logical. What I wanted to point out is the political and legal framework as well as the psychological condition of the fledgling Federal Republic of Germany in 1950 when it took over the task of the allied "Nazi hunters" and started to prosecuted alleged perpetrators of NS crimes herself. L: That is not a nice prospect of what is to come. R: How bad the prospect was indeed can be seen from the case of Ilse Koch. Ilse Koch was the wife of Erich Koch, the former commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp. During the war Koch had been prosecuted by an SS- internal court for crimes he had committed in Buchenwald. He was sentenced to death and executed.1026 After the war, Koch's wife was prosecuted and sen- tenced by an allied show trial as already mentioned (p. 99). When the scandal- ous circumstances of these show trials became known, Ilse Koch was par- doned. However, this did not prevent the new West German justice system to prosecute her again a short time later. The circumstances of that German trial were comparable to the allied trials just a few years earlier: The same hysteria, lies, and perjuries by the same professional witnesses, the same lack of critical investigation by the court and so on. But this time there was no mercy for Mrs. Koch. She was sentenced to a life term in prison and finally committed suicide. L: But that certainly was only a single case. R: No, that was and is the rule. Hans Laternser, who acted as defense lawyer both during the IMT as well as during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial 18 years later, characterized the atmosphere during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial as fol- lows:1027 1026 Affidavit SS-65 von SS investigating judge Konrad Morgen, IMT, vol. 42, p. 556. The investigations, ordered by H. Himmler personally, actually encompassed the entire concentration camp system, re- sulted, e.g., in proceedings against such prominent individuals as Rudolf Höß and Adolf Eichmann, and lead to numerous convictions; see interrogations of K. Morgen (IMT, vol. 20, pp. 485-515) and Chief Judge of the Supreme SS and Police Court Dr. Günther Reinecke, IMT, vol. XX, Aug. 6 & 7, 1946. 1027 H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 891), p. 28, cf. also p. 32; this is the only book ever published showing the perspective of the defense. 404 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "In the major international criminal trials in which I participated, there was never as much tension as in the Auschwitz trial ­ not even at the Interna- tional Military Tribunal in Nuremberg." R: On other words: After 18 years of incessant Holocaust propaganda, the social atmosphere was so poisoned and filled with prejudice and hatred that a fair trial had become impossible. But let me treat this subject chronologically. One of the first acts of the fledgling Federal Republic of Germany was to sign a treaty with Israel, in which Germany recognized the fate of persecution of the Jews suffered under National Socialism and promised to pay reparations in the form of payments of money and goods to Jewish individuals as well as to the new Jewish State. As a pay-off, Germany's politicians hoped to secure the benevo- lence of world Jewry during its tough financial and economic way out of the ruins of the Third Reich. German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer summarized it this way back in 1952:1028 "World Jewry is a great power!" L: And on the side of the Jews, Shmuel Dayan expressed the Jewish perspective as follows:1029 "A Glick hot unz getrofen[1030] ­ 6 Million Jews were killed and we get money for this!" R: You see: different standpoints, different evaluations. Fact is that the young Federal Republic of Germany really did not need any animosity of World Jewry, which is very influential in international finances and in the media. Hence, with the assistance of the German political opposition of the Social Democrats, the German administration under conservative Chancellor Ade- nauer did everything to reduce this animosity. There was only one brief mo- ment of resistance, when a member of Germany's then quite nationalistic Lib- eral Democrats in the German Bundesrat1031 demanded that prior to recogniz- ing Jewish demands, a historical commission should determine beyond doubt what exactly happened during World War II. But that statement was simply ig- nored. As a matter of fact, no official German governmental commission was ever formed after World War II to investigate those historical questions, which were then used as a moral basis upon which to erect the new German nation. This is in sharp contrast to World War I, after which the guilt question for the war was investigated very thoroughly by German governmental commis- sions.1032 As all administrative bodies in postwar Germany, the new German justice sys- tem also was a result of political postwar cleansing of the German administra- tion by the Allies. All judges and prosecutors who were considered to be politi- cally suspicious were removed from office and replaced with politically reli- 1028 Spiegel, no. 19/1995; and again on Nov. 30, 1998. 1029 Tom Segev, The Seventh Million ­ The Israelis and The Holocaust, Hill and Wang, New York 1994, p. 223. 1030 "A Good fortune has hit us." 1031 Parliamentary representation of the German Länder (states). 1032 Hermann Lutz was one of the most productive historians of the investigative commission researching the question of war guilt formed by the German parliament, the Reichstag, after WWI. 405 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST able individuals, even if they did not have the qualifications necessary for the job.1033 This frequently placed dedicated left-wingers in those position and also Jewish and non-Jewish former emigrants, who were extremely hostile toward the former officials of the Third Reich. Right after the war, the Allies estab- lished so-called Spruchkammern (sentencing chambers), which assisted the al- lied authorities in conducting political hearings and trials against each and every official of the Third Reich, including postmen and train conductors. After the Federal Republic of Germany was formed in 1949, the activities of these sentencing chambers were slowly taken over by common criminal courts, which prosecuted alleged and actual NS perpetrators. Until 1958, this activity was rather uncoordinated. This changed during that year with the creation of the Central Office of State Administrations of Justice, Germany's official "Nazi hunter" organization. (I will subsequently use the German official abbre- viation ZStL.) Since 1958, this office collects information all around the world about alleged or actual NS crimes. The most common starting point of its in- vestigation is "evidence" gathered during allied show trials, statements and sto- ries collected by various inmates associations as well as "evidence" submitted by Israel and in particular by the authorities of the communist countries of eastern Europe, since most of the crimes are claimed to have been committed on their territory. L: I cannot see anything wrong with that. R: First of all, it is wrong that the ZStL investigates only crimes committed by Germans, but not those committed by the Allies and their accomplices against Germans. German authorities are not allowed to conduct such investigations. Next it is wrong, because this "Nazi hunter" organization, just as every other German prosecutorial body, is obligated by German law to also collect and pre- sent exonerating evidence. But what kind of exonerating evidence would you expect to be submitted by Israel, by communist eastern European countries, and by organizations of former inmates, which are frequently dominated by communists? Fact is that the ZStL never bothered to look for exonerating mate- rial and that incriminating material has been accumulated by it just as uncriti- cally as it was done by the Allies right after the war. The close and uncritical collaboration between the ZStL and inmate organizations evidently dominated by communist countries indicates clearly that the ZStL itself was nothing but a bureaucratic arm of this fifth column of the communist international reaching into the German justice system. This becomes particularly obvious when con- sidering the close and friendly cooperation between the ZStL and the Ausch- witz Committee, which at that time had its headquarters in Krakow, that is, in communist Poland. This was a symbiosis that culminated in the co-editorship of Hermann Langbein, the communist president of the Auschwitz inmate or- ganization "Auschwitz Committee," and Adalbert Rückerl, the head of the ZStL, for the book Nazi Mass Murder.96 This conspiracy against an unbiased handling of criminal investigations initiated by the ZStL is also expressed in 1033 On this "reeducation" cf. C. von Schrenck-Notzing, Charakterwäsche, Seewald, Stuttgart 1965 (new: Ullstein, Berlin 1993); G. Franz-Willing, Umerziehung, Nation Europa, Coburg 1991. 406 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the gratitude which both the public prosecution and the judges expressed in a letter to Langbein for his massive support in preparing and conducting the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial.1034 L: Just as the U.S. "Nazi hunter" organization OSI, which was established in 1976 by Jimmy Carter, and the personnel of which reads like a Who is Who of Jew- ish Holocaust fanatics, who were quite eager to collaborate with Soviet forgers of the KGB, as the Demjanjuk case shows (see chapter 2.10.). R: Quite so, even though according to my knowledge the ZStL was never staffed with Jewish personnel. But it was quite en vogue for German anti-fascists after the war to be more Jewish than the Jews. The Germans today do not need Jews to persecute themselves. They have that perfectly under control. It therefore cannot surprise that German legal experts considered it a necessity that politi- cally particularly reliable personnel were employed for the first few decades of these special investigations1035 ­ and also at the courts, I may add. It is safe to assume that only such persons were employed as had never even dreamed of doubting the reality of the alleged crimes to be investigated. Given such eager, ideologically persuaded and trained personnel, it is quite within the realm of the possible that witnesses who were reluctant to testify were threatened in the course of preliminary investigations in order to obtain the desired testimony. German left-wing radical author Lichtenstein describes the results of a second- degree interrogation, which he expressly states is necessary in order to force re- luctant witnesses to talk:1036 "The witness [...] hesitates, [...] suffers or fakes a nervous breakdown. [...] Before leaving the witness stand he takes back his claim that the police offi- cer who had interrogated him had `blackmailed' him into telling what had happened at that time. He now states rather lamely that the officer had `been rather tough with him,' which is certainly necessary with witnesses of this sort.[sic!]" L: Are there any indications that torture was used during these German investiga- tions? R: No. But in my eyes, torture would not have been necessary under the circum- stances in those years. It may even have been counter-productive. Torture has the tendency to leave the victim with the impression of unjust treatment. As soon as the victim does no longer feel threatened, the "danger" arises that those mistreatment become known, which would undermine the cause of the torturer. Second degree interrogations, that is, "harsh interrogation methods" as well as repeated suggestive questionings are basically traceless and much more effi- cient. L: In other words: brain washing. R: That is a buzzword for it, yes. 1034 H. Langbein, Der Auschwitz-Prozeß, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt/Main 1965, vol. 1, pp. 31f.; vol. 2, p. 858. 1035 A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 765), pp. 163f., Reinhard Henkys, Die NS-Gewaltverbrechen, Kreuz, Stuttgart 1964, p. 210. 1036 H. Lichtenstein, Majdanek. Reportage eines Prozesses, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt/Main 1979, p. 52, cf. also p. 55. 407 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Before the investigations for the great Frankfurt Auschwitz trial started, the German government was reluctant to evaluate the content of eastern European archives. Offers by communist countries were conceived as attempts to destabi- lize West Germany. This resistance, however, collapsed under the lobbying over various pressure groups interested in the upcoming Auschwitz trial and was replaced by the reverse policy, namely to ask all countries of the world to assist Germany with its self-flagellations, that is: to make accessible all possi- ble material about NS crimes. The initial skepticism of some public prosecutors regarding the credibility of evidence offered by the Auschwitz Committee was put aside by orders from higher up, after the Auschwitz Committee complained about it. Public prosecutor Weber, who had interrogated the professional liar Rögner and was battling with Hermann Langbein about how to conduct the in- vestigations, wrote in a memo, after Langbein had filed a complaint with We- ber's superiors:1037 "Because it concerns an important investigation case, in which the Ministry of Justice is very interested, [...]." L: But that does not interfere with the rights of the defendant for a proper defense. In which way did that endanger the balanced approach to the case? R: Let me compare the situation with the IMT: In Nuremberg the defendants faced an apparatus that had roughly a year to sift through all the documents of an en- tire occupied country as well as those of the victorious countries in order to find incriminating evidence. In contrast to that, the defense was massively hampered. In Frankfurt during the years 1964/65, the defendants faced an accu- satory body organized on a worldwide scale that had been operating uninter- ruptedly for 20 years. Incriminating evidence arrived from all over the world. The preparation of a defense that would merely be remotely appropriate would have lasted years and would have caused tremendous costs. In other words: A defense against this huge vehemence of accusations was basically impossible. This gigantic inequality of means is the reason why under German law the prosecution is also obliged to search and present exonerating evidence. But ex- actly this did never happen. Much worse, however, are the manipulations which the ZStL committed to- gether with organizations of former inmates: they compiled so-called "crimi- nals' dossiers," which they made available to all potential witnesses as well as to domestic and foreign investigative bodies for the purpose of further dissemi- nation to witnesses. In these dossiers all supposed perpetrators are listed along with their photographs both from the time these dossiers were compiled and from National Socialist times, and a description of the crimes imputed to them ­ as well as such crimes which may have taken place, but for which witnesses and clues to the identity of the perpetrators are still lacking. The witnesses are then asked to treat the issue as a matter of confidence but to assign the crimi- 1037 Akten der Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), op. cit. (note 462), vol. 1, p. 102r. 408 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST nals to the crimes and to add other crimes which may be missing from the Dos- sier.1038 L: And what is supposed to be wrong with that? R: Every professional investigator will make sure by the use of proper questioning methods to first find out what a witness knows before offering him or her in- formation. But here the latter happened already prior to the interrogation. This happened to an extent which suggests to the witnesses that both deeds and per- petrators were already established. Merely the link between deeds and perpetra- tors needed to be confirmed, and the completion of the list of criminals and crimes was expected. Any doubt whether or not the crimes happened in the first place, and if so, if the defendants really were the perpetrators, were brushed aside already from the outset. L: This is exactly the kind of suggestive interrogation method, which Prof. Loftus has described as prone to massively distort the memory (compare chapter 4.2.2.). R: That is correct. It is obvious that later identifications of alleged perpetrators by these prepared witnesses were a farce. In addition to this, many of the wit- nesses were interrogated several times, some of them because the investigating authorities had new information, about which they wanted to ask new ques- tions, while others were repeatedly interviewed because their testimonies were in contradiction with what the authorities believed to be true. It is almost cer- tain that such repetitive interrogations already resulted in a sort of "streamlin- ing" of testimonies. L: Again according to Prof. Loftus: The probability of memory distortions in- creases drastically with repetitive suggestive interrogations. R: Rückerl, long-time head of the ZStL, pointed to cases of open manipulation of witnesses by investigating authorities as well as by private documentation cen- ters. In several instances Oppitz and Rückerl, both representatives of the prose- cution, have noted the influencing or prejudicing of witnesses by inmate or- ganizations such as the covertly communist VVN.1039 L: That is funny. Considering the suggestive interrogation methods used by the ZStL, this authority was for most parts nothing else but a gigantic institute of witness manipulation. 1038 Case 1 is the Sachsenhausen Trial. The entire witness dossier is available in copy form: letter of the Chief of the North Rhine-Westphalian Central Office for Investigation of National Socialist Mass Crimes in Concentration Camps, held by the Chief Public Prosecutor in Cologne, Dr. H. Gierlich, Ref. 24 AR 1/62 (Z); Case 2 is described without mention of the trial, by J. Rieger: Deutscher Rechtss- chutzkreis (ed.), Zur Problematik der Prozesse um "Nationalsozialistische Gewaltverbrechen," Schriftenreihe zur Geschichte und Entwicklung des Rechts im politischen Bereich 3, Bochum 1982, p. 16; Case 3, regarding the Sobibor Trial, is described by F. J. Scheidl, Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands, publ. by author, Vienna 1968, vol. 4, pp. 213f., based on National Zeitung, Sept. 30, 1960, pp. 3ff.; Case 4, regarding the Majdanek Trial, is set out in Unabhängige Nachrichten, 7 (1977) pp. 9f.; cf. W. Stäglich, Die westdeutsche Justiz und die sogenannten NS-Gewaltverbrechen, Deutscher Arbeitskreis Witten, Witten 1978, p. 14; W. Stäglich, JHR 3(2) (1981) pp. 249-281; for Case 5, in the trial of G. Weise, see R. Gerhard (ed.), Der Fall Gottfried Weise, Türmer, Berg 1991, p. 63. 1039 A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 982), p. 256; U.-D. Oppitz, op. cit. (note 891), pp. 113f., 239; cf. also H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 891). 409 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Can you imagine, what degree of manipulation those other prosecutors, police officers, inmate organizations, and documentation centers must have applied so that Rückerl felt obliged to critically mention their improper behavior? Further, defense lawyer Laternser reports that the witnesses for the Auschwitz Trial were able, even before the trial began, to tell their stories in the media or even in witness information pamphlets published especially for this occasion, so that impartial and objective testimonies became quite impossible. In addition to that, many witnesses were monitored by many different organizations and per- sons, which would also render their prejudice very likely.1040 Since the investigations were frequently very difficult, this resulted in the de- fendants being detained, awaiting trial, for three to five years and sometimes even longer, during which they were repeatedly interrogated. L: That wears them down. R: And it is in violation of human rights. Similar to the IMT, most later trials of NS crimes degenerated to show trials as well, during which many defendants were accused at once, hundreds of wit- nesses testified, thousands of spectators gaped, and the mass media layed it all out to uncounted millions all over the world. Not a single one of these cases was ever supported by any forensic evidence. A statement from the verdict of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial is a symbol for this gross negligence:1041 "The court lacked almost all possibilities of discovery available in a normal murder trial to create a true picture of the actual event at the time of the murder. It lacked the bodies of the victims, autopsy records, expert reports on the cause of death and the time of death; it lacked any trace of the mur- derers, murder weapons, etc. An examination of the eyewitness testimony was only possible in rare cases." L: At least they admit these shortcomings. R: Sure, but they did not even try to remedy that situation, for example by sum- moning expert witnesses in order to verify, a) which traces the claimed deeds would have left and b) which of those traces can be found! And when a single German judge had the courage to acquit a defendant because the evidence pre- sented for the alleged crime did not suffice to legally establish beyond doubt that the crime happened in the first place, the German Federal Supreme Court overruled that acquittal with the outrageous explanation, the court had done nothing to verify that the claimed crime did indeed occur.1042 But this was actu- ally never done by any German court trying alleged NS crimes. This lack of evidence for the reality of a crime, however, did not bother the German Federal Supreme Court when defendants were sentenced. 1040 H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 891), pp. 86ff., 170; U.-D. Oppitz documents a case of manipulation by an individual assigned to assist witnesses outside the courtroom during their stay in Frankfurt, op. cit. (note 891), p. 113. 1041 Verdict in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, ref. 50/4 Ks 2/63, pp. 108ff.; cf. I. Sagel-Grande, H.H. Fuchs, C.F. Rüter (ed.), Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. XXI, University Press, Amsterdam 1979, p. 434. 1042 H. Lichtenstein, Im Namen des Volkes?, Bund, Köln 1984, pp. 117f., about a verdict of LG Bielefeld, ref. Ks 45 Js 32/64, on the clearing of the Ghetto Wladimir-Wolynsk. 410 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The only expert witness to testify in a court dealing with NS crimes that did not address legal or historical issues never actually investigated the claimed crimes themselves, but only issues like the reliability of human memory or the ques- tion whether or not a Saint Bernard dog can be lovely today and cruel tomor- row. L: Is that a joke? R: No, I am serious. This happened during the Treblinka trial, during which wit- nesses made contradicting statements regarding the dog Barry of camp com- mandant Kurt Franz.1043 Apart from that, only historians filed expert reports, which did, however, by no means assess the historical accuracy of witness statements. After all, where would we end up with such critical attitude? No, these historians put the inves- tigated alleged NS crimes into the overall context of the officially prescribed horror image of the Third Reich and thusly created a trial atmosphere, in which the defendants were nothing more but representatives of the devil incarnate, the evil in and of itself.1044 L: This is a nice pedagogical approach for the reeducation of the German people. R: That is true, and that this was indeed the purpose of the whole exercise was even officially admitted. For example, the public prosecutor at the Auschwitz Trial, Fritz Bauer, admitted this fact,1045 as did Bernd Naumann, who reported about the Auschwitz trial for Germanys' daily newspaper Frankfurter Allge- meine Zeitung. The latter wrote that the Auschwitz Trial was of "ethical, so- cially educational significance."1046 And the communist Hermann Langbein, the éminence grise behind the trial scene, commented:1047 "The special element in these criminal trials is their political impact." R: A. Rückerl wrote that the "clearing-up" of National Socialist crimes was "of an overall public and historical relevance that went far beyond the criminal prosecution per se," R: and: "The combined results of historical research and criminal investigation lend themselves to impressing upon the man on the street such matters as he ought to bear well in mind, in his own interest ­ regardless of how unpleas- ant this may be for him."1048 R: With thematic consistency, German mainstream Historian Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler suggests that trials on NS crimes ought to be a permanent focus of public life, because they deal with an issue of the very existence of Germany's 1043 A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 630), pp. 234ff. 1044 Regarding the Auschwitz trial cf. H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 891), pp. 82f. These historical expert reports were published: H. Buchheim, M. Broszat, H.-A. Jacobsen, H. Kausnick, Anatomie des SS- Staates, 2 vols., Walter Verlag, Freiburg 1964; re. Sobibor: A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 630), pp. 87, 90ff.; re. Treblinka: ibid., p. 82; re. Majdanek: H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 1036), p. 30. 1045 C. von Schrenck-Notzing, op. cit. (note 1033, 1965), p. 274. 1046 B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 943), p. 7. 1047 H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 1034), vol. 1, p. 9. 1048 A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 630), pp. 7 and 23; cf. A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 765), p. 323. 411 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST society,1049 and according to another German mainstream historian, Prof. Dr. Peter Steinbach, trials on NS crimes provide an important contribution to the shaping of German identity.1050 L: The enlightenment of the masses by media reports was accordingly intensive. R: You are quite right, and this happened against the declared will of the majority of the German population. But an unwilling child has to be beaten up as long as it takes to make it submissive, as we all know. The educational task of the me- dia thusly unmasked as grossly undemocratic has been emphasized by various authors.1051 The Austrian newspaper Neues Österreich shed new light on the quality of this type of media reporting when it commented on witness testi- mony in a particular trial on NS crimes in the following way, which unfortu- nately is typical for our media:1052 "Whatever the defendant cannot disprove did obviously take place, as in- credible as it may sound." L: Hence, not the guilt of the defendant must be proven, but rather his innocence. R: Exactly. During the medieval witch trials such an approach to evidence was called probatio diabolica ­ diabolic proof. The most noteworthy reaction of other nations to these ongoing German trials of self-destruction was the international appeal of 1978, not to allow the NS crimes to lapse under the statute of limitations,1053 after the German statute of limitations for murder had already been extended twice for the sole purpose that the prosecution of alleged NS crimes might continue until the end of time.1054 In this context, Lichtenstein notes that during the 1979 debate about this statute Simon Wiesenthal had had postcards of protest printed in many dif- ferent languages and distributed with the request to mail these to the Federal German government.1055 Prof. Steinbach is quite right when he describes the German parliament's debates on this statute as some of the most remarkable moments of German parliamentarianism.1056 Only in 2004, almost 60 years af- ter the end of the alleged crimes, this madness was terminated by a decision of Germany's Federal Supreme Court declaring the prosecution of 90 year old geriatrics as no longer permissible.1057 L: That means that unexpiated NS crimes will no longer be clarified in future. 1049 W. Scheffler, in J. Weber, P. Steinbach (eds.), Vergangenheitsbewältigung durch Strafverfahren?, Olzog, Munich 1984, p. 114. 1050 P. Steinbach, ibid., p. 39. 1051 E. Bonhoeffer, Zeugen im Auschwitz-Prozeß, 2nd ed., Kiefel, Wuppertal 1965; H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 1036), p. 117; H. Grabitz, op. cit. (note 900), 1986, pp. 58f. 1052 Neues Österreich, June 1, 1963, p. 12. 1053 A. Rückerl, op. cit. (note 982), p. 205. 1054 First extension: BGBl I (1965) p. 315, second: BGBl I (1969) pp. 1065f., finial rescission: BGBl I (1979) p. 1046; cf. also: Deutscher Bundestag, Presse- und Informationszentrum (ed.), "Zur Verjährung nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen" in Zur Sache. Themen parlamentarischer Beratung, vol. 3-5/80, Bonn 1980. 1055 H. Lichtenstein in: J. Weber, P. Steinbach (ed.), op. cit. (note 1049), p. 197. 1056 P. Steinbach, ibid., p. 27. 1057 Reuters, June 27, 2004, cf. TR 2(3) (2004), p. 358. 412 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: As if one needs judges to investigate historical questions. Quite to the contrary. Even established historians oppose such a view:1058 "Trials which are conducted in order to furnish evidence for historians are evil trials and represent a sinister approach to show-trials." R: The case of Karl Wolff, a former General of the Waffen-SS, shows just how strong the influence of politics on these trials really was. In 1964 he was put on trial in Munich for his alleged involvement in the murder of 300,000 Jews. During this trial, which was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, some 90 witnesses testified. Only three of them incriminated General Wolff. The court, consisting of three professional judges and six jury members, was not con- vinced that Wolff was guilty and hesitated. Accordingly, the deliberation lasted quite long ­ eight days. And the verdict finally agreed upon with a slim major- ity of just one vote, sentenced Wolff to 15 years imprisonment on Sept. 30, 1964. And this is how this majority came about:1059 "For ten weeks Wolff claimed in court, and he emphasized it again in an in- terview with [German magazine] `neuen bildpost' in spring of 1974: `I did not know that the Jews were to be killed there.' But the court did not believe him that. As Himmler's `Eye and Ear' he had to have known what fate was awaiting the Jews. [...] According to Norbert Kellnberger, who served as a jury member for that trial, the verdict was reached with a majority of just one vote. Kellnberger and some of his colleagues were not convinced of Wolff's guilt. But judge Jörka is supposed to have pointed out massively that this is a political trial, that the entire world is watching the court; it therefore had to sentence Wolff. Jörka stated, according to Kellnberger, that they should not be worried about the fate of the defendant. He would be pardoned after a year or two at most anyway." R: Because Wolff did not remain just one year in prison, but was still behind bars in 1969, former jury member Norbert Kellnberger spoke out publicly about this show trial: "In spring of 1969 former jury member Kellnberger found out to his aston- ishment that Wolff was still behind bars in Straubing [prison]. He remem- bered the words of [judge] Jörka of 1964 and decided to do something about it. [...] Kellnberger told [suffragan bishop] Neuhäusler (and others) emphatically: `If Wolff is not out of prison within four to six weeks, I will open my mouth and cause a legal scandal!'" 1058 K.S. Bader, in: Karl Forster (ed.), Möglichkeiten und Grenzen für die Bewältigung historischer und politischer Schuld in Strafprozessen, Studien und Berichte der katholischen Akademie in Bayern, issue 19. 1059 G. Giese, "Der Mann, der den Papst verschleppen sollte," neue bildpost in nine installments, April 21 to June 16, 1974. Here the issue of April 28, 1974, is quoted (www.vho.org/VffG/2002/2/Image893.gif). 413 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Shortly thereafter Karl Wolff was released from Straubing prison for health reasons, but this decision could be revoked by the German authorities at any time. L: I guess the German authorities wanted to make sure that Wolff doesn't have any funny ideas like speaking out in the media. R: Probably. This entire case clearly shows that it wasn't evidence that decided theses court cases, but the raison d'état of modern-day Germany. Since no fo- rensic evidence was ever secured about the alleged crimes during these trials, and also because there are hardly ever any documents, which can be used to convict a defendant, most defendants were sentenced only on the basis of wit- ness statements. Even testimonies from hearsay have been used to this end. L: But the unreliability of such testimonies is legendary! In most countries, such evidence is therefore not even permitted. R: In Germany they are permissible, and for the trials at issue here they have been used quite frequently, as the verdict of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial admits:1041 "There is no doubt that the danger existed that witnesses depicted things in good faith as their own experience, which in reality had been reported to them by others, or about which they had read only after their liberation in books and magazines, which address the stories of Auschwitz and which are available in great numbers." L: The judges therefore were aware of the danger. R: Correct, but they did not take any consequences. The method applied by those courts to assess witness testimonies ­ the more witnesses testify similar things, the more the claims are considered to be true ­ corresponds to a medieval method, where an incriminating statement could be refuted only by seven or more exonerating statements ­ and vice versa. L: That has nothing to do with modern jurisdiction. R: No. Since we have already touched upon the methods of medieval witch trials, let me elaborate a little more on this. Other parallels between medieval witch trials and the trials on NS crimes are for instance that the alleged perpetrators were and are not allowed to rest in peace even after their deaths. The corpses of those suspected of sorcery were exhumed, sometimes paled and chopped into pieces, and the graves of alleged NS perpetrators were not left alone either. They were exhumed in order to identify them ­ just consider the fuss about the remains of Josef Mengele ­ and the mass media reported repeatedly about the "monstrosity" in certain graves. The crimes under consideration were consid- ered self-evident centuries ago as they are today. L: Witchcraft was considered self-evident? R: The existence of the devil, of sorcery, and of witches with their evil activities was considered just as self-evident during medieval times1060 as are the alleged NS crimes today. All motions to refute or verify this "truth" or to challenge "common knowledge," in particular with the help of forensic evidence, are re- jected in Germany and many other European nations without assessment of the 1060 W. Behringer, Hexen und Hexenprozesse in Deutschland, dtv, Munich 1988, p. 182. 414 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST offered evidence. Such motions to introduce evidence are considered to be mere delaying tactics,1061 and since the mid-1990, even defense lawyers who defend their clients to ambitiously, for example by filing motions to introduce "denying" evidence, are prosecuted in Germany, according to a decision of the German Federal Supreme Court:1062 "He who, as a defense lawyer in a trial about inciting the masses, files a mo- tion to introduce evidence, which denies the genocide against the Jews committed under the rule of National Socialism, invariably commits a crime according to Sec. 130 III Penal Code." R: That German law outlaws "Holocaust denial." This is another parallel to witch trials, during which defense lawyers that did not keep sufficient ideological dis- tance to their clients, could be accused of sorcery or collaboration with a witch. The crimes of which the defendants were accused were considered the most atrocious crimes one could think of ­ today's buzzword is the "uniqueness" of German crimes, centuries ago the term used was "crimen atrox," the atrocious crime. Then and now such crimes, or the denial of them, had to be prosecuted if they came to the knowledge of the authorities. No criminal complaint was nec- essary. Then and now the judicial system is even obligated not to follow the usual procedural rules ­ consider the creating of central "Nazi"-hunter organi- zations, the appointment of politically reliable personnel, the uncritical accep- tance of all sorts of incriminating statements and the refusal of forensic investi- gations. Then and now rude torture was used initially to make the defendants compliant, but then as well as now such methods declined with time and were replaced with more sophisticated psychological interrogation methods and long, grueling incarceration during the investigations. Then and now all details of the alleged crime were written down and defined in official books and were prescribed as the absolute truth (then it was the Hexenhammer (witch hammer), now it is the official history books). Then and now all available media saw to it that the stories of these crimes were distributed all over the know world, so that everybody knew what it was all about. Therefore all witness statements centu- ries ago as well as today were very similar, often down to details, so that third parties had to think that the statements of so many independent witnesses must somehow be true. Then as well as toady, many witnesses testified anonymously. Incriminating witnesses that were obliged to swear a holy oath in court as to the truth of their statement frequently received generous rewards for their services then and now. As a rule, their statements were not then and not today critically examined. Then and now they were not cross-examined by lawyers. Even if they were caught committing perjury, they usually were not held responsible for it, either 1061 The German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) rubberstamped this procedure as perfectly legal, ref. 1 StR 193/93. 1062 Sigmund P. Martin, "Volksverhetzung ­ Leugnen des Holocaust durch Verteidigerhandeln," Juristische Schulung, 11/2002, pp. 1127f., in a case against defense lawyer Jürgen Rieger; based on BGH, ref. 5 StR 485/01; cf. Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 2002, p. 2115; Neue Strafrechts-Zeitung, 2002, p. 539; cf. also BGH, ref. 1 StR 502/99, in a case against defense lawyer Ludwig Bock, see Rudi Zornig, "Rechtsanwalt wegen Stellung von Beweisantrag verurteilt," VffG 3(2) (1999), pp. 208f. 415 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST then or now. Neither obviously contradictory or nonsensical, nor even outright impossible statements were considered untrustworthy then and now. However, if witnesses or defendants would deny the deed or their involvement, they were prosecuted and punished even more severely for their stubborn de- nial ­ then and now ­ because they were apparently not willing to confess their evil acts, to show remorse, and to swear to turn away from the diabolical. Then as well as now, every defendant knew that the only way to receive mercy from the court was by confessing, so that even in cases, where torture was not ap- plied, confessions were frequent. In many cases the defendants tried then as well as nowadays to get leniency and even to buy their liberty by cooperating with the court by virtue of incriminating third parties. In former centuries, material evidence on the alleged crimes were hardly ever accepted, and nowadays they are always rejected, and even if it could be shown that the individuals who are said to have been murdered by the defendant were still alive or had died a natural death many years before, the courts then and now often were unimpressed by this. Then and now, defense lawyers were not allowed to challenge the deed as such and had to display the commonly held views about the topic, if they wanted to avoid being persecuted or even prosecuted, as I already mentioned. In former centuries, defense lawyers only rarely got complete access to court documents, and could not talk to their clients privately, as it was during the immediate post-WWII trials. If the defense lawyer, the defendant, or a third party decides to doubt the reality of the alleged crimes as such ­ witchcraft revisionism then, Holocaust revision- ism now ­ then this was considered to be even worse than the crime itself. It was the worst crime of all: "Haeresis est maxima opera maleficorum non cre- dere." ­ "Not to believe in the deeds of the criminals is the worst heresy."1063 L: But these are mere superficialities! R: I beg your pardon? Nullifying all legal norms that we achieved during the enlightenment are only superficialities? The relapse of the justice system into dark medieval times is only superficial? The situation of the defendants in such trials was therefore almost hopeless, and the tactics applied by the defense was adjusted accordingly. Defense law- yers had to watch out that they would not be identified with their clients who frequently were treated like wild animals by both the media and the other par- ties involved in those trials. The prejudice exposed by prosecution and the me- dia reached its climax when the defendants during the Auschwitz trial became the objects of an exhibition in the Frankfurt Paulskirche, the former Church of St. Paul, which was the first parliament building of modern Germany back in 1848 and which is a German memorial today. This exhibition was organized under the aegis of Fritz Bauer, the Jewish public prosecutor who, together with 1063 Cf. Max Bauer (ed.), Soldan ­ Heppe, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, esp. vol. I, Müller, Munich 1912, esp. starting at p. 311 (reprint: Parkland-Verl., Köln 1999); re. a detailed comparison of both cases see W. Kretschmer (=G. Rudolf), "Der mittelalterliche Hexenprozeß und seine Parallelen in unserer Zeit," DGG 41(2)(1993) pp. 25-28 (www.vho.org/D/DGG/Kretschmer41_2.html.html). 416 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the communist Hermann Langbein of the Auschwitz committee, was the main organizer of this trial. This exhibition depicted the defendants, including their portraits, as perpetrators already before the verdict had been handed down! What can happen to a defense lawyer during such trials who is too critical was experienced by Mannheim attorney Ludwig Bock. In preparation for the Ma- jdanek trial, Bock dared to visit the witnesses listed by the prosecution and in- terrogated them himself prior to the trial. During the trial he then juxtaposed his own records of these statements to the statements the same witnesses made in front of the court. That, which had been full of inconsistencies and contradic- tion during his pre-trial interrogations, had suddenly become streamlined and cleansed from the most obvious incredibilities.1064 The media attacked Bock massively for this, and it was attempted to revoke Bock's license, though fi- nally without success. The two countries delivering the most witnesses, though, Israel and Poland, barred Bock for all future to re-enter their territories.1065 The courageous defense of Ivan Demjanjuk resulted in his first defense lawyer fal- ling ­ or having been made to fall ­ from a balcony to his death, whereas Dem- janjuk's second lawyer was disfigured by someone pouring acid into his face.209 It is therefore not surprising that most defense lawyers are not very ea- ger to defend such clients effectively, if at all. As a matter of fact, some defense lawyers proved to be additional prosecutors rather then defense lawyers, just as it was often the case during witch trials. The attitude of public prosecutors and judges toward incriminating witness testimonies can be summarized as follows: ­ Witness statements are considered particularly reliable, if they are inaccurate and contradictory, because this must be expected after so many years, espe- cially if considering that the horrible events have affected the memory. ­ Yet very precise witness statements are trustworthy as well, because the ter- rible events could have sharpened the senses and burned the witnesses' im- pressions into their memory. L: But these two points contradict each other and do not make sense. R: Quite right, but it allows that every bit of nonsense told by a witness will be taken at face value, and that is apparently the purpose of this approach. And as I already mentioned: normal evidentiary rules do not apply in those cases. But let me continue: ­ Experts had concluded repeatedly that, on the whole, the credibility of wit- ness statements in such trials is intact even after 30 years and more, at least where the core of the testimony was concerned. All future motions to exam- ine the credibility should therefore be rejected. L: But that is in crass contradiction to the research results of Prof. Loftus and others, as you presented them in this book. 1064 Deutscher Rechtsschutzkreis, op. cit. (note 1038), pp. 15f. 1065 Ibid., pp. 15f., as well as H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 1036), p. 89; H. Grabitz, op. cit. (note 900), p. 15. 417 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Again quite right. It is a riddle to me how anyone can claim that our memories are still reliable 30 years and more after an alleged event. This proves once more that normal rules simply do not apply in these cases. But let me carry on: ­ The basic intention of incriminating witnesses is to tell the truth, because af- ter all, so a public prosecutor, they appeared in court "in order to bring the truth to light ­ why else would they have voluntarily come from abroad."1066 L: A prosecutor said that? R: Yes indeed, surely the height of naïveté. And consider what else German prosecutors said about these trials: ­ the horror vividly described by the witnesses paralyzed judges, public prose- cutors, and the defense in a way that no critical analysis of what the witnesses reported ever occurred; ­ stunned horror and restrained compassion with the victims was considered necessary in order to be able to understand the suffering of the victims; ­ if critical questions were posed after all in isolated cases by defense lawyers, they were usually rejected by the court, since it was considered impermissi- ble to imply that the victims do not tell the truth; ­ even if statements turned out to be wrong, the victims of yesteryear may not be prosecuted today. It is therefore not surprising that even during trials in Germany after the war both professional and vengeful witnesses repeatedly made false testimonies. German defense lawyer Laternser reports about the Auschwitz trial which is basically true for all trial of NS crimes: foreign witnesses traveled to Germany shortly before making their statement and returned back immediately after that, so that they could not even theoretically be held responsible for making poten- tially false statements. Neither judges nor prosecutors made any attempt to ver- ify the statements of incriminating witnesses. Any attempt to that effect by the defense was forestalled at the outset. What makes matters worse is that in German criminal proceedings no verbatim transcripts are taken, meaning that the court does not record witness testimo- nies at all, neither verbally nor even as a summary. L: So any judge can write into the verdict whatever he wants. R: Right. And it is almost impossible for the defense to keep track of all the state- ments made by sometimes hundreds of witnesses during those mamoth trials. The biggest scandal of these trials was exposed by the defense during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, but it was covered up both by the judges as well as by the court of appeals: When criminal investigations started in Germany in 1958, the Polish Ausch- witz museum started to write the official history of the camp with the assis- tance of Langbein's crypto-communist Auschwitz committee, which at that time had its headquarters in Krakow (Poland). This history was published in the German language periodical of the Auschwitz state museum (Hefte von Auschwitz). Considering that Poland showed genocidal hostility toward any- thing German in those immediate post-war years, one would have expected 418 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST them to either publish such material in Polish or in the new lingua franca Eng- lish. Hence, already the choice of the German language for this periodical indi- cates who the real target was. A revised version of this history was later also published in book form ­ again in German ­ under the title Kalendarium der Ereignisse des Konzentrationslagers Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939 ­ 1945.510 L: But there is nothing scandalous about writing a chronological history of the camp. R: You would be right, if historical accuracy would have been the guideline. Dur- ing the Frankfurt trials, however, it turned out that the witnesses which had traveled to Germany from countries of the eastern Communist Block, a) had all been interrogated for their political trustworthiness by communist se- cret services, government, and judicial agencies prior to their journey, b) that the testimonies of these witnesses had been massively influenced during those interrogations, and c) that those witnesses were accompanied at every step during their stay in Germany by officials of communist secret services and government agen- cies, even inside the court room, in order to make sure that no one would de- viate from the official party line.1067 L: So the official history of the camp was written first, and then the witness state- ments were brought in line with this desired image. R: One has to assume that the activities of the Auschwitz museum to compile an Auschwitz chronology had no other purpose than to adjust the witness state- ments intended to be presented in Frankfurt according to the historical image ordered by Moscow or Warsaw. They wanted to ensure that no witness would have funny ideas, like to say anything nice about the evil Germans. Especially Poland had a vested interest in depicting Auschwitz as a living hell, because this alleged German crime of the millennium is Poland's moral justification for the expulsion and mass murder of the Germans from east Germany and the an- nexation of one fifth of the entire German territory. Hence, what happened dur- ing those years was not only an attempt by the communist Eastern Block to morally undermine West Germany, but also an attempt by the nations involved in this ethnic cleansing to secure their spoils of World War II. This scandal of drilling witnesses by communist government agencies was even admitted by German mainstream journalist Bernd Naumann, who ob- served the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial for Germany's most reputable daily news- paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Naumann called this modus operandi of the Eastern Block nations "inquisition."1068 We had to wait until the year 2004 to get an inkling of what the methods ap- plied by those communist authorities were to get "their" witnesses to testify, and why exactly they did not trust those witnesses. In 1962, during the prepara- tion phase of the Auschwitz trial, the communist authorities of Czechoslovakia 1066 H. Grabitz, op. cit. (note 900), p. 13. 1067 H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 891), pp. 37, 99ff., 158ff., 171ff.; H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 1042), p. 29, describes the manipulation of Soviet witnesses by the KGB. 1068 B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 943), pp. 438f. 419 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST sentenced Ladislav Niznansky to death for allegedly having murdered 164 peo- ple in Slovakia during WWII. But since Niznansky had fled to West Germany after the war, he could not be executed. In 2001, however, the German authori- ties reopened the case and started to prosecute Niznansky for this alleged crime. And here is what happened, according to the German mainstream news magazine Focus:1069 "One of the witnesses involved in the 1962 case stated that he was threat- ened by an investigator `with a pistol.' A second witness testified that he had incriminated Niznansky `under psychological and physical duress.' Jan Holbus, another witness for the prosecution back in 1962, declared during his interrogation in 2001 that he was threatened that he `will leave the room with his feet first,' if he does not testify as the prosecution expects him to." R: Keep in mind that at the same time in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other com- munist countries witnesses were being prepared for their testimonies in Frank- furt by the very same authorities! L: But there is no proof that this happened there, too. After all, the communist authorities might only have been afraid that all their witnesses flee their coun- try and ask for political asylum in western countries. R: You are right, so far we do not have any direct proof, but learning about such methods should make us think twice. Hermann Langbein, however, the architect of this big time fraud, rejoiced that in spite of the discovery of this large-scale witness manipulation the German courts still did not question the credibility of these witnesses.1070 L: Does that mean that the discovery of this manipulation had no influence on the courts decision? R: That is indeed so. When the German Federal Supreme Court rejected the mo- tion of several defense lawyers to reopen the case, it argued that there was no reason to overturn the verdict, even when assuming that these manipulations did take place.1071 This decision is one in a long tradition of German court rul- ings not to accept any appeal in cases where alleged NS crimes had been tried and where the defendants had been sentenced. How different, in comparison, was the courts' treatment of witnesses for the defense! Anyone who knew nothing of the alleged crime was considered a worthless witness, since he had either been in the wrong place at the wrong time or because he simply had an unreliable memory. The case of Gottfried Weise, who had served as a guard in the Auschwitz camp, is pretty well docu- mented in this regard. Weise succeeded to present many more witnesses for his defense than the prosecution could come up with to incriminate him. But all witnesses who testified for Weise's defense were either not summoned, or their testimony were ­ contrary to their wording ­ reinterpreted by the court as in- criminating or dismissed as irrelevant, because only incriminating statements, 1069 Focus, Feb. 9, 2004. 1070 H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 1034), vol. 2, p. 864. 1071 BGH, penal section, ref. StR 280/67. 420 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST so the court argued, could help to clarify the crime.1072 German defense lawyer Jürgen Rieger reports that another court scornfully dismissed two defense wit- nesses with the comment that it was a mystery why these witnesses would lie.1073 German-Jewish author Josef Ginsburg, who had testified on behalf of the defense in several cases, reports that he was regularly threatened and even physically assaulted.1074 Former concentration camp inmate Paul Rassinier, the father of revisionism as described at the beginning of this book, intended to tes- tify for the defense during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, where he wanted to report about the general conditions in German war-time camps. But the Ger- man authorities refused to grant him entry to Germany, so he was unable to tes- tify in Frankfurt. Defense witnesses who were not confined to concentration camps and ghettos at the time in question are on principle treated with distrust by the courts. If they cannot remember the atrocities alleged by witnesses for the prosecution or if they should even dispute them (which is generally the case), they are de- clared unreliable and labeled "repulsive" and "disgusting." They are therefore either not sworn in at all or even subject to the suspicion of committing per- jury.1075 Lichtenstein reports a case where such "ignorant" witnesses were charged en masse with lying and perjury and where threats of arrest, and actual arrests, were repeatedly made.1076 He quotes the judge's response to one wit- ness who avowed that he was telling the plain and simple truth:1077 "You will be punished for this truth, I promise you." R: In the Auschwitz Trial, witness Bernhard Walter, whose testimony was not as the prosecution and the court wanted it to be, was placed under arrest until he had revised his statements.1078 It is clear that such actions by the court had to intimidated witnesses. German defense witnesses of the "perpetrator side," that is, persons somehow involved in Third Reich political or military operations, who were willing to testify for Adolf Eichmann in the Jerusalem trial, were threatened with imme- diate arrest upon arrival in Israel, so that they stayed away from the proceed- ings altogether.1079 This is so because in Israel any former member of the SS or any similar organization can expect to be indicted and tried in front of a show trial. The dilemma of the German witnesses who had been "outside the camps or ghetto fences" is demonstrated by former chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Heinz Galinski, who demanded that all members of the con- 1072 R. Gerhard (ed.), op. cit (note 1038), pp. 33, 40, 43-47, 52f., 60, 73. 1073 Deutscher Rechtsschutzkreis (ed.), op. cit (note 1038), p. 17; similar assessment of exoneration wit- nesses during the Majdanek trial, H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 1036), pp. 50, 63, 74. 1074 J.G. Burg, Zionnazi Zensur in der BRD, Ederer, Munich 1979, p. 54 (Majdanek trial; www.vho.org/D/zz). 1075 H. Grabitz, op. cit. (note 900), pp. 40f., 46, 48. 1076 H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 1042), pp. 63ff. 1077 Ibid., p. 80. 1078 H. Laternser, op. cit. (note 891), pp. 34ff., 57f., 414ff.; B. Naumann, op. cit. (note 943), pp. 272, 281, 299f. 1079 R. Servatius, op. cit. (note 19), p. 64. 421 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST centration camp guard staffs should be summarily punished for having been members of a terrorist organization,1080 which Adalbert Rückerl, the head of the ZStL, Germany's "Nazi hunters," declared as desirable, but "unfortunately" (!) impossible to implement. Nevertheless he and many others concluded that any- one from the Third Reich who had any contact whatsoever with the alleged events always had one foot in prison, since the witnesses who are frequently motivated by hatred often regard any such person as a criminal merely because of the position he held at that time. Langbein devotes an entire chapter to the opinion, expressed by many inmates, that all SS men were devils incarnate,1081 and he even admits that each and every Holocaust survivor is a perpetual ac- cuser of all Germans.1082 It is thus easy to understand that only a very few de- fense witnesses from the ranks of the SS, SD, Wehrmacht, and German police have the stomach for giving unreserved, candid testimony, since any witness for the prosecution can fashion a noose out of it for them with their consider- able talent for coming up with all sorts of incriminations. And if defense witnesses should get carried away and presume to claim that they know nothing of gas chambers, and perhaps even dare to dispute their ex- istence, then the least that will happen to them is that they are declared unreli- able. Even the judge himself may become abusive. But listen to how the judges change their tune in those exceptional cases where a former SS man "con- fesses":1083 "A valuable witness, one of the few who confirm at least some of what eve- ryone knows anyhow." L: But if everyone knows everything already anyhow, why bother to get any tes- timonies at all? R: That is exactly the point: The crime itself was cast in stone from the outset. The only purpose of these trials was to distribute the guilt and to mete out a certain punishment. Under these circumstances, the situation of the defendants was basically hope- less. They were the target of the unbridled hatred and malice of the witnesses for the prosecution as well as of the media. It borders on the miraculous that, in light of the conditions outlined, by far the majority of the defendants did in fact dispute any participation in the alleged crimes and tried to incriminate third parties instead, like deceased or missing former comrades. On the other hand, they did not as a rule dispute the crimes per se; in view of the "common knowledge" of these matters, any such attempt would only have served to di- minish their credibility in the eyes of the court anyway. Statements made by the defendants in their own defense were interpreted by the courts and the prosecu- tion as lies intended to serve as cover, which was often the case since many de- fendants tried any and all possible and impossible tricks in order to distance themselves from the place and time of the alleged crime, which of course they 1080 I. Müller-Münch, Die Frauen von Majdanek, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1982, p. 57. 1081 H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, Europaverlag, Vienna 1987, pp. 333ff.; cf. pp. 17f. 1082 Ibid., 547. 1083 H. Lichtenstein, op. cit. (note 1042), p. 56. 422 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST did not always succeed in doing. But these tactics, often doomed to failure, are easy to understand, since the defendants were given no chance to disprove the crime itself. Some of the defendants did not admit even a certain measure of guilt until after they had suffered dramatic heart attacks, nervous breakdowns and hysteric fits. Outrage at the boundless lies of the witnesses was a constant with all the defendants. Even after they had been convicted and sentenced to many years or even a lifetime in prison, most of them continued to "obsti- nately" deny their guilt, which is absolutely unusual otherwise for criminals of this kind. Remorse, repentance, and an awareness of guilt seemed to be alien to them ­ in contrast to "normal" criminals. Even in those few cases where guilt was admitted, a strange dichotomy of perception occurs, where the alleged criminals were not truly penitent and ready to atone from the heart, but contin- ued to seek to place part of the blame elsewhere, to invent justifications for the acts in question, and to complain of injustices done to them. In view of the glaring contradiction between the cruelty of the alleged crime and the decent harmlessness of the defendants, the term about the "banality of evil" has been coined. L: Are there any reports about cases of post-traumatic stress disorders under the alleged perpetrators of the Holocaust? R: No, nothing. I never even came across the topic. Why do you ask? L: Well, considering the unimaginable cruelties these people have either voluntar- ily committed or which they were forced to commit, there are mainly two ways most perpetrators could have dealt with this: either they did not really care about these atrocities or even enjoyed committing them, then they would have been inclined to be just as calloused or cruel in their post-war lives, or many of those forced to commit these crimes against their will and better moral judg- ment suffered from what is called post-traumatic stress disorder, which is, for instance, a common psychological disorder of soldiers who were involved in unusual atrocities like they happened in Vietnam.1084 R: The Holocaust literature agrees that those alleged Holocaust perpetrators all returned to a perfectly normal civil life after the war, as if they had never ex- perienced anything unusually cruel. L:That is almost impossible. Considering that thousands of SS men must have experienced these cruelties described by the witnesses, quite a few of them must have ended up in psychiatric treatment in one way or another, and those calloused enough to have been indifferent to what happened or even perverted enough to have enjoyed theses acts, as is described by many witnesses, would have had similar behavioral patterns after the war. Human monsters do not suddenly get cured just because the war is over. They remain monsters and would probably have committed other atrocious deeds later on, like violent 1084 Cf. David Nutt, Jonathan R.T. Davidson, Joseph Zohar (eds.), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Diag- nosis, Management, and Treatment, M. Dunitz, London 2000. The U.S. Department of Defense, De- partment of Veterans Affairs, even has a National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and two publications: National Center for PTSD Research Quarterly; National Center for PTSD Clinical Quar- terly (http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/publications/index.html). 423 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST crimes against family members or against minorities they still perceived as enemies. R: No, sorry, there is nothing like that. All former SS men behaved like John Doe after the war. L: Isn't there only one solution that would thoroughly explain all these phenom- ena? R: And which would that be? L: That the defendants were innocent. R: For such a claim you would go straight to prison in Germany and other Euro- pean countries. L: This proves once more that this statement is true. R: Following this strict logical approach, even German public prosecutor Helge Grabitz had this idea, but immediately rejects this "seductive" idea as cynically flying in the face of the evidence ­ which he and his colleagues had been hallu- cinating into being with the help of their willing witnesses.1085 L: Grabitz' definition of cynicism is strange. R: Well, yes, regarding our topic many things are upside down. To top all this fanatic persecutorial blindness, the German authorities prohibited all those who had been convicted of NS crimes to become politically active in any way after they had been released from prison, and in order to enforce this, they monitored these released convicts for the rest of their lives ­ an unlawful and no doubt unparalleled act of police-state surveillance. Clearly Germany desired to ensure that these people did not become active as revisionists. L: But isn't it normal that convicted murderers are barred from running for office? R: I wasn't talking about running for office. I was talking about any political ac- tivity. These convicts were not allowed to do anything that the German authori- ties would consider to be political, and be it only to gather in private circles to discuss political or historical issues. I give you an example for the effect of this prohibition. Kurt Franz had been convicted to a life sentence for his alleged in- volvement in the claimed mass murders at the Treblinka camp. In the mid 1990s he was released from prison on parole. Because he had been incarcerated in the prison of my home town, held by the very same authority where at the time of his release my sister worked as a paralegal, I tried to get in touch with him in order to interview him. All my attempts failed, however, because he was afraid that any contact with a revisionist researcher would immediately result in retaliations by the German authorities. L: Did that kind of monitoring have a parallel in the medieval witch trials as well? R: Those trials probably ended in most cases with the death penalty. I doubt that many left the dungeons alive. But I am certain that those who did get away with their mere lives were exposed to many suspicions and intensive observa- tions for the rest of their lives as well. 1085 H. Grabitz, op. cit. (note 900), p. 147. 424 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 4.4. Testimonies in Literature and Media R: One of the greatest scandals in Holocaust literature occurred in 1998 when Bruno Doessekker, alias Binjamin Wilkomirski, penned an "eyewitness ac- count" of his gruesome childhood spent at Auschwitz and Majdanek. He titled his memoirs Fragments,1086 but it turned out to be a completely fictitious story.1087 During the war years Doessekker never left Swiss territory. The scan- dal rests not so much in the fact that here was someone who had lied about the Holocaust ­ this is, after all, nothing new ­ and that the entire Holocaust jet set got fooled by it and heaped upon him honors and prizes for his fictitious work, but rather how the Holocaust establishment refused to admit this fraud for years. After Jewish mainstream journalist Daniel Ganzfried had published his revelations about Doessekker,1088 he received complaints that Wilkomirski's lies should not be exposed in public, because this would pour oil onto the revi- sionist fire. Jewish mainstream author Howard Weiss twisted the matter the other way around:1089 "Presenting a fictional account of the Holocaust as factual only provides ammunition to those who already deny that the horrors of Nazism and the death camps ever even happened. If one account is untrue, the deniers' rea- soning goes, how can we be sure any survivors accounts are true. [...] Per- haps no one was ready to question the authenticity of the [Wilkomirski] ac- count because just about anything concerning the Holocaust becomes sacro- sanct." L: Who is right here? Who assists revisionism more: the one who wants to hush up lies or the one who exposes them? R: Both are right, because revisionism wins in any case. L: Actually we should worry only about truth and not what is useful to revision- ism. R: That is what we should think. But some of the leading lights of the Shoa busi- ness see it differently. Deborah Lipstadt, for example, stated that if Wilkomir- ski's book is a fake, then it "might complicate matters somewhat. But [the book] is still powerful" as a novel.1090 The Jewish author Judith Shulevitz claimed in a prominent Canadian newspaper that she doesn't care if Fragments is true or not:1091 "I cannot help wishing Wilkomirksi-Doesseker [sic] had been more subtle in his efforts at deception, and produced the magnificent fraud world literature deserves." 1086 B. Wilkomirski, Bruchstücke. Aus einer Kindheit 1939-1945, Suhrkamp/Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt 1995; Engl.: Fragments. Memories of a Wartime Childhood, Schocken Books, New York 1996. 1087 Stefan Mächler, Der Fall Wilkomirski, Pendo, Zürich 2000 (Engl.: The Wilkomirski Affair, Schocken Books, New York 2001); Daniel Ganzfried, ...alias Wilkomirski. Die Holocaust-Travestie, Jüdische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin 2002. 1088 Weltwoche no. 35, Aug. 27, 1998, pp. 46f. 1089 Chicago Jewish Star, Oct. 9-29, 1998; this and other quotes taken from Mark Weber, "Holocaust Survivor Memoir Exposed as Fraud," JHR 17(5) (1998), pp. 15f. 1090 Forward, Sept. 18, 1998, p. 1. 1091 Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 18, 1998. 425 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Another anti-fascist liar! Well, at least she is honest! R: Deborah Dwork, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark Univer- sity, Worcester, Massachusetts, accepted that it is a fraud, but showed sympa- thy towards Doessekker. She considered him "to be a deeply scarred man" who had been exploited by his publisher.1092 Israel Gutman, director of the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, also the Mecca of Holocaust research, said it is irrelevant that Doessekker lied:1093 "Wilkomirski has written a story which he has experienced deeply; that is for sure. [...] He is not a fake. He is someone who lives this story very deeply in his soul. The pain is authentic." R: This was no exception, as Lea Balint showed, another employee at the Yad Vashem Museum, who defended Doessekker even after he had already been shown to be a fraudster.1094 The other red thread running through this dispute, beside the anti-revisionist spin, was that defenders of Doessekker claimed his account may have not been factual but that it still evoked a realism, which closely reflected the accounts of those who survived the Holocaust. L: So that is why one side insisted that Doessekker's story remains relevant be- cause it closely resembles other such stories? R: Yes, but even this argument dissolves if we consider that all reports compara- ble with Wilkomirski's are false. Contrary to Howard Weiss' claim that Doessekker was just "one untrue account," it was actually not an isolated case. In a detailed criticism of the insincerity of his religious brethren, Steven L. Ja- cobs reminded them that a similar fraudulent case had been exposed at the be- ginning of 1997 in Australia. Donald Watt produced a comparable legend about his invented imprisonment at Auschwitz.1095 Then a further fraud was revealed in the summer of 1998 when the Jesuit priest Juan Manuel Rodriguez sued the Rumanian Jew Salomón Isacovici, who had immigrated to Ecuador. Isacovici had passed off as his autobiography the novel that Rodriguez had written wherein Rodriguez had used the stories told to him by Isacovici.1096 Next, at the end of October 2004 the lies of the Australian Bernard Brougham, alias Bernard Holstein, were exposed when the publisher, University of West- ern Australia Press, pulled copies of his book Stolen Soul from bookshops after a private investigator was called in to probe the author's background.1097 Brougham had claimed that as a nine-year-old Jew (!) at Auschwitz he was 1092 New York Times, Nov. 3, 1998. 1093 Acc. to Norman Finkelstein, "The Holocaust Industry," Index on Censorship, April 2000, 2/2000, pp. 120f. See also N. Finkelstein, op. cit. (note 370), pp. 55-58. 1094 Cf. note 1090. For more of such contortions cf. Arthur R. Butz, "Historical Past vs. Political Present," JHR 19(6) (2000), pp. 12-25, here pp. 18-21. 1095 Steven L. Jacobs, "Binjamin Wilkomirski (Fragments) and Donald Watt (Stoker): When the Holocaust Story Is a Lie," CCAR Journal, spring 2001 (http://data.ccarnet.org/journal/601sj.html); cf. Serge Thion, "Revisionistisches aus unerwarteter Ecke," VffG 2(1) (1998), p. 38 (to appear in Engl. in TR). 1096 Bill Grimstad, "Augenzeuge oder Romanheld?," VffG 3(2) (1999), pp. 218f. 1097 Bernard Holstein (=Brougham), Stolen Soul: A True Story Of Courage And Survival, University of Western Australia Press, Perth 2004. 426 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST subjected to medical experiments, that he belonged to the resistance, and that he had fled and was caught and tortured. His adopted family reported to his publisher that Brougham was neither born in Germany nor was he a Jew. The detective discovered that Brougham was born in Australia and baptized a Ro- man Catholic in 1942.1098 The reaction to such revelations is typical:1099 "Publisher Judy Shorrock [...] was still `shocked' by the revelations and fears the incident may incite Holocaust denial. `I have spent three years working on this book. I am devastated... that it could damage the credibility of the Holocaust ­ that just makes me feel sick,' she said." R: Finally, there is the case of Enric Marco, the former president of the Spanish association of former inmates of the Mauthausen camp Amical de Mauthausen. Since the late 1970s he had claimed to have been incarcerated in the German camps of Mauthausen and Flossenbürg during the war. During the 60th anniver- sary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 2005, he addressed the Spanish parliament: "When we arrived in the concentration camps [...] they stripped us, their dogs bit us, their spotlights dazzled us. They put the men on one side and the women and children on the other; the women formed a circle and defended their children with their bodies." R: But these were all lies, as Spanish mainstream historian Benito Bermejo found out in early 2005. During the war, Marco actually volunteered in 1941 to work in a German navy dockyard, from where he returned to Spain in 1943. He never saw any German camp form the inside.1100 Norman Finkelstein clearly illuminated the blind loyalty aspect of Holocaust liars by recalling Elie Wiesel's stubborn loyalty towards Holocaust impostor Jerzy Kosinski,1101 long after Polish journalist Johanna Siedlecka exposed Kos- inski's basic Holocaust text of 1965, The Painted Bird,1102 as a fabrication.1103 Alfred Kazin's reproach in the Chicago Tribune is fitting when he claims that Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, and Jerzy Kosinski "tried making a fortune off the Holocaust and inventing atrocities."1104 L: Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi have also been exposed as fabricators? R: They have been accused of being dishonest. Elie Wiesel, probably the most famous of all Auschwitz survivors, was repeatedly and massively attacked by his own Holocaust allies, among others by Norman Finkelstein1105 as well as by 1098 Catherine Madden, Jim Kelly, "Holocaust man's claims queried," The Sunday Times (Perth), Oct. 31, 2004. 1099 Melissa Singer, "Holocaust `memoir' withdrawn," The Australian Jewish News, Nov. 6, 2004; cf. M. Singer, "Literary hoaxes and the Holocaust," ibid., Nov. 19, 2004 (www.ajn.com.au/pages/archives/feature/feature-02m.html). 1100 BBC News, May 12, 2005 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4539461.stm). Tageszeitung, May 17, 2005, p. 11 (taz.de/pt/2005/05/17/a0110.nf/text). 1101 N. Finkelstein, op. cit. (note 370), p. 56. 1102 Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1965. 1103 "Kosinski's War," The New Yorker, Oct. 10, 1994, pp. 46f., cf. www.ukar.org/kosins.html. 1104 Chicago Tribune, Dec. 31, 1995, reviews, pp. 1f. 1105 N. Finkelstein, op. cit. (note 370), pp. 41-78. 427 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Pierre Vidal-Naquet, the French Original German Forgery arch-rival of revisionist A. In Auschwitz A. In Auschwitz scholar Dr. Robert Fau- S. 57: au crématoire S. 53: ins Vernichtungslager risson. Vidal-Naquet S. 57: au crématoire S. 53: in die Gaskammer claimed:1106 S. 58: les fours crématoires S. 54: die Gaskammern "For instance, they S. 61: aux crématoires S. 57: in den Gaskammern S. 62: le four crématoire S. 57: in die Gaskammer have Rabbi Kahane, S. 67: Au crématoire S. 62: in die Gaskammer this extremist Jew, S. 67: le crématoire S. 62: Gaskammer who is less dangerous S. 84: exterminés S. 76: vergast S.101: les fours crématoires S. 90: in den Gaskammern than a man like Elie S.108: six crématoires S. 95: sechs Gaskammern Wiesel, who tells all S.109: au crématoire S. 95: in den Gaskammern sorts of things... One S.112: le crématoire S. 98: die Gaskammer only has to read a S.129: au crématoire S.113: in die Gaskammer few descriptions in B. In Buchenwald B. In Buchenwald `Night' in order to S.163: du four crématoire S.140: der Gaskammer know that some of his S.174: au crématoire S.150: in die Gaskammer Tab. 25: The forgery in the German translation depictions are not (1962) of Elie Wiesel's famous book Night from the true and that at the French original (1958): in fifteen cases the word GAS end he turned into a appears where the French original has no such word.1107 Shoah peddler. And so he as well damages the historical truth, and this to a tremendous extent." R: Later I shall return to some contextual aspects of Wiesel's biography La Nuit (Night), but now only mention an extraordinary aspect: In the original French version of his book he does not mention the gas chambers at Auschwitz. His view was that Jews were killed at Auschwitz by pushing them alive into burn- ing pits. I will get back to that later. Only in the German version was this "deficiency" rectified by substituting the words "cremation oven" with "Gaskammer" (gas chamber). This was done so mechanically that even the concentration camp Buchenwald had its crematory turned into a gas chamber, though it had never before been asserted that there was a gas chamber at Buchenwald.1108 L: But you cannot blame this erroneous translation on Wiesel. R: That depends if he endorsed such. The fact is that such forgeries do occur in the media. You just have to be on constant guard. A further literary hoax was exposed at the end of 1991 in a French magazine for former prisoners, where a report by Henry Bily, a former member of the 1106 Interview with Michel Folco, Zéro, April 1987, p. 57. 1107 Compiled by Jürgen Graf, first published in: R. Faurisson, "Die Zeugen der Gaskammern von Ausch- witz," in: E. Gauss (ed.), op. cit. (note 256), pp. 99-110, here p. 110; Engl.: G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), p. 144. The properly translated words of the Engl. edition have been omitted here for space reasons (Night, Hill and Wang, New York 1960). 1108 French: La Nuit, éditions de minuit, Paris 1958; German: Die Nacht zu begraben, Elisha, Ullstein, Fankfurt/Main-Berlin 1962. 428 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST crematory stokers at Auschwitz, was exposed as a crude plagiarized version of Miklos Nyiszli's book, because Bily:1109 "without any references took whole passages from Dr. Myklos Nyiszli's book Médecin à Auschwitz, especially chapter 7 and 28 [...]. Unfortunately the errors made by Dr. Nyiszli were also copied: it concerns the detailed de- scription of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando's activities to which Henry Bily is said to have belonged. [...] This analysis shows that the Henry Bily text cannot in any way be consid- ered as an original personal eyewitness report." L: What was the Sonderkommando's activity? R: This term is today used for prisoners who are said to have dragged the corpses out of the gas chambers, cut their hair, pulled their gold teeth, and shoved them into the ovens or onto pyres.1110 Original Auschwitz camp documents prove, however, that the term "Sonderkommando" (special unit) was never used for the prisoners working in the crematories, but instead for numerous other pris- oner units working on a great variety of tasks that had nothing to do with mur- der.1111 L: So we are dealing here with just another case of invented "code language." R: Correct. If already these cross-grained Holocaust believers have to admit that cheating and lying is going rampant, what would we find if we critically and without prejudice look behind the scene? Let me be a little more critical here and let's look at these star witnesses of the media, such as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Miklos Nyiszli, and Filip Müller. Miklos Nyiszli's book Médecin à Auschwitz,1112 which even the Holocaust believers claim is deficient (see above), was so contradictory to the statements he gave during his interrogation at Nuremberg that the prosecution declined to call on him as a witness. Nyiszli could not confirm anything that he had so loudly proclaimed in his publication. Meanwhile, the crude deceptive nature of his report has been exposed in detail.1113 Likewise Filip Müller's "Novel,"1114 wherein he details his activities as a member of the Birkenau Sonderkommando,181 under detailed scrutiny turns out to be plagiarized as well.1115 Imre Kertész's Roman eines Schicksallosen1116 is likewise plagiarized from Elie Wiesel's works, and ­ even though it is difficult to believe ­ from Binjamin Wilkomirski.1117 1109 Le Déporté pour la liberté, December 1991 ­ January 1992; Bily's story had been printed in the Octo- ber ­ November 1991 issue of this journal under the title "Mon histoire extraordinaire." 1110 See e.g. D. Czech, "The Auschwitz Prisoners' Administration," in: I. Gutman, M. Berenbaum (eds.), op. cit. (note 250), p. 371. 1111 See. C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 578), pp. 101-103. 1112 Engl. see note 376. 1113 W. Maser, op. cit. (note 100), pp. 348f., fn. 145; cf. Paul Rassinier, Le Véritable Procés Eichmann ou les Vainquers incorrigibles, Les Sept Couleurs, Paris 1962, appendix V; C. Mattogno, "Medico ad Auchwitz": Anatomia di un falso, Edizioni La Sfinge, Parma 1988. 1114 So J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 181. 1115 C. Mattogno, Auschwitz: un caso di plagio. Edizioni La Sfinge, Parma 1986; Engl.: "Auschwitz: A Case of Plagiarism," JHR, 10(1) (1990), pp. 5-24. 1116 Rowohlt, Berlin, 4th ed., 2001. 1117 Markus Springer, "The New Face of the `Holocaust,'" TR 2(3) (2004), pp. 297-300. 429 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Didn't Kertész receive the literature Nobel Prize for his book in 2002? R: Quite right. In this field it appears that lying and fame sometimes are identical. Now to Primo Levi, who after Elie Wiesel is the next most famous Auschwitz survivor. In his book he writes that only after the war he had learned there were gassings at Auschwitz,1118 and therefore only alludes to them in his texts. After 1976, however, in an appendix the gas chambers appear so often and in such a style that it deceitfully suggests Levi had first hand experience of them. The suspicion arises that on account of the rising popularity of the Holocaust indus- try in the 1970s Levi's work was augmented in order to satisfy the increasing demand for gas chamber horror stories.1119 What this appendix in Levi's book about the homicidal gas chambers is worth is made clear by the left-wing French daily newspaper Libération soon after Levi's suicide on April 11, 1987. The paper reported that Levi owed it to his being a Jew that he was not shot when at the end of 1943 he was arrested as a partisan:1120 "While active as a partisan, the Fascists had taken him prisoner ­ he still had a pistol on his body ­ and he identified himself as a Jew so as not to be shot on the spot. And he was handed over to the Germans as a Jew. The Germans sent him to Auschwitz [...]." L: According to this partisans were shot on the spot? R: Not necessarily, but the execution of partisans, that is, illegal combatants is and was generally accepted martial law.817 But Levi obviously hoped that he would receive a favorable special treatment if he revealed to his captors that he was a Jew, and he was obviously correct, because he survived the war. L: If we are talking about literary hoaxes, then doesn't Anne Frank's Diary de- serve a mention?1121 R: I would rather not dicuss this question here. L: But it has been shown to be a forgery. R: It is not that simple. The German Federal Bureau of Investigation (BKA) stated in an expert report that in the original manuscript a few corrections had been made with a ballpoint pen. Since ballpoint pens are a post-WWII invention, it is clear that such additions were not made by Anne Frank, because Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen camp shortly before war's end.1122 According to Professor Faurisson, it was Anne Frank's father Otto Frank who edited her diary after the war and created what it is today.1123 1118 Si c'est un homme, Juillard, Paris 1993, p. 19. The first Italian edition appeared in 1947 under the title Se questo è un uomo, Einaudi, Torino 1966 (Engl.: If this is a Man, Penguin, Harmondsworth/New York 1979). 1119 Cf. R. Faurisson, op. cit. (note 1107) as well as Pierre Marais, En lisant de près les ècrivains chantres de la Shoah ­ Primo Levi, Georges Wellers, Jean-Claude Pressac La Vielle Taupe, Paris 1991. 1120 Ferdinand Camon, "Chimie/Levi, la mort," Libération, April 13, 1987, p. 29. 1121 Niederländisches Staatliches Institut für Kriegsdokumentation (ed.), Die Tagebücher der Anne Frank, Fischer Frankfurt am Main 1988. 1122 Cf. www.annefrank.org/content.asp?PID=426&LID=3. 1123 R. Faurisson, "Is the Diary of Anne Frank Genuine?," JHR, 3(2) (1982), pp. 147-209. As book with the same title, IHR, Torrance 1985. 430 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Also, Anne Frank did write herself that she intended to publish her writings as a novel. Hence, even those pieces that she herself wrote are to be understood as a novel, naturally based on her experiences, but not as a truthful diary. L: And where is the literary hoax in this? R: It is dishonest to claim something is true if it is merely a novel. My objection to touching this topic lies in the fact that the framework of Anne Frank's story ­ even if it is a novel edited by her father ­ contains nothing profoundly false. Anne reports how she with her family and other Jews hid in Amsterdam during the war so as to escape deportation by the German occupying forces. She was finally discovered and deported to Auschwitz. I cannot see anything wrong in this general story, because countless Jews suffered a similar fate. The fact that Anne Frank was not gassed at Auschwitz as a 15-year-old girl, but was regu- larly registered, that towards war's end she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen and died there of typhus, like many thousands of other Jews, does not contra- dict the revisionist thesis. On the contrary, the Anne Frank story supports it. Insisting that The Diary of Anne Frank is not quite a proper diary and claiming it is a "forgery" leaves a bad taste, as if the revisionists wish to deny Anne Frank her tragic fate. This is the reason why I hesitate to touch this topic. The only aspect illuminated by the Anne Frank "case" is the extent of the Holocaust industry, which developed around this single fate of World War II. L: There is no business like Shoah business. R: Certainly not in the field of history. Finally I may mention the film as psychologically the most influential medium. Although no war-time films depicting camp life exist, I repeatedly came across individuals who are absolutely convinced that such documentary material ex- ists. The reason for this belief is the suggestive power of films made after the war, conveying the impression these same scenes are factual and created during the war. One of the earliest such films was made soon after the war by the Allies and presented to the German public under the title "Todesmühlen" (deathmills). The film allegedly depicts the horrors of the concentration camps and was de- signed to help "re-educate" the German people. Not all viewers accepted these films without some criticism, and protests ensued that even led to performances being disrupted. Rising objections of a few viewers was in part violently put down by those who felt guilty about what they were observing on the screen.1124 According to reports of that time criticism arose because to authen- tic film material of German concentration camps there was added scenes of piles of bodies from bombed German cities and of Germans interned in allied camps under the provisions of automatic arrest ­ all passed off as material from concentration camps.1125 Mainstream historian Chamberlin reports on the diffi- 1124 B.S. Chamberlin, "Todesmühlen. Ein Versuch zur Massen-'Umerziehung' im besetzten Deutschland 1945-1946," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 29 (1981) pp. 420-436, here p. 432. 1125 The Unabhängigen Nachrichten, no. 11 (1986), p. 11, reported that the Allies used German photos showing victims of the Allied air raid against Dresden in the movie Todesmühlen as alleged prove of mass murder in the concentration camps. 431 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST culty the occupying forces had in compiling authentic film material,1126 which indicates that such an augmentation may indeed have "solved" that problem. L: Such allegations of fabrications should be well documented. R: Correct. Unfortunately, to my knowledge such allegations have never been documented. L: I know of a friend who recognized himself in this film about alleged concentra- tion camp inmates ­ but he was a POW of the Americans. R: I am inclined to believe you, but historical research can do little with hearsay evidence. L: Are you accusing me of lying? R: Not at all. I must, however, view all witness evidence with the same critical standards. I cannot accept unfounded statements of hearsay as "gossip," if it contradicts my thesis, and uncritically accept it if it supports my thesis. L: That is insulting to say that my friend is just a talker. R: Just relax, please! What we do need is at least a statutory declaration of the witnesses, which explains in which film and scene they recognized themselves, and where this picture was actually made. Unfortunately anecdotes of veterans are useless! L: Well, that is enough for me. I don't have to take these insults. R: Please, I apologize if I have been insensitive, but I hope you now understand why Holocaust survivors get angry because we do not blindly accept what they have to say. I would gladly receive declarations to this topic that can be proven, but have not received anything to date. Let us now get back to the topic of the media. I have already reported on Lanzmann's documentary film Shoah (see p. 371). The most important aspect of all these film and sound interviews with Holocaust survivors is that they are conducted quite uncritically. No critical questions are asked and no further ex- planations demanded. In some respect these media interviews are more useless than the already worthless statements made by witnesses without cross- examination before a court. I already mentioned that in the mid-1990s several projects were launched to record as many witness statements of Holocaust survivors as possible, and that during these projects the interviews are conducted in a way to uncritically re- cord whatever those witnesses wish to tell or what they are animated to talk about, without having their credibility questioned (see p. 357). L: Such statements are therefore quite useless. R: No, not completely worthless. Imagine if today we had detailed statements of thousands of witnesses about witchcraft. Would that be worthless? Not at all. On the one hand such statements would enable you to assess the memory gleichschaltung (synchronization) and mass hysteria, and on the other hand it would be possible to glean from these statements some truths about the politi- cal and social situations prevailing at that time, besides obtaining some histori- cal facts that lie hidden therein. And so it is with these new statements of Holo- 1126 B.S. Chamberlin, op. cit. (note 1124), pp. 425f. 432 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST caust survivors. It is a treasure-trove of information that only through fu- ture critical research will be evalu- ated. Quite another category of films and witness documentation to that of Shoah are Holocaust and Schind- ler's List. No one asserts that these Ill. 129: Scene from "Schindler's List." films accurately reflect the official historical view. But historians welcome them because they fulfill a "public educative need."1127 L: But that is just another term for brainwashing. R: I would say it is a mild but permanently effective form of "social engineering." L: Nice to know that our historians desire us to become brainwashed through such manipulated films. R: This matter of manipulation needs to be proven, something I shall attempt to do by looking at Schindler's List. Ill. 129 shows a scene from Schindler's List, wherein Plaszow camp commander Göth randomly shoots into the mass of prisoners from his home balcony. According to air photos made at that time the commander's home is situated at the foot of a rise with the camp itself situated on this rise, Ill. 131.1128 The scene in the film requires an arrangement of camp and commander home as indicated in Ill. 130 in order to make that shooting scene possible. This scene is therefore a total fabrication. The film Schindler's List is loosely based on a novel that is set within an his- torical framework.1129 But even mainstream historians point out that the story line of both book and movie are massively distorted.1130 The movie director openly admits that he deliberately shot his movie in black and white and cre- ated unsteady camera effects so as to suggest it is a documentary of its time.1131 All over the world teachers were obligated to take classes, whole schools, to a screening of the film. In Australia the film was screened on commercial televi- sion without a commercial break ­ a first in television history. Something that is especially perfidious about this film is not noticed by the German audience. Each time when German soldiers or SS-people give orders, 1127 On the impact of Holocaust in Germany and Austria cf. M. Broszat, Vierteljahshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 27 (1979) pp. 285-298; P. Dusek, Zeitgeschichte (Vienna) 6 (1978/79), pp. 266-273; P. Malina, ibid., 7 (1979/80) pp. 169-191; Tilman Ernst, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 31(34) (1981) pp. 3-22; on the impact of Shoah cf. G. Botz, Zeitgeschichte, 14 (1986/87) pp. 259-265; R. Faurisson, op. cit. (note 408). 1128 Acc. to air photos in the U.S. National Archives: DT RL 751, Krakow, May 3, 1944; TuGx 895 A SK, exp. 382f., October 1944; quoted from J.C. Ball, Schindlers Liste ­ bloßgestellt als Lügen und Haß, Samisdat Publishers, Toronto 1994; cf. J.C. Ball, op. cit. (note 303). 1129 T. Keneally, Schindler's Ark, Hodder & Stoughton, London 1982; T. Keneally, Schindler's List, Simon & Schuster, New York 1982: "This book is work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or lo- cales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental." 1130 Cf. David M. Crowe, Oskar Schindler, Westview Press, Philadelphia 2004; Emilie Schindler, Erika Rosenberg, Where Light and Shadow Meet: A Memoir, W. W. Norton, New York 1997. 1131 Film & TV Kameramann, no. 2/1994, pp. 24ff., esp. the statement by chief camera man Janusz Kaminski, p. 27. 433 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Concentration Camp Plaszow Ill. 130: The camp in the movie, built ac- Ill. 131: The camp according to air pho- cording to witness reports. It is sur- tos: It was locate on top of a hill and rounded by a steep hill, so that it cannot could be seen from the surrounding vil- be viewed from outside. Camp inmates lages through a barbed wire fence. Since were shot by camp commander Göth Göth`s house was at the foot of that hill, from the balcony of his house. His house he could not see the camp from there and was located on top of the hill above the thus also could not shoot any inmates inmate huts. from his balcony. Balcony at the front of the house Balcony at the rear of camp com- side of Göth's Hill surrounding Wire mesh fence mander Göth, from house, from which separating guards the camp, pre- which he, accord- he was neither able from inmates venting outsiders ing to the movie, to look into the camp from looking into shot working and Inmates' nor to shoot in- the camp. Wire mesh relaxing inmates. huts. mates. fence Doghouses Inmates' huts. call out, shout, or act violently, they do this in the non-German versions of the film always in German. That is typical of such films. This method subcon- sciously conveys to the rest of the world the feeling that German is a language of gruesome monsters, that is to say: a devilish language. In the German ver- sion this is not noticeable, because the whole film is synchronized in German. With such hidden psychological tricks the peoples of the world are incited against Germans, against their language and culture without the Germans notic- ing that this is happening. L: And then one wonders why no one abroad wants to learn German anymore. R: That is one consequence of it. I would also like to point out that Spielberg omits to inform his audience that the former camp commandant of Plazow (Ammon Göth), together with the former commandants of Buchenwald camp (Erich Koch), the Majdanek camp (Hermann Florstedt), the Warsaw and Herzogenbosch camps were all subjected to internal SS-trials for their actual crimes.1026 Owing to time constraints I cannot mention a number of other his- torical twisted scenes appearing in Spielberg's horror propaganda film. To sum up I can say that many of the witness statements during a number of court cases are rather unreliable, but that the respect in which many individuals hold the courts ­ whether those courts deserve it or not ­ does encourage some of them not to diverge too far from telling the truth. Such inhibitions are, how- ever, lost when witnesses make statements to the media or write their own books. For such individuals lying, fabricating stories, and copying from other sources has become a normal form of behavior. Motives for such behavior are manifold: 434 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The need for self-assertion and vanity, that is to say, the will to be at center stage of an issue are drives that support lying and exaggeration. This is a gen- eral social phenomenon that recently became the subject of scientific studies, researching the origin of modern myths and legends. According to Ranke, tell- ing stories has a high priority for humans, as it serves to process fears and ex- periences as well as for communicating with the environment and for social bonding.1132 The social significance of exaggerations and fantastic fabrications was re- searched by Röhrich.1133 Brednich published a popular collection of myths and legends that tell stories from all corners of the world that are told as believable personal stories but in effect are nothing but lies.1134 The lie is therefore a firm part of our world. Yes, it even has a social function. And if you are honest with yourself, you know how often you have exaggerated real experiences in con- versation with a third person, and sometimes even invented them, that is: you lied. Quite often, of course, material interests like greed and profit are a strong mo- tive behind media and literary lies. In such cases, the social function of the lie becomes anti-social. L: There is no business like Shoah business. R: Revenge and hate may also play a role in our considerations, though less in the media and literature than in court cases where the aim is to punish alleged of- fenders. That many communists and Jews, that is, the main victim groups of National Socialism, were indeed livid with hatred and quite capable of commit- ting genocidal atrocities themselves, was shown by the late American-Jewish journalist John Sack in his book An Eye for an Eye on Jewish revenge against Germans after the war in Poland.1135 The main factor that encourages lies to flourish is the absolute security that lying witnesses will never be found out or at least never prosecuted. Exposing Holocaust liars in the media and literature happens seldom and usually is han- dled gently. The worse thing that can happen to fraudulent media witnesses is that they disappear again into anonymity from which they briefly emerged ­ with a little more money in their pockets. In courts of law, false Holocaust witnesses get off free as well, even if they have lied under oath. Most motions to have witnesses prosecuted for lying are rejected by the courts on the grounds that former persecuted victims shall not again be prosecuted. This, of course, becomes an open-door policy for lies. L: With the exception of convicted fraudster and liar Adolf Rögner (see p. 365f.). R: Yes, right after the war he did take things too far in the eyes of the then still skeptical German authorities. But at the end he did get what he wanted. 1132 Kurt Ranke, Die Welt der einfachen Formen, de Gruyter, Berlin 1978. 1133 Lutz Röhrich, Sage und Märchen, Herder Freiburg 1976; L. Röhrich, in: Günter Eifler (ed.), Angst und Hoffnung, Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz 1984; L. Röhrich, "Die Moral des Unmoralischen," in: Rheinisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 26 (1985/86), pp. 209-219. 1134 Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Die Spinne in der Yuca-Palme, Jumbo, Hamburg 1999. 1135 John Sack, op. cit. (note 360), pp. 100-111. 435 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 4.5. Critique of Testimonies, Part 1: Implausible Statements R: In this chapter we will take a closer look at some Holocaust testimonies, con- centrating on implausible statements. The first part contains a summary of some of the more fantastic Holocaust tales, which will give you a good general idea of the nature of the subject. In the second part we will take a closer look at the testimonies of several frequently quoted witnesses.1136 4.5.1. Collection of Lies R: The following collection of Holocaust absurdities is being constantly expanded as part of our contest to seek out and catalog such absurdities. You can join in the contest and win a prize if you find additional absurdities in official docu- ments, literature, or media reports. The results of this contest appear regularly in the periodicals Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung and The Re- visionist.1137 Some of these assertions have now been rejected by established historians, while others continue to be spread as before. All these assertions consist of similar absurdities and perversions, so everyone has to adopt his own criteria and reasons for what to believe and what to reject. I will offer no more commentary on this. I ask you to consider what the Germans have been forced to unquestioningly accept as "common knowledge" since the end of the war:1138 ­ Fountains of blood gushing from mass graves; this evidence given by promi- nent witnesses such as Elie Wiesel and Adolf Eichmann. In addition, Adal- bert Rückerl, longtime head of the ZStL, has also spread these absurd rumors, as has the Frankfurt Auschwitz Court. ­ Exploding mass graves (a variant of the above); freely invented by A. Eichmann. ­ Acid baths or boiling water baths for the preparation of human skeletons at Auschwitz; alleged by Filip Müller. ­ Injections into prisoners' eyes to change eye color at Auschwitz; alleged by Hermann Langbein. ­ The production of shrunken heads from prisoner corpses; a charge made by the IMT and also alleged by Hermann Langbein. ­ The ladling of boiling human fat from open cremation ditches; reported by R. Höß, H. Tauber, F. Müller, and spread by H. Langbein. ­ An SS man voluntarily jumped into a gas chamber from sympathy with a Jewish mother and child in order to die with them at the last second; a tale which originated with Emmi Bonhoeffer. ­ The production of soap made of human fat and ceremonial burial of such soap; alleged by Simon Wiesenthal and SS Judge Konrad Morgen. 1136 A comprehensive critique of eyewitness testimony relating to alleged mass exterminations at Ausch- witz compiled by J. Graf, op. cit. (note 926). For other camps see, above all, the numerous works by C. Mattogno and J. Graf in the bibliography at the end of this book. 1137 For present conditions and prizes, see online www.corax.org/revisionism/nonsense/nonsense.html. 1138 Source references to this list, if not stated otherwise, are found in M. Köhler, op. cit. (note 977), pp. 128-131. 436 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ Subterranean mass murders in huge tunnels by high voltage; S. Szende's fa- mous story about Belzec, Simon Wiesenthal's similar tale, IMT's allegations concerning Bergen-Belsen. ­ Murders with vacuum chambers, steam, or chlorine gas; a variety of wit- nesses and "reports" about Treblinka. ­ A miracle of German improvisation: Obliteration without a trace of mass graves containing hundreds of thousands of corpses in just a few weeks; alle- gations by countless witnesses and "reports." ­ Mobile gas chambers in Treblinka which dumped their victims directly into cremation pits; alleged by the Polish Resistance and taken seriously by main- stream Holocaust historian Prof. Dr. Peter Longerich. ­ A delayed-action poison gas that allowed victims to march out of the gas chambers and into mass graves; alleged by the Polish Resistance and taken seriously by Holocaust historian P. Longerich. ­ Conveyor belt electrocutions; reported by Pravda after the liberation of Auschwitz on Feb. 2, 1945. ­ Cremation of corpses in blast furnaces; rumor spread by German resistance fighter H. von Moltke during the war and later by Pravda, taken seriously by Peter Longerich. ­ SS bicycle races in the Birkenau gas chamber; described in newspaper Nürn- berger Nachrichten quoting a witness. ­ Disposal of corpses with explosives; one of the confessions made by Rudolf Höß under torture, taken seriously by prosecutors A. Rückerl and Helge Gra- bitz. ­ Clouds of blue smoke after gassings with hydrogen cyanide (hydrogen cya- nide is colorless); reported by SS man Richard Böck. ­ 12-year old boy giving heroic speech to other children just before gassings; alleged by F. Friedman. ­ Stuffing the mouths of victims with concrete in order to make them stop sing- ing patriotic and communistic songs; alleged at IMT. ­ Singing of Polish national anthem and the communist anthem "Internation- ale" by victims in gas chambers; alleged by F. Müller, also in testimony quoted by H. G. Adler, H. Langbein, and E. Lingens-Reiner. ­ Quick-assembly gas chambers for catching and immediately gassing on the spot of escaped Jews; reported by Adolf Eichmann after extensive "treat- ment" by his Israeli tormentors. ­ Execution by drinking hydrogen cyanide (hydrogen cyanide evaporates so quickly that everyone present would be killed); decision by Hannover Dis- trict Court, taken seriously by Heiner Lichtenstein. ­ Muscle tissue cut from the legs of executed prisoners jerked so powerfully that it caused buckets to jerk convulsively; medically and physically impos- sible nonsense spread by F. Müller. ­ Zyklon B gas released in gas chambers at Auschwitz and other places by means of shower heads or steel bottles; reports of commissions at Dachau and Auschwitz as well as Holocaust historian Wolfgang Benz. 437 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ Pumping prisoners full of water until they exploded.1139 ­ Child survived six gassings in nonexistent gas chamber at Bergen-Belsen; re- ported by Moshe Peer in Canadian newspaper. ­ Woman survived three gassings because the Nazis kept running out of gas; witness testimony reported in the same Canadian newspaper, also alleged by British politician Michael Howard.1140 ­ Fairy tale about a bear and an eagle kept in a cage that devoured a Jew a day; testimony about Buchenwald. ­ SS operation in a crematory made sausage from human flesh; "RIW" mean- ing "Reine Juden-Wurst" (Pure Jewish Sausage); alleged by David Olère, Auschwitz fantasy painter. ­ Lampshades, book bindings, gloves, saddles, riding breeches, house shoes, ladies' purses made of human skin; alleged by IMT and repeated during trial of Ilse Koch. ­ Pornography projected on screens made of human skin; likewise alleged dur- ing IMT. ­ Mummified human thumbs used by Ilse Koch as light switches; witness tes- timony published in New York Times. ­ SS father tosses babies in the air and shoots them like clay pigeons while his 9 year old daughter applauds and yells "Do it again Papa!"; alleged at IMT. ­ Hitler Youth used Jewish children for target practice; alleged at IMT. ­ Railroad cars disappear on ramp at underground crematory at Auschwitz; al- leged by SS Judge Konrad Morgen, quoted by Danuta Czech, the Polish his- torian at Auschwitz. ­ Prisoners were compelled to lick steps clean and remove garbage with their lips; alleged at IMT. ­ Woman at Auschwitz artificially inseminated and then gassed; alleged at IMT. ­ Torture of prisoners with special mass produced "torture kit" manufactured by Krupp; alleged at IMT. ­ Torture of prisoners by shooting them with wooden bullets in order to make them talk, according to World Jewish Congress. ­ Flogging of prisoners by means of special flogging machine; alleged at IMT. ­ Murdering prisoners with poisoned lemonade; alleged at IMT. ­ Mass murder by felling trees: victims compelled to climb trees which were then cut down; alleged at IMT by Eugon Kogon. ­ Boys murdered by forcing them to eat sand; alleged by Rudolf Reder, taken seriously by Holocaust historian Martin Gilbert. ­ Gassings of Soviet prisoners of war in a stone quarry; alleged at IMT. ­ Prisoners first flogged to death, then autopsied to determine cause of death; alleged at IMT. ­ Crushing skulls by means of pedal driven skull crushing machine; alleged at IMT. 1139 Jeff Lyon, "Memories of Nazi death camps haunt couple," Chicago Tribune, Jan 19, 1978, pp. 1, 14. 1140 Independent, Jul. 3, 2004 (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=537645). 438 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ 840,000 Soviet prisoners of war murdered at Sachsenhausen camp and cre- mated in four mobile crematories; alleged at IMT. ­ Instant obliteration of 20,000 Jews in Silesia using atom bombs; alleged at IMT. L: Would you repeat that, please? R: I am quoting the court record of interrogation of Reich Minister Albert Speer, during which U.S. Chief Prosecutor Jackson stated:1141 "And certain experiments were also conducted and certain researches con- ducted in atomic energy, were they not? [...] Now, I have certain informa- tion, which was placed in my hands, of an experiment which was carried out near Auschwitz [...].The purpose of the experiment was to find a quick and complete way of destroying people without the delay and trouble of shooting and gassing and burning, as it had been carried out [...]. A village, a small village was provisionally erected, with temporary structures, and in it ap- proximately 20,000 Jews were put. By means of this newly invented weapon of destruction [atomic bomb], these 20,000 people were eradicated almost instantaneously, and in such a way that there was no trace left of them;" R: These words were spoken by an American prosecutor whose government was responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. L: So it is not just a lie, it turns the truth upside down. R: Well, recent research findings indicate that the Germans did indeed test nuclear bombs in March 1945, that is, several months before the Americans did. The bombs were detonated at the military training ground at Ohrdruf in Thurin- gia.1142 As I write this, research is still in progress, so it is so far unclear whether or not these bombs were proper atom bombs or just "dirty" bombs. At any rate, several hundred people died during the first detonation, since the German army grossly underestimated the effect of the bomb. Several SS men and inmates from the nearby concentration camp Ohrdruf were among the vic- tims. So what Jackson presented at the IMT was a distortion and vast exaggeration of what really happened. L: By a factor 100 regarding the number of victims, as it seems. R: Probably so. After all, the truth could not be mentioned at the IMT, since nu- clear technology was considered top secret and because it would have once more confirmed that German scientists under awful war-time conditions per- formed just as good as U.S. scientists did in their peaceful homeland. The nuclear technology confiscated by the U.S. Army in various German un- derground facilities was shipped to the U.S. after the war, and all documents on what was going on in Ohrdruf was classified top secret for 100 years. But it looks like the truth is slowly coming out after all. 1141 IMT, vol. XVI, pp. 529f., June 2,1946. 1142 Rainer Karlsch, Mark Walker, "New light on Hitler's bomb," Physics World, 18(6) (2005), p. 15f. (www.physicsweb.org/articles/world/18/6/3); Rainer Karlsch, Hitlers Bombe. Die geheime Geschichte der deutschen Kernwaffenversuche, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2005; TR will be having an ar- ticle on this issue very soon as well, giving more details by a German insider of these nuclear tests. 439 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The majority of absurd Holocaust claims made during the IMT originated from the Soviets, which were still trying to hide their own mass murder behind in- vented German crimes. After all, the violent Soviet purges of former collabora- tors among the Baltic and Caucasian people, the Russians and Ukrainians as well as the ethnic cleansing of all Germans from Eastern Europe continued un- til late in 1946, so there was still a need for a smoke screen. Revisionist re- searcher Carlos Porter has compiled a collection of these absurdities presented during the IMT, most of which are today rejected as untrue by most main- stream historians. This book with the title Made in Russia: The Holocaust gives you an idea of who was one of the major driving forces behind early Holocaust propaganda.1143 4.5.2. Kurt Gerstein R: Now let us consider more closely some of the more or less prominent or impor- tant witness reports. I want to start with the most prominent witnesses who were SS men during the war. Even though uncounted thousands of SS men who had served in one or even in several concentration camps fell into Allied hands after the war, the Allies managed only to extract testimonies from a few of them despite the methods applied as described earlier in this lecture.1144 Let us now look more closely into some of these statements and how they came about. Kurt Gerstein was a hygiene expert with the Waffen SS during the war. After the war he came into French captivity. Here he made a number of "confes- sions" in which he reported a visit to the Belzec camp, where he said he wit- nessed a mass gassing. At first, Gerstein's confessions were considered very significant by historiography. Thus the German mainstream historical journal Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, which was founded with the specific task to re-educate the German people, carried a summary of this report in its first is- sue.1145 However, there are a number of problems with Gerstein's testimony. For ex- ample, he reports that 700 to 800 persons were crowded together in gas cham- bers with a surface area of 25 square meters and volume of 45 cubic meters, which means 27 to 32 persons per square meter (three persons per sq ft) or 15 to 18 persons per cubic meter (2 cubic feet for each person).1146 Gerstein went on to state that the clothing of the victims made a pile 35 to 40 meters high (115-130 ft) and that at least 20 million persons were murdered in 1143 Carlos W. Porter, Made in Russia: The Holocaust, Historical Review Press, Brighton 1988 (www.cwporter.com). 1144 On this see also R. Faurisson, "Confessions of SS Men who were at Auschwitz," JHR 2(2) (1981), pp. 103-136. 1145 H. Rothenfels, "Augenzeugenberichte zu den Massenvergasungen," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 1 (1953), pp. 177-194. 1146 Similarly Charles S. Bendel, who alleges 2000 Persons (50/m) in an area 40 m2. Asked how 12,000 people could fit in a space of 64 m3, he answered: "That's a good question. It could be done only by the German method... The four million people gassed at Auschwitz are proof that it happened." Cf. U. Walendy, Auschwitz im IG-Farben-Prozeß, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1981, p. 58. 440 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST this manner. On this account it was easy for skeptical minds to pass off the Gerstein's allegations as grotesque exaggerations and lies.1147 Since the mining engineer Gerstein was a kind of crown witness for the theory that prisoners were killed with diesel exhaust at Belzec and Treblinka, main- stream historians did not want to dispense with him ­ although this claim is it- self absurd, since any mining engineer would know that it is impossible to commit mass murder with diesel exhaust gasses. This attitude was not changed until the mainstream historians could no longer ignore the massive revisionist criticism and were forced to make corrections. British Jewish mainstream his- torian Michael Tregenza wrote for example:1148 "At the end of 1945, only seven surviving Jews were known to have survived Be ec, one of whom was murdered a year later at Lublin by Polish anti- Semites [before he could testify ...]. Judged in the light of what we know to- day, the two reports [by Kurt Gerstein and Rudolf Reder] are contradictory and contain inconsistencies. [...] Based on the current state of our research, we must also designate Gerstein's material on Be ec as questionable, even belonging to the realm of fantasy in some places. He gave erroneous dimen- sions for the mass graves, the number of guards he mentioned is too high, he assigned twenty to twenty-five million victims to Be ec and Treblinka, he described the camp commander Wirth as `a frail and small man from Swabia' (in reality, Wirth was tall and broad-shouldered), etc. [...] As has been ascertained by later investigations and statements, all three eyewitness reports regarding the Be ec camp must be considered to be unreliable." L: So, according to this, is there no reliable witness testimony on Belzec? R: That's right. L: So, in principle, no evidence at all... R: None. Besides, Gerstein died in French captivity. The official report is that he hanged himself in his cell. L: In other words: he was either driven to suicide by his torturers or else he was murdered by them. R: That is the logical assumption. So much for the crown witness for mass murder at Belzec. 4.5.3. Johann Paul Kremer R: During the war, Johann Paul Kremer was Professor of Medicine at the Univer- sity of Münster. From Aug. 30 to Nov. 18, 1942, he substituted for a convalesc- ing camp physician at Auschwitz, where he kept a diary. Some of these diary entries are frequently used as evidence that mass exterminations were carried out in Auschwitz, evidence that was supported by testimonies, which Kremer 1147 Cf. C. Mattogno, Il rapporto Gerstein: Anatomia di un falso, Sentinella d'Italia, Monfalcone 1985; Henri Roques, The Confessions of Kurt Gerstein, Institute for Historical Review, Costa Mesa, CA, 1989. Also C. Mattogno, J. Graf, op. cit. (note 198), C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 694); F.P. Berg, op. cit. (note 646). 1148 M. Tregenza, op. cit. (note 700), p. 246. 441 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST gave during the Auschwitz trial at Krakow in 19471149 and at Frankfurt in 1964.1150 Here are a few extracts from Kremer's diary:1151 "Quarantine in the camp due to infectious diseases (typhus, malaria, diar- rheas [sic])." (Aug. 30) "In the afternoon at a gassing of a block with Zyclon B against the lice." (Sept. 1.) "For the 1st time present outside at 3 am at a special action. In comparison to this, Dante's Inferno seems like a comedy to me. Auschwitz is called the camp of annihilation for a good reason!" (Sept. 2) "This afternoon at a special action from the F.K.L. [women's camp] (`Mus- lims'): the most terrible of the terrible. Hschf.[1152] Thilo ­ troop physician ­ is right when he said to me today, we are at the anus mundi.[1153] Evening, toward 8 o'clock again at a special action from Holland." (Sept. 5) "Evening at 8 o'clock again to a special action outside." (Sept. 6) "2nd protective inoculation against typhus; strong systemic reaction (fever) after it in the evening. Despite it still at a special action in the night from Holland (1,600 persons). Horrible scene in front of the last Bunker! That was the 10th special action. (Hössler)." (Oct. 12) "Present at the 11th special action (Dutch nationals) this Sunday morning, with damp, cold weather. Dreadful scenes with three women, who pleaded for their very lives." (Oct. 18) L: So there we have it: An annihilation camp! R: Not so fast, not so fast! As we know from various sources, and not just Kremer's diary, a devastating typhus epidemic was raging, as well as malaria and dysentery. Hundreds were dying from these diseases every day. Extreme emaciation (hence the expression "Muselmen") as well as uncontrollable defecation (hence "anus mundi") are some of the symptoms of typhus and dysentery, which were enough in them- selves to give Auschwitz the sobriquet "asshole of the world." In view of the thousands of victims of this epidemic, Kremer's choice of words in referring to Auschwitz as a "camp of annihilation" also becomes clear. How- ever, Kremer mentions "gassings" only a single time, in the context of fumigat- ing the prisoners' living quarters. The entries for Sept. 5 and Sept. 12 contradict the assertion that the term "Son- deraktionen" (special actions) refers to homicidal gassings, as is frequently im- plied. He uses the term in the phrase "bei einer Sonderaktion aus Holland" (at a special action from Holland), which clearly indicates that the term refers to 1149 Proces za ogi, vol. 59, pp. 20f.; cf. the footnotes comments to the Kremer diary in J. Bezwinska, D. Czech (eds.), op. cit. (note 941), pp. 214-226. 1150 Cf. H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 1034), p. 72. 1151 J. Bezwinska, D. Czech (eds.), Auschwitz in den Augen der SS, State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1997, pp. 141-207. The English translation, op. cit. (note 941), pp. 199-280, must be read with care, as there are some distorting mistranslations. 1152 Hauptscharführer. 1153 Latin for "anus of the world." 442 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the deportation of Dutch Jews. Otherwise, he would have written "Sonderak- tion an Juden aus Holland" (special action on or with Jews from Holland.) Likewise, the fact that deportees caused terrible scenes does not prove that Kremer witnessed mass executions. Some of these deportees, who were innocent of any wrongdoing, might have panicked at their arrival due to fears resulting from all sorts of rumors and due to being utterly exhausted by the long and difficult journey. Facing an uncer- tain fate, it would have been not surprising if some of them would have begged for their lives. There are other strong indications that Kremer did not witness mass murders. Prof. Kremer, who had a skeptical analytical mind, was not sparing of critical remarks about the German government in his diary. For example, replying to Philip Lennard's theory of "German Physics" on Jan. 13, 1943, he wrote that it is nonsense to speak of Aryan vs. Jewish science, that there is only true vs. false science. On that same day, he also compared the censorship of science during the Third Reich to the situation in Galilei's day. Considering his human- istic spirit and his free and critical mindset, it is unthinkable that he would have passed over the annihilation of thousands of human lives without comment, particularly if he had been forced to take part in such an atrocity. L: Perhaps he was anxious to spell it out in his diary, fearing that some official might read it and get him in trouble for this. R: Considering that he was very frank in his other critical statements of the NS government in his diary, I doubt this very much. Apart from that, I think it is a highly questionable assumption that Prof. Kremer would have been transferred on a special assignment for just 10 weeks as a kind of expert assistant in exter- minating Jews, then abruptly be allowed to return to his university to be able to report to students and colleagues what he had just helped to do, if some kind of atrocious secret operation were underway. The fact that some independent minded professor from a West German university was assigned to Auschwitz for a few weeks only, clearly indicates that the German authorities thought they had nothing sinister to hide. What was really uppermost in Prof. Kremer's mind is evident from a letter which he wrote on Oct. 21, 1942:1154 "Though I have no definite information yet, nonetheless I expect that I can be in Münster again before December 1 and so finally will have turned my back on this Auschwitz hell, where in addition to typhus, etc., typhoid fever is now mightily making itself felt." R: As a matter of fact, many foreign authors have falsified Kremer's diary entries by deliberately omitting or mistranslating the critical word "aus" in the phrase "Sonderaktion aus Holland" (Special action coming from Holland.) Polish au- 1154 R. Faurisson, Mémoire en défense, op. cit. (note 149), pp. 55f. 443 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST thor Danuta Czech, for example, rendered it into the English phrase "Special action with a draft from Holland."1155 L: But how do you explain that Kremer confirmed the extermination thesis during his court testimonies? R: In the same way that other statements of alleged NS murderers become official court testimony: by show trials. These trials presented only one possible expla- nation or interpretation for ambiguous statements. The defendants either had to accept that interpretation and be treated mildly or face merciless punishment. Most defendants chose the easy way out.1156 4.5.4. Rudolf Höß R: I have already reported on the tortures inflicted upon Rudolf Höß, which are generally admitted today. But since this does not prove that his statements are false, we will now examine these more closely. An analysis of Höß' testimo- nies1157 produces the following obviously false statements: He mentioned three million victims alleged to have been murdered under his command, that is, through the end of 1943. This is obviously an accommoda- tion of the false Soviet total number of victims of four million. In order to make this number appear realistic, he also exaggerated the numbers of Jews living in various European countries by an approximate factor of ten.1158 In addition, Höß mentions Belzec, Treblinka, and Wolzec as additional "exter- mination camps," although there was no camp named Wolzec. He stated that these three camps were already in operation by June of 1941, but Belzec began operating in March of 1942 and Treblinka in July 1942. He claims to have received orders to begin murdering Jews in June of 1941, at which time he states that gassings began at Auschwitz. Established historiogra- phy, however, dates the hypothetical "final solution" orders in the fall of 1941, with the alleged gassings beginning early in 1942.1159 Höß also parrots the fairy tale of collecting human fat and pouring it on the flames:1160 1155 J. Bezwinska, D. Czech (eds.), op. cit. (note 941), pp. 215f., 223; likewise Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Assas- sins of Memory, Columbia University Press, New York 1992, p. 114, Oct, 12, 1942: "I was present at still another special action on [sic] people coming from Holland." 1156 On Nov. 29, 1960, Kremer was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on two accounts of murder by the Schwurgericht at LG Münster. Since he had already served eleven years in a Polish prison for the same "crimes" between 1947 and 1958 ­ he had actually been sentenced to death in Krakow, but was later pardoned ­ he did not have to spend a single day in a German prison. I. Sagel-Grande et. al. (eds.), op. cit. (note ), vol. XVII, pp. 3-85; see also E. Kogon et al., op. cit. (note 96), pp. 141f.; G. Reitlinger, op. cit. (note 252), p. 124. 1157 See S. Paskuly (ed.), op. cit. (note 511). 1158 This led German mainstream historian M. Broszat to commit his own falsification by deleting these allegations on the last pages of Rudolf Höß `s testimony from his Höß edition with the commentary in a footnote that the deletions contained "completely wild allegations about the numbers of these Jews;" Martin Broszat (ed.), Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höß, DTV, Munich 1981. Höß reports on 3 million Jews in Hungary, 4 million in Rumania, and 2½ million in Bulgaria. 1159 IMT-Dokument 3868-PS. 1160 S. Paskuly (ed.), op. cit. (note 511), p. 160. 444 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "On top of that, they had to maintain the fires in the pits, pour off the accu- mulated fat, [...]" R: Höß even stated that members of the prisoner's cremation detail were immune to poison gas and had no need for gas masks:1161 "The door [of the gas chamber] was opened a half an hour after the gas was thrown in and the ventilation system was turned on. Work was immediately started to remove the corpses. [...] they could be seen shifting the corpses with one hand while they chewed on something they were holding in the other." R: Of course, one can eat only when not wearing a gas mask. During an interroga- tion Höß expressively confirmed his claim that no gas masks were required during hard labor in the gas chambers:1162 "Q But was not it quite dangerous work for these inmates to go into these chamber and work among the bodies and among the gas fumes? A No. Q Did they carry gas masks? A They had some, but they did not need them, as nothing ever happened." R: Höß mentions technically inappropriate, even absurd methods of disposing of the corpses:1163 "At first we poured waste oil over the bodies. Later on we used mehtanol. [...] He [Blobel] also tried using dynamite to blow uo the corpses, but he had very little success with this method." L: Dynamite!? Did the SS spend their time collecting arms and legs from treetops and rain gutters? R: Well, if Höß's confessions were an insult to human intelligence, his British and Polish captors did not notice it. L: But why couldn't they have burned corpses with oil residues and methanol? R: The cremations Höß described were supposed to have taken place in trenches. Liquid fuel burns on or next to an object, but never below an object, which is why it could not have worked. You can use liquid fuel to ignite wood or coal, but not to incinerate something that does not burn well, and most certainly not methanol,1164 which burns with a very low heat. Besides, the Germans did not have thousands of tons of oil residue to burn. 4.5.5. Pery S. Broad R: SS-Rottenführer Pery Broad was part of the Political Department at Auschwitz. As I have mentioned, he made a detailed confession immediately after the war. In 1959 he gave testimony that crassly contradicted it (see p. 402.) The state- 1161 Ibid., also pp. 44f. The German original actually reads "they would eat and smoke," Martin Broszat (ed.), op. cit. (note 1158); p. 166. 1162 John Mendelsohn (ed.), The Holocaust, Vol. 12, Garland, New York 1982, p. 113, interrogation of R. Höss, April 2, 1946. 1163 S. Paskuly (ed.), op. cit. (note 511), pp. 32f. 1164 Also known as methyl or wood alcohol, CH3OH, the most volatile of all alcohols. 445 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ments which Broad made in 1945 are unbelievable for the following reasons, among others:1165 1. Broad said the whole area stank like "burning hair" but this is not possible, since crematories do not emit such odors. 2. Broad claimed that four to six corpses at a time were stuffed into each cre- matory muffle, which was technically impossible.1166 3. He parroted the legend of flames shooting out of crematory chimneys. 4. He stated that mass shootings were carried out in a forest near Birkenau, which remains completely unsubstantiated. 5. He also repeated the fairy tale of cremation trenches. 6. He claims to have seen how 4,000 people were crammed at a time into the morgues of Crematories II and III said to have served as gassing cellars. Since these morgues had an area of 210 square meters, this would mean 19 persons per sqm (2 per sq. ft). In conclusion, a few more words about the testimony he gave during his inter- rogation on Apr. 30 and May 1, 1959. According to this his testimony in 1945 had been based on hearsay evidence, which means rumors and lies. He ex- plained the reason why he could not really have known anything about gassings in 1959 as follows:1167 "In this connection, I would like to explain that the fact that extensive gas- sings were carried out inside the main camp, was kept strictly secret from lower ranking members of the SS as well as guard units. No one was allowed to speak of it. Even the members of the guard units could have learned noth- ing about the conditions, except through rumor." R: Broad is speaking of himself here, since he began as a guard and never rose above the rank of Rottenführer. Thus, as far as gassings in the old crematory are concerned, he was initially reporting nothing but rumors.1168 Later he be- comes more precise, but still he claims to have experienced a gassing in Cre- matory I "only once," when he was billeted in the second story of the hospi- tal.1169 However, the credibility of the statements he made in 1959 is meager, since his suggestion is absurd that the SS had "hermetically sealed" the surrounding of the old crematory in the main camp in order to ensure secrecy. If the SS had indeed made plans to keep mass murder secret even from the SS not directly involved, it is unthinkable that they would have performed those gassings in that crematory in the first place. If they had nevertheless made such an attempt, the SS hospital would have been the first building evacuated, since it accom- modated almost exclusively SS people who had nothing to do with mass mur- der. The office buildings of the Political Department were located on the other side of the hospital, immediately next to the old crematory. That was the department 1165 Here I summarize some of Jürgen Graf's arguments, op. cit. (note 926), pp. 168-176. 1166 On this subject I will go into more deatil in the case of witness Henryk Tauber. 1167 Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), op. cit. (note 462); vol. VII, pp. 1080a, 1081. 1168 Ibid., p. 1085. 1169 Ibid., p. 1086; cf. note 946, p. 377. 446 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST concerned directly with all executions. Pery Broad worked in this building every day since June 1942. How he could have observed such a gassing one time only (by coincidence, and then only from the SS hospital) when such atrocities were conducted under his nose every day, remains a great mystery. L: Maybe the administration offices of the Political Department were evacuated every day at gassing time. R: In that case, what were they trying to keep secret from the Political Depart- ment? After all, they were responsible for carrying out executions. And if they had wanted to keep the alleged gassings secret from the official executioners, they would have evacuated the SS hospital as well. L: Well, maybe the Political Department was evacuated because of the danger posed by the poison gas when it was ventilated. R: I agree with you on that point, but it would have posed a danger to the hospital as well. Furthermore, evacuating the area around the crematory on account of poison gas would have frustrated every effort to keep the use of poison gas se- cret. No matter how you twist and turn it, Broad's testimony is still irrational and illogical. Anyway, Pery Broad was arrested on May 30, 1959, and kept in custody during the ongoing investigations and the entire trial itself, which commenced in 1964. On August 20, 1965, he was sentenced by the Frankfurt District Court to four years imprisonment, which was considered served with the time he had spent in jail since 1959. His sentence was for 22 counts of participation in selections and executions, that is to say, for collective assistance to collective murder. And so in Frankfurt the convicted mass murderer Pery Broad left the courtroom as a free man, just as he had after the war. 4.5.6. Richard Böck R: Richard Böck served as driver in the Auschwitz motor pool. He was interro- gated twice in 20 months by the fact finding branch of the Frankfurt court.1170 Böck stated during his first interrogation that he had "personally observed one instance of gassing, it must have been in the summer of 1943." In his second interrogation he said that it had taken place in the winter of 1942/43. Although it was strictly forbidden for him as an unauthorized person to be present at the alleged gassings or executions in a gravel pit, he had no problems being present, since he simply drove to the gas chamber or accompa- nied SS men "a few meters behind" on their way to executions. He said the command for execution was simply "Ready, steady, go!" L: How very childish! The command would have to be "Ready, Aim, Fire!" or something like that. R: Well, it seems to me there are three possibilities here: a) the gassings or shootings were not secret; 1170 For the decisive passages of Böck's testimony, see Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), op. cit. (note 462); vol. 3, pp. 447-464, vol. 29, pp. 6879-6887; also G. Rudolf, op. cit. (note 919). 447 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST b) the SS consisted of complete idiots, unable to carry out the most elementary security precautions; or c) Böck is making use of poetic license. L: Well, that is not a difficult choice to make. R: At another place in his testimony, he reports that he once received orders to deliver a truckload of sandwiches to the Birkenau railway ramp, where arriving prisoners were to be selected, because the SS expected a commission from the International Red Cross in Switzerland to observe the Jewish "resettlement" and the SS wanted to impress them with the sandwiches. But the commission did not show up, and so he was sent back with the sandwiches. L: So what happened to the sandwiches? He was obviously trying to pull the wool over our eyes, as if the almighty SS would not be able to control when a Red Cross delegation could arrive in the camp and when it could leave. R: Good observation. Here are some excerpts from Böck's report of the gassing he allegedly ob- served at one of the bunkers at Auschwitz:1171 "Finally an SS man came, I believe it was a Rottenführer, to our ambulance and got out a gas canister. With this gas canister he then went to a ladder, which stood at the right side of this building, seen from the gate. At the same time, I noticed that he had a gas mask on while climbing the ladder. After he had reached the end of the ladder, he opened the circular tin lid and shook the contents of the canister into the opening. I clearly heard the rattling of the canister against the wall, as he hit it while shaking it out. Simultaneously I saw a brown dust rise through the wall opening. When he had closed the little door again, an indescribable crying began in the chamber. I simply cannot describe how these humans cried. That lasted approximately 8-10 minutes, and then all was silent. A short time afterwards, the door was opened by inmates and one could see a bluish cloud floating over a gigantic pile of corpses. [...] At any rate, I was surprised that the inmate commando assigned to remove the bodies entered the chamber without gas masks, although this blue vapor floated over the corpses, from which I assumed that it was a gas." R: Considering everything we have discussed up to now, who noticed anything unusual about this? L: Hydrogen cyanide is not blue. Böck is imagining something, making an as- sumption based on the German name of the gas (Blausäure = blue acid). L: In order to kill those people so quickly, a huge amount of poison gas pellets had to have been dropped into the chamber. That means the prisoner detail would not have been able to enter the unventilated chamber filled with Zyklon B still releasing gas, unless they had gasmasks and protection suits. Otherwise they would have fallen over dead themselves. R: Very good observation! In addition, let me point out that Zyklon B does not create brown dust when it is poured out. 1171 Staatsanwaltschaft, ibid., vol. 29, pp. 6882f. 448 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 132: Auschwitz according to Richard Böck: (Courtesy of French revisionist cartoon artist Konk) The victims were pushed into the gas chamber. The door was closed and Zyklon B There was a wait of a few minutes. introduced. And when the door was opened: THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE! "I was surprised that the inmate com- Everyone would have been dead! A mando assigned to remove the bodies room filled with Zyklon B gas has to entered the chamber without gas be ventilated for hours (the manufac- masks, although this blue vapor turer recommends 20 hours!)... Even floated over the corpses, from which I with gas masks it would not have assumed that it was a gas." been possible. 449 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: And what about the time Böck claims it took to murder all these people? R: Considering that it takes 10 to 15 minutes to kill a single prisoner in an execu- tion gas chamber in the United States, where the poison gas develops swiftly in large quantities right underneath the prisoner, it is highly unlikely that the use of just one can of Zyklon B would result in a similarly quick execution of hun- dreds of prisoners. After all, Zyklon B releases its poison only slowly. L: Well then, Böck cannot have seen what he claims to have seen. R: That is correct, but it is not the end of it. Böck claims to have witnessed still another gassing. That was in the fall of 1941, in Crematory I of the main camp. Unfortunately, gassings are not said to have been carried out in the morgue of this crematory until early 1942, according to official historiography. Furthermore, Böck stated (and drew a sketch to illustrate) that the motor pool building, where he was assigned day in, day out for several years, was located at the other side of the street, that is, immediately adjacent to the old crematory. How could it be that he witnessed only one gassing at this crematory, if they had occurred constantly after the spring of 1942? L: Maybe they were inconspicuous. R: He tells us just how inconspicuous they were:1172 "In any case, during the entire time of my presence in Auschwitz I could ob- serve that inmate corpses were cremated in the old crematory. This de- creased somewhat only toward the end of 1944. I could see every day how the flames shot two meters high out of the chimney. It also smelled inten- sively like burned flesh." L: There is the old fairy tale again about flames shooting out of chimneys. R: And don't forget the stench. On top of everything else, this crematory had been shut down in July of 1943. As I mentioned (see page 367), Böck was a buddy of Adolf Rögner and as- sisted the camp partisans by smuggling letters. He was once arrested and inter- rogated by the camp Gestapo for this but was neither tortured nor punished. L: So here we deal with an SS man who, at least at the time of the interview, claimed that he had completely gone over to the prisoners' side already during the war, and he willingly disseminated their propaganda after the war. R: That is probably an accurate characterization of Böck, the buddy of the electri- cian Adolf Rögner who was assigned to the motor pool as an inmate worker and who was a notorious liar and perjurer. 4.5.7. Rudolf Vrba, Alfred Wetzler R: We have already become acquainted with Rudolf Vrba as a witness who in- dulged in poetic license, even though he claimed to have personally witnessed everything he related. He has since admitted that he really knew nothing and al- lowed others to tell him what to testify (see page 368). Now I would like to discuss some of the critical points in the reports that Vrba and his fellow pris- 1172 Ibid., p. 6886. 450 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST oner Alfred Wetzler concocted during the war.924 I am relying here on the ex- cellent study compiled by Spanish revisionist historian Enrique Aynat.926 First of all, Vrba's testimony alleges that 1,765,000 Jews were gassed in the period April 1942 to April 1944. However, at the time of this writing, official historiography assumes a figure of "only" half a million for that period. Fur- thermore Vrba assures us that 50,000 Lithuanian Jews were gassed at Ausch- witz, of which official historiography has no knowledge whatsoever. He also alleges that the number of French Jews gassed at Auschwitz amounted to 150,000. Official historiography assumes that around 75,000 were deported, some being regularly registered while the rest were allegedly gassed.48 Next, the map of Auschwitz included in their report is false, as are the sketches of Crematories II & III in a particularly crass manner: ­ Instead of the 9 ovens each with 4 openings alleged by Vrba there were actu- ally 5 ovens with 3 openings each. ­ Instead of the pair of rails that he alleges led from the gas chamber to the oven room, the basement morgue (alleged gas chamber) was actually a level lower than the oven room, and they were connected by an elevator. L: Vrba really missed that one! R: Obviously he was reporting something he had heard on the scuttlebutt and then jotted down from memory. ­ He says that 2,000 people at a time were gassed in the alleged gas chambers. However, the morgue had an area of 210 square meters. 9.5 persons could never be packed into an area of one square meter, without strict military dis- cipline and willing cooperation, as discussed on p. 209. ­ The allegation that Zyklon B was a "dust like substance" is also false; Zyklon B was gypsum granules soaked with hydrogen cyanide. ­ The alleged duration of execution, three minutes, agrees with most other tes- timony, but is technically absolutely impossible. L: Even if they all say the same thing? R: That doesn't make it true. As I have already pointed out, those short execution times assume that enormous overdoses of poison were used (see p. 234). For execution periods of a few minutes, the amount of poison necessary would be so absurdly large that it cannot be seriously considered, in particular with Zyk- lon B, which releases its gas only slowly. ­ The allegation that Crematories IV and V were "of very similar construction" as Crematories II and III is false. They were of entirely different construc- tion. ­ The number of 6,000 daily cremations given as total capacity of the four crematories at Birkenau is greatly exaggerated. The theoretical maximum number of possible daily cremations was under 1,000. ­ The allegation that 8,000 Jews from Krakow were gassed in the presence of prominent guests from Berlin at dedication of the first Birkenau crematory early in 1943 is not confirmed by a single source. In his book I Cannot Forgive, Vrba lavishly describes Heinrich Himmler's alleged presence at the gassing of 3,000 Jews (packed 13 per square meter 451 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST this time) in the alleged "gas chamber" of the recently opened Crematory II in January of 1943.1173 In truth, the crematory was not completed until March of that year, and it is undisputed that Himmler's last visit to Auschwitz was in July of 1942. 4.5.8. Henryk Tauber R: Next we consider Henryk Tauber, allegedly a former member of the Sonder- kommando (special cremation unit) at Crematory II in Birkenau, whom Pressac calls the best witness for homicidal gassings at Auschwitz.1174 Tauber's absurd testimony contains the following allegations:1175 "Generally speaking, we burned 4 or 5 corpses at a time in one muffle, but sometimes we charged a greater number of corpses. It was possible to charge up to 8 `musulmans.' [sic] Such big charges were incinerated with- out the knowledge of the head of the crematorium during air raid warnings in order to attract the attention of airmen by having a bigger fire emerging from the chimney." (Emphasis added) L: The term "bigger fire" suggests that according to Tauber flames always came out of the chimney. R: That is right. L: So he is lying about that. R: Not only about that, but also about the amount of corpses he claims to have inserted in every single muffle at a time. Tauber describes the procedure used to insert these corpses as follows:1176 "On the furnaces of Krematorien [...] there was a single pair of rollers for three muffles which could he moved along an iron bar fixed in front of the muffle doors. [...] This `stretcher' was placed before the muffle. Two prison- ers loaded it with corpses. [...] While the corpses were being loaded on the stretcher, one of these opened the door of the muffle and the other positioned the rollers. Then, they lifted the stretcher and put it on the rollers, while a fifth prisoner, positioned at the handles at the other end of the stretcher, lifted it at the same time as them and pushed it into the muffle. As soon as the corpses were inside, a sixth prisoner held them there with a fire iron while the fifth withdrew the stretcher. [...] The same procedure was used for the following charge destined to be incinerated in the same muffle." R: The muffle doors of the Birkenau crematories measured 60 cm × 60 cm (21/3 ft × 21/3 ft), with the lower 10 cm (4 in) unusable because that space was taken up by the rollers described by Tauber to insert the stretcher. Furthermore these doors had round arches that were just 30 cm high. So these arches began just 20 cm above the stretcher (see Ill. 133-135). It was therefore indeed difficult to in- 1173 R. Vrba, A. Bestic, op. cit. (note 242), pp. 10ff. 1174 Examination of Henryk Tauber dated May 25, 1945, appendix 18, vol. 11 of Höß trial, quoted in Pres- sac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 481-502. 1175 Ibid., p. 489. 1176 Ibid., p. 495. 452 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST sert two bodies at once, which indicates that these muffles were built for the cremation of only one corpse at a time ­ without any coffin. The size and shape of the opening was not the only limiting factor. When a corpse was in- serted on the stretcher lying on the rollers, there was another problem at the door. The weight of the corpse on the stretcher had to be balanced, or else the stretcher would tilt downward in the oven and get stuck on the crisscrossed gratings of the firebrick frame be- fore the corpse was completely inside the muf- Ill. 133: Oven doors in crema- fle. Ill. 136 shows a typical stretcher, indicat- tory II in Birkenau.1177 ing that the side rails were roughly twice as long as the area where the corpse was placed. Because the corpses spread out roughly from the middle of the stretcher to its other end, half of the weight of the corpses needed to be bal- anced at the end of the side rails according to the lever laws, when the stretcher was pushed deep into the muffle, that is to say, when it came to rest in its middle on the two rollers. In order to balance the weight of two corpses in a controlled manner in that situation, the person Ill. 134: Same oven doors in holding the stretcher at the other end needed to Buchenwald camp, where a be heavier than both corpses together. How- triple-muffle oven was in- stalled identical to those in ever, the corpses on the stretcher would have Birkenau.1178 been lighter than the person pushing them into the muffle with considerable certainty only, if most corpses had been victims of the typhus epidemic raging in Auschwitz at that time, be- cause typhus victims are extreme emaciated. If, however, the corpses had been the victims of gassings, as Tauber claims, which are said to have been murdered right after their arrival in the camp, the sum of two randomly chosen corpses would quite often have exceeded the weight of the person pushing them into the Ill. 135: Rollers in front of the muffle. Hence, Tauber's testimony about in- muffle to insert the stretcher serting two corpses by just one person indi- (highlighted with white ellip- 1179 cates that those corpses were victims of the ses). epidemic, not of murder. 1177 APMO, Neg. no. 291, Selection 1178 U.S. Army Audio-Visual Agency, SC 263997. 1179 Taken from J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 259, section enlargement. 453 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But the corpses could have been inserted one after the other. R: Yes, but even if several corpses would have been introduced into the muffle one after the other, there were physical limits to this as well. One of them is that the muffles were not large enough to accommodate four, five, or even up to eight corpses. Once a certain stacking height is reached, it would simply have been impossible to add more corpses through the small oven doors. Another physical limit is that in the crematory ovens of Birkenau the muffles of the triple- and eight- muffle ovens were interconnected. Only the outer muffles of the triple- muffle ovens in crematories II and III and every other muffle of the Ill. 136: Typical corpse stretcher, here eight-muffle ovens in crematories IV from a cremation oven of the 1180 Mauthausen camp. and V had gas generators producing heat and combustion air. The center muffles of the triple-muffle ovens and the unheated muffles of the eight-muffle ovens received their heat and combustion air from the heated muffles through openings in the muffle walls (see. Ill 137). If too many corpses were piled up in the muffle, these holes would have been partly or completely blocked, slowing down or completely stopping the crema- tion process in all muffles. There are thermal reasons as well why loading multiple corpses into a single muffle did not make any sense. First of all, the introduction of numerous cold corpses, whose water content had to be evaporated before cremation could start, would reduce the temperature at the beginning of the cremation for a con- siderable length of time. Since the gas generators were only designed to incin- erate one corpse at a time, they cold not produce the heat and combustion air necessary to compensate for that energy loss. Hence the cremation would have slowed down tremendously. In addition, the numerous corpses would so reduce the space between corpses and muffle wall that the hot air would have passed more rapidly through the muffle. That means that it would give off its heat not onto the corpses and muffle walls, but rather the flue and chimney, which would be severely damaged thereby. There would be another deleterious effect resulting from the fact that numerous corpses in a large heap have a smaller surface area relative to their volume than just a single corpse. The heat and oxygen necessary for the incineration, how- 1180 Ibid., p. 114. 454 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ever, is always transported through the surface. This reduced surface-volume-ratio would have slowed down the cremation even more. Once the water had evaporated and the corpses start to produce heat instead of consuming it, multiple corpses in one muffle would produce a considerably greater heat than just one corpse. Hence, the temperature in the muffle ­ and subsequently in flue and chimney ­ would then rise beyond the tolerance level for which Ill. 137: Openings in the system was designed, severely damaging it. walls of center muffle When crematory II went into operation in early 1943, of Buchenwald triple- muffle oven the Auschwitz camp had been without sufficient cre- (=Birkenau ovens, mation capacity for over seven months during a se- vere typhus epidemic. It is conceivable that the SS highlighted with white ellipses).1179 tried to cremate more than one corpse in a muffle si- multaneously in an attempt to quickly cremate the piles of corpses that must have accumulated during the prior months. And that might also be the true core of Tauber's testimony. Kurt Prüfer, chief engineer of the Topf firm that con- structed the Birkenau cremation ovens, commented on this while interrogated by the KGB in 1946 in Moscow:1181 "I reported Sander that I was present during the testing of the ovens in the crematory of the concentration camp Auschwitz, and I concluded that the crematories could not cope with such an number of corpses, because the performance of cremation ovens was not high enough. As an example I told Sander that in Auschwitz in my presence two corpses were inserted into each muffle instead of just one, and that the ovens of the crematory could subse- quently not stand the strain, because very many corpses had to be cre- mated." R: As a result of this abuse of the ovens, the flues of this crematory had partly collapsed and parts of the chimney were damaged just a fortnight after it had started operating.1182 Hence, the entire crematory had to be taken out of opera- tion in May and stayed inoperable until end of August 1943.1183 L: I guess that this is what you get if you don't stick to the user manual. After all, if my car's user manual says you cannot drive this car with kerosene and load ten people into it, but I do it anyway, I should not complain if it blows up into my face. 1181 Penal matter no. 1719, interrogation of Kurt Prüfer by the KGB in Moscow, March 19, 1946, Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (Federalnaya Slushba Besopasnosti Rossiskoy Federatsiy), N-19262; see J. Graf, "Anatomie der sowjetischen Befragung der Topf- Ingenieure," Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung 6(4) (2002), pp. 398-421, here p. 407 (soon also to be published in TR). 1182 The damage to the chimney had actually been caused by the fact that not all ovens had been operating simultaneously, resulting in extreme temperature differences in the various chimney ducts, see C. Mat- togno, "An Accountant Poses as Cremation Expert," chapter II.5., in, G. Rudolf, C. Mattogno, Ausch- witz Lies (note 9). 1183 C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 186), p. 403. 455 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Correct, and that is exactly what happened to the SS. Impatience doesn't pay off, as we all know, and so it turns out that trying to burn two corpses or more in those muffles did not lead to an accelerated cremation procedure, but to a collapse of this particular crematory. Now back to Tauber, who made another claim that is just as outrageous. He went so far as to claim that ordinary corpses were cremated without fuel, since they contained enough fat to burn by themselves:1184 "During the incineration of such [not emaciated] corpses, we used the coke only to light the fire of the furnace initially, for fatty corpses burned of their own accord thanks to the combustion of the body fat. On occasion, when coke was in short supply, we would put some straw and wool in the ash bins under the muffles, and once the fat of the corpse began to burn the other corpses would catch light themselves. [...] Later on, as cremations suc- ceeded one another, the furnaces burned thanks to the embers produced by the combustion of the corpses. So, during the incineration of fat bodies, the fires were generally extinguished." R: That sounds like the admonitory tale of little Pauline, who played with matches: touch a burning match to a human body and it goes up in flames.1185 L: It can happen with "spontaneous human combustion." R: Under extraordinary circumstances it can happen that portions of the human body wrapped in cotton clothes burn slowly, but here we are dealing with total cremation of naked corpses in a short time, and it just doesn't happen that way. Thousands of crematories all over the world consuming large amounts of en- ergy are the best proof of that. The situation gets totally absurd when Tauber alleges that cremation trenches are more efficient than crematories, and that is why they shut them down in 1944:1186 "It was realized that the pits burned the corpses better (than the furnaces), so the Krematorien closed down one after the other after the pits came into operation" R: As for trench burning in comparison to cremation, the energy loss through radiation and convection, along with the problem of incomplete burning, is so gigantic that further commentary is really not needed. But there is another detail that exposes Tauber's testimony as a total concoc- tion. In some of the muffles of the Birkenau crematories1187 the ash collector which Tauber mentions as being beneath the muffle was located directly in front of the flue, which directed the exhaust gases into the chimney. If a fire had been lit there, it would have drawn air away from the flue, forced the com- bustion gases upward into the muffle and from their through the coke gas gen- erator into the oven room. 1184 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 489, 495. 1185 Heinrich Hoffmann, "The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches," see www.fln.vcu.edu/struwwel/pauline_e.html. 1186 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 500f. 1187 The center muffle of the triple-muffle ovens and every other muffle of the eight-muffle ovens. 456 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST In other words: such a fire in the ash collector would have reversed the flow of exhaust gas, fresh air would have been drawn into the chimney, and smoke would have been forced into the crematory building. L: A fine signalman for the bomber crews Tauber was, giving smoke signals in- side the building! R: That is not the only thing. Tauber's lies really grow big and fat on the subject of human fat:1188 "Another time, the SS chased a prisoner who was not working fast enough into a pit near the crematorium [V] that was full of boiling human fat. At that time [summer 1944], the corpses were incinerated in open air pits, from which the fat flowed into a separate reservoir, dug in the ground. This fat was poured over the corpses to accelerate their combustion." L: I wonder what kind of scoops they used to reach down and gather fat from the bottoms of deep trenches filled with huge fires cremating hundreds of corpses. Without an asbestos suit, you couldn't get closer than fifteen or twenty feet. 4.5.9. David Olère R: David Olère was deported to Auschwitz in March 1943 and was employed there by the SS to paint portraits for them. He claims that he lived in the attic of crematory III. At war's end he was deported to the Mauthausen labor camp.1189 That he had indeed detailed knowledge of the internal design and layout of crematory III result from architectural drawings he prepared from this build- ing.1190 They are in fact so detailed and stunningly similar to the original archi- tectural drawings ­ he even includes the oven flues which were invisible for his eyes ­ that it must be assumed that he managed to get plans of this building. So here we have a person who lived for almost two years in a building that Robert Jan van Pelt once called the absolute center of human suffering.1191 Olère must know. And he claims he did. Olère's paintings are considered the only images ever produced of the alleged mass murder. I have reproduced a few of his paintings here (Ill. 138-145).1192 They all show crematory chimneys spewing thick smoke and fire. Unfortunately I can reproduce them here only in black and white, so you cannot see the nice orange color of the flames shooting out of the chimneys on some of them, but they are all posted in color on the internet.1193 As you can see, one of Olère's favorite item to draw was a crematory chimney, but not as it appeared in reality. And this does not only concern smoke and 1188 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 494. 1189 Serge Klarsfeld, David Olère 1902 ­ 1985, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1989, p. 8. 1190 Reproduced in R.J. van Pelt, op. cit. (note ), pp. 175-177. 1191 Van Pelt's testimony in Errol Morris' documentary movie Mr. Death, op. cit. (note 159). 1192 The original paintings are stored at the Ghetto Fighters House, Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heri- tage Museum, Kibbutz Lohamei-Haghettaot, Israel. Some of them were published in David Olère, L'Oeil du Témoin/The Eyes of a Witness, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1989. 1193 http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/gallery/Olere.htm; www.learntoquestion.com/resources/db/Time_Periods/1950s/ 457 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 138-145: Paintings by David Olère of Auschwitz-Birkenau with thick smoke and flames coming out of crematory's chimney. 458 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST flames. In addition, in paint- ings #1, 2, 5, 6, and 8 the size of the chimney is rendered much too large. Some of these paintings do not even pretend to depict re- ality by the theme chosen, see paintings #5, 6, and 8. Hence, what Olère was painting was not reality, but an artist's in- terpretation of it enriched with symbols, using lots of "poetic license," that is to Ill. 146: David Olère's artistic license to distort say: exaggerations and inven- reality: the gas chambers directly annexed to tions. the oven room.1194 How important poetic license was for Olère can be see from Ill. 146. It claims to depict how the so-called Sonderkommando dragged corpses from the gas chamber, the opened door of which can be seen at the right, to the cremation ovens, partly seen at the left. The problem with this picture is, however, that the rooms claimed to have served as a homicidal gas chambers did not border at the oven room in any of the Birkenau crematories. Since Olère himself drew plans of the crematories he shows in his drawings, accurately depicting the morgues allegedly misused as gas chambers to be located in the basement of these buildings, he must have known better. He just didn't care, because he wanted to impress his audience. L: Didn't you indicate that it would have been impossible for the inmates to work in the gas chamber without any protection like gas masks and protective suits, if the chamber was opened right after the gassing, as witnesses claim? After all, this gas chamber is filled to the top with corpses, so it was just opened. R: Quite correct. Now let me turn to another painting of David Olère, which is the next step in a sequence with which he depicted the alleged procedure of mass murder in these crematories. Ill. 147 depicts the ovens in crematories II and III in Birkenau. Here the list of things that is wrong with this painting: 1. As you can guess, their muffle doors are some 3-4 feet high. However, as we have seen, the actual oven doors of the Auschwitz crematories were only a little over two feet wide and high. 2. Also, the corpse stretchers were not pushed into the muffles using a bar held by prisoners, but with the help of rollers attached to a bar running under- neath the muffle doors. 3. Like Henryk Tauber, David Olère insists that the stretcher was pushed into the muffle by just one person, but again: the lever rule prevents a single man from balancing a stretcher as shown with a weight heavier than his own ­ since nothing keeps the stretcher up inside the muffle! 1194 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 258. 459 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 147: Painting by David Olère, falsely depicting Birkenau oven doors some 3-4 feet high.1195 4. It is physically impossible to work with a naked upper body in front of open ovens doors whose inside temperature is 1,400-1,800°F. 5. No flames can come out of oven doors of coke-fired ovens. L: But perhaps the flames emanate from corpses burning inside the muffle, not from the coke gas generator. R: If a huge amount of corpses were in that muffle burning that intensely, no fur- ther corpses could have been put into that muffle. No, that muffle is empty. In other words: David Olère is spreading the same exaggeration, inventions, and lies as Henryk Tauber. He is merely using a different medium. 4.5.10. Miklos Nyiszli R: Nyiszli, who worked as forensic pathologist with the infamous Josef Mengele at Auschwitz since May 1944, assures us that he has recounted everything "without exaggeration" in his book,376 about which German mainstream histo- rian Prof. Dr. Maser said that it contains excessive lies (see p. 173). According to his account, each of the four crematories at Auschwitz had a capacity of 5,000 corpses per day. To these must be added the 6,000 who he says were shot and burned in trenches every day at the "birch wood." L: But the story is that there were mass gassings in the bunkers there, not mass shootings at a wood. 1195 Taken from Robert J. van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz, op. cit. (note 140), p. 179; also in David Olère, Alexandre Oler, Witness: Images of Auschwitz, WestWind Press, North Richland Hills, Texas, 1998; cf. http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/Holocaust/resource/gallery/olere.htm 460 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: That official "truth" apparently did not get through to Nyiszli. At any rate, according to Nyiszli, Auschwitz had a murder rate of around 26,000 people per day, which comes to 780,000 per month or around ten million per year. It came to a total of around 20 million after the Birkenau crematories went into opera- tion ­ in addition to the two million already shot at Birkenwald. L: No exaggerations? R: Nyiszli, who worked in the autopsy rooms of a Birkenau crematory, gave the length of the "gas chambers" as 150 meters. The actual length of the cellar morgue alleged to have been used as a gas chamber was 30 meters. L: And he is still not exaggerating? R: Jean-Claude Pressac attempted to salvage Nyiszli's credibility by suggesting that Nyiszli did in fact tell the truth, but for some inscrutable reason exagger- ated everything fourfold1196 ­ except for the victim number, which he inflated by a factor of twenty, if we take the current official figure of about one million. To this, Robert Faurisson made the following remark:1197 "Supposing a `witness' states that in six months (the duration of Nyiszli's stay in Auschwitz) he saw four men who were all 7 meters tall and 200 years old. We can assume that anybody would dismiss such a witness. Anybody but Pressac, who, applying the rule of the famous divisor of four, would say: this witness is telling the truth: he saw one man, who was 1.75 meters tall and 50 years old." 4.5.11. Filip Müller R: Filip Müller is one of the gushiest writers and speakers of all the Auschwitz witnesses. In addition, he is literally "living proof" that the members of the so- called Sonderkommando, who according to legend dragged corpses from gas chambers and stuffed them into ovens, were not themselves murdered every few months, as is often claimed. Müller claims to have been a member of this Sonderkommando from spring of 1942 until the bitter end.181 He also made the following statement during the Auschwitz trial at Frankfurt:1198 "The chief of the crematory, Moll, once grabbed a child away from its mother. I saw that at Crematory IV. There were two big pits nearby where they were burning corpses. He threw the child into the boiling fat that had collected in the trenches around the pit... There were these two pits near Crematory IV. They were about 40 meters long and six to eight meters wide, with a depth of about two and a half meters. The fat from the corpses would collect at the edge. We had to pour this fat over the corpses." L: This is getting monotonous; we have heard it so many times. R: Pardon me, but Müller did tend to plagiarize others, as I said.1199 35 years after liberation Müller finally wrote down his memoirs in a book, the most compre- 1196 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), pp. 473, 475, 479. 1197 Robert Faurisson, op. cit. (note 334), p. 150. 1198 H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 1034), vol. 1, pp. 88f. 1199 See page 454. Similar descriptions of fat from cadavers are to be found in his book already quoted (note 181), pp. 207ff., 216ff., 227. 461 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST hensive depiction of Auschwitz horrors of all. Among other things there is a heart wrenching scene of a death ceremony held by two thousand condemned Jews just before their execution:1200 "Suddenly from among the crowd a loud voice could be heard: an emaci- ated little man had begun to recite the Viddui. First he bent forward, then he lifted his head and his arms heavenward and after every sentence, spoken loud and clear, he struck his chest with his fist. Hebrew words echoed round the yard: `bogati' (we have sinned), `gazalti' (we have done wrong to our fellow men), `dibarti' (we have slandered), `heevetjti' (we have been deceit- ful), `verhirschati' (we have sinned), `sadti' (we have been proud), `maradti' (we have been disobedient). `My God, before ever I was created I signified nothing, and now that I am created I am as if I had not been created. I am dust in life, and how much more so in death. I will praise you everlastingly, Lord, God everlasting, Amen! Amen!' The crowd of 2,000 repeated every word, even though perhaps not all of them understood the meaning of this Old Testament confession. Up to that moment, most of them had managed to control themselves. But now almost everyone was weeping. There were heart-rending scenes among members of families. But their tears were not tears of despair. These people were in a state of deep religious emotion. They had put themselves in God's hands. Strangely enough the SS men pre- sent did not intervene, but let the people be. Meanwhile, Oberscharführer Voss stood near by with his cronies, impa- tiently consulting his watch. The prayers had reached a climax: the crowd was reciting the prayer for the dead which traditionally is said only by sur- viving relatives for a member of the family who has died. But since after their death there would be nobody left to say the Kaddish for them they, the doomed, recited it while they were still alive. And then they walked into the gas chamber." R: This is a good example of the category of witness testimony in which victims in gas chambers give incendiary speeches or sing patriotic1201 or communist songs. L: But such things certainly do happen. A lot of people have solemnized their own executions. R: Or consider this holo-erotic scene, another category of gas chamber testimony: Müller, who is weary of life, decides he wants to die in the gas chamber with naked young women: "Suddenly a few girls, naked and in the full bloom of youth, came up to me. They stood in front of me without a word, gazing at me deep in thought and shaking their heads uncomprehendingly. At last one of them plucked up courage and spoke to me: `We understand that you have chosen to die with us of your own free will, and we have come to tell you that we think your de- 1200 F. Müller, op. cit. (note 181), pp. 70f. Page numbers of subsequent quote given in parentheses after the quote. 1201 So Müller himself on p. 110: Slovaks singing the Czechoslovak national anthem and the Jewish "Hatikvah" in the gas chamber. 462 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST cision pointless: for it helps no one.' She went on: `We must die, but you still have a chance to save your life. You have to return to the camp and tell eve- rybody about our last hours,' [...]. Before I could make an answer to her spirited speech, the girls took hold of me and dragged me protesting to the door of the gas chamber. There they gave me a last push which made me land bang in the middle of the group of SS men." (pp. 113f.) L: If it was so easy to shove Müller out of the gas chamber, why couldn't they shove their own way out? R: That's a good question. Then comes the question of how likely it is that a group of naked girls facing mass execution would behave that way. And while we are on the subject of Holo-pornography, let me mention another instance: "Suddenly they stopped in their tracks, attracted by a strikingly handsome woman with blue-black hair who was taking off her right shoe. The woman, as soon as she noticed that the two men were ogling her, launched into what appeared to be a titillating and seductive strip-tease act. She lifted her skirt to allow a glimpse of thigh and suspender. Slowly she undid her stocking and peeled it off her foot. [...] She had taken off her blouse and was stand- ing in front of her lecherous audience in her brassiere. Then she steadied herself against a concrete pillar with her left arm and bent down, slightly lifting her foot, in order to take off her shoe. What happened next took place with lightning speed: quick as a flash she grabbed her shoe and slammed its high heel violently against Quackernack's forehead. [...] At this moment the young woman flung herself at him and made a quick grab for his pistol. Then there was a shot. Schillinger cried out and fell to the ground. Seconds later there was a second shot aimed at Quackernack which narrowly missed him." (pp. 87f.) R: Sex sells everything; and since this type of Holocaust tale of a sexy woman starting a rebellion appears rather frequently, I would not want to deprive you of this little Holo-porno show. Müller actually stole this theme from an anony- mous "report" by an unknown Polish officer as published by Henry Morgen- thau's propaganda agency War Refugee Board.1202 From there it spread like a metastazing cancer into the stories of many Holocaust novelists. Eugen Kogon, for instance, told his version as follows:1203 "The Rapportführer Schillinger made an Italian dancer perform naked in front of the crematory. At an opportune moment she approached him, yanked his pistol away, and shot him down. In the ensuing melee the woman was likewise shot, and so she escaped death by gassing." R: You see, if many witnesses tell a similar story, that doesn't mean it is true. It just means that they had access to similar sources. But now let's get serious again. In a different scene, Müller reports the following about his first day of work in crematory I of the main camp: 1202 "The extermination camps of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia," Collection of War Refugee Board, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, New York, doc. FDRL 2; see E. Aynat, op. cit. (note 926, 1998), Appendix 3 (www.vho.org/F/j/Akribeia/3/Aynat/A3.html). 1203 E. Kogon, op. cit. (note 82, German edition), p. 167. 463 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "The damp stench of dead bodies and a cloud of stifling, biting smoke surged out towards us. Through the fumes I saw the vague outlines of huge ovens. [...] As the glow of the flames broke through the smoke and fumes, I noticed two large openings: they were cast-iron incinerators. Prisoners were busy pushing a truck heaped with corpses up to them. [...] We were met by the appalling sight of the dead bodies of men and women ly- ing higgledy-piggledy among suit-cases and rucksacks. [...] Before me lay the corpse of a woman. With trembling hands and shaking all over I began to remove her stockings. [...] the biting smoke, the humming of fans and the flickering of flames [...]." (p. 12) R: The ovens if Crematory I were made of firebrick, not of cast-iron. Furthermore his allegation that the victims were gassed fully clothed along with their lug- gage contradicts all logic and all other testimonies, as well as official versions of history. let me also point out that neither large nor small flames could ever escape from cremation ovens, just as smoke could not escape. This is because the doors of the ovens were always kept closed, except for the moment when corpses were introduced. But even if the doors were opened, no large flames and not much smoke could escape. To top it all off, Müller claims to have eaten "triangels of cheese and a poppyseed cake" (p. 13), which he claims to have found in the pocket of one of the victims in the gas chamber. This is obviously impossible while wearing a gas mask. But if he had removed the mask, that would have been his last meal. In view of such nonsense as this, it is not sur- prising that Müller would understate the time needed for cremation by a factor of nine, in order to correspondingly increase the capacity of the ovens.1204 He was obviously inspired by Rudolf Höß, who gave the same bizarre testimony in this regard. Here is my favorite scene from the whole Müller novel: "From time to time SS doctors visited the crematorium, above all Haupt- sturmführer Kitt and Obersturmführer Weber. During their visits it was just like working in a slaughterhouse. Like cattle dealers they felt the thighs and calves of men and women who were still alive and selected what they called the best pieces before the victims were executed. After their execution the chosen bodies were laid on a table. The doctors proceeded to cut pieces of still warm flesh from thighs and calves and threw them into waiting recepta- cles. The muscles of those who had been shot were still working and con- tracting, making the bucket jump about." (p. 46f.) L: If he had omitted the nonsense with the jumping buckets, one might have be- lieved it. R: Yes, if one is inclined to believe anything Müller says. However, freshly dis- sected muscle tissue jerks only when an electrical shock it applied to it. And even then it could not shake the bucket, for the simple reason that the physical law of inertia would not allow it. 1204 20 min. for three corpses per muffle (F. Müller, op. cit. (note 181), p. 16), and 3,000 corpses per crema- tory and day (p. 59: =200 per muffle and day, or 10 per hour or 12 min. per corpse), instead of 1 corpse per hour. 464 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Allow me to point out that this passage is missing in the French translation of Müller's book.1205 R: Still another example of his journalistic integrity. Müller's detailed knowledge of the gas chamber, in which he claims to have worked for three years, led him to give the following testimony about the mechanism for introducing Zyklon B in to the "gas chamber": "The Zyclon B gas crystals were inserted through openings into hollow pil- lars made of sheet metal. They were perforated at regular intervals and in- side them a spiral ran from top to bottom in order to ensure as even a distri- bution of the granular crystals as possible." (p. 60) R: Here he is contradicting Michal Kula, who claims to have built these columns. According to Kula, the columns had removable insert, in which the Zyklon B was introduced into the chamber and then removed after completion of the gas- sing (see the following chapter.) L: Whom should we believe? R: Neither one, since there are no holes in the ceiling through which such a device could have been brought up through the roof. Both these witnesses neglected to correlate their lies. Müller tells the following untruths about the gassing proce- dure itself: "As soon as Zyclon B crystals came into contact with air the deadly gas be- gan to develop, spreading first at floor level and then rising to the ceiling. It was for this reason that the bottom layer of corpses always consisted of chil- dren as well as the old and the weak, while the tallest and strongest lay on top, with middle-aged men and women in between. [...] Many [of the corpses] had turned blue, [...]" (p. 117) L: But victims of cyanide poisoning do not turn blue. R: Right, and that is slip-up number one.1206 The fact is that hydrogen cyanide gas, which furthermore is 9% lighter than air at the same temperature, would be evenly dissipated in a room full of people. The convection created by body warmth would have mixed all the gases together. Maybe it is best if we accept Müller's own opinion of his novel, which is only included in the German original:1207 "[...] and I myself was not sure whether I had not just dreamed it all." R: By the way, Filip Müller was a member of the camp partisan underground along with the professional propagandists and liars Hermann Langbein, Bruno Baum, and Adolf Rögner. 1205 F. Müller, Trois ans dans une chambre à gaz, Editions Pygmalion/Gérard Watelet, Paris 1980. 1206 S. Moeschlin, Klinik und Therapie der Vergiftung, Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart 1986, p. 300; W. Wirth, C. Gloxhuber, Toxikologie, Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, pp. 159f.; W. Forth, D. Hen- schler, W. Rummel, Allgemeine und spezielle Pharmakologie und Toxikologie, Wissenschaftsverlag, Mannheim 1987, pp. 751f. 1207 F. Müller, Sonderbehandlung. Drei Jahre in den Krematorien und Gaskammern von Auschwitz, Stein- hausen, Munich 1979, p. 271. 465 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 4.5.12. Michal Kula R: Former Auschwitz internee Michal Kula does not rank among the most fre- quently quoted Holocaust witnesses, but an important role has been assigned to him in recent years. The reason for this is because he claimed to have con- structed the "wire net push-in devices" in the inmate workshop, with which Zyklon B was allegedly lowered into the alleged gas chambers of Birkenau crematories II and III and then, when the gassing was completed, removed from the chamber.1208 Italian revisionist historian Carlos Mattogno has definitively proven, however, that there is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of this wire net apparatus described by Kula.1209 This is quite apart from the fact that there are no open- ings in the roof of the morgue said to have been a gas chamber, in which Kula's columns would have fitted. What undermines Kula's credibility even more, however, is another claim of his of having once seen the bodies of gassed victims:1210 "I saw then that they [the corpses] were greenish. The nurses told me that the corpses were cracked, and the skin came off." R: Victims of cyanide poisoning are not colored green, but rather rose red. And exposure to hydrogen cyanide does not cause bodies to disintegrate and the skin to peel off. L: Maybe Kula had seen ordinary corpses that had been lying about for too long, because of inadequate crematory capacity. Maybe he just imagined that they died by gassing. R: The same way he "imagined" that some of the things he built in the inmate workshop were used as insertion columns for Zyklon B. Anyway, in view of Kula's vivid imagination, his allegations are worthless as long as we do not have any material or documentary evidence supporting them. 4.5.13. Adolf Rögner R: It is hardly worthwhile to discuss the professional denouncer and convicted serial liar Adolf Rögner again separately (see p. 365). Because some of his statements complete the picture of the Holo-pornographer Adolf Rögner, how- ever, I will add a few more examples of his skill in lying. In the course of his first examination he stated the following:1211 "In his personal behavior, he [camp commandant Rudolf Höß] got carried away by sexual excesses with women in the bunker, whereby several became pregnant, which inmate physicians were forced to interrupt." 1208 Höß trial, vol. 2, pp. 99f. 1209 C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 552), pp. 292-294; C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 557), pp. 275f. 1210 Quoted, according to van Pelt op. cit. (note 553) p. 112, from testimony of Michael Kula on June 11, 1945, Appendix 16, Krakow District Directorate for examination of German war atrocities, "Protocol on the mass murders in Birkenau," Nov. 26, 1946; introduced in criminal proceedings against Fritz Ertl/Walter Dejaco, Landesgericht für Strafsachen, Vienna, ref. 20 Vr 3806/64, vol. ON264, 393u(r). 1211 Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), op. cit. (note 462); vol. 1, p. 69. 466 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: But this is just a prelude, since, in my opinion, Rögner's best testimony was the following:1212 "In interrogations, Unterscharführer Quackernack Walter [...] ­ used tor- ture by crucifixion, stabbing the testicles with steel needles, and burning tampons in the vagina." L: More sado-masochistic Holo-porn. Rögner was not only a pathological liar but a pervert as well. R: People who are constantly sitting in prison for fraud, forgery, and perjury tend to be sexually deprived. While we are on the subject of perversion, consider Rögner's fantasy about children:1213 ­ He alleged that the smallest children of arriving prisoners were yanked from their parents' arms and thrown on a big pile of forty or forty-five infants. Those on the bottom of the heap are said to have been crushed and smoth- ered. From there, he said, the infants were tossed in a lorry and then thrown alive into roaring crematory ovens. ­ He says that arriving children became so desperate on the ramp because of the brutality of the SS people that they hugged the legs of the SS men and were then shot by them. L: Panicky children hugging the legs of someone of whom they are deathly afraid? R: Here is a scene described by Röger that is a downright classic: "After the arrival of another prisoner transport in Auschwitz II B o g e r took one of the babies that lay on the floor, unwrapped it from its diapers, so that it was completely naked, took it by the legs and hit it by the head against the iron edge of the goods car, at first lightly and then with much greater force, until the head was completely squashed. Then he twisted around the arms and legs of the already dead child and threw it to the side." L: That sounds like the incubator lie invented by Hill and Knowlton to convince the United Nations to go to war against Iraq in 1991 (p. 29). R: Correct. Only Rögner probably had no professional advice about this. But it is true that these stories about atrocious baby murders have the highest psycho- logical impact. Rögner claimed to have witnessed this same scene on another occasion, when he hid behind a non-existent tree at the ramp in Birkenau... 4.5.14. E. Rosenberg, J.-F. Steiner, Y. Wiernick et al. R: As our next to last example of fantastic accounts, let us review some statements made by various witnesses about the alleged burning of corpses under the open sky at Treblinka. First is that of Eliahu Rosenberg, one of the witnesses who appeared at the Demjanjuk trial, which was rejected as incredible even by the Israeli court. He reported:1214 1212 Ibid., p. 65. 1213 Interrogation of Jan. 4, 1958, ibid., vol. 2, pp. 247-261. 1214 E. Rosenberg, Tatsachenbericht, pp. 9f., in: H.P. Rullmann, op. cit. (note 196), pp. 141f.; the following explanations are based on the work by A. Neumaier, op. cit. (note 209). 467 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "After Himmler inspected the camp he ordered the burning of all the bodies lying in the pit [...]. For this purpose, two iron rails were placed on the ground parallel to each other, and the bodies that were dug out of the pit with excavators were stacked on top of each other like fire logs. It frequently happened that the corpses, especially those just freshly killed, didn't burn well, and so we had to pour gasoline over them." L: Is he saying that the old, exhumed corpses, that is, most of them, did not need gasoline, but burned by themselves? R: Would you please stop stealing my point! In his testimony in Jerusalem, he repeated the same nonsense:1215 "In Treblinka we learned that little children burn better than grown men. All it takes is a match to light them. That's why the Germans, damn them, or- dered us to put the children in the pit first." L: Does anyone believe such claptrap? R: Only 99% of all people on this pathetic planet. L: It makes you wonder if homo sapiens is really an intelligent species. R: The witness Szyja Warszawski, who arrived at Treblinka in July 1942, testified that at least 10,000 persons per day were gassed with chlorine, and then cre- mated as follows:1216 "The grates, which consisted of iron rails, were supported by cement posts about two feet above the ground. [...] A fire was started underneath. Bodies were layered on the burning grate with an excavator machine. Once the bodies caught fire they would continue burning by themselves." R: Yankiel Wiernik, the only witness who admitted having directly participated in the process of extermination over a long period, wrote:1217 "It turned out that bodies of women burned more easily than those of men. Accordingly, the bodies of women were used for kindling the fires." R: And Richard Glazar, who wrote down his memories only late in life, made this succinct observation:1218 "Bodies don't really burn that well. They burn very poorly, in fact. You have to build big bonfires and put a lot of kindling in among the corpses, and then douse the whole thing in something very flammable." R: In addition he related that he and 24 other Jews were the only ones allowed to work outside the camp, collecting branches to camouflage the fence. He also stated that he had to climb the trees in order to break off branches.686 Thus, ac- cording to Glazar there was no tree cutting detail at all at Treblinka, only a de- tail to gather branches for camouflage purposes. In other words: According to Glazar human bodies may have burned poorly, but they still burned by them- selves. 1215 Testimony of E. Rosenberg before the Jerusalem trial of Demjanjuk, quoted by U. Walendy, HT no. 34, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1988, p. 24. 1216 Szyja Warszawski, in: Zdzis aw ukaszkiewicz, op. cit. (note 633); see also her statement of October 9, 1945, in: Z. ukaszkiewicz, Obóz strace w Treblince, Pa stwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warsaw 1946, p. 32. 1217 J. Wiernik in: A. Donat, op. cit. (note 198), p. 170. 1218 R. Glazar, op. cit. (note 686), p. 29. 468 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Jewish mainstream author Rachel Auerbach compiled various witness accounts and summarized them as follows:1219 "Polish people still talk about the way soap was manufactured from the bod- ies of Jews. The discovery of Professor Spanner's soap factory in Langfuhr proved that their suspicions had been well founded. Witnesses tell us that when the corpses were burned on pyres, pans would be placed beneath the racks to catch the fat as it ran off, but this has not been confirmed. But even if the Germans in Treblinka or at any of the other death factories failed to do this, and allowed so many tons of precious fat to go to waste, it could only have been an oversight on their part. In Treblinka, as in other such places, significant advances were made in the science of annihilation, such as the highly original discovery that the bodies of women burned better than those of men. `Men won't burn without women.' [...] [T]he bodies of women were used to kindle, or, more accurately put, to build the fires among the piles of corpses [...] Blood, too, was found to be first-class combustion material. [...] Young corpses burn up quicker than old ones. [...] [W]ith the help of gasoline and the bodies of the fatter females, the pile of corpses finally burst into flames." L: Here we have all the lies rolled up in one: The collection of human fat, soap made of human fat, and blood (which is 90% water) as fuel. R: And all this in the book praised by Yad Vashem as the standard work on Treb- linka. The other book that is likewise recommended as standard work on the three alleged pure extermination camps Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, also contains the same fantastic material:1220 "[...T]he SS men in charge of the cremation became convinced that the corpses burned well enough without extra fuel. Yechiel Reichman, a member of the `burning group,' writes: `The SS `expert' on body burning ordered us to put women, particularly fat women, on the first layer of the grill, face down. The second layer could consist of whatever was brought ­ men, women, or children ­ and so on, layer on top of layer [....]' These [fresh] bodies did not burn as well as those removed from the ditches [i.e., the graves] and had to be sprayed with fuel before they would burn." R: There was one Holocauster who did not fail to notice that something was wrong, however. Jean-François Steiner concretely described the actual prob- lems that would have developed from such a gigantic demand for cremation wood:1221 "The costs proved to be insurmountable. In addition to huge amounts of gasoline, they would have needed as many tree trunks as they had corpses. It was not a rational undertaking because, even if they were able to cut down all the forests in Poland, they would still run out of gasoline. The battle for Stalingrad had been lost, and the rich oil fields of the Caucasus disappeared like a mirage." 1219 R. Auerbach in: A. Donat, op. cit. (note 198), pp. 32f., 38. 1220 Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 198), pp. 175f. 1221 Jean-François Steiner, Treblinka, Stalling, Oldenburg 1966, p. 294. 469 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: But J. F. Steiner, who likewise compiled a great deal of testimonies, found a way out of that impasse by joining in the discovery of self-incinerating corp- ses:1222 "Some corpses were fireproof while others burned easily. The trick was to use the flammable ones to burn the others. According to his (H. Floss's) research ­ apparently they were quite extensive ­ old corpses burned better than new ones, fat ones better than thin ones, women better than men, and children better than men but not as well as women. It turned out that the decomposing corpses of fat women were the best of all." R: According to the testimonies of several people, there really were several de- tachments in camp whose task it was to gather firewood. While A. Krzepicki, S. Willenberg, and R. Glazar were aware only of the detachment that gathered branches from trees in order to camouflage the camp,1223 Y. Arad knew better. He described a wood gathering detail that originally gathered just enough wood for construction and heating needs, but later had to supply wood for cremation as well.1224 However, the witnesses and true Holocaust believers all agree that the wood was lit only like a campfire under the heaps of corpses, until they caught fire and burned by themselves. L: Abra Cadabra. R: That's the easiest way to solve evidence problems. Or as one could read in a Swiss Jewish paper in 1993:1225 "Every Jew can deduct from our Parsha and can live with this insight that the Jewish people is not subject to the limitations of natural laws." L: Nor were the SS men in those camps, apparently. And that is the way we got court-imposed "common knowledge." R: Rachel Auerbach has given the proper comment on all this nonsense about Treblinka when she stated:1226 "As the Italian saying goes: `Se non è vero, è ben trovato.'" That is Italian and means: "Even if it is not true, it is well invented." 4.5.15. Elie Wiesel R: In conclusion of our consideration of incredible testimonies, and as introduc- tion to testimonies that are more credible, we will now consider the statements of our last witness. Since Wiesel does not claim that homicidal gas chambers existed at Auschwitz (see Table 25, p. 427), he had to come up with a different way of exterminating his fellow Jews. L: But he does claim that flames shot out of the crematory chimneys! R: Thanks for the additional detail. In order to murder his victims, Wiesel hit upon the idea of having the victims of Auschwitz burned alive in huge open fires:1227 1222 Ibid., p. 295. 1223 In A. Donat, op. cit. (note 198), pp. 124-192. 1224 Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 198), p. 110. 1225 Jüdische Rundschau Maccabi, Basel, November 11, 1993. 1226 Rachel Auerbach, "In the Fields of Treblinka," in: A. Donat, op. cit. (note 198), p. 48. 470 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something there. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load ­ little chil- dren. Babies! Yes, I saw it ­ saw it with my own eyes... those children in the flames. (Is it surprising that I could not sleep after that? Sleep had fled from my eyes.) So this is where we were going. A little far- ther on was another and larger ditch for adults. [...] `Father,' I said, `if that is so, I don't want to wait here. I'm going to run to the electric wire. That would be better than slow agony in the flames.'" R: The French original actually reads "vegetating Ill. 148: Elie Wiesel for hours in the flames,"1228 an exaggeration which had been obviously edited out in the English translation. As we all know, he did not have to "vegetate for hours in the flames," though. L: As if it would have been possible to "vegetate for hours in the flames." R: A bit of an exaggeration, to be sure. L: How can it be that the SS let him wander around freely in the camp so that he could become a witness of such atrocious cruelties in the first place? R: Let's say it that way: Wiesel saw flames, where there were none. Here two more examples:1229 "[...] the flames were gushing out of a tall chimney into the black sky. [...] Do you see that chimney over there? See it? Do you see those flames?" R: At any rate, Wiesel was saved by a wondrous event:1230 "Our line had now only fifteen paces to go. I bit my lips so that my father would not hear my teeth chattering. Ten steps still. Eight. Seven. We marched slowly on as though following a hearse at our own funeral. Four more steps. Three steps. There it was now, right in front of us, the pit and its flames. I gathered all that was left of my strength, so that I could break the ranks and throw myself upon the barbed wire. In the depth of my heart I bade farewell to my father, to the whole universe; and, in spite of myself, the words formed themselves and issued a whisper from my lips: Yitgadal veyit- kadach shmé raba... May His name be blessed and magnified.... My heart was bursting. The moment had come. I was face to face with the Angel of Death... No. Two steps from the pit we were ordered to turn to the left and made to go into our barracks." L: Well, it could be true! 1227 E. Wiesel, Night, op. cit. (note 1107), p. 30. 1228 Op. cit, (note 1108), pp. 58f. 1229 E. Wiesel, op. cit. (note 1107), pp. 25, 28. 1230 Ibid., p. 31. 471 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Except that it contradicts everything that every other witness has said about Auschwitz. In a different context, Elie Wiesel himself gave us a clue of what to think about his writings:1231 "`What are you writing?' the Rebbe asked. ` ­ Stories,' I said. He wanted to know what kind of stories: true stories. `About people you have knew?' Yes, about people I might have known. `About things that happened?' Yes, about things that happened or could have happened. `But they did not?' No, not all of them did. In fact, some were invented from almost the beginning to almost the end. The Rebbe leaned forward as if to measure me up and said with more sorrow than anger: `That means that you are writing lies!' I did not answer immediately. The scolded child within me had nothing to say in his defense. Yet, I had to justify myself. `Things are not that simple, Rebbe. Some events do take place but are not true; other are ­ although they never occurred.'" L: But it is not certain that Wiesel meant his Auschwitz memoirs with this. R: No, but it is certain that his Auschwitz tale is neither true nor did it take place, so I guess that he is covering himself here. But wait a little while, Wiesel's amazing finale is still to come. 4.6. Critique of Testimonies, Part 2: Plausible Statements 4.6.1. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi R: The end of Elie Wiesel's testimony on Auschwitz includes a very strange epi- sode. When the Red Army was about to overrun Auschwitz in January 1945, the Germans evacuated the camp, but left it up to the sick inmates to decide whether they wanted to flee with the Germans or await the arrival of the Red Army. Some of Wiesel's exact words of how he and his father made their deci- sion read as follows:1232 "The choice was in our hands. For once we could decide our fate for our- selves. We could both stay in the hospital, where I could, thanks to my doc- tor, get him [the father] entered as a patient or nurse. Or else we could fol- low the others. `Well, what shall we do, father?' He was silent. `Let's be evacuated with the others,' I told him." R: You need to fully realize what this means: For years Elie Wiesel and his father, so they claimed later, had been living in hell, where people had been burned alive in masses. The living inmates had been abused and mistreated with all methods one can think of. Then early 1945 there was a chance to flee from the clutches of these mass murderers and to be liberated by the advancing Rus- sians. And how did they decide? They decided to flee from their liberators with their diabolic mass murderers. They decided to remain slave workers in the hell 1231 Elie Wiesel, op. cit. (note 364), p. viii of introduction. 1232 E. Wiesel, op. cit. (note 1107), p. 78; thanks to F.P. Berg, on whose article (note 651) the following paragraphs are base. 472 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST created by the evil Germans. They decided to reach out for the uncertainty of the cold and dark night under the guard of their German Satans. Ladies and Gentlemen! Here the key to the truth lies hidden! Elie Wiesel and his father feared the liberation by the Red Army more than they feared what ever the Germans or what ever fate would do to them when fleeing. In order to show that this is not a single case, I may support this with state- ments by Primo Levi. In his entry of January 17, 1945, Levi writes in his book Survival in Auschwitz, how he would have followed common instincts and would have joined the other inmates that fled with the SS, if only he had not been so sick:1233 "It was not a question of reasoning: I would probably also have followed the instinct of the flock if I had not felt so weak: fear is supremely contagious, and its immediate reaction is to make one try to run away." R: Keep in mind: The fear he writes about here is the one that drove the inmates ­ he talks about the instinct of the flock ­ and which drove them to flee with the Germans. They therefore did not fear the Germans, but the Russians. And Levi even gives us the result of this referendum by feet: 800 mostly incapacitated inmates decided to stay in Auschwitz, but 20,000 others joined the National Socialist mass murderers. Wiesel and Levi, two of the most influential atrocity propagandists against the Germans, admit here in the midst of their most important propaganda works ­ unnoticed by a world lulled into believing their atrocity stories ­ that they did not really fear the Germans. What would you expect how both would have re- acted if they themselves had believed in their own stories? L: They would have longed for the liberation by the Russians and would have done anything to get away from the Germans. R: Quite so. The importance of the decision made by Wiesel and his father as well as by many hundreds or even thousands of their co-inmates cannot be overes- timated. Or as American revisionist scholar Friedrich Paul Berg had put it:651 "In the entire history of Jewish suffering at the hands of gentiles, what mo- ment in time could possibly be more dramatic than this precious moment when Jews could choose between, on the one hand, liberation by the Soviets with the chances to tell the whole world about the evil `Nazis' and to help bring about their defeat ­ and the other choice of going with the `Nazi' mass murderers and to continue working for them and to help preserve their evil regime. [...] The momentous choice brings Shakespeare's Hamlet to mind: `To remain, or not to remain; that is the question' [...] Oh what heartache!" R: Elie Wiesel reports, you decide! On January 27, 2005, the 60th anniversary of the occupation of Auschwitz by the Red Army, the Chicago Tribune wrote: "Although the Soviets were welcomed as liberators, it was only a matter of weeks before they began plundering and raping those they liberated. Women 1233 P. Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, Summit Books, New York 1986. 473 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST who survived the Nazis were raped to death by Soviet soldiers, according to survivor testimonies. Ten thousand Soviet war prisoners were sent to Auschwitz in 1941, and a grim fate awaited the survivors among them. Stalin decreed that there were no Soviet `prisoners,' only `betrayers of the motherland.' Thus classified, they were rounded up and sent to languish in Siberia. Many in Eastern Europe saw the Soviets `not as liberators but as aggres- sors­it was a second occupation,' said Piotr Setkiewicz, director of the ar- chives at the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum." L: So Elie Wiesel made the right decision. R: Quite so. One has to keep in mind the reign of terror, which the Soviets unleashed in the areas they occupied in eastern Europe, in order to understand that the Red Army could not and would not liberate anyone.1234 Reading survivor literature with a critical attitude and an open mind can reveal many similar statements elsewhere as well. Let me give you two more exam- ples. The father of Anne Frank, Otto Frank, married a second time. The daughter of his second wife wrote a book in 1991, in which she relates the story of her par- ents. In the context of the evacuation of prisoners from Auschwitz to other camps she wrote:1235 "Our rows got thinner. Every couple of days the SS took thirty or forty women out of the barracks in order to send them to the west to central Ger- many. The danger for me to be selected for these transports as well grew with every day. When ever the SS came I kept my head down, braided my rope, and prayed." L: So they did not want to be transferred away from Auschwitz. R: Right. Very similar to this is the statement by French-Jewish Auschwitz inmate Marc Klein, a professor at the medical faculty of the University of Straßburg, Alsace:1236 "It was always an unpleasant menace to be transported [away from Ausch- witz], because one instantly lost all material advantages, the big ones and the little ones, which one had gained in a camp in the long run. It was a de- parture to the unknown, paired with the burden of the travel and the difficul- ties of the new environment in a different camp. Despite all, at least for the Jews, who were always threatened by massive Jewish gassings, a transport could sometimes be a path of rescue. [...] One day a transport left for Natz- weiler/Struthof. I was intensely tempted to be a part of it, because that would 1234 Cf. Joachim Hoffmann, op. cit. (note 24), pp. 279-327; cf. Ataullah B. Kopanski, The Barnes Review, 4(4) (1998), pp. 37-40; cf. also Alfred Maurice de Zayas, The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace, St. Martin's Press, New York 1993; Heinz Nawratil, Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung 1945 bis 1948, 11th ed., Universitas, Munich 2003. 1235 Eva Schloss, Evas Geschichte, Heyne, Munich 1991, p. 117. 1236 Marc Klein, "Observations et Réflexions sur les camps de concentrations nazis," in: Revue d'Études germaniques, no. 3, 1946 (www.phdn.org/histgen/auschwitz/klein-obs46.html). 474 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST get me home to the Alsace. But from a safe source I had learned that this would be a Himmelfahrtskommando,[1237] so that I renounced." R: Hence, the threat of the gas chambers cannot have been that real after all, if a mere rumor makes him decide to stay in Auschwitz. We will meet Prof. Klein again in just a few moments. 4.6.2. "Opera During the Holocaust" R: The following article was published on May 1, 1997, in the Australian newspa- per Killoy Sentinel (New South Wales). It speaks for itself: "We are all familiar with the name Auschwitz. Most people could identify Auschwitz as a `death camp' for the Jews. Many people might be capable of recalling that it was located in Poland. Many would be uncertain of details, but would be at least familiar with the name. In any case, it is a part of mod- ern culture. Auschwitz is usually depicted as the place of incessant, methodical and cen- trally-planned extermination of the Jews (not the Jewish race, as there is none.) There are many accounts and descriptions about the total horror, the perva- sive atmosphere of suffering and the impending assembly line of death. Could such a place possibly have had a swimming pool for the prisoners? Could it have been equipped with a social-educational centre, organized discussion groups, concerts, theatre, a children's choir, opera performances ­ all run by, and for, the internees? Impossible! That wouldn't fit in with the image with which we are all familiar. Anyone prepared to search books, papers, and videos presenting the non- establishment evidence and opinions ­ material which, significantly, is never available in mainstream book shops ­ will become familiar with this infor- mation. The swimming pool has appeared in published reproductions of various wartime air photographs. Of course, these photos could be fakes; but the prisoner's pool ­ now seen close-up ­ appears in a video filmed in modern- day Auschwitz. This video includes a rather surprising interview with the head tour guide and the director of the modern-day camp, Dr. Franciszek Piper. The film was made by David Cole. Mr. Cole is an American Jew. Perhaps the video is a forgery. But if the other facilities did, in fact, exist, then the swimming pool is quite plausible. For evidence of the reality of the other facilities, let's turn to no less a source than the Jerusalem Post (domestic edition), January 25, 1995, (Fea- tures), page 7. This present writer has the original copy, it was sent to him from Israel. One half-page article is entitled `Amidst the Killing, Children Sang of Brotherly Love.' `In 1943, 10-year-old Daniel K. arrived in Auschwitz. Now a univer- sity professor, he looks back at a different face of the death camp,' runs the 1237 heaven trip command = certain death assignment. 475 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST introduction. Professor K. writes: `The Chorale from (Beethoven`s Ninth Symphony) was... performed by a Jewish children's choir at Auschwitz- Birkenau in 1943... I was a member of that choir... I... remember my first engagement with culture, with history, and with music ­ in the camp...' `In March 1944, I was severely ill with diphtheria and was sent to the camp hospital barracks. My mother had asked to be transferred to stay with me in the hospital. (Response not stated)... Nurses, doctors, and patients sur- vived...' Why nurses, doctors, even hospitals, for people who were sent there to be killed? Why was the boy fed, clothed, and housed for between two and three years? Daniel K continues: `One of the youth leaders of our group... asked to establish an education centre for children. He was given permission, and in a short time the educa- tion centre became a spiritual and social centre for the family camp. (The family camp!) It was the soul of the camp. `Musical and theatrical performances, including a children's opera, were held at the centre. There were discussions of various ideologies ­ Zionism, Socialism, Czech nationalism... There was a conductor named Imre... (who) organized the children's choir. Rehearsals were held in a huge lavatory bar- racks where the acoustics were good... `(In) the fall 1944... huge masses of inmates fit for labour were being sent to Germany.' (End quote.) Ah, so `huge masses' of them were kept fit to work! I have deliberately ig- nored the many usual references to extermination, gas ovens, and so on; they are available ad nauseam all around us. My purpose is to bring to attention the admitted existence of these leisure fa- cilities. Their existence can no longer be doubted. Their existence throws a new and thought-provoking light on those familiar stories we all know: Could it be that Auschwitz was not quite the type of place usually de- scribed?" R: The eye-opening video by David Cole mentioned in this article can be downloaded for free from the Internet or purchased as a hardcopy.572 The lei- sure activities mentioned in the above article did indeed exist and are by no means unknown to the normal literature about Auschwitz, as claimed in the ar- ticle. There are many references in the survivor literature referring to things, which are in extreme contrast to the notion of Auschwitz as an extermination camp. For matter of brevity, I shall only reproduce a very concise list here:1238 Culture Theater;1239 cinema, cabaret,1236 orchestra of all nationalities, members most Jews;1240 Alma Rose, nice of composer Gustav Mahler, was conductor of the 1238 Most of the following items were collected by German lawyer Hajo Herrmann. 1239 Jean-Claude Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 41. 1240 M. Klein, op. cit. (note 1236); F. Müller, op. cit. (note 181), p. 10; Reitlinger, op. cit. (note 252), p. 126. 476 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST women's orchestras;1241 Ignaz Speiser as famous violinist, Szymon Laks, com- poser, violinist, conductor of the camp orchestra;1242 choirs;1243 Russian ballet, Italian orchestra.1244 Sport and Fitness sport field; soccer games between SS soldiers and inmate functionaries;1245 children playground, table tennis;1246 kindergarten, school for Jews from Theresienstadt;1247 green areas for inmates to rest, flower beds;1248 swimming pool, water polo; 1236 sauna;1249 brothel.1250 Contact from and to the Outside World Sending and receiving letters;1251 parcel reception for Jews;1252 50,000 parcels to Jews;1253 one parcel per month and Jew;1254 releases;1255 inmates worked to- gether with Polish civilians and British POW, smuggling mail and docu- ments;1256 inmates with special ID leave camp without guards;1257 good escape chances, 90% successful;1258 visit by commission of the International Red Cross in September 1944;1259 listening to Allied radio stations.1260 Bureaucracy Welfare department replies to inquiries from outside, gives advice in legal af- fairs, inheritances, births, weddings, deaths, and release of property of deceased inmates to relatives;1261 camp administration reports any unnatural death to public prosecutor;1262 30 signatures necessary for death certificate;1263 urn de- 1241 FAZ-Magazin 1990, no. 563, p. 80. 1242 Liberty Bell, Washington DC, Febr. 1988, p. 34. 1243 Hefte von Auschwitz, no. 18, State Museum Auschwitz, p. 259; Udo Walendy, op. cit. (note 1146), p. 198; Hermann Langbein, op. cit. (note 1081), p. 150ff. 1244 U. Walendy, op. cit. (note 1146), p. 244. 1245 H. Langbein, op. cit. (note 1081), p. 155; Queen versus Zündel, op. cit. (note 64), p. 338, 397. 1246 Verdict, op. cit. (note 1041), p. 430f.; Simha Noar, Krankengymnastin in Auschwitz, Herder, Freiburg 1986, p. 57. 1247 Filip Müller, op. cit. (note 181), p. 154. 1248 U. Walendy, op. cit. (note 1146), p. 287. 1249 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 251), p. 57; Ota Kraus, Erich Kulka, op. cit. (note 871). 1250 Verdict, op. cit. (note 1041), p. 28; Hefte von Auschwitz, no. 18, p. 57; U. Walendy, op. cit. (note 1146), p. 115. 1251 Hefte von Auschwitz, no. 18, p. 48. 1252 Ibid., p. 226; Langbein, op. cit. (note 1081), p. 43 1253 Walendy, op. cit. (note 1146), p. 38; P. Rassinier, Was ist Wahrheit?, 8th ed., Druffel, Leoni, 1982, p. 246f. (www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres/PRwahr.pdf). 1254 F. Müller, op. cit. (note 181), p. 154. 1255 Verdict, op. cit. (note 1041), p. 45; R. Höß, in M. Broszat (ed.), op. cit. (note 1158), p. 179; Langbein, op. cit. (note 1081), p. 70; Walendy, op. cit. (note 1146), p. 126; see works quoted in notes 467f. 1256 Langbein, op. cit. (note 1081), p. 513; Hefte von Auschwitz 18, pp. 66, 215, 220; M. Broszat (ed.), op. cit. (note 1158), p. 99. 1257 Verdict, op. cit. (note 1041), p. 39 1258 M. Broszat (ed.), op. cit. (note 1158), pp. 99f., 178. 1259 P. Rassinier, op. cit. (note 1253), p. 246. 1260 M. Broszat (ed.), op. cit. (note 1158), p. 99. 1261 Hefte von Auschwitz 18, p. 57. 1262 Verdict, op. cit. (note 1041), p. 34. 1263 Robert Lenski, The Holocaust on Trial, Reporter Press, Decatur, AL, 1990, p. 309. 477 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST pot, remainders of deceased inmates sent to relatives;1264 death notification for relatives in Czechia.1265 Work and Family Harmony between Aryan and Jewish colleagues and colleagues in higher positions;1266 women labor camp with sewing room and weaving mill;1267 only a fraction of all inmates works, in May 1944 11,331 are not capable to work;1268 family camp for gypsies;1269 inmates wear civil clothes and long hair, many births within the camp;1270 children block for orphans;1271 family camp for Jews from Theresienstadt.1272 Food and Health Inmate cantine;1251 inmate hospital with several hundred beds;1273 sick books;1274 recovery for future labor;1275 double food rations, surgery rooms, x- ray equipment;1276 dentist office;1277 woman confined to bed due to nerve dis- ease well taken care of, testifying after war;1278 typhus epidemic in summer 1942: more than 200 casualties each day, also under civilians and SS men; SS physician Dr. Schwela succumbs;1279 proper food for inmates;1280 1,800 calo- ries per day;1281 foreign workers for hard labor get up to 4,000, more than a German engineer; 4,800 sick and immobile inmates remain in Auschwitz under supervision of physicians;1282 inmates oppose relocation to other camps.1283 L: Although this list contradicts the common notion of Auschwitz, it sure fits well into all the other evidence we have learned about during these lectures. R: To give you one example of the mind-boggling admissions of former Ausch- witz inmates, let me quote what former Auschwitz inmate Prof. Dr. Marc Klein wrote in his memoirs under the headline "Auschwitz I Main Camp":1284 1264 Hefte von Auschwitz 18; p. 65. 1265 Langbein, op. cit. (note 1081), p. 71. 1266 Ibid., p. 545; Hefte von Auschwitz 18, p. 45; F. Müller, op. cit. (note 181), p. 90. 1267 Langbein, op. cit. (note 1081), p. 177. 1268 Reitlinger, op. cit. (note 252), pp. 125. 1269 Verdict, op. cit. (note 1041), p. 31; Langbein, op. cit. (note 1081), p. 44. 1270 F. Müller, op. cit. (note 181), p. 240. 1271 Verdict, op. cit. (note 1041), p. 830. 1272 Hefte von Auschwitz 18, p. 260. 1273 Walendy, op. cit. (note 1146), p. 120. 1274 Ibid., p. 139. 1275 Verdict, op. cit. (note 1041), p. 716. 1276 See in general Simha Noar, op cit. (note 1246). 1277 Verdict, op. cit. (note 1041), p. 40; Queen versus Zündel, op. cit. (note 64), pp. 396, 399. 1278 Verdict, op. cit. (note 1041), p. 474. 1279 "Ausgewählte Probleme aus der Geschichte des KL Auschwitz," State Museum Auschwitz, 1988, p. 66 1280 Hefte von Auschwitz 18, p. 45; 1281 P. Rassinier, op. cit. (note 1253), p. 270; Walendy, op. cit. (note 1146), pp. 169, 188. 1282 W. Stäglich, Der Auschwitz-Mythos, op. cit. (note 152), p. 448 1283 M. Broszat (ed.), op. cit. (note 1158), p. 101; Simha Noar, op. cit. (note 1276), p. 111. 1284 De l'Université..., op. cit. (note 89), p. 453; similar in "Observations...," op. cit. (note 1236); taken from Robert Faurisson, "Das Schwimmbad im Stammlager Auschwitz," VffG 5(3) (2001), pp. 254f.; cf. Robert Faurisson, op. cit. (note 334), p. 25. 478 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "During Sun- and holydays, when most commandos had the day off, working hours were dif- ferent. The roll call took place at noon; during the evening one relaxed or dedicated his time to a selection of athletic or cul- tural activities. Soccer, basket- ball, and water ball games (in the outdoor pool that had been built by inmates within the Ill. 149: Inmate swimming pool in the Auschwitz main camp with three starting camp) attracted the spectator blocks and a three meter board. Photo masses. It should be noted that taken in spring 2001 (German quality work. only the fit and well nourished It still holds the water!). © Dr. Robert H. Count- inmates, who were spared from ess hard labor, could get engaged in such games that attracted the vivid applause of the masses of the other inmates." R: Such descriptions do not dominate the survivor literature, of course. They are usually mentioned only in passing, beside the well-known horrors and atroci- ties. Only when intentionally searching these things and putting them together, one realizes how paradox the image is that the witnesses draw of Auschwitz ­ and not just of Auschwitz. This should indeed be thought-provoking to all of us. A systematic analysis of the witness testimonies, which in the meantime spread out sheer endlessly, has yet to be done. Who dares to tackle this thank- less task? L: Do you want to suggest with this that the inmates had a nice time in Ausch- witz? R: No, that is not what I am saying at all. The positive sides of the Auschwitz camp mentioned in the survivor literature are only of limited value to assess the mental and physical well-being of the inmates. But one should neither demon- ize those who mention these things nor keep these things secret, just because they do not fit in one's concept. You can draw your own conclusions from these positive sides. Because the space in this book is restricted, I need to re- strict our discussion mainly to the issue of mass extermination, which is why I will not dwell any further on the joys and sorrows of the inmates which were not murdered. Fact is that almost all statements by witnesses contain both true and false claims. Nobody has a perfect memory, and not everybody is an upholder of perfect moral standards. The art to separate the plausible from the implausible has almost been forgotten when it comes to statement on the Holocaust. 479 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 4.6.3. Statement Excerpts from the Auschwitz Files R: In closing the forth lecture I will now list several witness statements, which I consider to be believable mainly because I cannot see a reason why former in- mates should invent exonerating claims or what external circumstances could "create" such exonerating statements. L: Well, some inmates could have felt threatened by organizations of former SS members or even by the German government. R: It can objectively be ruled out that the post-war German authorities posed any danger to inmates. The behavior of inmates and inmate organizations in post- war Germany also clearly indicates that they never perceived the new German authorities as a threat. I consider the claim that SS organizations could have been perceived as a threat to former inmates as a bad joke. Former SS members were fair game without any legal protection everywhere in Europe and almost all over the world after 1945. No such organization with any noticeable influence ever existed, in con- trast to the very influential and well organized former inmates. But let me now get to my excerpts of credible statements of former inmates. Not all claims of these witnesses are necessarily believable, which I have shown elsewhere,874 but in the following I will restrict myself to the plausible aspects of them. I already mentioned and analyzed the statements made by Maryla Rosenthal. Despite massive pressure of her environment, she remained steadfast that she could not remember any atrocities during her stay in Auschwitz (see p. 353 and following). I also pointed out earlier the sincere statement of the former inmate Jakob Lewinski about the forced labor camp Auschwitz Monowitz (see p. 205) as well as the testimony of Emil Behr, who during his stay in Auschwitz was an electrician and a colleague of Adolf Rögner, but who could confirm nothing of what the professional liar Rögner had alluded to (see p. 367). 4.6.3.1. Artur Hartmann R: Soon after arriving at the camp Hartmann injured his foot and was sent off to peel potatoes. According to his recollection, he found a number of prisoners there who were ill or otherwise unfit for work, something that contradicts the received version of events that such prisoners were immediately gassed. He re- ports of an SS man who mistreated prisoners but who was then sentenced to death for that mistreatment. Otherwise he could not complain about being mis- treated by concentration camp personnel.1285 4.6.3.2. Henryk Bartoszewicz R: Bartoszewicz worked in the Auschwitz tannery. Owing to his membership of the camp partisans he was kicked about during interrogations, but he did not mention any other forms of torture.1286 1285 Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), op. cit. (note 410); vol. 1, p. 132. 1286 Copy of the testimony from Aug. 30 [1958]; ibid., vol. 2, pp. 223ff. 480 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 4.6.3.3. Aleksander Gorecki R: Gorecki reports on a prisoner who had just had a bladder operation and who was about to have a prostate surgery. Interestingly, such facts that prisoners were operated on at Auschwitz to keep them alive receives little attention.1287 4.6.3.4. Adolf Rögner R: Even some statements by Rögner are not a lie, for example when he claims that during his stay at the Dachau concentration camp in May 1943 he was treated at the hospital in such a way that he was again fit for work.1288 4.6.3.5 Konrad Lang R: Lang was incarcerated between 1940 and 1945 at Auschwitz and in 1943 be- came senior inmate supervisor (Kapo) at the Deutsche Ausrüstung-Werke (German equipment works), where he had 2,000 prisoners under him. He stated that he dealt with Boger only once during an investigation of an attempted act of sabotage. The West German officer who interrogated Lang in 1958 summed up Lang's statement as follows: "Lang has only heard secondhand that Boger was `very keen' and that the prisoners were afraid of him. Lang claims he has never heard of killings or shootings of prisoners by Boger or on Boger's orders." R: Obviously Lang was high up in the prisoner hierarchy where he made contact with many prisoners and those responsible for the camp. This makes it all the more extraordinary that he didn't know anything about the alleged murderous activities of Wilhelm Boger. L: Perhaps on account of his collaboration with the Germans Lang was compro- mised. He possibly maltreated the prisoners under him. R: That is conceivable, but that would mean he could have been blackmailed, hence one would assume that he would have done anything in order not to up- set the organizations of former inmates, that is to say, he would have spoken against Boger, even if it was not true. This tactic of hiding your own misdeeds was used by, for example, Eugen Kogon, as I already mentioned (see p. 62). But Lang does not incriminate Boger. Besides the love of truth, I don't know what else would have motivated Lang in making his statements in the way he did.1289 4.6.3.6. Moritz Salomon R: Salomon states that he was so badly mistreated by Boger that thereafter he was "fit for `gassing.'" But then a wonder occurs and Salomon is taken to the camp hospital where he recovers.1290 1287 Letter by the Auschwitz Committee, Oct. 20, 1958; ibid., vol. 2, p. 226. 1288 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 250. 1289 Interrogation of Nov. 7, 1958; ibid., vol. 2, pp. 279f. 1290 Interrogation of Nov. 14, 1958; ibid., vol. 2, p. 283. 481 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 4.6.3.7. Jakob Fries R: Just like Rögner, Jakob Fries was also at Auschwitz as a professional criminal. During his interrogations he was serving a 14-year prison sentence. At Ausch- witz Fries was the work foreman for all the work groups at Auschwitz main camp. According to his interrogators, Fries stated the following about Boger's alleged crimes:1291 "He claims not to have heard anything about shootings in Auschwitz. [...] He merely remembers that in Auschwitz inmates, who had tried to climb over the fence, were shot by guards. He also claims to have heard nothing about other crimes against inmates. He claims to have learned only after 1945 and through media reports what had been going on in Auschwitz and especially in Birkenau." R: Here we have a witness who is either capable of differentiating between per- sonal experience and that, which he heard about after the war, or here is some- one who collaborated with the Germans to organize forced labor and therefore adjusted his statement for tactical purposes of avoiding self-incrimination. L: But I thought that inmates were not prosecuted? R: Sure they were, in particular if they did not support the legend and had made enemies among other inmates. Take the fate of Emil Bednarek as an example. He was incarcerated in Auschwitz for allegedly belonging to a Polish under- ground movement. During his activity as an inmate overseer of the penal com- mando of Auschwitz, he was claimed to have murdered 14 other inmates, for which he was sentenced to a life term in prison.1292 Remember that the influen- tial and well organized associations of former inmates, like the VVN, put their fellow inmates under massive pressure right after the war ­ including threats and intimidations (see p. 396). It was easy for them to cook up some charges against noncompliant former co-inmates. In western societies, these inmate or- ganizations were the real and only threat to former inmates, and we must there- fore expect that many former inmates adjusted their statements accordingly. Hence, if Jakob Fries adjusted his testimony, he would have done it in a way to avoid anything that antagonized the former prisoners' organizations and inves- tigators alike. It is therefore more likely that he would have supported the leg- end, if he had some dirty laundry in his closet. But despite this danger for him- self, he did not support the legend. We can dismiss Fries' claim that he did not know what was happening at Auschwitz, because he had as his immediate superior Hauptsturmführer Au- meier, who was the head of the protective custody camp and assistant com- mander of Auschwitz. 4.6.3.8. Alfred Korn R: Alfred Korn was initially incarcerated at Plazow camp, where he enjoyed a number of freedoms, because Plazow became a closed camp only in 1943. At the end of 1943, he volunteered to go to Auschwitz, where the SS supervisors 1291 Ibid., vol. 3, p. 437R. 1292 See the verdict of the Frankfurt trial, op. cit. (note 1041). 482 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST treated him fairly. Once he was interrogated by the camp Gestapo, but it did not have any consequences for him. He said he knew of camp atrocities from camp gossip that he heard, but could not give any details of such allegations. The only factual incident he claimed to recall about atrocities was in relationship to a gassing in November 1944. But even according to orthodox historical writ- ings it is claimed that the extermination facilities in Auschwitz had ceased op- eration a while before that and were being dismantled at that time.1293 4.6.3.9. Otto Locke R: Otto Locke reports how Boger maltreated him. He subsequently spent four weeks in the prison hospital, apparently either for a malady he contracted in the isolation bunker or because of typhus.1294 Locke also reports that Boger be- haved himself towards Locke since spring 1943 on the orders of the camp commandant Liebehenschel that prisoners were not to be beaten. Boger's bad reputation stems from the time when beatings were still tolerated during inter- rogations. Locke refused to lodge a formal complaint against Boger. 4.6.3.10. Rajzla Sadowska R: As a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz, Mrs. Sadowska had suffered such a serious work-related accident that she could not work anymore. She reported:1295 "Since I now was no longer fit to work, I feared that I would be gassed. It had become general knowledge that all those unfit for work were gassed." R: She was therefore selected and, no, not gassed as she feared and must be ex- pected, if the legend were true, but taken to the camp hospital until she made a recovery. After seven days she was once again selected, this time by the notori- ous SS Dr. Mengele. He is claimed to have conducted very painful experiments on Mrs. Sadowska, which she did not specify. She claimed to have been a hu- man cripple after these experiments. If the legend were true, then she had to be gassed after that, because now she was not only unfit for labor, but also unfit for further experiments, as she stated. But another miracle happened: she was again nurtured back to good health.1296 Note what happened here: A female Jewish inmate in Auschwitz had a severe accident and was sent to the hospital, where she was treated well for a week. Next, an SS doctor did some unpleasant surgery on her, after which she was al- lowed to completely recover to good health. This clearly proves that the SS did everything ­ including surgery ­ to restore that woman's health in order to keep her fit for work. But in her post-war interview, Mrs. Sadowska tries to turn her positive experience of healthcare in Auschwitz upside down. Note also, that the investigating officer interviewing her in 1959 did not try to find out, what kind of experiment (=surgery) had been performed on her. This proves once more the docile naiveté of these interrogators. 1293 Interrogation of March 5, 1959, in Stuttgart, ibid., vol. 3, pp. 571-576. 1294 Interrogation of March 6, 1959, ibid, pp. 578-584 1295 Ibid., vol. 5, pp. 657, 684, 676, 678f. 1296 Ibid., p. 684. 483 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST That Mrs. Sadowska's experiences in Germany during the war cannot have been all that horrible, is also proven by the fact that Mrs. Sadowska chose to live in Germany after the war, because she didn't like the climate in Israel. Into this pattern fits a "selection" that Mrs. Sadowska claimed to have experi- enced immediately after arriving at the camp. Destination: Three months quar- antine for all those new prisoners who arrived with Mrs. Sadowska. After this quarantine was over in order to ensure that all prisoners were healthy, these women were subjected to yet another selection, after which most of them were transferred into other huts. Later they were transported away per trucks, upon which these ladies are said to have sung their "final song," as Mrs. Sadowska claims. L: How did she know that this song was their final song? R: As a matter of fact, she didn't. She only concluded from the fact that she saw these women never again that they had been killed. But that is, of course, non- sense, because had murder been the intention of the SS, then they would have saved the trouble of feeding these women for three months during the quaran- tine time. Also, people singing songs while being transported on trucks hardly support the theses that they thought they were driven to their executions. 4.6.3.11. Hugo Breiden R: A similar paradox appears in the statement by Hugo Breiden, who claimed during his second interrogation that an eleven-year-old Jewish boy ­ who con- trary to received opinion and in spite of his age was not gassed on arrival ­ was given all the care he needed for weeks on end to recover from typhus, just to be selected after that ­ allegedly for a lethal injection. The final fate of this boy, however, Breiden knows only from hearsay.1297 4.6.3.12. Erwin Valentin R: The statements of former inmate Valentin contain contradictions as well. He claims that he had filed a criminal complaint against the commandant of the work camp Neutomischel, Stülpnagel, as a result of which Stülpnagel was sen- tenced to 18 months in prison for stealing food. Stülpnagel spent his time at Stutthof concentration camp.1298 L: Food thieves among the SS were punished but not murderers? R: That is what they want us to believe. Valentin also claimed that on account of his incessant complaining he was eventually sent to Auschwitz where he con- tracted pneumonia. L: He volunteered to be transferred to Auschwitz? R: Yes L: So the reputation of the Auschwitz camp could not have been too bad after all. R: Not in his mind at that time at least. Instead of being selected for the gassing, as was allegedly done with other severely sick patients, Valentin was well looked after in the Auschwitz hospital, since he was a doctor and surgeon. Furthermore 1297 Ibid., p. 701. 1298 Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 841-843, 847f. 484 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST he reported that as head physician of block 9 of the prison hospital he worked under Dr. Hans Münch, and that there were up to 1,000 prisoners cared for at any one time in that hospital, most of whom suffered from typhus and dysen- tery. This does, of course, not fit into Valentin's assertion that severely sick prisoners were selected and gassed. Valentin does not comment further on the selection and gassings, and so one may assume that his views about gassings arose from post-war impressions. Valentin knows about Boger's misconduct only through rumors. His own ex- perience is the following: "[...] I was addressed politely by Boger ­ for the first time as an inmate in Auschwitz." R: And his own experiences as a doctor are also positive, and about his superior SS doctor he can say "nothing detrimental." Everything Valentin knows about mass killings comes from hearsay, as he himself admits:1299 "Everything that is reported about the procedures during the gassings and incinerations of the unfortunate victims is for the most part based on `hear- say.'" 4.6.3.13. Walter Mosbach R: The statement by Walter Mosbach is also internally contradictory, who recog- nized this himself and therefore offered an explanation:1300 "I would like to split [SS] Dr. Fischer into two persons: as a physician he behaved correctly, he even took the side of the inmates; however, as SS member, to give an example, he sent inmates, which he had treated well a quarter hour earlier and had protected in front of the inmate physicians, into the gas chamber during the selections." L: According to this, this SS doctor was usually nicer to the inmates than the phy- sicians recruited from among the inmates. R: Right. This is a clear paradox: The nice SS doctor Fischer,1301 who sends his beloved inmate patients to the gas chamber with a warm smile. The paradoxical nature of Mosbach's testimony is dissolved, however, if we just delete the words "into the gas chamber" out of his statement, that is to say, if we assume that Fischer was convinced that his selection of certain inmates did not happen with the prospect of having them murdered in a gas chamber, but with the prospect of a different harmless destination, like their assignment to the camp hospital or to certain labor tasks. 1299 Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 862-867; here addition from May 16, 1945. 1300 Ibid., p. 931. 1301 According to Brün Meyer (ed.), Dienstaltersliste der Waffen-SS. Stand vom 1. Juli 1944, Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1987, Horst Fischer was a mere "SS-Führer des Sanitätsdienstes," i.e., a paramedic without PhD. 485 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 4.6.3.14. Max Willner R: Another ex-prisoner, Max Willner, constructed a similar internal contradiction in his statement. First he reported how he had been selected for suspicion of ty- phus and transferred to the hospital section at Birkenau, where he recovered, al- though he was a Jew incapable to work. On the next page he claims that pris- oners at Birkenau were categorized according to their illnesses, but this time for the purpose of dying in the gas chamber ­ about which he has nothing to report, much like anything else that he claims remains vague. Yet on the gassing issue he is firm:1302 "[...] Even with the best of intentions I can no longer remember any specific cases. I will strive to sit down shortly with some more former Auschwitz in- mates residing here in order to talk everything over with them and to report in detail about the findings of the Central Office of State Administrations of Justice in Ludwigsburg ­ Mr. Public Prosecutor Schüler [recte: Schüle]." R: This proves that witnesses systematically coordinated their statements already years before the start of the Frankfurt trial and with the assistance of public prosecutors. At least Willner is honest. 4.6.3.15. Wilhelm Dibowski R: Wilhelm Dibowski spent winter 1941/1942 until February 1943 in Birkenau because he was a member of the Communist Party of Germany. He reports on the mass gassings,1303 but his statements are peppered with expression such as "among prisoners it was said," "later one spoke," "I don't know personally," "I have heard," "never saw myself," "he is supposed to have boasted," "through Polish prisoners [...] became known," "these two [...] told me," "I cannot say anything about selections," "I only know from hearsay," "I don't know them," "I know the name Mengele from a book," "I don't know," "it means nothing to me," "in the camp this was known," "I cannot give you any more details on this," "also on this matter I cannot say anything else." L: That such witnesses are taken seriously at all... R: But one thing Dibowski knows with certainty: "I cannot say anything about the large gassings in Birkenau, because in my opinion these were carried out after my time at Auschwitz." L: But the mass killing is supposed to have started in early spring of 1942 at Birk- enau in the bunkers, where thousands of Jews became victims of the gigantic smoking and fire-spewing pyres in huge pits. R: Add to this implausibility that the witness was also involved in constructing the Birkenau camp, so he knew exactly what was happening there. But considering all the things he did not really know because he learned about it only from hearsay, he was absolutely certain about one thing: that during his presence in Birkenau there were no "large gassings." L: Halleluja! R: Dibowski's statement also indicates how terrible the SS was in Auschwitz: 1302 Ibid., pp. 934f. 1303 Ibid., vol. 7, pp. 1007-1013. 486 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 150: Wilhelm Dibowski doesn't know anything... (Files, p. 1011) "I knew the Oscha. [correct: Stubaf.] Bischof [sic], who was at the Construc- tion Office. [...] Bischof lived in Essen after 1945, and I visited him once myself in his dwelling in Essen. I visited him in 1950, and at that time he lived in Essen, Klappstr. 78. Later he moved to Essen-Steele. [...] I have a neighbor, who was with the guards in concentration camp Auschwitz. [...] I cannot say anything bad about him; to the contrary, I can only say good things about him." R: Karl Bischoff was head of the SS Central Construction Office at Auschwitz, under whose direction the huge extermination sites would have been erected, had such ever existed. And because Dibowski was involved in building the camp, Bischoff was his superior. L: With whom he remained on good terms after the war, as was the case with one of his former guards. R: Yes, this proves that every SS man must have been a terrible criminal. 4.6.3.16. Hans Röhrig R: Röhrig was imprisoned since 1936 for being a communist and for high treason. Early 1942 he was transferred to Birkenau. Röhrig reports how at some point a guard, who had shot an inmate without any reason, was arrested by the SS and lead away.1304 L: So arbitrary killings were pursued as a crime after all! R: Exactly. The fact is that at that time there was an SS order, according to which the mishandling of prisoners was to be severely punished.1305 How far the order was followed and if SS men who contravened this order were consistently pun- ished, is of course a different matter. In June 1942 Röhrig became incapacitated through typhus, and he was selected ­ no, not for the gas chamber but to the hospital at Auschwitz main camp, where he remained until August 1942 and recovered thanks to the medical care of the SS. 1304 Ibid., pp. 1127, 1129. 1305 "Der Inspekteur der Konz.-Lager und Führer der SS-Totenkopfverbände," Berlin, June 4, 1937, Be- fehlsblatt SS-TV/IKL no. 5, May 1937, no. 29: "Mißhandlung von Häftlingen, Strenge Behandlung von Mißhandlungen, Degradierung, Ausschluß, Strafgericht" (mistreatment of inmates, severe punishment of mistreatment, degradation, exclusion, prosecution) 487 Fifth Lecture: On Science and Freedom 5.1. Pseudo Science R: I would like to round off considering revisionist arguments by getting back to the question whether Holocaust revisionism is pseudo-scientific or not. L: What do you mean by "pseudo-scientific"? R: "Pseudo" is Greek and means not-authentic, a sham, thus pseudo-science. L: So pseudo-scientific is another word for non-scientific. R: No, pseudo-science is non-scientific work that claims to be scientific. L: That is why the Leuchter Report and The Rudolf Report are generally consid- ered to be non-scientific, not really scientific, though Leuchter and Rudolf as- sert that they are. R: That is the view held by the German government and by most media outlets. L: And how do you distinguish scientific work from non-scientific work? R: Scientific work is characterized by its asserted conclusions being testable, that any evidence offered can be followed by others through logical thought proc- esses, repeatable experiments, or references to documents or other scientific works in such a way that a third party can locate these documents and works. Hence the reason for having over a thousand footnotes in this book. L: If you argue in this way, then you need to consider the works of the orthodox Holocaust historians as scientific ­ for example, Raul Hilberg's The Destruc- tion of European Jewry or Wolfgang Benz' Dimension des Völkermordes ­ be- cause their works are full of footnotes. R: It is beyond dispute that these books fulfill the criterion of proving their factual assertions. But that is not the only criterion needed for something to be consid- ered scientific. Other criteria are not fulfilled by these works, such as the pres- entation and discussion of opposing arguments. In addition, the above-named works turn upside down the generally accepted hierarchy of evidence: witness evidence is the most important, followed by documentary evidence, but mate- rial evidence almost never appears. After all, the Holocaust, which has mainly been defined as systematic murder in homicidal gas chambers, cannot be "proven" because there is no material and documentary evidence to do that. Another criterion of scientific work is adopting a systematic approach as well as separating facts from opinions and interpretations, though this is not an ab- solute necessity. As authorities in Europe often interfere with our scientific freedom to do re- search when it come to history, as I will show in more detail later, I would like 488 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST to quote from a judgment of the German Constitutional High Court, which of- fers a kind of definition of scientific work, or rather, what the condition is that a work can be denied the status of being scientific. This allows us to measure these censoring authorities with their own standard:1306 "The protection of the fundamental right to a free science does neither de- pend on the correctness of its methods or results nor on the soundness of the argumentation and logical reasoning or the completeness of the points of view and the evidence lying on the base of a scientific work. Only science it- self can determine what is good or bad science and which results are true or false. [...] It is not permissible to deny a work to be scientific just because it has a bias and gaps or because it does not consider opposing viewpoints adequately. [...] It is removed from the realm of science only if it fails the claim to be scientific [...] systematically. [...] An indicator of this can be the systematic neglect of facts, sources, views, and results that oppose the au- thor's view." L: If Leuchter's report is nevertheless called unscientific by Germany's courts, does that meant that Leuchter systematically ignored facts, sources, views, and results that would undermine his views? R: Leuchter's expert report was pioneer work, and it was the first of its kind in the world wherein the question of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and elsewhere was treated from a forensic point of view. One can hardly accuse him of having systematically ignored opposing views and results because such views did ba- sically not exist. But Leuchter was never accused of that. He has been accused of having come to false conclusions based on false premises.1307 L: Is this criticism justified? R: In my view partially yes.1308 But that is not important for me here. The German Constitutional High Court has stated that even erroneous or deficient works are not necessarily unscientific and are therefore protected under the law. If having made errors were a criterion to deny a work is scientific character, then most scientists would be producing pseudo-scientific works, because everyone makes errors once in a while. It is therefore not possible to seriously argue like that. The mindset that suppresses unpopular scientific research looks different. As an example, let me quote from Germany's most respected daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wherein a certain Patrick Bahners reported on a speech given by Fred Leuchter in Germany:1025 "The state protects the freedom of science. He recognizes a scientist not by his correct results, but by his correct form. [...] But it is overlooked that the intention to incite [to hatred] cannot only be recognized by errors of form, 1306 Verdict BVerfG, Jan. 11, 1994, Ref. 1 BvR 434/87, pp. 16f. 1307 Criticism of Leuchter, cf. e.g. G. Wellers, "A propos du `rapport Leuchter' les chambres à gaz d'Auschwitz," Le Monde Juif, No. 134, April-June 1989, pp. 45-53; J. Bailer, op. cit. (notes 538, 645); W. Wegner, op. cit. (note 167); see the books Auschwitz Lies (note 9) and Auschwitz-Lügen (note 168) in this regard. 1308 See the critical edition of the Leuchter Reports, op. cit. (note 134). Anyone interested in the Leuchter Report's deficiencies may also consult my The Rudolf Report, op. cit. (note 415). 489 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST which distinguishes beer table talks from a scientific lecture. Quite to the contrary, the incitement perfected in form is particularly perfidious. [...] But for the Auschwitz survivor there can be no insult more wicked than when an expert with spurious logical reasoning states that the survivor was never in danger of his life. But the state is here also ridiculed. If Deckert's [=Günter Deckert translated Leuchter's speech] `Perception of the Holocaust' is correct, then the Fed- eral Republic [of Germany] would be founded on a lie. Each presidential address, each minute's silence, each history book would be a lie. By denying the murder of the Jews he disputes the Federal Republic's legitimacy." R: Please read through these sentences again and then look for argumentative errors. L: The revisionists do not assert that Auschwitz prisoners were never in danger of their lives. R: Exactly, that is the first error. The raging typhus epidemic killed tens of thou- sands of prisoners. The leading revisionist Auschwitz expert, Carlo Mattogno, assumes a maximum number of Auschwitz victims of around 136,000.230 Any- thing else? L: In his article Bahners negates the freedom of science and turns it into its oppo- site: the more scientific, the more objectionable, and the more prohibited. R: Right, and it is clear that the likes of Patrick Bahners are not arguing in accord with the Germany's constitution. He begins from false premises: Firstly it is unclear how an intention to incite to hatred can be recognized if not by its un- scientific form. Such argumentation turns all logic on its head. Secondly, no expert exists who claims that Auschwitz survivors were never in danger of their lives, and thirdly the view is absurd and profoundly wrong that the legitimacy of the Federal Republic of Germany to exist rests on the acceptance of the pre- vailing view about National Socialist persecution and extermination of the Jews. If the Federal Republic of Germany were actually founded on this his- torical detail, then it does not bode well for this state, because every state has to collapse sooner or later, if its existence is based solely upon a certain view of history forced upon its citizens by penal law. L: In your opinion, on what is the modern German state founded? R: What about human rights, the German people accepting this state, its interna- tional recognition, its political, historical, and cultural identity and continuity with its German predecessor state? This somewhat astounding view of the Holocaust forming the moral foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (see quotes on p. 401) creates a very con- crete danger for this state. The adherents of such a view must state that anyone who has a different opinion on the Holocaust is an enemy of the state, even those who have no intentions of harming the state. You thereby create "ene- mies of the state" who in reality are nothing of the sort. You therefore drive loyal citizens into an enemy role, thereby creating the enemy that you then at- tempt to fight. This artificially created enemy then serves to justify limiting the rights guaranteed in the German constitution. This forcing of well-disposed 490 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST citizens into an unwilling enemy role must lead to a polarization of society, when the revisionists have increasing scientific success, something that can up- set the internal peace of the German society. Unfortunately even the German Constitutional High Court has adopted this strange logic, when it found that even a scientific book can be subjected to book burning, especially when it allegedly subverts a Jew's human dignity by contradicting his testimony.1309 German jurisprudence acts basically as if Jews are the only ethnic group whose dignity can be endangered through scientific work. L: In other words: The German Constitutional High Court could not care less about Germany's constitution. It does not care about its own ruling on what is science and therefore enjoys the protection of the law either, as soon as Jews are concerned. Jews apparently still receive special treatment in Germany. R: That is the obvious conclusion. Yet even if the judiciary cannot but concede that a work is scientific, such work will still be defamed as pseudo-scientific. L: What kind of proof is offered when a revisionist work is defamed as pseudo- scientific? R: Nothing. The assertion is made without offering any kind of evidence. They simply claim in crass contrast to the truth that revisionists merely quote one another. They call it the "quoting cartel of the deniers" or so. L: That reminds me of many articles from "normal" scientific works where au- thors primarily refer to their own works as well as to the works of scientists whose mindset is similar. This is something that is quite normal in science, though, because scientists working in a similar field on similar projects using similar methods simply tend to refer to each other's works. R: Yes, but in this instance it is claimed that counter arguments are ignored. But this backfires, because objectively seen the revisionists do the exact opposite: They take apart the assertions made by Holocaust believers ­ witnesses as well as historians ­ while the mainstream historians, energetically supported by politicians, the media, and the judiciary, vehemently resist to even take notice of any revisionist arguments, least of all to take these arguments seriously and to discuss them. In addition revisionists are always accused of maintaining ­ usually right-wing ­ political views, which are claimed to be advanced through revisionist argu- ments. L: To vindicate Hitler. R: That is the usual reproach. L: Vindicating Stalin and his accomplices is never regarded as pseudo-scientific, and it certainly would not lead to any book-burning. 1309 So also the case W. Stäglich, BVerfG, Ref. 1BvR 408f./83, cf. Wigbert Grabert (ed.), op. cit. (note 153), pp. 287ff. Also applied to the book E. Gauss, op. cit. (note 256); cf. reference in note 156; also DGG 44(4) (1996), pp. 9f. (www.vho.org/D/DGG/IDN44_4.html); VHO, "Zur Wissenschaftsfreiheit in Deutschland," VffG 1(1) (1997), pp. 34-37; that "Holocaust denial" is equated by Germany's courts with denying Jews their human dignity and thus their right to live has been confirmed repeatedly, see, eg., BVerfG, ref. 1 BvR 824/90, June 9, 1992; Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, 1993, 14, p. 916f. 491 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: Let's formulate it this way: as long as the boots are sunk into Hitler's body, you can do almost anything. L: But this kind of argumentation rests on circular reasoning, which is scientifi- cally inadmissible and is in effect pseudo-scientific reasoning. A piece of work is un-scientific if and when wrong and forbidden results are obtained, namely "Hitler's vindication." The author of such a work reaches false results because of his objectionable views. And his views are objectionable because his results are false, that is to say: because Hitler was, is, and must remain a devil. In summary: The author's results are false because his results are false. Truth is set in concrete through dogma and taboo, which is enforced by the thought po- lice. The falseness of revisionist works is thus automatic. You can stand on your head and change nothing because §1: The party is always right; and §2: If the party is wrong, then automatically §1 is activated. R: I see. I hadn't thought of that. Permit me to widen our perspective by moving away from the revisionists. The problem of being accused of doing pseudo- science is of a general nature and it plays an important role in the sciences, es- pecially when we consider scientific disciplines where outsiders explore exotic new sources of energy or work on alternative laws of nature. Established sci- ences ­ physics, chemistry, astronomy ­ see their paradigms challenged by such research and at times react quite allerically. L: But they don't call for the prosecutor, do they? R: No, that is limited to Holocaust revisionists. But in other areas there is such a thing as censorship through scientific "authorities." In such cases, single or whole schools of scientists, even scientific institutions, whose paradigms enjoy such a high esteem within the scientific community that critical challenges of their paradigms activates a defensive reaction against the dissident similar to the one that occurs in a society at large when social taboos are broken: refusal to publish papers, personal attacks, intrigues, and open attempts to remove dis- sidents from teaching posts and honors, etc. This especially applies to research- ers who question or contradict the dogma of human equality.1310 But even in subjects where one would not expect any political influences, as in physics, such censorship measures occur. Halton Arp of the Max Planck Institute for astrophysics in Munich goes so far as to compare today's obsessive dogmatic behavior of scientists everywhere with the religions of the Middle Ages:1311 "Science has become religion! [...] science, more importantly, has adopted the methods of religion. [...] The most damaging aspect of science today is widely promulgated theories that are contradicted by observation and ex- periment. In both cases, a story is mandated by authority and then defended by educational, economic, and sociopolitical agencies. [...] The most harm- ful aspect of what science has become is the deliberate attempt to hide evi- 1310 Compare Glade Whitney, "Subversion of Science: How Psychology lost Darwin." JHR, 21(2) (2002) pp. 20-30; Paul Grubach, "All Men Are Equal ­ But Are They Really?" TR, 1(2) (2003), pp. 139-150. 1311 Halton Arp, "What has science come to?," Journal of Scientific Exploration, 14(3) (2000), pp. 447-454. 492 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST dence that contradicts the current paradigm. [...] In a quite human fashion, however, they act in an exactly opposite manner ­ judging that `if an obser- vation disagrees with what we know to be correct, then it must be wrong.' The tradition of `peer review' of articles published in professional journals has degenerated into almost total censorship. [...] scientists, in their fervid attachment to their own theories, have now mostly used their selection as a referee to reject publication of any result that would be unfavorable to their own personal commitment. [...] The only comparable interaction I have heard of is the passionate wars between different religious doctrines of past centuries. [...] The result is that real investigative science is mostly now an underground activity. Independent, often self-supported researchers are publishing in privately supported, small-circulation journals. [...] Again, as science organized, authority figures became associated with the `laws' they were credited with discovering. Organized religion succeeded in killing a great number of people down through the ages on issues that were labeled `belief and heresy' but were probably more fundamentally con- cerned with personal profit and power. Science has arisen some centuries later in less bloody societies but has killed and delayed many new ideas and discoveries and has made many mistakes, for perhaps basically the same reasons." R: If such dogmatic behavior is found within scientific disciplines where no overt political and legal pressure exists, then what do you expect occurs amongst Holocaust historians? Considering the widespread dogmatism within the natural sciences it is not surprising that representatives of the prevailing dogma also quickly accuse heretics of doing pseudo-scientific work. To see if such accusations are justi- fied or not, skeptics have drawn up a questionnaire that was designed to sepa- rate science from pseudo-science.1312 I used this questionnaire and applied it to revisionist and established works on the Holocaust.1313 Bearing in mind my own prejudices, permit me to present a few interesting points in Table 26 that shows, on which side of the debate the problem lies. L: That does not look good. R: Good for whom? L: Well, it is obvious that the officially protected Holocaust research fulfills the criteria for being merely pseudo-scientific much more than does revisionism. R: Exactly. I can cite supporting comments for this by German mainstream histo- rian Prof. Ernst Nolte, who does not only think that the quality of revisionist re- search "surpasses that of the established historians" (see quote on p. 134), but who also accuses the Holocaust establishment to be nothing but pseudo- scientific:1314 1312 "BCS Debates a Qi Gong Master," Rational Enquirer, 6(4) (1994), publ. by the British Columbia Skeptics Society, http://psg.com/~ted/bcskeptics/ratenq/Re6.4QigongDebate.html. 1313 Germar Rudolf, "Pseudowissenschaft," VffG 7(3&4) (2003), pp. 403-405. 1314 Ernst Nolte, op. cit. (note 263), p. 9. 493 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Table 26: Test to determine pseudo-science Question Revisionism Holocaustism 1. Do representatives of the No. "Common knowledge" is the discipline refer to history, sharpest sword: since the end claiming: "the matter has of WWII everything is known been known for a long time to everyone and irrevocably and thus must be true." true. 2. Has progress been made? Revisionism has made huge As far as the thesis of the progress. Compare for example planned and industrial extermi- Rassinier's Debunking the nation of the Jews is con- Genocide Myth with Dissecting cerned, the Holocausters have the Holocaust or the views of stood still since the Nuremberg Emil Aretz1315 on the Ausch- trials. All subsequent trials witz crematories with those of merely raised the number of Carlo Mattogno.186 anecdotal, unverifiable evi- dence, but not their quality. 3. Must proven physical laws No. Many witness statements, on be abandoned in order to ac- which Holocaustism relies, cept premises of an asser- contradict basic natural laws tion? and technical possibilities. 4. Is the only offered evidence No. The evidence of Holocaustism of an anecdotal nature? is almost exclusively anecdotal from survivors. 5. Do the representatives of the Revisionists complain they are Criticizing Holocaustism is discipline assert they are be- not being noticed and criti- considered to be obscene or ing overly criticized? cized. even illegal. 6. Do representatives of the Seldom, and then only as an The Holocausters defame their discipline fall back on per- emotional reaction to massive critics, persecute them, destroy sonal attacks instead of on persecution their livelihood, throw them factual argument? into prison, and condone physi- cal attacks on them. "I soon formed the view that this [revisionist] school of thought is being countered in the established literature quite unscientifically, namely through mere rejection of arguments, by casting suspicions on the author's inten- tions, and mostly through censorship." R: Remember that Prof. Nolte wrote these words in 1993. Meanwhile revisionism has made extraordinary progress, while the opponents have nothing equivalent to offer, but instead increased their persecution of revisionists. L: So most utterances of established historians on the Holocaust can accordingly be categorized as pseudo-scientific. Should they therefore be banned? R: Not at all! Even if most of their publications are pseudo-scientific, something that is a given, and revisionist arguments are blended out, this does not justify censorship. Burning of books is a far greater evil than unscientific scribbling, and that applies to all sides. Be that as it may, the fact is that those who have the political, legal, and media power reject the scientific nature of revisionist works so that it does not enjoy 1315 Hexen-Einmal-Eins einer Lüge, Verlag Hohe Warte, Pähl/Obb. 1976. 494 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the constitutional protection in many western nations, although the constitu- tions of all of these nations formally guarantee freedom of scientific research. L: And so nothing stands in the way of a book burning... R: Right. The German edition of the Leuchter Report was withdrawn on the be- hest of the District Court Bielefeld and subjected to book burning,1316 and the same fate befell my Rudolf Report.543 L: Why is there no protest against such authoritarian measures? R: You can only protest against something that you have knowledge about. It is not possible to bring this topic into the public because all media give it the si- lent treatment, i.e. they call out, "get the Nazi," and anyone who does not con- form is silenced one way or another. The most effective means whereby to suppress thoughts about this topic are the magic words "Nazi" and "neo-Nazi," because in all western countries and in particular in Germany this will socially ostracize anyone. Who is prepared to listen to and perhaps even help a Nazi? L: No one wishes to have anything to do with Nazis, and rightly so. R: That is your personal viewpoint. The problem is how do you determine if a person defamed as a National Socialist is actually a National Socialist? You would have to have a personal discussion with that individual, right? L: Do you consider yourself to be a National Socialist? R: If you ask me if I consider myself to be what the general public thinks a Na- tional Socialist is, then my answer is no. L: That sounds like you have your own definition of what a Nazi is. So do you think you are a Nazi of your own definition? R: In order to answer that question, I needed to know what National Socialist ide- ology is all about, if there is something like that. And to be honest with you, I never bothered looking into it at all. I am simply not interested in ideologies, and I most certainly do not wish to blindly follow any ideology that others have cooked up. I insist on thinking for myself and creating my own worldview. My picture of what National Socialism is, remains predominated by what we all hear day in, day out from the mass media. But considering the lies I have ex- posed regarding historical aspects of National Socialism during my research over the past 15 years or so, I would not be surprised to find out that many things we are being told about National Socialism as an ideology are just as distorted and falsified. But as I said: I do not know. Hence I cannot answer your question, because I do not know what a National Socialists is. But let me give you an indirect answer. If you would look into my book shelves and onto my walls, what you would see there is a nostalgic fancy for the second German Reich, the old Kaiserreich, and the politically leading Hohenzollern dynasty. This not so much because I like the idea of a monarchy, but rather be- cause it stands for a Germany untainted by all the disasters that befell my fa- therland after the monarchy had dissolved. It is the dream of an innocent, thriv- ing, self-confident Germany that attracts me. 1316 Udo Walendy, "Ein Prozess der Geschichte macht," HT no. 36, Verlag für Volkstum & Zeitgeschichts- forschung, Vlotho 1988; confiscated after appeal, BGH, Ref. BvR 824/90. 495 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Even though most people knowing me are well aware that I am definitely not a National Socialist, it does not help me. The mass media and authorities still de- fame me as such. And that goes for most revisionists. It is based upon yet an- other lie. Any effective protest against such defamation with subsequent perse- cution and book burning requires publicity. This is the only protection against arbitrary misuse of power by the authorities. But this is exactly what is not available to those who have "successfully" been defamed as National Social- ists. L: I cannot see anything bad about excluding Nazis. R: Some 400 years ago no one dared to defend anyone condemned by the authori- ties of being a witch. In the Soviet Union it could be fatal to be labeled an anti- socialist or counter-revolutionary. In National Socialist Germany it was better not to protect a Jew or communist. Today you label someone a "Nazi," and it all operates according to the same pattern. And then most who shout "Nazi!" don't even know how to define the term. The labels change within the dictato- rial systems that ostracize and expel individuals, but neither the persecution methods nor the indifference of the masses or the public's applause changes. 5.2. Violence R: Let me make it quite clear who deserves to be excluded: Persons who consider, advocate, or even use force to suppress other opinions. The fact is that not a single revisionist has ever advocated or used violence. On the contrary, revi- sionists are peaceful and peace-loving people. L: It appears to me that they don't seem to have peaceful intentions towards Jews, though. R: Prove this massive accusation! What I can prove in response is the misuse of state powers to silence revisionists as well as actual brutal physical and illegal violence. Here are a few examples: At the end of the 1970s French journalist and leading politician of the Front National, François Duprat, published the revisionist brochure Did Six Million Really Die? in French, whose English original had been written by Richard Verall (alias Richard Harwood).161 Duprat also published a revisionist work called The mystery of the gas chambers. He was only 38 years old when a bomb exploded in his car on March 18, 1978, that killed him, whereas his wife lost both her legs. Two Jewish groups claimed responsibility for this terror act: a "Jewish Resistance Commando" and a "Jewish Revolutionary Group." The murderers were never caught.1317 French Professor Faurisson was repeatedly assaulted, once almost fatally: On September 16, 1989, he went with his dog on his usual walk in the park of his home town Vichy. But on this day things were different. Three thugs attacked him in the park, sprayed tear gas in his eyes and beat him almost unconscious. Even as he lay on the ground, they kicked him repeatedly in the face and chest. 1317 Cf. E. Ratier, op. cit. (note 1318), pp. 232ff. 496 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "His jaw and face was smashed," reported a fireman who came to Faurisson's res- cue. Doctors spent over four hours operating on him. One group named "Sons of Jewish Memory" (Les fils de la mé- moire juive) claimed responsi- bility for this attack. In a statement by this group it said: "Professor Faurisson is the first but not the last. May the Holocaust deniers tremble." R: That attack was also a reaction to the Leuchter Report, because Faurisson is its spiritual father. The French "Nazi hunter" Serge Klarsfeld, one of the Ill. 151: All that was left of Duprat's car.1318 most aggressive opponents of revisionists, commented thereto:1320 "Someone who has provoked the Jewish community for years should expect this sort of thing. [...] one cannot defame the mem- ory of the dead without consequences." R: The opponents of revisionists blatantly advo- cate force, including murder, something revi- sionists have never done ­ and yet it is the re- visionists who are defamed as inhuman. L: Surely that is not possible. Your argumenta- tion must be faulty because there must be a reason why such violent acts occurred. R: The motivation behind such murderous atti- tudes of the revisionist hunters was made clear in a quotation from the Jewish magazine The Scribe:1321 Ill. 152: There are those who use force if they run out of "The correct attitude to the Holocaust arguments. Prof. Faurisson should be that it is not too late to deal out after his beating by Jewish proper punishment to our enemies who are thugs, September 16, in fact the enemies of God. But who are our 1989.1319 1318 Le Havre Presse, March 20, 1978, from E. Ratier, Les guerriers d'Israël, Facta, Paris 1995, p. 233. 1319 The Globe and Mail, September 18, 1989; Le Monde, September 19, 1989; Sunday Telegraph, Septem- ber 24, 1989; cf. Mark Weber, The Zionist Terror Network, Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach 1993. 1320 Cf. E. Ratier, op. cit. (note 1317), pp. 250, 252. 1321 "Holocaust Denial," The Scribe, Journal of Babylonian Jewry, No 70, October 1998 (www.dangoor.com/70032.html). 497 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ill. 153: Pictures of the devastation caused by the fire bombing of the printing works of Historical Review Press in Uckfield, UK, in September 1996. enemies? All those who deny that the Holocaust took place [...]. Anyone in the above categories must be regarded as if he had taken part in the Holo- caust himself. He walks about with a death sentence on his head. If our ene- mies can be made to experience the loss of 6 million people themselves they would no longer claim that the Holocaust did not take place. [...] Only those who identify themselves as enemies of God will receive their punishment." R: For 60 long years the National Socialists were portrayed as physical em- bodiment of the devil against whom all measures were justified to suffocate everything at its source: "The womb out of which it crawled is still fruitful." Crawling is for vermin, beasts, monsters, and this is exactly how people respond. Nazis, monsters, devils. It is all the same. It is permissible to beat, kick, murder as soon as one such monster had been identified. This is how the Allied propaganda during World War II whipped up its own soldiers. In one way or another it still happens like that in any war to this day. But the propaganda of World War II has never stopped and continues to this day. L: Because it proved to be true. R: True or not, that is a personal judgment. But to portray one's fellow humans as non-humans, as devils, as vermin, as sub-humans only because they entertain another opinion! Is that not what the National Socialists are accused of having done? Is that not deeply fascist, nazistic, racist, to use the inflammatory adjec- tives once again? Other forms of violence used against the revisionists are fire and bomb attacks. The Institute for Historical Review wrote in its introduction to its journal, edi- tion 2-4, 1984:1322 "At approximately midnight on the Fourth of July last [1984], the business office and warehouse of the publisher were burned to the ground by arson. [...] What you see before you could be called the `Phoenix' issue of The JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW as it has quite literally risen from the ashes. Regrettably, more than $300,000 worth of historical books, docu- ments, files and equipment were not so fortunate." 1322 JHR 5(2-4) back cover. 498 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: That these are not isolated cases is shown in the following incomplete list:1323 Nov. 20, 1978: Professor Faurisson at- tacked by students. Nov. 5, 1980: Arson attack on revi- sionist publisher His- torical Review Press, East Sussex, England. Jan. 29, 1981: French revisionist Mi- chel Caignet has acid thrown into his face, which left it perma- nently disfigured. Apr. 5, 1981: An employee of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) is beaten up outside the office. Ill. 154: Fire damage to the Zündel June 26, 1981: During the early hours of the morning an ar- house after the arson attack on May 7, 1995. son attack is made on the IHR without causing significant damage. Apr. 25, 1982: Arson attack on the IHR causes damage to stock of books. May 27, 1982: A bomb attack is made on revisionist history teacher George Ashley. Sep. 5, 1982: The IHR office is shot at. Dec. 1982: Revisionist George Ashley has his house ransacked. Feb. 6, 1984: Members of the Jewish Defense League physically attack Ernst Zündel. May 15, 1985: A bomb explodes in front of George Ashley's home. June 5, 1985: The Jewish Defense League targets German-American revi- sionist Hans Schmidt with a bomb. July 12, 1987: Robert Faurisson is physically attacked while exercising in a fitness club of his hometown by a certain Nicolas Ullmann. Dec. 12, 1987: Professor Robert Faurisson and companion are injured after a Jewish mob attacks them during a seminar at the Sorbonne Uni- versity at Paris. Jan. 14, 1988: A number of people physically attack and injure University Lyon III revisionist historian Professor Jean-Paul Allard. Feb. 10, 1988: German mainstream historian Prof. Dr. Ernst Nolte, who sym- pathizes with revisionists, has his car set alight. 1323 For details, cf. Jean Plantin, "Einige Fälle von physischer Bedrohung und Gewaltanwendung gegen Revisionisten," VffG 5(1) (2001), pp. 85-91; see also R. Faurisson, "Jewish Militants: Fifteen Years, and More, of Terrorism in France," JHR 16(2) (1996), pp. 2-13. 499 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST July 18, 1988: Canadian revisionist James Keegstra has his house torched. Feb. 6, 1990: French revisionist Olivier Mathieu is beaten up. Mar. 21, 1991: During the opening of Professor Robert Faurisson's trial a group of observers attack him. Jan. 22, 1992: Jewish revisionist David Cole is beaten at the university in Los An- geles. Mar. 17, 1992: While visiting the Swedish-Moroc- can revisionist Ahmed Rami, a wild mob nearly lynches Professor Ro- Ill. 155: The Libreria bert Faurisson. Europa in Barcelona Oct. 28, 1992: A fire bomb destroys the book shop after an arson attack on of Belgium revisionist Jean-Marie January 16, 1999. Borbouse. Apr. 22, 1993: At a demonstration against the opening of the Washington Holo- caust Museum revisionist David Willcox is badly beaten up. Apr. 4, 1995: An "Antifascist Militia" sends German-Canadian revisionist Ernst Zündel an anonymous bomb threat including a razor blade and a mouse trap. May 7, 1995: Arson attack on Ernst Zündel's house in Toronto, Canada. May 20, 1995: Ernst Zündel receives a packet containing a false sender's ad- dress. He takes the packet to the police where it is x-rayed and found to contain a powerful bomb that would have destroyed anything within a 90 meter radius. The police harmlessly ex- plode the bomb in a quarry. TV crews film the event, and Zündel watches it on the evening news. July 16, 1996: The revisionist book shop Librairie du Savoir in Paris is ran- sacked. Sep. 6, 1996: Second arson attack on Historical Review Press. Sep. 7, 1996: Paris book dealer Patrick Helin is beaten up because he sells revisionist books. Jan. 15, 1998: During the Paris trial of revisionists Roger Garaudy and Pierre Guillaume, both are attacked and injured. Feb. 27, 1998: During Roger Garaudy's sentencing both he and his supporters are physically attacked and injured. Jan. 16, 1999: In Barcelona, Spain, an arson attack on the revisionist oriented Libreria Europa. 500 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 5.3. Censorship L: That is the result of talk like that from Fritjof Meyer that one should beat up fascists wherever one meets them (see p. 167). R: Such individuals are called armchair perpetrators, whose activity is of an incit- ing nature. The shocking thing about the above-listed acts of violence against revisionists is that none is ever legally pursued. For example, if individuals at- tack revisionists within the body of a court, then surely such perpetrators should be arrested and charged. But this never happens. Should someone by chance be arrested, then that person is soon released by command from above. In other words: Violence against revisionists is tolerated by the government, and is thus welcomed. This is not surprising if you look at how the governments of the western world behave towards revisionists. All sorts of ways and means are employed to hin- der, to limit, or even to stop their activities. That is why we shall look in more detail at the various forms of censorship that we have come across during these lectures. In Europe censorship of revisionism is quite differentiated. For example, many states such as Italy, Portugal, England, Ireland, and the Scandinavian countries do not impose any censorship. Most of the eastern and south eastern European countries do not have similar laws, but there are initiatives under way to change this. For example, any country that wishes to join NATO must have on its books some law that will criminalize "Holocaust denial." In January 1999 Po- land enacted such laws, and then in April 1999 it joined NATO. Spain and Holland have such laws, but they are not rigorously enforced. Hol- land perhaps does not enforce its law because a revisionist movement as such does not exist there. Energetically enforced laws are to be found in Poland, France, Belgium, and in the German-speaking countries. Austria punishes revi- sionist statements with a maximum of ten years, Germany with a maximum of five years (as does Israel), then Poland and Switzerland up to three years, fol- lowed by France and Belgium with a maximum of one year prison. L: Poland and Israel also punish revisionists? R: Of course. You can discern a pattern here: All countries that need the Ausch- witz-Lie for their own survival have appropriate laws that protect it. But other countries have developed no less effective ways to protect this taboo. For ex- ample, through their human rights tribunals, Canada and Australia have devel- oped a justice system that operates independently of the criminal justice system and silences dissidents with fines and court orders. Any violation of such court orders is then a criminal matter and pursued as such.1324 Thanks to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, there is practically no censorship by U.S. authorities. Unfortunately the mass media are concentrated in a few hands and so a plurality of opinions does not exist there either any- 1324 Compare the cases of Fredrick Töben in Australia (www.adelaideinstitute.org) and Ernst Zündel in Canada (www.zundelsite.org); cf. also Ingrid Rimland, "Ernst Zündel: His Struggle for Germany," TR 1(2) (2003), pp. 183-196. 501 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST more. A large part of the mass media is in the hands of nine large corpora- tions,1325 which also control the advertising market, on which the rest of the media depends. The U.S. media are essentially fed with one news outlet ­ As- sociated Press. The U.S. book trade is essentially in the hands of one firm ­ In- grams. This explains why it is far more difficult in the USA to find historical publications wherein the clichés of the victorious Allies of World War II are challenged, than is currently the case in Germany. Although the USA to date has no penal laws against revisionists, it does every- thing possible to suppress revisionist work in foreign countries. In 1992 the FBI "Nazi hunter" section OSI sent from the American consulate in Frank- furt/Main a report about revisionism in Germany, a copy of which was anony- mously sent to the Institute for Historical Review.1326 Interestingly, the report was also distributed directly to the Israeli Embassy in Bonn, the Israeli Consu- late in New York and the B'nai B'rith Lodge in London. The OSI therefore works closely together with the Israeli State and with this Jewish lodge. This report states at Point 3 that the German Federal Bureau of Investigation (Bundeskriminalamt) promised that it would initiate criminal proceedings against anyone possessing revisionist material. It thus does not surprise that the USA engages the world over in activities that undermines revisionist conferences and publications. For example, it sufficed for the USA to send a threat to Lebanon that then effected the cancellation of a planned revisionist conference in Beirut.1327 In another case U.S. diplomatic pressure led to the dismissal of an editor at a large Egyptian newspaper, all be- cause the editor permitted the publication of a revisionist article.1328 And last but not least, the U.S. authorities currently try all legal and illegal tricks to de- port the author of these lines, who has applied for political asylum in the United States in 2000 due to the escalating persecution I experienced in my country of origin Germany.1329 L: Where would they deport you to? R: To Germany, where some 30 criminal investigations for "Holocaust denial" are pending against me for all the scientific literature I have published since 1993. Each single one of these "thought crimes" is punishable with up to five years in prison.1330 L: So how many years would you have to serve for having talked to us and other audiences in spoken and written words similar to these? 1325 Robert W. McChesney, Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy, Seven Stories Press, New York 1997; Robert W McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy, New Press, New York 2000. 1326 Office of Special Investigation, Department of Justice, Field Report Subject: BKA REP5033 93/Revisionist Propaganda Continues, October 9, 1992. 1327 See: Germar Rudolf, "Von Beirut nach Amman," VffG, 5(2) (2001), p. 122; Robert Faurisson, "Beirut: Die unmögliche revisionistische Konferenz," ibid, p. 123 (Engl.: "Beirut: the Impossible Revisionist Conference," www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/FaurisArch/RF010327.html); Ibrahim Alloush, "Die Geschichte eines Forums, dass nicht stattfinden sollte," ibid, pp. 124-236. 1328 See: VffG 8(3) (2004), p. 366 (www.vho.org/news/D/News3_04.html). 1329 For a case description see www.germarrudolf.com. 1330 Seewww.germarrudolf.com/persecute/MoreCrimes.html 502 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: They will probably merge some of these cases together, but I doubt that they will make just one big case out of it, since they then would have to let me go after "just" five years. So I reckon that I will get considerably more than five years. Perhaps ten. L: That sounds pretty much like a totalitarian society. R: Quite so, and the U.S. authorities assist and push for more persecution in the background. L: It is obvious how hypocritical U.S. propaganda is when it claims to be spread- ing freedom and democracy to other countries. R: All charity has its limits. In any case the main victor of World War II is the USA, and this they wish to remain. The strong Jewish lobby in the USA must not be forgotten1331 because if it had its way, it certainly would eliminate the First Amendment. But even now there is an attack on human rights in the USA. Bush's "Patriot Act" after September 11, 2001, opened the doors for such at- tacks. The surprising thing about censorship in western democracies is the fact that a large majority of the population in those countries either accepts such censor- ship measures or is at best indifferent to them. This in spite of the fact that only a small percentage of citizens nurture any radical views that are fanatically in- clined to suppress unwanted views. This powerful and unified front against any major revision of historiography can be understood, if we consider the interests of those groups who demand and support this censorship most intensely.1332 But I do not want to get into a political discussion here. The most glaring example of censorship is Germany. The mindset prevailing in Germany can be seen from the fact that most Germans actually believe that the first verse of the German National Anthem is prohibited, although this is not true.1333 L: But this verse was so misused during World War II that it should not be sung. R: It does not concern me here whether the verse should be sung or not. I am con- cerned with the following: What can you expect of a country where a large sec- tion of the population thinks it is prohibited to sing one of the national an- them's verses, which after all has quite a long tradition? The problem gains a balanced perspective if we compare this with other countries where it is con- sidered normal to sing one's national anthem and fly the national flag. The British newspaper The Independent of 2001 correctly noted that in Germany 1331 See: J.J. Goldberg, Jewish Power. Inside the American Jewish Establishment, Addison-Wesley, Read- ing, MA, 1996. 1332 Zionism and other forms of imperialism, international high finance, corporate capitalism, egalitarian ideologies; cf. G. Rudolf, "Revisionism: An Ideology of Liberation," TR 3(1&2) (2005), in preparation. 1333 This was claimed for example in the student edition of Germany's largest news magazine, Der Spiegel ­ www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/0, 1518, 125322, 00.html#v . Searches of the Internet reveal that German websites discussing the topic find it necessary to emphasize that the first two verses are not banned, a statement necessary for many German visitors to be learn about the legality of their national anthem. E.g. www.deutschlandlied.de/; www.frankfurter- verbindung.de/studentenlieder/liedderdeutschen.html; www.deutsche- schutzgebiete.de/deutschlandlied.htm; English media often falsely report that the first verse is prohib- ited, see for example the British Searchlight (www.searchlightmagazine.com/stories/Defending Wehrmacht.htm). 503 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the singing of the anthem and the hoisting of the national flag is done only by "morons and neo-Nazis."1334 In other words: already the normal, natural kind of patriotism is regarded as bordering on neo-Nazism in Germany. And how are we to view a country where a large sector of the population is not offended by harmless songs or verses being banned? In what kind of a mental state is a people that finds it acceptable, even quite normal that songs can be banned in the first place? Can you imagine how many people would seriously object if a song is actually banned? Or next, how many would protest if films, books, Internet pages are banned? That this is not mere hypothetical talk is illustrated by the case of Frank Ren- nicke, a nationalist German song writer, who has been repeatedly persecuted and ultimately sentenced to prison. This only because his songs, peaceful as they are, are nevertheless very political, protesting what Rennicke perceives as disastrous social and political developments in Germany.1335 And that is only the tip of the iceberg. Or take, for example, the case of history teacher Hans-Jürgen Witzsch, who was prosecuted and actually thrown into prison for holding revisionist views that were scientifically well-founded.1336 What are we to think of a government that puts historians behind bars because of their scientific views? Or take the case of Judge Wilhelm Stäglich, who had his doctorate revoked because of his revisionist book that was eventually burned (see chapter 2.7., p. 88f.). Or take the fate of a 1994 anthology published in memory of late German mainstream history professor Dr. Hellmut Diwald.1337 This book contained a number of articles by a number of German scholars, including the already quoted article by Robert Hepp about the history of the "Diwald scandal" (see p. 132). Hepp wrote therein in a footnote in Latin ­ I shall abbreviate it drastically because today hardly anyone can read Latin:1338 "Sunt apud nos cogitationes liberae in foro interno, constrictae tamen in foro publico. [...] Ego quidem illud iudaeorum gentis excidium, ratione institutum et in `castris extinctionis' gaso pernicioso methodice peractum, veram fabulam esse nego. Sed documentorum et argumentorum scholae re- visionisticae ratione habita haud scio, an hoc verum sit. [...]" R: Professor Hepp explains here that in Germany the freedom to discuss certain topics is restricted and that everyone will be punished if expressing certain dis- senting views. If one wishes to make some true statements in such cases, cer- tain methods need to be adopted. This is the reason why the footnote is in Latin. Then Professor Hepp contests that the story about the gas chambers that 1334 The Independent, March 21, 2001, p. 5. 1335 The case of F. Rennicke, see the verdict of September 18 ­ October 15, 2002, LG Stuttgart, ref. no. 6Js8818/98; see the article by Johannes Heyne, "Patriotenverfolgung: Der Fall Ute und Frank Rennik- ke, " VffG, 7(1) (2003), pp. 81-93; cf. also Rennicke's website http://go.to/Rennicke. 1336 Johannes Heyne, "Der Fall Hans-Jürgen Witzsch," VffG 7(2) (2003), pp. 212-222. 1337 R.J. Eibicht (ed.), op. cit. (note 6). 1338 R. Hepp, op. cit. (note 6), p. 147. 504 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST allegedly were used during the genocide of the Jews in so-called extermination camps is true. He says revisionist arguments convinced him of that. Because of this Latin footnote Professor Hepp was prosecuted for "stirring up the masses" and "inciting to hatred." As the statute of limitations had expired, he was not put on trial but the book was confiscated1339 and burnt under police supervision.74 L: All because of a footnote in Latin? How can a footnote in Latin incite the masses to anything? They cannot understand it, to begin with! R: In Germany language is irrelevant but content is everything. So, what kind of a political system is it that burns a scholarly anthology dedicated to one of Ger- many's great post-war historians? L: Hepp and Diwald were but only right-wing historians. R: So what does that mean? That they do not have a right to express their schol- arly opinion? Is that the meaning of Article 5, Section 3, of the German Basic Law: Research and teaching are free, as long as researchers and teachers do not air any right-wing views? And who defines what right-wing views are, other than views that are unacceptable to those in power? Two examples illustrate, where this kind of thinking leads to. The first occurred on October 27, 2000, and concerns the rejection by a Chemnitz public prosecu- tor to open investigations about a complaint made by a German conservative political activist who felt defamed because the media had labeled him a "Nazi." The public prosecutor justified his decision not to open an investigation as fol- lows:1340 "In determining the question whether the labeling as neo-Nazi is defama- tory, it is important to consider how an impartial observer, an average reader understands this expression. Particularly when considering the back- ground of frequent recent public discussions of `right-wing violence,' the term neo-Nazi is used as a collective term for all persons who are associated to the political right-wing spectrum in any which way, without differentiat- ing between memberships to any group within the right-wing spectrum. The term used here does therefore not constitute defamation, but merely assigns the complainant to a group. As the chairman of the Junge Landsmannschaft of Saxony and Lower Silesia [youth organization of Saxon patriots] he is without a doubt to be categorized as a person with a right-wing orienta- tion." L: In other words: right = neo-Nazi = devilish = outlawed. R: Exactly, especially because neo-Nazis are generally considered to be the dredges of humanity. The second example shows what can happen when the hysterical hunt for any- thing actual or only alleged right-wing begins. The Austrian Professor Dr. Werner Pfeifenberger once taught politics at a respected German university. Then he committed the crime of taking a quotation from German communist 1339 AG Tübingen, ref. 4 Gs 1085/97. 1340 Facsimile reproduction in TR 1(2) (2003), p. 216; www.vho.org/Intro/StA-Nazi1.png&~/Sta- Nazi2.png. 505 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Kurt Tucholsky out of context, who had once written that the German bourgeoisie should be gassed. As dramatic as this may sound, Tuchol- sky's text was opposing any war, the conse- quences of which ­ for example poison gas at- tacks ­ he wished the bourgeoisie to experience themselves in order to finally become pacifist. Professor Pfeifenberger used this and other trun- cated quotations in an article, in which he com- pared nationalism and internationalism. That was the reason why he was finally labeled and shunned as a "right winger" and persecuted. He was exposed to a media hate campaign, lost his teaching position, and at the end was even in- dicted in Austria for re-engaging in National So- cialist activities, which can be punished with up to twenty years in prison. With the complete breakdown of his private life and his career and Ill. 156: Feldherrenhalle, confronted with a possible prison term, he com- Munich: stains of the fire mitted suicide on May 13, 2000.1341 left behind by Reinhold Elstner. L: Oh, my God! First books get burned, and now even people die! R: Yes, and they also burn. To that a final example, even if it doesn't concern an academic. Reinhold Elstner, a German war veteran, had suffered for many years under what he termed "the Niagara flood of lies" and distorted history with which he and his generation have been doused. In 1995 he wrote a pas- sionate appeal to the German people to stop these lies and distortions. On April 25, 1995, he went to the Munich Feldherrenhalle, poured gasoline over himself and lit a match. He died shortly thereafter.1342 L: That is an act of a stupid fanatic. R: You can view it like that. But the reaction from the German authorities was just as stupid and fanatical. They confiscated Elstner's last appeal and prohibited its publication. They also prohibited any commemorative meetings for him at the Feldherrenhalle, and to this day they remove and destroy any wreath or flowers that were and are placed there in Reinhold Elstner's memory. L: That reminds me somehow of the reaction by the communist administration in Czechoslovakia, when in 1969 the Prague student Jan Palach emulated himself in protest against the Soviet Union's repression of the "Prague Spring." R: The parallel is quite striking. The tangled web of censorship and persecution of dissenters in Germany can- not be presented here in detail, so I can only make a reference to further publi- 1341 See Otto Scrinzi, "Menschenjagd bis in den Tod," Aula, 6/2000; and Rudi Zornig, "Zum Gedenken an Werner Pfeifenberger," VffG 4(2) (2000), pp. 131f. 1342 See: Reinhold Elstner, "Zum Gedenken an Reinhold Elstner," VffG, 4(2) (2000), pp. 127-130. 506 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST cations.1343 But what I may present here are data published by the German Of- fice for the Protection of the Constitution about what the German authorities call "propaganda offences." Besides historical expressions there are also all sorts of political expressions as well as the displaying of prohibited flags, sym- bols, emblems, pictures, the distribution, playing or singing of prohibited songs, and more. Some of these listed offences may indeed be associated with the spreading of National Socialist thoughts, as are the painting of swastikas or the spreading of some National Socialist quotations and symbols. All these ac- tivities are legal, for example, in the U.S. or in the UK. L: Considering German history they should indeed be prohibited. R: I think we need to discuss that because if these things are prohibited, why not also all material that comes from the communists? If we ban all things from the "right," why not also ban everything on the "left"? Everyone showing a red five-pointed star, waving a flag with hammer and sickle, singing the Interna- tionale, selling copies of the Communist Manifesto or the Captial, and so on, ought to be punished. Considering the duty to treat all citizens equally, who could object? But if we treat everyone as the "right-wingers" are treated in Germany, who would not be ostracized and persecuted? After all, even if we accept the official versions of history, then the "left" communism of the world was still far more brutal than National Socialism. If you persecute "left-wing" propaganda offences and anything that is "left-wing," as the "right-wingers" are persecuted, then we would soon have everything off-limit, persecuted, and possibly be all imprisoned. It would be easier again to build a wall around Germany and convert the whole country into a huge prison camp, as did the leaders of former communist East Germany, Ulbricht and Honecker. L: But you cannot compare these things. In any case in Germany the Nazis raged more than the communists. R: Even that is debatable. After all, the National Socialists are not responsible for the victims of the ethnic cleansing of eastern Germany and eastern Europe from all Germans, which rests mainly on Stalin's shoulders. I may also point out that you are trying to impose an illegal and immoral system of collective responsi- bility: You justify the restricting of civil rights of all Germans living today with what some of their grandfathers or great-grandfathers are claimed to have done. A moral person cannot accept that. In my opinion there should be no such thing as "propaganda offences" in a constitutional, democratic state. Only clear incitements to, or approval of, ac- tual crimes should be open to criminal investigation, like for example state- ments similar to "No civil rights for Greenlanders!" or "It is a good thing to murder those who fanatically believe they were chosen by God." It is not the expression of peaceful opinions that ought to be prosecuted, but any attempt by authorities to suppress such opinions ought to be prosecuted. 1343 See: Anton Mägerle (=G Rudolf), "Eine Zensur findet nicht statt, es sei denn..."VffG 2(4) 1998, pp. 300-307, on the Internet at www.vho.org/censor/D.html (also in English); cf. also G. Rudolf, "Discov- ering Absurdistan?" TR 1(2) (2003), p. 203-219; G. Rudolf, op. cit. (75). 507 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: Then in Germany a number of judges and Tab. 27: Germany today: public prosecutors would be off to jail. 117,344 Criminal R: Not necessarily, since according to funda- Prosecutions mental legal principles laws cannot be en- forced retroactively (ex post facto). But if to- Because of "Thought Crimes" day's violations of fundamental civil rights During the Last Eleven Years: Year Right Left Foreign Total by German authorities will in future be found 1994 5,562 185 235 5,982 to have been in violation of then already ex- 1995 6,555 256 276 7,087 isting laws ­ which I think is the case ­ then, 1996 10,257 1,063 1,249 12,569 7,585 557 818 8,960 1997 yes, the prisons will fill up swiftly. 1998 9,549 1,141 2,098 12,788 Now just a few words on the mechanism of 1999 8,651 1,025 1,525 11,201 German censorship, so that you understand 2000 13,863 429 525 15,367 979 2001 8,874 353 9,656 what we are dealing with here. There are 2002 9,807 331 467 10,605 German police units that are responsible for 2003 9,692 431 1,340 11,463 2004 10,915 410 341 11,666 the protection of the constitution, and its Total: 101,310 6,807 9227 117,344 members investigate and prosecute those in- ­ Right: "Offenses with right wing extremist background," that is: "Propaganda Of- dividuals deemed to be committing propa- fenses" and "Stirring up the People" ­ Left: "Offenses with left wing extremist ganda offences. background," generally referred to as I hear irritating murmurings? Yes, ladies and "other offenses" ­ Foreign: offenses committed by foreign gentlemen, because modern Germany con- extremists, mainly against the German law of organizations ("Vereinsgesetz") by siders itself to be a "democracy willing to de- Kurds in the prohibited Kurdian Liberation 1344 Army PKK fend itself," its police forces have quite large "state protection departments." There investigations are directed by specially trained public prosecutors who do nothing but prosecute "political" offences. In German courts of law such offences are heard before so-called "state protection chambers," which have specialized themselves in political trials. L: I thought Germany did not have a political penal system, since officially at least there is no political persecution. R: This illusion I must take from you. L: So, anyone accused before these courts of propaganda offences and sentenced to a prison term can be regarded as political prisoners? R: Right. In a yearly tally of some 10,000 initiated criminal investigations involv- ing thought crimes there would be about a few hundred that end with a prison term. The majority of investigations is either shelved because of unknown per- petrators or a defendant is given a fine. There are also acquittals, of course. Only a minority of these cases reaches a trial judge, and again a minority of these end with a prison sentences. Censorship in Germany is enforced in two steps. On the one hand any court can determine the prohibition of a medium, and on the other hand the Bundesprüf- stelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (BPjM, Federal Office for Media Endan- gering the Youth) can "index" a medium, that is to say, it can prohibit that it be offered or sold publicly. In the past the lists of indexed media were openly 1344 Bundesministerium des Inneren (ed.), Bundesverfassungsschutzbericht (Report of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution), Bundesdruckerei, Bonn 1995-2005, quoting data as provided by the German Federal Bureau of Investigation (Bundeskriminalamt). (see www.verfassungsschutz.de). 508 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST available at larger libraries, but because such lists indirectly advertise prohib- ited material, they are now housed under lock and key. L: That is quite appropriate if it concerns pornography and horror movies. R: The Bundesprüfstelle was originally established in order to prevent the distribu- tion of such material to children and adolescents, and that is still its primary function to this day. L: No objections arise out of this. R: Correct. As early as 1990, Dr. Eckhart Jesse, sociology professor in Chemnitz, criticized the Bundesprüfstelle in a publication of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution for conducting a one-sided battle against what it considers to be right-wing media.1345 According to Jesse the censorship meas- ures of the BPjM:1346 "are difficult to reconcile with the principles of a free society [...] because the written and spoken word must not be subjected to guardianship. [...] A free society must not suffocate or suppress the free exchange of ideas and viewpoints." R: In 2004 the German law to protect the youth was tightened regarding material that violates criminal law ­ meaning: the really "dangerous" political and his- torical material such as this very book. According to this new law, the Bundes- prüfstelle now has to keep such really dangerous media in secret lists that must not be made accessible to the public.1347 L: This means German citizens cannot even inform themselves what material is prohibited? R: Exactly. The next step of German censorship ­ the prohibition, confiscation, and total destruction of material through German court orders ­ also remains a secret to most citizens, because these judgments are published in secret lists that the German Federal Bureau of Investigation collects.1348 Anyone who thinks about getting prohibited material for distribution, production, importing, exporting, storing, offering, reviewing, selling, or bringing it into circulation in any other way, will receive a visit from the police. L: But how can you prevent committing a crime when the authorities keep secret what is prohibited? R: Ignorance is no protection from prosecution. L: But you cannot do anything about becoming knowledgeable about what is pro- hibited, since it is secret... R: Bad luck. That is part of being a citizen of a "democracy willing to defend itself," the German type. Add to this that the German authorities have installed a denunciation telephone line where you can report suspicious "right-wing" ac- tivities: 01805-234566. Such a number is also available in France. L: What do you have against a democracy willing to defend itself? 1345 Eckhard Jesse, op. cit. (note 157), pp. 304, cf. p. 289. 1346 Ibid., pp. 287, 303. 1347 JuSchuG, Art. 18, Sec. 2, 3-4; Bundesgesetzblatt 2002, I, p. 2730, 2003, I, pp. 476, 3007, 3076, (www.bmfsfj.de/RedaktionBMFSFJ/Abteilung5/Pdf-Anlagen?juschg-stand-01-04-04, property=pdf.pdf) 1348 See: Richtlinien für das Strafverfahren und das Bussgeldverfahren no. 208, II + IV; according to: Gerd Pfeiffer (ed.), Karlsruher Kommentar zur Strafprozessordnung, 3rd ed., Beck, Munich 1993, p. 2147. 509 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST R: As long as this defensiveness does not unnecessarily restrict basic civil rights, nothing really. But how would you justify this present book's confiscation on grounds that it "incites to hatred"? Then the German authorities secretly incin- erate the confiscated books, and anyone caught buying copies as gifts for friends or relatives ends up in front of a criminal court. Distributing the book you are holding in your very hands right now is an offence punishable with up to five years in prison in Germany. And you call that a democracy under the rule of law? Let me support this with a quotation from an expert. On January 19, 1993, Eike Mußmann, professor of criminology at the Academy of Public Administration in Ludwigsburg (Germany), held a lecture at Stuttgart before the Catholic stu- dent fraternity Nordgau Prag, to which I then belonged. The topic was "The Police in times of change." In his presentation he was critical of the constant undermining of civil rights in Germany and the extension of police powers. Professor Mußmann noted that should this trend not be reversed he would not like to live in Germany in forty years because Germany would have become a police state along the lines of the Orwellian model. L: It appears as if Professor Mußmann overestimated the time needed for German politicians to achieve this change. R: That is how I see things, too. Revisionists repeatedly pointed out this dangerous development. For example, I may remind you that in 2000 a free issue of the journal The Revisionist was distributed as an insert in the university newspaper at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. This issue of The Revisionist car- ried an article on the escalating persecution and book burning with focus on Germany by drawing parallels to Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451.1349 Some students of that university were so enraged ­ not about these violations of the most basic civil rights in Germany, but about finding revisionist material in their newspaper ­ that they publicly burned this free journal (see p. 112)! Hence, I doubt that most members of our species deserve the adjective "sapiens." Of special concern for the German and French authorities is the Internet, as you can well imagine, because this medium has democratized the mass media. Without incurring great expenditure, anyone can now express their views to anyone else. Of course, it wasn't long before the French and German authori- ties took up this challenge. At first the large search engines of the Internet were threatened with legal action if they did not stop showing prohibited Internet material as search results. Step by step the search engines programmed their websites so that visitors from Germany and France would be directed to sites where certain "prohibited" Internet contents are not shown. For example, the largest search engine in the world www.google.com shows all pages of the largest revisionist website www.vho.org. Not so the French or German versions of the Google search engine www.google.fr and www.google.de, which do not 1349 Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Hart-Davis, London 1967; republished by Long Beach Public Library Foundation, Long Beach, CA, 2005. 510 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST display a single page of www.vho.org.1350 The German censors took it one step further by threatening with legal action all Internet service providers who pass on prohibited content to their users.1351 Hence I receive information from Ger- many, even from Switzerland, that my website www.vho.org has become inac- cessible. L: The dream of democratizing the media seems to be a nightmare for the democ- rats. R: As you can see, the censors are hitting back. Parallel with the ever increasing Holocaust propaganda since the 1950s, there is an ever increasing censorship rage among central and western European politicians, and the hardest hit vic- tims are the dissenting historians, the revisionists. Imagine what would happen if the persecution experienced by revisionists had happened to other groups, for example Jews, homosexuals, women, left-wing individuals. A world-wide media campaign would begin. But because the vic- tims are merely perceived as being "right-wingers," the matter is ignored and silently dismissed. Viewed objectively, however, there is no difference between Jehovah Witnesses and communists on the one hand, who were imprisoned during the Third Reich,1352 and right-wingers and revisionists on the other hand, who challenge the official historiography about the Third Reich and are imprisoned in today's Germany because of their publications. L: It appears hardly anyone in Germany cares about this increase in censorship. R: Fear is all pervasive. Courage, which should first of all be directed against those misusing their political power, is in Germany a rare virtue. Even during 1914 and 1939 the German underling hated to question the authority of the bu- reaucrats and judicial system, something that is still a transgression for him to- day. Hardly anyone warns about the continued undermining of civil rights, and most merely bitch in their splendid isolated cellars. It appears that the German tradition of freedom of speech and thought is rather underdeveloped. In view of German history, it would be the proper reaction to apply universal human rights strictly and impartially to anyone ­ and not to deny them to the "right" side of the political spectrum for a change, as is the case today. Regarding civil rights, Germany finds itself in a vicious circle, where the pendulum is madly swinging from one extreme to another. It is time for it to come to rest, to balance in the middle. 1350 G. Rudolf, "Censorship of the Internet," TR 1(2) (2003), pp. 220-222. 1351 Online-Demonstration, "BRD plant totale Internetzensur in Deutschland," VffG 8(2) (2004), pp. 228- 231; cf. Reuter, Bonn, August 20, 1997 (www.vho.org/News/D/News4_97.html#minister); Der Spiegel, 35/2000, p. 17 (~/News3_00.html#n68); Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 14, 2003 (~/News1_04.html#m24); similarly also in Australia (~/News1_00.html#30). 1352 Although it can be argued that initially communists were not imprisoned because of their views but rather because one feared physical acts of violence. 511 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 5.4. Common Knowledge L: But surely in German courts reasoned arguments carry weight. R: I also expected that back in 1992, but reality is different. The German term "Offenkundigkeit" means "well known, obvious, self-evident," and translates into English legalese as "public knowledge" or better "common knowledge." This legal term is defined in the article 244, section 3, of the German Code of Penal Procedures (Strafprozeßordnung). This permits judges to dismiss evi- dence if the subject matter has already been legally determined to be "common knowledge." For example, motions to prove trivial claims like "the sky is blue" or "water freezes at 0°C/32°F" will not be permitted due to "common knowl- edge." In addition to that, motions to prove claims that have been proven nu- merous times during other criminal proceedings can also be dismissed due to "common knowledge." This law is designed to prevent a defense from adopting strategies that unnecessarily drag out proceedings. L: Something that is quite understandable. R: Quite so. However, this article becomes a problem when used to suppress evi- dence in proceedings against revisionists. Although they are accused of making false and inciting assertions, they are not permitted to contradict the charges made by the court that the revisionist views are wrong. By denying a defendant the opportunity of proving to the court that the alleged "propaganda offense" is not an offense because the indicted statement is true and thus cannot be a crime, the defendant is denied a fair trial, which is a violation of a most funda- mental human right. In German legal procedures against revisionists public prosecutors merely as- serts that it is "common knowledge" that revisionists are factually wrong. There is, therefore, no need to prove the case against a revisionist. The defen- dant, on the other hand, has no right to prove his case because the judges fol- low the public prosecutor and declare that it is "common knowledge" that the defendant is always wrong.1353 If the defendant still insists on proving his case, then this attracts a more severe sentence because the defendant is seen not to show any "insight" or "fails to learn," because he repeats his thought crime in court instead of showing remorse. L: But surely new or fresh evidence can cast doubt on even the most obvious mat- ter of fact. R: Formally seen you are right. Some German courts decided in the early 1990s that "common knowledge" can be challenged by new or more convincing evi- dence that has never been presented in a German court before, or if there is a noticeable public debate contradicting "common knowledge."1354 But all mo- tions by defense lawyers to prove that submitted evidence is new and/or supe- rior or that there is a considerable public debate will be rejected by German 1353 See: BVerfG, verdict of March 15, 1994, Ref. 1StR 179/93. 1354 OLG Düsseldorf, ref. 2 Ss 155/91 ­ 52/91 III; BVerfG, ref. 2BrR 367/92; OLG Celle, ref. 3 Sc 88/93, Monatszeitschrift für Deutsches Recht, 48(6) (1994) p. 608. 512 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST judges ­ guess on what grounds? Because the Holocaust is self-evident due to "common knowledge." L: But don't the motions concern the quality of evidence offered or if there is a public debate on the matter, not on whether or not there was a Holocaust? R: Well observed, but the German Federal Supreme Court played dumb here and rubber-stamped such decisions anyway.1355 It is like if I would say: "I want to prove that my car is faster than yours," and you answer: "Request denied be- cause it is self-evident that water melts at 0°C." Both things have nothing to do with each other. L: So the German courts suffer under autism in this regard. R: Correct. Historians and forensic experts, who prepare new and/or superior evi- dence, are always rejected, because "common knowledge" predetermines that they are wrong, no matter what they would have to say. Next, if these experts do not shut up, they are prosecuted as well, and during their trials, they are pre- vented from submitting their own works in their own defense. They are con- victed because their views, which they are not allowed to voice in court, are considered wrong on account of "common knowledge."1356 L: But how can the judges know that the defendants are wrong if they do not lis- ten to what they have to say? R: Because German judges are godlike creatures who infallibly know what is true thanks to "common knowledge." If, on the other hand, a person courageously attempts to get a public debate go- ing in order to create the other option that would eliminate "common knowl- edge," that person will then be prosecuted as well without being permitted to debate the matter openly in court ­ because it is again "common knowledge" that that person's views are wrong. L: That is truly Kafkaesk.1357 R: But we are far from being finish with this grotesque story, because defense lawyers who dare to present evidence that casts doubt on the truthfulness of the Holocaust are subject to prosecution as well (see p. 414). And since the law- yer's views are wrong due to "common knowledge," he has no right to defend himself with the evidence he intended to present on behalf of his client either. L: Justice therefore plays the famous three monkeys. The whole matter resembles a total, no, a totalitarian judicial blockade of freedom of scientific research. R: Exactly. The Stalin show trials were amateurish compared to how the German judiciary perfectly protects the taboo.1358 What lies behind this I think I found out during my numerous appearances as an expert witness for the defense of various revisionists. 1355 BGH, Ref. 1 StG 193/93: Motion to assess the value of new evidence was dismissed on grounds that the Holocaust is "self-evident." 1356 BGH, Ref. 1 StR 18/96: Conviction of expert witness Germar Rudolf to 14 months prison, because he dared to offer himself to the court as a witness for the defense as "superior evidential material." 1357 See Franz Kafka, The Trial, Schocken Books, New York 1998 (www.gutenberg.org/etext/7849). 1358 See: Hermann Kater, "Die Rechtslage bei der Überprüfung der deutschen Zeitgeschichte," Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 40(4) (1992), pp. 7-11 (www.vho.org/D/DGG/Kater40_4.html). 513 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Article 245 of the German Code of Penal Procedures states that evidence al- ready present in the court room cannot be rejected due to "common knowl- edge," but only if it turns out that the evidence is "totally unsuited" to prove what it is claimed to prove,1359 something that will only be the case if, for in- stance, an expert is completely incompetent, but then he ceases to be an expert, of course. In all other cases a German judge must listen to an expert witness al- ready present in the court room. Since no public prosecutor or judge would ever summon an expert on the Holocaust to investigate forensic evidence and present his findings in court ­ for German public prosecutors and judges the results are "common knowledge" anyway, so why bother ­ the defense team has no option but to organize its own expert witnesses and subpoena them with their expert forensic evidence. In response to an attorney's request to prepare an expert report on this matter in June 1991, I agreed to do this as a graduated chemist. Following this, a number of defense lawyers subpoenaed me as an expert witness in the years 1991-1994 for cases launched against a number of revisionists. In all cases I was rejected by the judges either on grounds that the Holocaust is "common knowledge" ­ which was legally impossible ­ or because my expertise was allegedly "totally unsuitable evidence," which was just as illegal. How can a scientist with a mas- ter's degree in chemistry, enrolled in a PhD program with focus on the area that lies at the core of the issue (inorganic chemistry) be "totally unsuitable" in an- swering chemical questions?1360 This violation of the law was supported and confirmed at all levels of appeal. On July 22, 1992, in one such trial in Munich, I met the defense lawyer Dr. Klaus Göbel, who briefed me on my role as expert witness. He advised me that there will be no opportunity for me to present my evidence on matters Holo- caust. He said this after briefly speaking to the judge before whom his client would appear. The judge advised him that he, the judge, had received instruc- tions from above to reject any evidence that would create doubt about the Holocaust. My own experience fits into this as well, where in one case a judge had not been prepared how to react when an expert witness was already present in the court room. When the motion was filed to have me testify, the judge panicked. He adjourned the hearing, rushed out of the courtroom and, as one observer who followed the judge reported to me afterwards, placed a phone call with the prefixes 0228. That is the number for Bonn, at that time West Germany's capi- tal city. What followed then is obvious. L: He must have obtained advice from above, something that does not quite fit the image of an independent judiciary. R: You can bet on that! In Germany the judiciary is woefully dependent, as is illustrated by the case of Judges Dr. Rainer Orlet, Dr. Wolfgang Müller, and 1359 See: Detlef Burhoff, Handbuch für die strafrechtliche Hauptverhandlung, 4 ed., Verlag für Rechts- und Anwaltspraxis, Recklingshausen 2003, 656 (www.burhoff.de/haupt/inhalt/praesentes.htm). 1360 This is what happened in the proceedings against Otto Ernst Remer, LG Schweinfurt, ref. 1 Kls 8 Js 10453/92, and in the proceedings against Arthur Vogt, LG Nürnberg, ref. 6 Ns 341 Js 31951/92. 514 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Elke Folkerts. In 1994, these three Mannheim judges imposed upon the former leader of the National-democratic Party Germany (NPD), Günter Deckert, a suspended prison sentence of one year. Deckert was found guilty for translating a speech given by American Fred Leuchter on November 10, 1991, about his Leuchter Report, wherein Deckert had affirmed Leuchter's work through ges- tures and choice of words. Because Leuchter had denied the Holocaust in his report, his translator was also guilty of this "crime." Rainer Orlet, the judge re- sponsible for drafting the written verdict, made an "error" when considering mitigating circumstances:1361 "Although one can be of the opinion that the defendant was in pursuit of a legitimate interest in trying to deflect the demands against Germany that are still rising from the Holocaust. Yet he did not use the appropriate means (c.f. Dreher/Tröndle, op. cit, sec. 193 no. 8), but by far exceeded them." L: Is it permissible at all to call the rejection of demands made against Germany a pursuit of legitimate interest? R: If we take the principles of a state under the rule of law as a guideline, then certainly. We must then oppose claims of collective liability. That is what it is all about: German children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are all held liable for what some of their ancestors, most of which have long died, are claimed to have done. In this context the Mannheim judge also stated other mitigating circumstances: "[...] the act was done [by Deckert] to strengthen the German people's re- sistance against the Jewish demands that flow from the Holocaust. It was also pointed out that Germany to this day, around 50 years after the end of the war, and because of the Jewish persecution, is still subjected to far reaching claims ­ politically, morally, and financially ­ while the mass mur- ders of other countries have not been atoned, which, from the political view of the defendant, represents a heavy burden for the German people." L: He is quite right here but you are just not allowed to say it in Germany without making enemies. R: And more, especially if such comments are made and presented as mitigating circumstances. In the eyes of most German politicians and media people such a comment is possibly a criminal heresy. Judge Orlet concludes his judgment by justifying the suspended sentence: "It is to be expected that the defendant will take note of this conviction and not re-offend. The defendant presented himself well. He has a strong charac- ter, a sense of responsibility with clear principles. His political beliefs lie dear to his heart and he commits considerable time and energy to defending them." R: Further, the judgment stated that Deckert was "a highly intelligent man." Then the court committed the "unpardonable sin" of not criminalizing Deckert's thought processes: 1361 LG Mannheim, verdict of June 22, 1994, ref. (6) 5 KLs 2/92; the following comments are based on a legal report from Dr. Günther Herzogenrath-Amelung, cf. "Gutachten im Asylverfahren von Germar Rudolf," VffG 6(2) (2002), pp. 176-190. 515 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "That the defendant continues to commit himself to revisionism, and that he will in all probability continue to do so, does not give rise to any further justifiable criticism; this method of thinking contains nothing punishable." L: Well, the majority of German judges would have a different opinion on this matter. R: You are right there, but in the judici- ary one ought not to think what the majority thinks but rather what is right and what is legal. Since when are certain historical views consid- ered illegal in a country that claims to be a democracy based on the rule of law? To top off its provocation, the Mannheim court held that the "defense of the rule of law" would "The verdict is alright the way it is" demand that the prison term be sus- Hunting judges in Germany: A photogra- pended: pher of a major German political maga- "Moreover, the court does not zine waited long for this shot ­ taken doubt that the majority of the after a long day in court rooms without people will understand that a 54- air conditioning during a heat wave. Sweating, with tie removed and shirt year-old irreproachable family father, whose wrong in effect con- opened, judge Orlet was heading home, only to be caught and "executed" by a sists only in the expression of a camera.1362 view, justifiably receives a sus- pended sentence." R: The three Mannheim judges may have been correct, but this presupposes that the population had been properly informed about the Deckert case and about his personality. The German media subsequently ensured that the opposite would occur. The Orlet judgment was blown up as the greatest scandal in West German judicial history (see quotations starting on p. 401). The media execution of Deckert was relatively simple, as members of the NPD were labeled Nazis, in alliance with the devil, thereby not deserving to be considered human and not deserving to be treated humanely. After the written judgment became known, politicians and media began to shoot at the judge who had written the judgment, Judge Rainer Orlet. With ever increasing noise politicians and media demanded not only the suspension of this revolting judgment but also demanded criminal proceedings against the 1362 H. Reinke-Nobbe, F. Siering, Focus, Aug. 15, 1994, p. 24. 516 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST judge who had dared to understand and justify Deckert's motivation and to characterize revisionism as a legitimate method of thought. After weeks of media hysteria the two Mannheim judges Dr. Orlet and Dr. Müller were replace by other judges because of their "continued sick leave." In order to escape criminal indictment, Dr. Orlet was forced to go into early re- tirement. Since the German authorities did not trust the Mannheim judges any- more, the Deckert case was illegally withdrawn from his legally assigned Mannheim judges and handed over to the "politically reliable" District Court Karlsruhe, which sentenced him for the above "crime" of translating a technical speech to a two year prison term without probation. Article 97 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany states: "The judges are independent and only subject to the law." R: This is exactly the law followed by the judges Dr. Müller, Dr. Orlet, and Folk- erts, and exactly because they followed the law their independence was quashed. Since the "Deckert/Orlet case" any person can be sure that in matters "denying the Holocaust" they will not enjoy any civil rights in Germany. This case also sent out the message to all German judges that they must describe dissident his- torians as sub-humans, consider their motives base and not serious, and punish them without mercy. If judges do not act like that, then they will face at least a sudden end of their career, if not even prosecution. Revisionists are therefore doubly condemned before they even enter a court: first, it is predetermined by infallible "common knowledge" that revisionists are wrong and therefore guilty, and second, it is "common knowledge" that re- visionists are morally inferior individuals acting out of malicious motives. L: Is that, in your view, why in criminal proceedings against revisionists any at- tempt by the defense to overcome "common knowledge" by introducing new evidence will fail? R: Yes, but in addition to this, a judgment of the German Federal Supreme Court demands that defense lawyers who offer revisionist evidence must be prose- cuted, as I already mentioned (see p. 414). Hence, as a revisionist you may as well spare yourself the energy. If you end up in court with such a case, it is best to silence one's defense lawyer and merely point to the show trial character of the proceedings. All else is a waste of time, energy, nerves, and money. Except, of course, the courts gets swamped with so many cases that there is a real chance that some judges will show backbone and refuse to send dissidents to jail. Up to the beginning of the 1990s, no defense team even attempted to introduce evidence that would contradict the Holocaust. Defense lawyers merely wanted to get acquittals or mild verdicts for their clients, and the only way to achieve this was by not antagonizing the judges, that is to say, by agreeing to the gen- eral historical picture. But when the introduction of evidence contradicting this general historical picture was tried since the year 1991, German politicians and judges saw to it under brutal violation of procedural, penal, and constitutional law that this historical taboo is now legally unassailable. As illustrated above, 517 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST the German judiciary does not even shy away from sending individual histori- ans to prison. As long as the majority of establishment German historians do not protest, little will change in this regard. I doubt whether the federal German judiciary is pre- pared to take large numbers of respected historians to court. If they dared to do this, then that would be the end of the constitutional state in Germany. Then only Article 20, Section 4, of the German surrogate constitution would help: "Against anyone who eliminates the [free democratic] order, all Germans have a right to resist, if other means are not possible." R: As a post script, I would like to mention that Germany's most prominent de- fense lawyer, the left-winger Rolf Bossi, published a book in 2005, in which he massively criticized some of the distortions of the German legal system men- tioned here, like that no verbal transcripts of the proceedings and no records of evidence introduced are prepared, allowing judges to hand down arbitrary judgments, and that there is no possibility to appeal such judgments in cases where the crime of the defendant is considered to have been serious (which academic revisionism is in the eyes of the German authorities).1363 5.5. Possible Solutions L: Could you not expect a few human rights organizations to help you against such injustices? R: That is what one would expect, but unfortunately all human rights organiza- tions keep their heads down on this issue. The politically left-wing afflicted Amnesty International (AI) specifically excludes such cases from support where a persecuted individual has incited hatred against others. That revision- ists do not incite anyone to hate anything does not interest them. In this in- stance AI follows the German brainwashed model: revisionist = anti-Semite = persecutor, not persecutee. There are, of course, other human rights organizations that are far more objec- tive, but even from them no support has been forthcoming. The reason is sim- ple: Would you support and protect individuals who are defamed by the au- thorities and the media as Nazis? The chairman of the German International Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (IGFM, International Association for Human Rights) addressed this clearly when he was approached to help those individuals who are persecuted in Ger- many today. Although this organization is aware of the persecution of so many researchers and publishers in Germany and other European countries, it decided not to help:1364 1363 Rolf Bossi, Halbgötter in Schwarz, Eichborn, Frankfurt/Main 2005. 1364 Letter by Karl Hafen, president of Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte, to Germar Rudolf, October 30, 1996; in G. Rudolf, "Die Menschenrechtsorganizationen und der Revisionismus," VffG 1(4) (1997), pp. 270-273 (www.germarrudolf.com/persecute/docs/ListPos21_d.pdf, and Engl.: ~_e.pdf). 518 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST "I believe that the IGFM does not have the energy to see through a trial without suffering damage to itself." R: The background to this is that this organization has been, and still is, subjected to massive criticism from the media and left-leaning organizations because it stood firm against communism and because it helped ethnic Germans who were subjected to persecution ­ especially in Poland and former Czechoslova- kia. Helping individuals who are persecuted because of their right-wing lean- ings could start a persecution campaign against the organization itself, some- thing they believe may be fatal to their organization. That is why I don't think any effective help can be expected from this side. L: I cannot imagine that for 50 years Germany's leading citizens, be it in business, publishing, culture, or politics, have only been fearful, ignorant, or enemies of the German nation. How can so many people slavishly and blindly follow such nonsense? R: Let me explain this apparent problem with an historical parallel that was first suggested by Dr. Arthur Butz, and which I shall summarize here.145 This his- torical parallel will also indicate how matters will develop for us in future. I make reference to the so-called "Donation of Constantine." It probably was the most successful documentary forgery in European history. Around 800 AD the Catholic Church asserted that Roman Emperor Constantine I, after converting to Christianity, handed over his worldly empire "the city of Rome, all Italian provinces, towns, as well as the western regions" as well as "the four large holy places of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople" to the Pope and granted the Pope some further privileges. So as to eliminate any doubt about this matter, it stated furthermore that Constantine would transfer the imperial capital city from Rome "to the province of Byzantium," "where a city shall emerge that shall be named after us," i.e. Constantinople. L: But Byzantium ­ that was Constantinople's first name ­ had existed long be- fore Constantine converted to Christianity. R: Well noted. This is one of the two main points of evidence that the document is a forgery. The second is that according to all available evidence the imperial society in Italy continued under Constantine and Sylvester, as well as under their successors. Although the forgery was so blatant, the authenticity of it was not questioned until the 15th century, although this document was the founda- tion of the power and the massive misuse of that power by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. Only in 1433 there appeared a well-founded critique of it written by Johann von Kues, alias Cusanus, at that time deacon of St. Flo- rinus in Koblenz (Germany). His work De concordantia catholica did not cause a sensation, though, probably because it was written in a dispassionate style. This serenity, however, lasted only until 1440, when the passionate and detailed work of Italian scholar Lorenzo Valla appeared ­ De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio.1365 He was the one who for the first time used forensic methods that exposed the forgery by, for example, look- 1365 Teubner, Stuttgart/Leipzig 1994. 519 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ing at Roman coins after the Constantine era, which were produced not in the name of the Pope but in the name of the respective Roman Emperor. Valla's critical revisionist method was at that time revolutionary. With the rise of book printing at the end of the 15th century Valla's writings were distributed far and wide, and it formed one of the pillars on which Martin Luther and his support- ers based their Reformation. Martin Luther declared that Valla's work had con- vinced him that the pope was the embodiment of the Anti-Christ. This historical example throws up two questions that also arise in the Holo- caust-Lie matter: 1. If the lie was so blatant, why was it not quickly exposed as such? The answer lies primarily in the power that the church at that time possessed. It decided what was permitted to be discussed, and it also decided what in- formation people received. The actual learned individuals, who could have tackled the topic critically, were either honored members of the church or if not of the church then certainly dependent upon the church. Thus the prereq- uisites for "politically correct" stupidity had been fulfilled. 2. If a fearless and inquiring intellect can recognize so easily the forgery of the Donation of Constantine, then why was a detailed work such as Valla's ar- gumentative over-kill needed in order to eliminate the myth? Valla's work contained intellectual material of such quality that the break- through could not be stopped. Collectors of coins gained prominence; spe- cialists of Latin language and grammar felt encouraged to participate in the debate; experts on Roman history felt involved; church historians wanted to add their bit. In summary, voices from all sectors of society began to be heard amidst a massive political upheaval. The analogy to the "Holocaust" legend is striking: Academics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, who did not see the obvi- ous, remind us of the academics of our time. In view of the draconian social and criminal threats against dissidents, there is hardly anyone who has broken free of the Pavlovian conditioning and is prepared to become a martyr. The legend of the Donation was exposed as a forgery at a time when the Pa- pacy was subjected to strong criticism, when it was fashionable to criticize the Catholic Church. Similarly the "Holocaust" lie will be exposed when those up- holding the post-World War II order and Zionism do either not need it anymore or can no longer sustain it. A further parallel is the excessive attention to detail on Valla's part, much like that of the revisionists. In both cases one can speak of "overkill." The people of the Renaissance simply didn't realize that the handing over of power from em- peror to pope never happened, and we don't seem to notice that millions of "Jewish survivors" were still there after World War II, and that alone indicates that the "Holocaust" never happened. Apparently we have to investigate all possible details, which may appear fanci- ful to our successors. For example, we are not satisfied that the Zyklon B alleg- edly used to kill Jews in Auschwitz was a mere pest control agent. No, we even have to exhaustively analyze each and every chemical aspects of this question! 520 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But you cannot avoid analyzing in detail the assertions made by the official historians! R: Quite right. This obsession with detailed analysis is to be welcomed, not only because we thereby counter the claim that we have run out of arguments, but most importantly we enable specialists from all different sectors of our society a point of entry and become involved in the controversy. L: Is not one of revisionist's prerequisites for academic success the acceptance of the persecution of victims of the Third Reich? R: Absolutely. I have adopted the view that the persecution measures of the Na- tional Socialists against the Jews, according to today's constitutional legal un- derstanding in Germany, can be called genocide even if no physical extermina- tion of Jews occurred but "only" deprivation of civil rights, deportation, and subsequent damage to property, body, and soul.1366 According to today's inter- national law, which entered the German Criminal Code under Article 220a, genocide is defined as: "(1) Anyone who intends totally or partially to destroy a national, racial, re- ligious, or ethnic group, 1. Kills members of the group, 2. Causes members of the group to suffer serious physical or mental dam- age, as defined in Article 226 [serious bodily injury], 3. Creates situations for the group that causes total or partial physical de- struction, 4. Adopts measures that prevent a group from procreating, 5. Forcefully takes children from the group and places them in another group, will be punished by life in prison. (2) In less serious cases, Section 1, no. 2-5, the incarceration is not less than five years." R: Thus in order to commit genocide you do not need to have committed mass murder. L: But the same type of genocide happened to the Germans in east Germany. R: Correct. The persecution of the Jews, according to revisionist interpretation, is comparable to what other people have experienced during World War II. This does not diminish the tragedy they suffered nor does it lessen its importance. Only its unique character disappears, and so their fate becomes just one of many of the tragedies in human history. You do not help a people if you fill their history of persecution with distortions, exaggerations, and lies. The liars are the real threat to the proper memorial of the real victims whose story may not be believed anymore, because people may conclude that it is all lies anyway. The revisionists are merely the conveyors of news that lies were told. That is why it is not the revisionists who endanger the acceptance and memorization of the history of persecution, but the liars and those that cover up for the liars. 1366 Cf. my introduction to G. Rudolf (ed.), op. cit. (note 44), p. 33. 521 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST L: But there must be revisionists who do not even accept real persecution of the Jews. R: Perhaps, but I don't know of any. And if there are, it would be far fewer than those who deny the persecution of Germans at the end and after the war, and still fewer than those who deny that today dissidents are persecuted. Anyone who claims he has learned something from yesterday's persecution should op- pose today's persecution, especially if it concerns individuals whose opinions you do not share. L: My head is spinning after these lectures. I feel as if my whole view of the world has been turned upside down. R: I felt the same when as a 24-year-old I first stumbled across these things. The first time confrontation usually causes great internal mental and emotional up- heaval. After all, a part of one's world view fractures if today's historical writ- ings are wrong. Yet it is important to overcome these difficulties. I think it is anyone's wish to have a secure and closed world view wherein to find mental and spiritual safety and peace. These lectures destroy this security because now the possibility exists that the simple black-white picture of the evil Nazis and the dear Allies, of the cruel Third Reich and the Paradise of the Federal Republic of Germany, is now untenable. That is one of the reasons why revisionism is so resisted and feared: It cannot be true what many do not wish to be true, because that would mean a change in the paradigm that has become so cozy for many individuals. But you, as an intelligent person, should be aware that such good-bad dichotomy was never helpful in explaining complex reality. And finally you should consider this: Even if there was no systematic mass extermination and even if many other things of that period have not been correctly presented, this still does not turn the Third Reich, which was so far always perceived as devilish, into an angel. L: Don't you think that with such interpretation you are supporting the political right-wing? R: Is that a reproach? L: That is what I wish you to feel. R: Well, I will then add a little political excursion. You are aware that in Germany there exists a political left. You may also know that there are certain topics that the left holds dear. I ask you, is it a crime to talk about such topics, then? L: How could it be? R: The existence of a variety of different political opinions is the foundation of a functioning pluralistic democracy. Where there is a left-wing, there ought to be also a right-wing. For me there is nothing worse than to have a political world view without an ideological opposition. Political opponents always force us to review our own ideological position. That is the reason why one-party systems always fail: They are not forced early enough to correct their errors. Only when it is too late and the errors cannot be fixed up do the people rise against their rulers in one way or another and get rid of the dictatorship. We can also draw parallels with our historical writings: With all kinds of measures ­ in many European countries even with the help of penal law ­ any 522 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST opposition is suppressed, thereby preventing a critical confrontation. In this way biased historical writings will end up in various cul-de-sacs. A world, in which the public breaks out in hysteria when certain things are discussed, because that discussion actually or only seemingly is advantageous to the political right-wing, is seriously ill. That has nothing to do with democ- ratic discussions, but is rather the hallmark of a totalitarian synchronization of public opinion and the thinking of the people. L: Well, I did not mean the right-wing as such but the extreme right-wing. R: Your earlier choice of words is excused, if and only if it was the exception. Unfortunately it is common usage now in Europe, for example as illustrated in German slogans such as "Rock against the Right," "Justice against the Right," "Network against Right," etc. In the public domain this kind of propaganda knocks over everything that is right of center. And who defines where the mid- dle is? But alright, let's focus on the extreme right. And let us also assume that you are right. What do you suggest then? Do you want to generally constrain the right to have a free and serious exchange of opinions and the freedom of scientific research for the sake of preventing a misuse of certain opinions or research re- sults? Do you want to eliminate the most fundamental civil rights just in order to make some left-wingers of Zionists feel more comfortable, so that they do not have to face critical questions and a possible refutation of some aspects of their ideology? And since when is ideological "comfort" a civil right? L: ... R: You are directly following the path of undermining the most basic civil rights. Who ultimately determines which opinion is allowed and which is not? Who will determine when something will one day be misused or not misused? With such an approach you would drastically change the legal interpretation of civil rights that can be manipulated and distorted at will! And further: You hand the extreme right-wing ­ whatever one may understand that to mean ­ a simple recipe how they can monopolize any discussion. Let us for a moment assume that the evidence I presented here is correct, some- thing which can ultimately be found out only after a long open and serious dis- cussion. Which comprehensible argument can you come up with that would al- low the prohibition of this possible truth? Is there a single argument that would justify to continuously supporting a lie? L: As you indicated, in these lectures you are moving beyond that which is per- mitted in the German-speaking countries. Is a law abiding citizen not obligated not to get anywhere close to prohibited material? R: A democracy can only function if its citizens critically partake in the ongoing political discussion of their country. I pointed out earlier that even a professor of criminology agreed that Germany is curtailing basic civil rights in an unac- ceptable manner. How is one to react to that? If you do not approach the boundaries of officially defined legality, which has become illegal, then you will never stop such developments. If you place your finger in an open wound, then you naturally cause pain, but there is no other way. Abuse of power can 523 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST only be curtailed or stopped if you confront the powerful. That the powerful then declare such actions illegal is the hallmark of dictatorships. Constitutional democracies tolerate and encourage criticism and control of power. Let me stress again what this is all about. Throughout these lectures I merely referred to serious sources and made scientific deductions from them. This ac- tivity occurs within the limits of the civil right formally guaranteed even in Germany, and this activity certainly does not infringe upon any individual's rights. Now along comes the public prosecutor and asserts that I am slandering, defaming, or inciting third persons to hatred. What logic permits simple crimi- nal law to overrule or suspend fundamental human rights? In Germany the au- thorities justify this by referring to Article 1 of their Basic Law, which protects the dignity of all human beings. They claim that revisionists directly or indi- rectly assert that some Jews lied in their testimonies about their experiences ­ which some indeed did ­ but that this assertion allegedly violates the dignity of Jews in general. L: How can that be? Do the German authorities claim that Jews never lie, in con- trast to all other human being? R: No. The logic goes like that: Claiming that the Holocaust is a lie will lead to people blaming the most likely culprit for such a lie: the Jews. As a next step, people will be inclined to see the inventors of this ultimate lie as the ultimate evil, and thus will strive to deny them their human dignity by persecuting them all over again. L: Such scape-goating and retaliation against today's Jews must indeed be pre- vented under any circumstances. R: Correct, but what the German authorities do is to blame the messenger, the revisionists, for what some individuals in some remote and hypothetical future might want to do with some Jews. That is just outrageous, because a historical statement in and of itself is bare of any inciting content. You see from this that in Germany and similar to this in many other European countries there are unlawfully constructed constitutional conflicts, whereby the civil rights of a certain group (Jews) are expanded so far that it limits the civil rights of other groups: They have the right to distort, lie, and exaggerate at will and nobody is allowed to challenge their claims. If this is my scientific and earnest opinion as a democratic citizen, it is my responsibility to criticize this restriction of civil rights. In this case it is not I who acts illegally, but the Ger- man authorities that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I refer to the human right to freedom of thought, opinion, and expression. The human rights enshrined in the statutes of the United Nations are known to take precedent even over Germany's basic law. L: I do not oppose a healthy nationalism. In this case I may even be defending values that are considered to be right-wing in Germany, although most of these views are just plain normal in most other countries. However, I consider such lectures as you have presented here quite counter productive. Anyone who wishes to increase the wellbeing of the German nation and seeks to strengthen its reputation in the world must not harm Germany through such lectures. You 524 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST achieve only one thing: You give the Nazis arguments with which they can propagate their misanthropic politics. With your comments you are enticing the brown rats out of their holes. In view of the threats from the right this cannot be in anybody's interest. R: That is your honorable patriotism. But think of the following: Everything that I raised here is largely nothing new. It is also not unknown to those you call "brown rats." What would happen if I followed your advice and not hold these lectures? Do you seriously mean that the "Nazis," whoever that may be, would leave the topic alone? In any case, your choice of words ­ "brown rats" ­ indicates your own misanthropic attitude. This kind of language is considered to be the domain of National Socialists. I thus request you to temper your use of language! If you wish to prevent the misuse of scientific knowledge, then it is quite counter productive to prevent a scientific discussion. One thing the history of science has proven is the fact that scientific knowledge cannot be banned. If it is not possible to refute revisionist theses in open and honest discussions, then one has to ensure that mainstream scholars use the revisionist approach them- selves and bring the fruits of this research into their own political barn. In this way you also prevent a possible misuse of this revisionist knowledge. Also, suppressing discussions on undesirable topics is the final reason why populations in totalitarian countries lose their trust in their own authorities. Hence, if we wish to prevent totalitarian developments from taking place, then we are duty bound to discuss taboo topics seriously and to put them in the ser- vice of democracy so as to prevent any misuse. L: After your lectures my impression is that things weren't too bad in the concen- tration camps. R: If the mass extermination by means of the methods mentioned here did not occur and far fewer people died as previously thought, then this chapter of German history would not seem to be as bad as previously stated. That does not mean things really weren't bad at all. "Not that bad" is making a comparison and is not an absolutist expression, and comparisons make up the essence of scientific enquiry. L: Can you understand that people are upset when they are confronted with revi- sionist theses? R: Yes, I too was upset by them until I was 24-years old. But let me turn things around. Should each individual not be happy that at a large accident or a mas- sacre it wasn't thousands who died but that it was only a handful or that it was a hoax? Surely the relatives of such tragedies should be enthusiastic about find- ing out that the fate of their relatives or friends was not as horrible as had pre- viously been assumed. In actual fact we observe the opposite. The relatives of victims cling desper- ately to a view that a massacre occurred this way and no other way, and that exactly this number of individuals died as stated in an official report. I am not getting involved in the issue of what motives relatives may have to adopt such a view, because that is a very contentious matter. But interestingly it is not even 525 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST permitted to offer relief to the relatives of the perpetrators of such alleged crimes. The reasons are manifold and require a psychological investigation. Some of the reasons that individuals resist the hearing of good news may be: ­ If certain matters of contemporary history are fundamentally revised, then your own world view may be fractured because to date it had been a com- fortable home wherein you felt well. The resulting mental dissonance will cause discomfort, something to be avoided. ­ If you admit that you had been lied to and didn't notice it, then you are giving yourself a bad reference. We usually attempt to avoid such self-accusation. ­ If the realization is there that certain historical statements could be lies, then you can see yourself on the same level as those individuals you collectively defamed as "Nazis," "brown rats," "extreme right-wing," and "mad." You try to avoid this comparison, even if it is against your own common sense. This, by the way, is the structure of the successful defamation campaign used against revisionists. ­ Finally, it is a matter only for a few individuals to stand against an overpow- ering public opinion, to constantly be persecuted by your environment, not to mention the loss of job, financial ruin, and prosecution. L: Would it not have been better before you commenced with this topic to have clarified your position regarding the inhuman ideology and all the crimes committed by the Third Reich, and then to have distanced yourself from all that? R: It is everybody's individual choice if he wants to do that. In my eyes, however, most people are merely driven by a Pavlovian reflex when offering this anti- fascist ritual. I don't think much of such rituals because only a few know what they are talking about. But I must confess that I have only superficially con- cerned myself with the ideology of the Third Reich and with the day to day things of the Third Reich, so I cannot credit myself with any competence and comprehensive judgment about the Third Reich as such. When judging the Third Reich in general, I must admit that I do rely on the image as it is pre- sented by the mass media. But I don't consider that to be particularly objective. L: Why do you lecture then? R: I stumbled upon this topic quite accidentally. During the mid 1980s I had my first discussion on this topic with a gentleman who had half-revisionist views. The way he argued, however, was not to my liking because he insisted that it was "only" three instead of six million victims. Such a game with figures I found a waste of time because it changed nothing about the matter itself. Fi- nally, in 1989 a friend and member of a small German libertarian party pre- sented me with the German edition of Rassinier's book The Real Eichmann Trial. It was only through this most impressive book and through open discus- sion with this libertarian friend that I gained a serious entry into the topic. My own work then began after the Leuchter Report appeared. When I had the op- portunity to compliment my own research on behalf of a lawyer's request, which would see me appear in court as an expert witness ­ at least that was the 526 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST plan ­ I quickly became involved in the social and legal persecution mill that ultimately drove me into exile.1367 An important motivation for my work is without any doubt my well-developed sense for justice, because I am upset that we are kept by force from asking questions, and that it is prohibited to spread dissenting answers. I am shocked to see that in Germany once again dissidents are persecuted because of their views. Furthermore I want to mention my constant quest to understand the world we live in, that is to say, I am driven by curiosity and love for the truth. I call this the Eros of Cognition, the pleasure of discovering and understanding. And finally, there has to be a reason why the Holocaust is the taboo of our times. The slightest violation of this taboo enrages the entire world of histori- ans, jurists, politicians, and media people to the point of utter panic. I think that Holocaust revisionists are most relentlessly persecuted because those in power know that what we do is to challenge the ideological foundation, upon which their abuse of power rests ­ their amoral foundation, to use their own kind of language. I also would not like this topic to be left to some ideologue or half- educated person. I thus regard it as my duty to ensure that revisionist works about this topic are serious, systematic, and published competently. L: In your work are you not in danger of producing results of wishful thinking? R: As we are all human, it is not possible for a scientist to be totally divorced from the influences of our own wishes. But I shall do my best to ensure that I do not make such errors because I would only deceive myself and thereby hurt myself in the process. Errors are ruthlessly exploited by the opposition. That should be enough reason for me not to produce predetermined, desired results. In addition, revisionists are quite prepared to criticize and correct their own er- rors or that of other revisionists. In this context I would again like to raise the dispute about the Lachout Document where revisionists are not of one mind whether this document is genuine or a forgery.127 By the way, revisionists are often accused of producing research results for the sake of sensationalism and financial gain. But if you look at the personal cir- cumstances of most revisionists, then you will note that any publishing or other public revisionist enterprise will as a rule bring with it financial ruin and social ostracism. Most likely it is more the case that revisionists, among them many idealistic academics, will continue to hold to their beliefs and work in spite of economic ruin and social ostracism, which is then often followed by divorces and family breakdowns. As a matter of fact, this claim turns the truth upside down. Just consider the attention that the fraudulent stories of self-proclaimed Holocaust survivors get and keep in mind the billions of dollars made with the help of the shoa busi- ness, and it is easy to see which side in this confrontation produces stories for the sake of sensationalism and financial gain. Finally let me once again point out that defending a certain thesis, which may be along the line what a scholar wants to be true, is in itself not unscientific. Of 1367 Cf. the appendix to my expert report, op. cit. (note 415), pp. 297-419, as well as my personal website www.germarrudolf.com. 527 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST course every scientist wants to be right, and he spends lots of energy to prove that he is indeed right. This competitive game of thesis and antithesis, in each case resting on the perception of reality by the individual scientist, is one of the motors of scientific research. It is this personal emotional engagement of the scientist together with the natural curiosity and instinct to play that expands our knowledge. Only when scientists seek to support their thesis with distorted or falsified evidence and ignore counter arguments, then their work becomes un- scientific. The prevailing situation is, however, that the powers-that-be prevent any discussions of revisionist theses and that mainstream historiography even in topics not related to Holocaust research must accept the accusation that over decades it worked with a huge number of falsified evidence and lies. Who then produces results of wishful thinking? L: What advice do you have for the ordinary citizen? R: Shy away from radical slogans because it would hurt yourself and revisionism. Be aware that we are dependent upon our human rights and therefore never fall into the temptation to deny our opponents their human rights. Take to heart these words from Immanuel Kant: "Act in such a way that the maxims of your will at any time can become a universal law." R: I also share what Martin Luther said: "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise." R: And with Ullrich von Hutten: "I dared!" 529 Acknowledgments My friend Jürgen Graf and I initially planned to write this book together, but because of his extensive workload this plan had to be shelved. Jürgen did, how- ever, find enough time to read through the manuscript critically and make correc- tions and suggest additions, for which I thank him. Far more important than Jürgen's suggestions is Carlo Mattogno's fundamen- tal historical and forensic research, which is the most important basis on which this book rests. Without Carlo's research this book could not have been written, just as Carlo's work would hardly be available to German and English readers, if it were not for Jürgen Graf translating many of Carlo's work from Italian into German and English. And since Carlo's works are read only by a few people in Italy, I have the honor to publish his works both in English and German, which I hope encourages Carlo to continue with his important research. It appears that the trio Carlo Mattogno (researcher), Jürgen Graf (researcher and translator), and Germar Rudolf (researcher and publisher), is the most produc- tive that historical revisionism has seen to date. Let's hope this will remain so for a while. This does not mean that the contributions of the many critical revisionist histo- rians on whose works I also base my own research are lessened in any way. There are just too many to name here, and so I say a general thank you to you all. You know who you are. I also want to thank all those translators who volunteered to assist me in get- ting this book out in English as well: Regina Belser, James Damon, Henry Gard- ner, Carlos Porter, and finally my dear friend Dr. Fredrick Toben. Finally I wish to thank my wife who looked kindly upon my taking home work from the office so that this job could get done in due time. Germar Rudolf 531 Appendix SS Ranks and U.S. Army Equivalents SS U.S. ARMY SS Mann Private Sturmmann Private First Class Rottenführer Corporal Unterscharführer Sergeant Scharführer Staff Sergeant Oberscharführer Technical Sergeant Hauptscharführer Master Sergeant Sturmscharführer First Sergeant Untersturmführer Second Lieutenant Obersturmführer First Lieutenant Hauptsturmführer Captain Sturmbannführer Major Obersturmbannführer Lieutenant Colonel Standartenführer Colonel Oberführer Colonel Brigadeführer Brigadier General Gruppenführer Lieutenant General Obergruppenführer General Oberstgruppenführer General of the Army 532 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Abbreviations AA Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Office) ABC American Broadcasting Corporation ADL Anti-Defamation League AEG Allgemeine Eletricitäts Gesellschaft AG Aktiengesellschaft or Amtsgericht (German County Court) AI Amnesty International AP Associated Press APMM Archiwum Pa stwowego Muzeum na Majdanku (Archive of the State Museum Majdanek), Lublin APMO Archiwum Pa stwowego Muzeum w O wi cimiu (Archive of the State Museums Auschwitz) ARD Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesre- publik Deutschland (public broadcasting corporation Germany) BASF Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik (German chemical corporation) BBC British Broadcasting Corporation Bundesgesetzblatt (German Federal Law Journal) BGBl BGH Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Supreme Court) BKA Bundeskriminalamt (Wiesbaden) BPjM Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (German Federal Office for Me- dia Endangering the Youth) BRT Belgian Radio & TV BVerfG Bundesverfassungsgericht (German Federal Constitutional High Court) BW Bauwerk (building / construction site) CBS Columbia Broadcasting System CIA Central Intelligence Agency CN­ cyanide ion CNN Cable News Network CO carbon monoxide CO2 carbon dioxide CODOH Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust DDT Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane, pesticide DEGESCH Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung (German Society for Pest Control) Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart DGG DM Deutsche Mark Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung FAZ FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation GARF Gosudarstvenni Archiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russan Federation), Moskow Gestapo Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police) GULag Glavnoye Upravleniye ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey (Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps) HCN hydrogen cyanide Historische Tatsachen HT I.G. Interessen-Gemeinschaft IGFM Internationalen Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (International Association for Human Rights) IHR Institute for Historical Review IMT International Military Tribunal 533 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST The Journal for Historical Review JHR KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) POW Prisoner of War KL, KZ Konzentrationslager (concentration camp) LG Landgericht (German District Court) NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NKVD Narodny Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) NMT Nuremberg Militäry Tribunal NPD National-Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (National-Democratic Party of Germany) NS National Socialist/sm NSDAP Nationalsozialistische deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Wor- kers' Party) New York Times NYT OLG Oberlandesgericht (German Upper District Court) Österreichische Volkspartei (Austrian People's Party) ÖVP OSI Office of Special Investigations OSS Office of Strategic Services PA Politische Abteilung (political department, Auschwitz camp) PKK Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers Party) RGVA Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennii Vojennii Archiv (Russian State Archive of War) RIF Reichsamt für Industrielle Fettversorgung (Reich Office for Industrial Fat Supply) RM Reichsmark RTL Radio Tele Luxemburg SA Sturmabteilung (storm department) SD Sicherheitsdienst (security service) SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei (Socialist Unity Party) SS Schutzstaffel (protection squad) The Revisionist TR UN United Nations Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung VffG VVN Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes (Association of those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime) VW Volkswagen WAPL Wojewódzkie Archiwum Pa stwowe w Lublinie (State Archive of the District Lublin), Lublin WWI/II World War One/Two ZStL Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen (Central Office of State Administrations of), Ludwigsburg 534 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Bibliography Monographs and Anthologies ADL on the Frontline, Anti-Defamation League, special summer edition 2003 ­ Günter Agde, Sachsenhausen bei Berlin. 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Fertig, New York 1984 ­ 535 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein, Jüdischer Bolschewismup. Mythos und Realität, Edition Antaios, Dresden 2002 ­ Joseph Billig, La solution finale de la question juive, Beate Klarsfeld, Paris 1977 ­ David F. Bjorklund (ed.), False-Memory Creation in Children and Adults: Theory, Research, and Impli- cations, Lawrence Erlbaum Ass., Mahwah, NJ, 2000 ­ Richard Blake, Orphans of Versailles. The Germans in Western Poland, 1918-1939, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1993 ­ Benjamin Blech, The Secret of Hebrew Words, Jason Aronson, Northvale, NJ, 1991 ­ Nachman Blumental (ed.), Dokumenty i materia y, vol. I, ód 1946 ­ Heinz Boberach, Inventararchivalische Quellen des NS-Staates, 2 vols., K.G. 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Doyle, Eyewitness Testimony: Civil and Criminal, 3rd ed., Lexis Law Pub., ­ Charlottesville, VA, 1997 Elizabeth Loftus, Katherine Ketcham, Witness for the Defense, St. Martin's Press, New York 1991 ­ Elizabeth Loftus, The Myth of Repressed Memory, St. Martin's Press, New York 1994 ­ Zdzis aw ukaszkiewicz, Obóz strace w Treblince, Pa stwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warsaw 1946, p. ­ 32. Stefan Mächler, Der Fall Wilkomirski, Pendo, Zürich 2000 ­ Stefan Mächler, The Wilkomirski Affair, Schocken Books, New York 2001 ­ Thomas Mann, Sieben Manifeste zur jüdischen Frage, Jos. Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1966 ­ Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel, Goebbels. 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Dunitz, London 2000 Miklos Nyiszli, Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, Arcade Publishing, New York 1993 ­ Richard Ofshe, Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria, 3rd ed., Univer- ­ sity of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1996 542 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ David Olère, Alexandre Oler, Witness: Images of Auschwitz, WestWind Press, North Richland Hills, Texas, 1998 ­ David Olère, L'Oeil du Témoin/The Eyes of a Witness, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1989 ­ Ulrich-Dieter Oppitz, Strafverfahren und Strafvollstreckung bei NS-Gewaltverbrechen, Selbstverlag, Ulm 1979 ­ Friedrich Oscar, Über Galgen wächst kein Gras, Erasmus-Verlag, Braunschweig 1950 ­ Walter Ostwald, Generator-Jahrbuch, Jahrgang 1942, J. Kasper & Co., Berlin 1943 ­ Reginald T. Paget, Manstein. His Campaigns and his Trial, Collins, London 1951 ­ Steven Paskuly (ed.), Death Dealer. 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No Holocaust?: A Study of the Holes in the Roof of Leichenkeller I of Krematorium 2 at Birkenau, Zimmer Printing, Monongahela, PA, 2000 ­ Peter Przybylski, Tatort Politbüro ­ Die Akte Honecker, vol. 1, Rowohlt, Berlin 1991 ­ Adam Raisky, David Diamant, Charles Ledermann, La presse antiraciste sous l'occupation hitlérienne, U.J.R.E., Paris 1950 ­ Kurt Ranke, Die Welt der einfachen Formen, de Gruyter, Berlin 1978 ­ Paul Rassinier, Debunking the Genocide Myth, The Noontide Press, Torrance, CA, 1978 ­ Paul Rassinier, L'opération Vicaire, La Table ronde, Paris 1965 ­ Paul Rassinier, Le Drame des Juifs Européns, Paris 1964 ­ Paul Rassinier, Le Mensonge d'Ulysse, La Librairie française, Paris 1950 ­ Paul Rassinier, Le Véritable Procés Eichmann ou les Vainquers incorrigibles, Les Sept Couleurs, Paris 1962 ­ Paul Rassinier, Le véritable procès Eichmann ou les vainqueurs incorrigibles, Les Sept Couleurs, Paris 1962 ­ Paul Rassinier, Passage de la Ligne, La Librairie française, Paris 1948 ­ Paul Rassinier, The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses, 2nd ed., Institute for Historical Review, New Port Beach 1990 ­ Paul Rassinier, The Real Eichmann Trial or The Incorrigible Victors, Institute for Historical Review, Torrance 1976 543 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ Paul Rassinier, Ulysse trahi par les siens, La Librairie Française, Paris 1961; repr. La Vieille Taupe, Paris 1980 ­ Paul Rassinier, Was ist Wahrheit?, 8th ed., Druffel, Leoni, 1982 ­ Emmanuel Ratier, Les guerriers d'Israël, Facta, Paris 1995 ­ Gerhard Rauschenbach, Der Nürnberger Prozeß gegen die Organisationen, L. 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Müller, Karlsruhe 1972 ­ Adalbert Rückerl, NS-Verbrechen vor Gericht, 2nd ed., C.F. Müller, Heidelberg 1984 ­ Adalbert Rückerl, NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, dtv, Frankfurt 1977 ­ Germar Rudolf (ed.), Auschwitz: Plain Facts, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005 ­ Germar Rudolf, Auschwitz-Lügen, Castle Hill Publishers, Hastings 2005 ­ Germar Rudolf (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, 2nd ed., Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, IL, 2003 ­ Germar Rudolf, Das Rudolf Gutachten, 2nd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Hastings 2001 ­ Germar Rudolf, Eine Zensur findet statt! Redeverbote und Bücherverbrennung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Castle Hill Publishers, Hastings 2005 ­ Germar Rudolf, The Rudolf Report, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2003 ­ Germar Rudolf, Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: The Case Against Insanity, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005 ­ Germar Rudolf, Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz-Lies, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2005 ­ Hans Peter Rullmann, Der Fall Demjanjuk, 2nd ed., Verlag für ganzheitliche Forschung und Kultur, Struckum 1987 ­ Colin Rushton, Spectator in Hell. A British soldier's extraordinary story, Pharaoh Press, Springhill (Berkshire) 1998 ­ John Sack, An Eye for an Eye, Basic Books, New York 1993 ­ John Sack, Auge um Auge, Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1995 ­ Irene Sagel-Grande, H.H. Fuchs, Christiaan F. Rüter (ed.), Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. XXI, Univer- sity Press, Amsterdam 19791 ­ Thomas Sandkühler, Endlösung in Galizien. 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Seidler, Verbrechen an der Wehrmacht, 2 vols., Pour le Mérite, Selent 1998, 2000 ­ Karl-Heinz Seifert, Dieter Hömig (ed.), Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2nd ed., Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft Baden-Baden 1985 ­ Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness, Mc Graw-Hill, New York 1974 ­ Robert Servatius, Verteidigung Adolf Eichmann, Harrach, Bad Kreuznach 1961 ­ Yoram Sheftel, The Demjanjuk Affair. The Rise and Fall of the Show Trial, Victor Gollancz, London 1994 ­ Eran Sher (ed.), Handbook of Air Pollution from Internal Combustion Engines: Pollution Formation and Control, Academic Press, Boston 1998 ­ Michael Shermer, Alex Grobman, Denying History. Who Says the Holocaust never Happened and Why Do They Say it?, University of California, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2000 ­ Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, Freeman & Co., New York 1997 ­ Karl Siegert, Repressalie, Requisition und höherer Befehl, Göttingen 1953 ­ Constantin Simonov, The Lublin Extermination Camp, Foreign Languages Publication House, Moscow 1944 ­ Bradley F. Smith, Agnes F. Peterson (ed.), Heinrich Himmler. Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, Propyläen, Frankfurt 1974 ­ Bradley R. Smith, Break His Bones, published by author, San Ysidro 2003 ­ Arthur Lee Smith, Die "Hexe von Buchenwald." Der Fall Ilse Koch, Böhlau, Köln 1983 ­ Alexander Solschenizyn, 200 Jahre zusammen, 2 vols., Herbig, Munich 2003 ­ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago I-II, Harper & Row, New York 1974 ­ Walter J. Spielberger, Kraftfahrzeuge und Panzer des österreichischen Heeres 1896 bis heute, Motor- buch Verlag, Stuttgart 1976 ­ Hans Springer, Das Schwert auf der Waage, Vowinckel, Heidelberg 1953 ­ Elisa Springer, Il silenzio dei vivi. All'ombra di Auschwitz, un racconto di morte e di risurrezione, Marsi- lio Editore, Venedig 1997 ­ Staatliches Museum Auschwitz, "Ausgewählte Probleme aus der Geschichte des KL Auschwitz," Au- schwitz 1988 ­ Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (ed.), Die Sterbebücher von Auschwitz, Saur, Munich 1995 ­ Wilhelm Stäglich, Der Auschwitz-Mythos, Grabert, Tübingen 1979 ­ Wilhelm Stäglich, Der Leuchter Report. Antwort auf eine Kritik, History Buff Books and Video, Hamil- ton, Ontario, undated (1991) ­ Wilhelm Stäglich, Die westdeutsche Justiz und die sogenannten NS-Gewaltverbrechen, Deutscher Ar- beitskreis Witten, Witten 1978 ­ Wilhelm Stäglich, The Auschwitz Myth: A Judge Looks at the Evidence, Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach, CA, 1986 ­ Franz Steiner, Taboo, Cohen & West, London 1956 ­ Jean-François Steiner, Treblinka, Stalling, Oldenburg 1966 ­ Arthur Suzman, Denis Diamond, Six Million did Die ­ the truth shall prevail, South Africa Jewish Board of Deputies, Johannesburg 1977 ­ Stefan Szende, Der letzte Jude aus Poland. Europa Verlag, Zürich 1945 ­ The Trial in the Case of the Atrocities Committed by the German Fascist Invaders and their Accomplices in Krasnodar and Krasnodar Territory, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moskau 1943 ­ Serge Thion (ed.), Vérité historique ou vérité politique?, La Vielle Taupe, Paris 1980 ­ Ralf Tiemann, Der Malmedy-Prozeß, Munin, Osnabrück 1990 ­ John Toland, Adolf Hitler, Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1976 ­ Stephen Trombley, The Execution Protocol, Crown Publishers, New York 1992 ­ U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Oil Division Final Report, 2nd ed., War Department, Washington 1947 ­ Ukrainska Radyanska Encyklopedya, Kiev 1959 ­ Freda Utley, The High Cost of Cengeance, Henry Regnery, Chicago 1949 ­ Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio, Teubner, Stutt- gart/Leipzig 1994. ­ Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory, Columbia University Press, New York 1992 ­ Rudolf Vrba, Alan Bestic, I Cannot Forgive, Bantam, New York 1964 ­ Rudolf Vrba, Ich kann nicht vergeben, Rütten & Loening, Munich 1964 ­ Hans Wahls, Zur Authentizität des "Wannsee-Protokolls," Veröffentlichungen der Zeitgeschichtlichen Forschungsstelle Ingolstadt, vol. 10, Ingolstadt 1987 ­ Udo Walendy, Auschwitz im IG-Farben-Prozeß, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1981, p. 58 545 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ Udo Walendy, Bild-`Dokumente' für die Geschichtsschreibung?, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitge- schichtsforschung, Vlotho 1973 ­ Thomas Wandres, Die Strafbarkeit des Auschwitz-Leugnens, Strafrechtliche Abhandlungen, neue Folge, vol. 129, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2000 ­ War Refugee Board, German Extermination Camps ­ Auschwitz and Birkenau, Executive Office of the President, Washington, D.C., November 1944 ­ Jürgen Weber, Peter Steinbach (eds.), Vergangenheitsbewältigung durch Strafverfahren?, Olzog, Munich 1984 ­ Mark Weber, The Zionist Terror Network, Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach 1993 ­ Hutton Webster, Taboo. A Sociological Study, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1942; reprinted Lon- don 1973 ­ Ingrid Weckert, Jewish Emigration from the Third Reich, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004 ­ Georges Wellers, L'Etoile jaune à l'heure de Vichy/De Drancy à Auschwitz, Fayard, 1973 ­ Gary L. Wells, Elizabeth F. Loftus (ed.), Eyewitness Testimony: Psychological Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, New York 1984 ­ Steffen Werner, Die 2. babylonische Gefangenschaft, 2nd ed., Grabert, Tübingen 1991 ­ Elie Wiesel, Die Nacht zu begraben, Elisha, Ullstein, Fankfurt/Main-Berlin 1962 ­ Elie Wiesel, La Nuit, éditions de minuit, Paris 1958 ­ Elie Wiesel, Legends of Our Time, Schocken Books, New York, 1982 ­ Elie Wiesel, Night, Hill and Wang, New York 1960. ­ Elie Wiesel, Tous les fleuves vont à la mer, Mémoires, vol. 1, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1994 ­ Simon Wiesenthal, KZ Mauthausen, Ibis Verlag, Linz 1946 ­ Simon Wiesenthal, in:Der neue Weg, no. 15/16 & 17/18, Vienna 1946 ­ Binjamin Wilkomirski, Bruchstücke. Aus einer Kindheit 1939-1945, Suhrkamp/Jüdischer Verlag, Frank- furt 1995 ­ Binjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments. Memories of a Wartime Childhood, Schocken Books, New York 1996 ­ Robert Wilton, The Last Days of the Romanovs, George H. Doran, New York 1920; reprint: Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach 1993 ­ Wolfgang Wirth, Christian Gloxhuber, Toxikologie, Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart 1985 ­ Robert S. Wistrich, Who's Who in Nazi Germany, Bonanza, New York 1984 ­ Rebecca Elizabeth Wittmann, Resistance Reconsidered: The Women of the Political Department at Auschwitz Birkenau, Report of Experiences of the Working Party "Jewish Resistance at the Concentra- tion Camps," Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1999 ­ Irmtrud Wojak, Peter Hayes (ed.), "Arisierung" im Nationalsozialismus, Volksgemeinschaft, Raub und Gedächtnis, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/Main, New York 2000 ­ Leni Yahil, The Holocaust, Oxford University Press Inc., New York, 1990 ­ Chuck Yeager, Yeager. An Autobiography, Bantam Books, New York 1985 ­ Alfred M. de Zayas, Die Wehrmachtsuntersuchungsstelle, 4th ed., Ullstein, Berlin 1984 ­ Alfred M. de Zayas, The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace, St. Martin's Press, New York 1993 ­ Christian Zentner, Der große Bildatlas zur Weltgeschichte, Unipart, Stuttgart 1982 ­ Günter Zimmermann (ed.), Bauschäden Sammlung, vol. 4, Forum-Verlag, Stuttgart 1981 ­ Michael Zimmermann, Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet. Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik gegen Sinti und Roma, Klartext-Verl., Essen 1989 ­ Emile Zola, Alain Pages, The Dreyfus Affair: J'accuse and other Writings, Yale University Press, Yale 1998 ­ Efraim Zuroff, Occupation Nazi-Hunter. The Continuing Search for the Perpetrators of the Holocaust, KTAV, Hoboken, NJ, 1994 Periodical Articles Akribeia: Enrique Aynat, "Les `Protocoles d'Auschwitz' sont-ils une source historique digne de foi?", nr. 3, Oct. 1998, pp. 5-208 Annales d'histoire révisionniste (Vichy): Robert Faurisson, "Le savon Juif," 1 (1987), pp. 153-159 Automobiltechnische Zeitschrift: 18 (1940) and 19 (1941) Barnes Review, The: Ataullah B. Kopanski, 4(4) (1998), pp. 37-40 Biuletyn G ównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce (Poznan) later ...Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce (Warsaw): ­ Zdzis aw ukaszkiewicz, "Obóz zag ady Treblinka," I, 1946, pp. 133-144 546 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ Eugeniusz Szrojt, "Obóz zag ady w Be cu," III, 1947 ­ Zdzislaw ukaszkiewicz, "Obóz koncentracyjni i zag ady Majdanek," IV, 1948, pp. 63-105 ­ Stanis aw Wojtczak, "Karny obóz pracy Treblinka I i o rodek zag ady Treblinka II," XXVI, 1975 Biuletyn ydowskiego Instytutu Historicznego w Polsce: Tatiana Berenstein, "Eksterminacja ludno ci ydowskiej w dystrikcie Galicja (1941-1943)," 61, 1967 British Journal of industrial Medicine:: R.E. Pattle, H. Stretch, F. Burgess, K. Sinclair, J.A.G. Edginton, 14 (1957), pp. 47-55 Bundesgesetzblatt (Bonn/Berlin) ­ "Vertrag zur Regelung aus Krieg und Besatzung entstandener Fragen," May 26, 1952, II (1955) pp. 405f. ­ I (1965) p. 315 ­ I (1969) pp. 1065f. ­ I (1979) p. 1046 ­ II (1990), p. 1386. ­ I (2002), p. 2730 ­ I (2003), pp. 476, 3007, 3076 Dachauer Hefte: Arthur Haulot, "Lagertagebuch. Januar 1943 ­ Juni 1945," 1(1) (1985), pp. 129-203 Der praktische Desinfektor: issue 2, Erich Deleiter, Berlin 1941 Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Tübingen) ­ Wilhelm Stäglich, "Auschwitz-Fotos widerlegen `Holocaust,'" 27(3) (1979) pp. 10-14 ­ Wilhelm Niederreiter, "Die europäischen Juden. Eine technische Studie zur zahlenmäßigen Entwicklung im Zweiten Weltkrieg," parts 1-4, 28(1-4) (1980), pp. 12-15; 17-21; 17-21; 25-31 ­ Dankwart Kluge, 29(2) (1981) pp. 31-36 ­ "Ende der Wissenschaftsfreiheit?," 29(3) (1981), pp. 8 ­ "Vernunft wird Unsinn ... Späte Rache für den `Auschwitz-Mythos,'" 31(1) (1983), pp. 19f. ­ "Unglaubliches Urteil im Fall Dr. Stäglich", 36(1) (1988), p. 7 ­ "Bundesverwaltungsgericht im Dienste der Umerzieher. Erstmalig Doktorgrad aus politischen Gründen aberkannt," 36(3) (1988), p. 18 ­ Wolfgang Häberle, "Zu Wegners Kritik am Leuchter-Gutachten," 39(2) (1991), pp. 13-17 ­ Hermann Kater, "Die Rechtslage bei der Überprüfung der deutschen Zeitgeschichte," Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 40(4) (1992), pp. 7-11 ­ Walter Lüftl, "Sollen Lügen künftig Pflicht sein?," 41(1) (1993), pp. 13f. ­ Wolfgang Kretschmer (=Germar Rudolf), "Der mittelalterliche Hexenprozeß und seine Parallelen in unserer Zeit," 41(2)(1993) pp. 25-28 ­ Walter Lüftl, "Die Feuerbestattung in der ersten Hälfte dieses Jahrhunderts," 41(2) (1993), pp. 14-16 ­ Wilhelm Stromberger, "Was war die `Sonderbehandlung' in Auschwitz?," 44(2) (1996), pp. 24f. ­ "`Appell der 500' vor Landtag," 44(4) (1996), pp. 9f. East European Jewish Affairs: Robin O'Neil, "Be ec: A Reassessment of the Number of Victims," in 29(1- 2) (1999). Film & TV Kameramann: no. 2/1994, pp. 24ff. Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte Nikita Petrov, "Veränderungstendenzen im Kaderbe- stand der Organe der sowjetischen Staatssicherheit in der Stalin-Zeit," 5(2) (2001) Freie Forum, Das (Tübingen): 1990, no. 4, p. 12 Gedenkstätten-Rundbrief (Berlin): Herbert Obenaus, "Das Foto vom Baumhängen ­ ein Bild geht um die Welt," no. 68, October 1995, pp. 3-8. Geschichte mit Pfiff: Nov. 1996, p. 37 Gesundheits-Ingenieur ­ Rudolf Jakobskötter, "Die Entwicklung der elektrischen Einäscherung bis zu dem neuen elektrisch beheizten Heißlufteinäscherungsofen in Erfurt," 64(43) (1941), pp. 579-587 ­ Ludwig Gaßner, "Verkehrshygiene und Schädlingsbekämpfung," 66(15) (1943), pp. 174-176 ­ Franz Puntigam, "Die Durchgangslager der Arbeitseinsatzverwaltung als Einrichtungen der Gesund- heitsvorsorge," 67(2) (1944), pp. 47-56 ­ Franz Puntigam, "Raumlösungen von Entlausungsanlagen," 67(6) (1944), pp. 139-180 Glückauf: H.H. Müller-Neuglück, H. Werkmeister, "Grubensicherheit der Diesellokomotiven," Aug. 23, 1930, p. 1145 Hefte von Auschwitz: no. 18, State Museum Auschwitz, p. 259 Historical Journal, The ­ Alfred M. de Zayas, "The Wehrmacht Bureau on war crimes," 35(2),1992, pp. 383-399 ­ Ruth Bettina Birn, "Revising the Holocaust," 40(1) (1997), pp. 195-215 Historische Tatsachen (Udo Walendy, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho): nos. 18 (1983); 25 (1985); 34 (1988); 35 (1988); 36 (1988); 43 (1990); 44 (1990); 47 (1991); 48 (1991) 547 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Holocaust and Genocide Studies ­ Peter Witte, Stephen Tyas, "A New Document on the Deportation and Murder of the Jews during `Ein- satz Reinhardt' 1942," 6(3) (2001). ­ Daniel Keren, Jamie McCarthy, Henry Mazal, "The Ruins of the Gas Chambers: A Forensic Investiga- tion of Crematoriums at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau," 9(1) (2004), pp. 68-103. Hornylo (Lviv): Oleh Kalugin, "KGB During Gorbachov's Era," vol. 4, 1991, p. 13 Jewish Social Studies: Samuel Gringauz, "Some Methodological Problems in the Study of the Ghetto,"vol. XII, New York 1950, pp. 65-72 Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine: S. Sivaloganathan, "Death from diesel fumes," 5 (1998), pp. 138f. Journal of Genocide Research: John C. Zimmerman, "Fritjof Meyer and the number of Auschwitz victims: a critical analysis," 6(2) (2004), pp. 249-266 Journal of Historical Review (Torrance/Costa Mesa/Newport Beach, CA) ­ Robert Faurisson, "The Mechanics of Gassing," 1(1) (1980), pp. 23-30 ­ Robert Faurisson, "The `problem of the gas chambers,'" 1(2) (1980), pp. 103-114 ­ Richard Harwood, Dietlieb Felderer, 1(2) (1980) pp. 131-139 ­ Ditlieb Felderer, "Auschwitz Notebook Part 2: Lids and Openings," 1(3) (1980), pp. 255-266 ­ Robert Faurisson, "Confessions of SS Men who were at Auschwitz," 2(2) (1981), pp. 103-136 ­ Robert Faurisson, "The Gas Chambers of Auschwitz Appear to be Physically Inconceivable," 2(4) (1981), pp. 311-317 ­ Robert Faurisson, "The Gas Chambers: Truth or Lie?" 2(4) (1981), pp. 319-373 ­ Robert Faurisson, "Is the Diary of Anne Frank Genuine?," 3(2) (1982), pp. 147-209 ­ Wilhelm Stäglich, 3(2) (1981) pp. 249-281 ­ Arthur R. Butz, "Context and Perspective in the `Holocaust' Controversy," 3(4) (1982), pp. 371-405 ­ Frank H. Hankins, 4(1) (1983) p. 61-81 ­ Friedrich P. Berg, "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth," 5 (1), 1984, pp. 15-46 ­ Keith Stimely, "The Torture of Julius Streicher," 5(1) (1984), pp. 106-119 ­ David Irving, "On Contemporary History and Historiography," 5(2-4) (1984), p. 251-288 ­ 5(2-4) back cover ­ Friedrich P. Berg, "The German Delousing Chambers," 7(1) (1986), pp. 73-94 ­ Robert Faurisson, "How the British Obtained the Confessions of Rudolf Höss," 7(4) (1986), pp. 389-403 ­ Mark Weber, "Buchenwald: Legend and Reality," 7(4) (1986), pp. 405-417 ­ Robert Faurisson, 8(1) (1988), pp. 85-92 ­ Robert Faurisson, 8(1) (1988), pp. 117-126 ­ Jacques Lebailly, "Interview with Michel De Boüard on the `Thesis of Nantes'," 8(3) (1988), pp. 381- 384 ­ Robert Faurisson, "The End of a Myth," 8(3) (1988), pp. 376-380 ­ Robert Faurisson, "The Zündel Trials," 8(4) (1988), pp. 417-431 ­ Friedrich P. Berg, "Typhus and the Jews," 8(4) (1988), pp. 433-481 ­ Carlo Mattogno, "Auschwitz: A Case of Plagiarism," 10(1) (1990), pp. 5-24 ­ Martin Brech, Werner Laska, Hans Rudolf von der Heide, 10(2) (1990) pp. 161-185 ­ 10(3) (1990), pp. 261-322. ­ Fred A. Leuchter, "Witch Hunt in Boston," 10(4) (1990), pp. 453-460 ­ Carlo Mattogno, "Jean-Claude Pressac and the War Refugee Board Report," 10(4) (1990), pp. 461-486 ­ Robert Faurisson, 11(1) (1991), pp. 25-66 ­ Robert Faurisson, 11(2) (1991), pp. 133-175 ­ Enrique Aynat, "Neither Trace nor Proof," 11(2) (1991), pp. 177-206 ­ Jan Markiewicz, W. Gubala, J. Labedz, B. Trzcinska, "An official Polish report on the Auschwitz `gas chambers,'" 11(2) (1991), pp. 207-216 ­ Mark Weber, "Jewish Soap" 11(2) (1991), pp. 217-227 ­ John Cobden, "An Expert on "Eyewitness" Testimony Faces a Dilemma in the Demjanjuk Case," 11(2) (1991) pp. 238-249 ­ Mark Weber, "The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust," 12(2) (1992) pp. 167-213 ­ Mark Weber, "Pages from the Auschwitz Death Registry Volumes," 12(3) (1992), pp. 265-298 ­ Walter Lüftl, "Holocaust: Belief and Facts" in 12(4) (Winter 1992-93) pp. 391-420 ­ Fred A. Leuchter, "Is there life after persecution? The botched execution of Fred Leuchter," 12(4) (1992), pp. 429-444 ­ 13(1) (1993), pp. 45. ­ David Cole, "David Cole Interviews Dr. Franciszek Piper, Director, Auschwitz State Museum," 13(2) (1993), pp. 11-13 548 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ Mark Weber, "The Jewish Role in the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's Early Soviet Regime," 14(1) (1994), pp. 4-14 ­ Mark Weber, "`60 Minutes' takes aim at Holocaust revisionism," 14(3) (1994) pp. 16-20 ­ Mark Weber, Greg Raven, "Bradley Smith's `Campus Project' generates nationwide publicity for Holo- caust revisionism," 14(4) (1994), pp. 18-24 ­ Mark Weber, "Bergen-Belsen Camp: The suppressed story," 15(3) (1995), pp. 23-30 ­ Robert Faurisson, "Jewish Militants: Fifteen Years, and More, of Terrorism in France," 16(2) (1996), pp. 2-13 ­ Robert Faurisson, "Auschwitz, Facts and Legend," 16 (4) (1997), pp. 14-19 ­ Serge Thion, "The Dictatorship of Imbecility," 16(6) (1997), pp. 8-10 ­ Mark Weber, "Probing Look at `Capital Punishment Industry' Affirms Expertise of Auschwitz Investiga- tor Leuchter," 17(2) (1998), pp. 34ff. ­ Robert Faurisson, "An Orthodox Historian Finally Acknowledges: There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers," 17(4) (1998), pp. 24-28 ­ Mark Weber, "Holocaust Survivor Memoir Exposed as Fraud," 17(5) (1998), pp. 15f. ­ Mark Weber, "Pat Buchanan and the Struggle for Truth in History," 18(3) (1999), pp. 2f. ­ Mark Weber, "High Frequency Delousing Facilities at Auschwitz," 18(3) (1999), pp. 4-12 ­ Greg Raven, "Media Coverage of the Irving-Lipstadt Trial," 19(1) (2000), pp. 40-52 ­ Greg Raven, "Media Coverage of the Irving-Lipstadt Trial," 19(2) (2000), pp. 47-53 ­ IHR, "Thirteenth IHR Conference: A Resounding Success," 19(3) (2000), pp. 2-11 ­ Robert Faurisson, "Faurisson's Three Letters to Le Monde (1978-1979)," 19(3) (2000), pp. 40-46 ­ Arthur R. Butz, "Historical Past vs. Political Present," 19(6) (2000), pp. 12-25 ­ Samuel Crowell, "The Basement Showers of Crematorium III," 20(2) (2001), pp. 17-20 ­ Richard A. Widmann, "Transfers to the Reich," 20(2) (2001), pp. 21-25 ­ Samuel Crowell, "Defending Against the Allied Bombing Campaign: Air Raid Shelters and Gas Protec- tion in Germany, 1939-1945," 20(4) (2001), pp. 15-41 ­ Don Heddesheimer, "`Nothing Has Been Invented:' The War Journalism of Boris Polevoy," 21(1) (2002), pp. 23-38 ­ Glade Whitney, "Subversion of Science: How Psychology lost Darwin." 21(2) (2002) pp. 20-30 Journal of Scientific Exploration: Halton Arp, "What has science come to?," 14(3) (2000), pp. 447-454 Juristische Schulung: Sigmund P. Martin, "Volksverhetzung ­ Leugnen des Holocaust durch Verteidiger- handeln," 11/2002, pp. 1127f. Konstruktiv (Vienna): Walter Lüftl, "Sachverständigenbeweis versus Zeugenbeweis," 166 (1991) pp. 31f. Le Déporté pour la liberté: ­ Henry Bily, "Mon histoire extraordinaire," October ­ November 1991 ­ December 1991 ­ January 1992 Mining Congress Journal: Dennis S. Lachtman, "Diesel Exhaust-Health Effects," January 1981, p. 40 Mining Engineer (UK): S. Gilbert, "The Use of Diesel Engines Underground in British Coal Mines," June 1974, p. 403 Monatszeitschrift für Deutsches Recht: 48(6) (1994) p. 608 Motortechnische Zeitschrift, no. 6/7, 1943, p. 3A Neue Juristische Wochenschrift ­ 1993, 14, p. 916f. ­ Stefan Huster, "Das Verbot der `Auschwitz-Lüge,' die Meinungsfreiheit und das Bundesverfassungsge- richt," 1995, pp. 487-489 ­ Daniel Beisel, "Die Strafbarkeit der Auschwitz-Lüge," 1995, pp. 997-1000 ­ 2002, p. 2115 Neue Strafrechts-Zeitung ­ Hans A. Stöcker, 1995, pp. 237-240 ­ 2002, p. 539 new left review: Norman G. Finkelstein, "Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Crazy' Thesis ­ A Critique of Hitler's Willing Executioners," July 1997, pp. 39-87 Osteuropa. Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsfragen des Ostens: Fritjof Meyer, "Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz ­ Neue Erkenntnisse durch neue Archivfunde," no. 5, May 2002, pp. 631-641 Physics World: Rainer Karlsch, Mark Walker, "New light on Hitler's bomb," 18(6) (2005), p. 15f. Polis, Schriftenreihe der Hessischen Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, (Wiesbaden): Wolfgang Ayaß, Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar, "Mit Argumente gegen die Holocaust-Leugung," 1996, pp. 22f. Rational Enquirer: "BCS Debates a Qi Gong Master," 6(4) (1994), publ. by the British Columbia Skeptics Society 549 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Reichsarbeitsblatt: Franz Puntigam, Hermann Breymesser, Erich Bernfus, Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr, Special Print, Berlin 1943 Reichsgesetzblatt (Berlin) ­ "Reichsgesetz über die Führung akademischer Grade" of June 7, 1939, I, pp. 985 ­ "Durchführungsverordnung" of July 21, 1939, I, pp. 1326 Research Bulletin of the American Gas Association (New York): W. Gumz, J.F. Foster (Battelle Memorial Institute), "A Critical Survey of Methods of Making a High BTU Gas from Coal," no. 6, July 1953 Revisionist, The (San Diego/Chicago) ­ Richard A. Widmann, "Holocaust Literature vs. Holocaust Scholarship: Finkelstein, Goldhagen, and Holocaust Revisionism," (Codoh series), no 1, Nov. 1999, pp. 17f. ­ Richard Widmann, "Fahrenheit 451," (Codoh series), no. 2, January 2000, pp. 11-15 ­ William Halvorsen, "Morris Shines a Light on Fred Leuchter," (Codoh series), no. 3, 2000, pp. 19-22 ­ George Brewer, "A Tale of Two Ads," (Codoh series), no. 3, 2000, p. 22 ­ Michael Gärtner, Werner Rademacher, "Ground Water in the Area of the POW camp Birkenau," 1(1) (2003), pp. 3-12 ­ Carlo Mattogno, "Open Air Incinerations in Auschwitz: Rumor or Reality?," 1(1) (2003), pp. 14-17 ­ Robert Faurisson, "How many deaths at Auschwitz?," 1(1) (2003), pp. 17-23 ­ Germar Rudolf, " Cautious Mainstream revisionism," 1(1) (2003), pp. 23-30 ­ Carlo Mattogno, "Auschwitz. Fritjof Meyer's New Revisions," 1(1) (2003), pp. 30-37 ­ Germar Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial," 1(1) (2003), pp. 115-118 ­ Friedrich P. Berg, "Posion Gas über alles," 1(1) (2003), pp. 37-47 ­ Paul Grubach, "World War I Atrocity Propaganda and the Holocaust," 1(1) (2003), pp. 104-109 ­ Paul Grubach, "All Men Are Equal ­ But Are They Really?," 1(2) (2003), pp. 139-150 ­ Jean-Francois Beaulieu, "Holocaust Movie Shoah Exposed as Propaganda," 1(2) (2003), pp. 166-168 ­ Ernst Bruun, "Rudolf Vrba exposes himself as a liar," 1(2) (2003), pp. 169f. ­ Ingrid Rimland, "Ernst Zündel: His Struggle for Germany," 1(2) (2003), pp. 183-196 ­ Germar Rudolf, "Discovering Absurdistan," 1(2) (2003), pp. 203-219 ­ Germar Rudolf, "Censorship of the Internet," 1(2) (2003), pp. 220-222 ­ Germar Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial. Part 2," 1(2) (2003), pp. 235-238 ­ Stephen J. Sniegoski, "The War against Iraq," 1(3) (2003), pp. 288-304 ­ Carlo Mattogno, "The `Gassing' of Gypsies in Auschwitz on August 2, 1944," 1(3) (2003), pp. 330-332 ­ Jürgen Graf, "Raul Hilberg's Incurable Autism," 1(3) (2003), pp. 344-350 ­ Germar Rudolf, "From the Files of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Part 3," 1(3) (2003), pp. 352-358 ­ Bradley R. Smith, "Revisionist Notes," 1(4) (2003), pp. 364-366 ­ Walter Lüftl, "The Dachau Horror-Tale Exposed," 1(4) (2003), pp. 385f. ­ Walter Lüftl, "The General in the Ice-Block," 1(4) (2003), pp. 386f. ­ Carlo Mattogno, "The Four Million Figure of Auschwitz: Origin, Revisions and Consequences," 1(4) (2003), pp. 387-392, 393-399 ­ Ingrid Weckert, "What Was Kulmhof/Chelmno?," 1(4) (2003), pp. 400-412 ­ Caroline Song, "Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Controversial Expert on Human Memory," 1(4) (2003), pp. 456- 458 ­ Robert H. Countess, "My Critique of Dr. Loftus' Behavior," 1(4) (2003), pp. 459f. ­ Manfred Köhler, "Forced Confessions: Why Innocent Defendants Admit their Guilt," 1(4) (2003), pp. 465f. ­ Germar Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Part 4," 1(4) (2003), pp. 468-472 ­ Carlo Mattogno, "Combustion Experiments with Flesh and Animal Fat," 2(1) (2004), pp. 64-72 ­ Carlo Mattogno, "Flames and Smoke from the Chimneys of Crematoria," 2(1) (2004), pp. 73-78 ­ Otto Humm, "Typhus ­ The Phantom Disease," 2(1) (2004), pp. 84-88. ­ Germar Rudolf, "Aspects of Biological Warfare During World War II," 2(1) (2004), pp. 88-90 ­ Jürgen Graf, "`Just Call Me Meyer' ­ A Farewell to `Obviousness,'" 2(2) (2004), pp. 127-130 ­ Carlo Mattogno, " On the Piper-Meyer-Controversy: Soviet Propaganda vs. Pseudo-revisionism," 2(2) (2004), pp. 131-139 ­ Robert H. Countess, "John Sack in Memoriam," 2(2) (2004), pp. 214f. ­ Germar Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Part 5," 2(2) (2004), pp. 219-223 ­ Letter to the Editor, 2(2) (2004), pp. 233f. ­ "N. Finkelstein Sued for Criticizing Holocaust Industry," 2(2) (2004), pp. 239 ­ Otward Müller, "Sinti and Roma ­ Yarns, Legends, and Facts," 2(3) (2004), pp. 254-259 ­ Ingrid Weckert, "Two Times Dachau," 2(3) (2004), pp. 260-270 550 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ Carlo Mattogno, "The Morgues of the Crematoria at Birkenau in the Light of Documents," 2(3) (2004), pp. 271-294 ­ Walter Lüftl, "1972: A Somewhat Different Auschwitz Trial," 2(3) (2004), pp. 294f. ­ Werner Rademacher, "Engineer's Deathbed Confession: We Built Morgues, not Gas Chambers," 2(3) (2003), pp. 296f. ­ Markus Springer, "The New Face of the `Holocaust,'" 2(3) (2004), pp. 297-300 ­ Germar Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial. Part 6," 2(3) (2004) pp. 327-330 ­ Wolfgang Strauss, "The End of the Legends," 2(3) (2004), pp. 342-351 ­ Walter Lüftl, Letter to the Editor, 2(3) (2004), p. 353 ­ 2(3) (2004), p. 358f. ­ Emil Schlee, "German Forced Labor and its Compensation," 2(4) (2004), pp. 364-368 ­ Werner Rademacher, "Sauna a `Crime'?," 2(4) (2004), pp. 371-373 ­ Carlo Mattogno, "`No Holes, No Gas Chamber(s),'" 2(4) (2004), pp. 387-410 ­ Carlo Mattogno, "The Openings for the Introduction of Zyklon B," 2 parts, 2(4) (2004), pp. 411-436 ­ Germar Rudolf, "The Internationale Auschwitz Controversy," 2(4) (2004), pp. 449-452 ­ Germar Rudolf, " The Courage of a Secure Retiree," 2(4) (2004), pp. 455-466 ­ Germar Rudolf, "Revisionism: An Ideology of Liberation," 3(1&2) (2005), in preparation ­ Manfred Gerner, "`Key Document' is a Forgery,'" 3(3) (2005), in prep. ­ Carlo Mattogno, "`Key Document' ­ an Alternative Interpretation," 3(3) (2005), in prep. ­ Manfred Gerner, Michael Gärtner, Hans Jürgen Nowak, "The Construction Costs of Auschwitz," in preparation. ­ Germar Rudolf, "Some Comments about the NS-Language with Regards to Jews," 3, in preparation ­ Carl O. Nordling, "What happened to the 75,000 Jews who were deported from France?," 3(3) (2005), in preparation. ­ Germar Rudolf, "From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Part 8," 3, in preparation Revue d'Études germaniques: Marc Klein, "Observations et réflexions sur les camps de concentration nazis," no. 3, 1946, pp. 244-275 Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaire: Michel de Boüard, vol. XXXIV (January-March 1987) Revue d'Histoire Révisionniste: Marek Wolski, "Le massacre de Babi Yar," 6 (1992) pp. 47-58 Rheinisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde: Lutz Röhrich, "Die Moral des Unmoralischen," in: 26 (1985/86), pp. 209-219 Richtigstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte, Grabert-Verlag, Tübingen, vols. 1-15, Tübingen 1990 and later. Scientific American: Elizabeth Loftus, "Creating False Memories," vol. 277, no. 3, 1997, pp. 70-75 Scribe, The, Journal of Babylonian Jewry: "Holocaust Denial," no. 70, October 1998 Skeptic Magazine: Michael Shermer, "Proving the Holocaust," 2(4) (1994), pp. 44-51 Society of Automotive Engineers Transactions: David F. Merrion, "Effect of Design revisions on Two Stroke Cycle Diesel Engine Exhaust," 77 (1968), paper 680422, p. 1535 Staatsbriefe (Munich): Karl Salm, "Der Justizskandal in Fall Thomas-Dehler-Stiftung," 5(12) (1994), 6(2,3- 4,6) (1995) Storia illustrata (Roma): Robert Faurisson, "Le camere a gas non sono mai esistite,", 261 (1979), pp. 15-35 Temps Modernes, Les: ­ Miklos Nyiszli, "SS-Obersturmführer Doktor Mengele," March 1951, p. 1655; ­ Robert Redeker, "La Catastrophe du Révisionnisme," no. 568, November 1993, pp. 1-6; ­ Robert Redeker, "Le Révisionnisme invisible," no. 569, December 1993, pp. 127-134; Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung (Hastings/Chicago) ­ Wolfgang Lambrecht, "Zyklon B ­ eine Ergänzung," 1(1) (1997), pp. 2-5 ­ Conrad Grieb (aka Friedrich Paul Berg), "Der selbstassistierte Holocaust-Schwindel," 1(1) (1997), pp. 6ff. ­ Robert Faurisson, "Bilanz der Affäre Garaudy/Abbé Pierre," 1(1) (1997). pp. 9-18 ­ "Zur Wissenschaftsfreiheit in Deutschland," 1(1) (1997), pp. 34-37 ­ Germar Rudolf, "Revisionistischer Funktionalismus mit höchsten jüdischen Weihen," 1(1) (1997), pp. 45f. ­ Wulf von Xanten, "Die Wannsee-Konferenz," 1(2) (1997), pp. 60-69 ­ Germar Rudolf, "Wilhelm Höttl ­ ein zeitgeschichtlich dilettantischer Zeitzeuge," 1(2) (1997), pp. 116f. ­ Conrad Grieb (=F.P. Berg), "Holocaust: Dieselmotorabgase töten langsam," 1(3) (1997), pp. 134-137 ­ Germar Rudolf, "Auschwitz-Kronzeuge Dr. Hans Münch im Gespräch," 1(3) (1997), pp. 139-190 ­ Samuel Crowell, "Technik und Arbeitsweise deutscher Gasschutzbunker im Zweiten Weltkrieg," 1(4) (1997), pp. 226-243 ­ Göran Holming, "Himmlers Befehl, die Vergasung der Juden zu stoppen," 1(4) (1997) pp. 258f. ­ Germar Rudolf, "Die Menschenrechtsorganizationen und der Revisionismus," 1(4) (1997), pp. 270-273 551 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ 1(4)(1997), p. 290 ­ Serge Thion, "Revisionistisches aus unerwarteter Ecke," 2(1) (1998), p. 38 ­ Schirmer-Vowinckel, "Inverser Verfolgungswahn: Von Beruf Nazijäger," 2(1) (1998), pp. 63-68 ­ Knud Bäcker, "`Ein Kommentar ist an dieser Stelle überflüssig,'" 2(2) (1998), pp. 120-129 ­ Andrew Allen, "Auschwitz: Krema-Zerstörung als Propaganda-Bremse," 2(2) (1998), p. 130 ­ Jack Wickoff, "Der Mythos von der Vernichtung Homosexueller im Dritten Reich," 2(2) (1998), pp. 135-139 ­ 2(2) (1998), p. 163 ­ Enrique Aynat, "Die Sterbebücher von Auschwitz," 2(3) (1998), p. 188-197 ­ Hans Lamker, "Die Kurzwellen-Entlausungsanlagen in Auschwitz, Teil 2," 2(4) (1998), pp. 261-273 ­ Anton Mägerle (=G Rudolf), "Eine Zensur findet nicht statt, es sei denn..." 2(4) 1998, pp. 300-307 ­ Germar Rudolf "John Sack und die Gaskammern," 3(1) (1999), pp. 94f. ­ 3(1) (1999), p. 118 ­ Germar Rudolf, Sibylle Schröder, "Partisanenkrieg und Repressaltötungen," 3(2) (1999), pp. 145-153 ­ Rudi Zornig, "Rechtsanwalt wegen Stellung von Beweisantrag verurteilt," 3(2) (1999), pp. 208f. ­ David Irving, "Menschenhäute," 3(2) (1999), pp. 214-216 ­ Bill Grimstad, "Augenzeuge oder Romanheld?," 3(2) (1999), pp. 218f. ­ Ingrid Weckert, "`Madagaskar für die Juden,'" 3(2) (1999), pp. 219-221 ­ Germar Rudolf, "Die ketzerischen Geständnisse eines Holocaustologen," 3(2) (1999), pp. 222-224 ­ Reinhold Elstner, "Zum Gedenken an Reinhold Elstner," 4(2) (2000), pp. 127-130 ­ Rudi Zornig, "Zum Gedenken an Werner Pfeifenberger," 4(2) (2000), pp. 131f. ­ Carlo Mattogno, "Leichenkeller von Birkenau: Luftschutzräume oder Entwesungskammern?" 4(2) (2000), pp. 152-158 ­ Samuel Crowell, "Bombenschutzeinrichtungen in Birkenau: Eine Neubewertung," 4(3&4) (2000), pp. 284-330 ­ Germar Rudolf, 4(3&4) (2000), pp. 435-438 ­ Jean Plantin, "Einige Fälle von physischer Bedrohung und Gewaltanwendung gegen Revisionisten," 5(1) (2001), pp. 85-91 ­ Germar Rudolf, 5(1) (2001), pp. 100-112 ­ Germar Rudolf, "Von Beirut nach Amman," 5(2) (2001), p. 122 ­ Robert Faurisson, "Beirut: Die unmögliche revisionistische Konferenz," 5(2) (2001), p. 123 ­ Ibrahim Alloush, "Die Geschichte eines Forums, dass nicht stattfinden sollte," 5(2) (2001), pp. 124-236. ­ Germar Rudolf, 5(3) (2001), pp. 244-246 ­ Robert Faurisson, "Das Schwimmbad im Stammlager Auschwitz," 5(3) (2001), pp. 254f. ­ Walter Lüftl, "Die Lügen unserer Zeit," 5(3) (2001), pp. 325f. ­ Walter Lüftl, "Der Fall Jedwabne und das Verbotsgesetz," 5(3) (2001), pp. 337f. ­ Jean Plantin, "Der Mythos von Gebrauchsobjekten aus Menschenhaut," 5(4) (2001), pp. 397-401. ­ Reinhold Schwertfeger, "Gab es Gaskammern im Altreich?," 5(4) 2001, p. 448 ­ Theodore O'Keefe, "Viktor Frankl über Auschwitz," 6(2) (2002), pp. 137-139 ­ Günther Herzogenrath-Amelung, cf. "Gutachten im Asylverfahren von Germar Rudolf," 6(2) (2002), pp. 176-190 ­ Elmar Schepers, "Viktor Emil Frankl in Auschwitz," 6(3) (2002), pp. 304-309. ­ Walter Lüftl, Letter to the Editor, 6(3) (2002), p. 364 ­ Jürgen Graf, "Anatomie der sowjetischen Befragung der Topf-Ingenieure," 6(4) (2002), pp. 398-421 ­ Michael Gärtner, Hans Jürgen Nowak, "Die Stärkebücher von Auschwitz," 6(4) (2002), pp. 425-436 ­ Germar Rudolf, "Zum Untergang seiner Majestät Schlachtschiff HMBS Irving," 6(4) (2002), pp. 479f. ­ Johannes Heyne, "Patriotenverfolgung: Der Fall Ute und Frank Rennicke, " 7(1) (2003), pp. 81-93 ­ Carlo Mattogno, "KL Sachsenhausen," 7(2) (2003), pp. 173-185 ­ Johannes Heyne, "Der Fall Hans-Jürgen Witzsch," 7(2) (2003), pp. 212-222 ­ Germar Rudolf, "Pseudowissenschaft," 7(3&4) (2003), pp. 403-405 ­ Martin Hohmann, "Gerechtigkeit für Deutschland ­ vielleicht nächstes Jahr," 7(3&4) (2003), pp. 417- 421 ­ Jürgen Graf, "Arthur Vogt, der erste Schweizer Revisionist (1917 ­ 2003)," 8(1) (2004) pp. 109f. ­ Enrique Aynat, "Die Berichte des polnischen Widerstands über die Gaskammern von Auschwitz (1941- 1944)," 8(2) (2004), pp. 150-166 ­ Online-Demonstration, "BRD plant totale Internetzensur in Deutschland," 8(2) (2002), pp. 228-231 ­ Klaus Schwensen, "Zur Echtheit des Lachout-Dokuments," 8(2) (2004), pp. 166-178 ­ 8(3) (2004), p. 366 ­ Heinrich Köchel, "Leichenverbrennungen im Freien," 8(4) (2004), pp. 427-432 552 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Munich) ­ Hans Rothenfels, "Augenzeugenberichte zu den Massenvergasungen," 1 (1953), pp. 177-194 ­ Wilhelm Treue, 3 (1955), pp. 184f. ­ Ernst Deuerlein, "Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik und die Reichswehr," 7 (1959), p. 204 ­ Lothar Gruchmann, 16 (1968), pp. 385-389 ­ Reginald H. Phelps, "Hitlers `grundlegende' Rede über den Antisemitismus," 16 (1968), p. 417 ­ Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, 25 (1977) p. 120-135 ­ Martin Broszat, "Hitler und die Genesis der `Endlösung.' Aus Anlaß der Thesen von David Irving," 25 (1977), p. 750 ­ Martin Broszat, Vierteljahshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 27 (1979) pp. 285-298. ­ Brewster S. Chamberlin, "Todesmühlen. Ein Versuch zur Massen-'Umerziehung' im besetzten Deutsch- land 1945-1946," 29 (1981) pp. 420-436 ­ Ingeborg Fleischhauer, "`Unternehmen Barbarossa' und die Zwangsumsiedlung der Deutschen in der UdSSR," 30 (1982) pp. 299-321 ­ Ino Arndt, Wolfgang Scheffler, "Organisierter Massenmord an Juden in nationalsozialistischen Vernich- tungslagern," 24 (1976), pp. 127f. ­ Norbert Frei, 35 (1987) pp. 385-401 ­ Thomas A. Schwartz, "Die Begnadigung deutscher Kriegsverbrecher," 38 (1990) pp. 375-414 Z Zagadnien Nauk Sadowych: Jan Markiewicz, W. Gubala, J. Labedz, vol. XXX (1994) pp. 17-27 Zeitschrift für hygienische Zoologie und Schädlingsbekämpfung: Gerhard Peters, E. Wüstinger, "Entlausung mit Zyklon-Blausäure in Kreislauf-Begasungskammern. Sach-Entlausung in Blausäure-Kammern," 32(10/11) (1940), pp. 191-196 Zeitgeschichte (Vienna): ­ Peter Dusek, 6 (1978/79), pp. 266-273 ­ Peter Malina, 7 (1979/80) pp. 169-191 ­ Gerhard Botz, 14 (1986/87) pp. 259-265 Zeszyty Majdanka (Lublin) ­ Józef Marsza ek, "Budowa obozu na Majdanku w latach 1942-1944,", Vol. IV (1969), p. 48 ­ Czes aw Rajca, "Problem liczby ofiar w obozie na Majdanku," Vol. XIV (1992), p. 127 Newspapers, News Magazines, Press Agency Releases ­ Abendzeitung (Munich): March 7/8, 1998 ­ Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung: "Zynische Zahlenspiele," July 26, 1990, p. 2; "Neue Inschriften im KZ Auschwitz", June 11, 1992, p. 1 ­ Article 31: Ida Zajdel, Marc Ascione, letter to the editor, January/February 1987, p. 22 ­ Associated Press: July 19, 2001 ­ Atlantic Monthly, The: Don D. Guttenplan, "The Holocaust on Trial," 285(2) (2000), pp. 45-66 ­ Aula (Vienna): Otto Scrinzi, "Menschenjagd bis in den Tod," 6/2000 ­ Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Martin Broszat, "Zur Kritik der Publizistik des antisemitischen Rechtsex- tremismus," B19 (1976), p. 5; Tilman Ernst, 31(34) (1981) pp. 3-22 ­ Australian Jewish News: Melissa Singer, "Holocaust `memoir' withdrawn," Nov. 6, 2004; Melissa Singer, "Literary hoaxes and the Holocaust," Nov. 19, 2004 ­ Baseler Nachrichten: June 13, 1946 ­ Berliner Morgenpost: Oct. 10, 1998, p. 9. ­ Berner Tagwacht: August 24, 1945 ­ Bild (Berlin): Hans-Jörg Vehlewald, "Soll bloß keiner sagen, er hätte nichts gewußt: Ich war SS mann in Auschwitz," Jan. 25, 2005 ­ Bulletin, Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung (Berlin): Roman Herzog, March 19, 1997, no. 234 ­ Canadian Jewish News: Jan. 20, 1982, p. 8; "Commission try to defuse Auschwitz controversy," Oct. 3, 1990, p. 5 ­ CCAR Journal: Steven L. Jacobs, "Binjamin Wilkomirski (Fragments) and Donald Watt (Stoker): When the Holocaust Story Is a Lie," spring 2001 ­ Chicago Jewish Star: Oct. 9-29, 1998 ­ Chicago Sun-Times: Oct. 25, 1977. ­ Chicago Tribune: March 19, 1947, p. 20; Hal Foust, "Nazi Trial Judge Rips `Injustice,'" Feb. 23, 1948; May 4, 1975; Jeff Lyon, "Memories of Nazi death camps haunt couple," Jan 19, 1978, pp. 1, 14; "Piecing a family back together," June 29, 1987; Alfred Kazin, Dec. 31, 1995, reviews, pp. 1f.; Jan. 27, 2005 ­ Cleveland Jewish News, May 31, 2004. 553 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ Common Sense (New Jersey, USA): "The False Gas Chamber," June 1, 1962, p. 2 ­ Daily Telegraph, The (London): "Atrocities in Serbia," March 22, 1916, p. 7; "Germans Murder 700,000 Jews in Poland," June 25, 1942, p. 5 "Jewish Soap tale `was Nazi lie,'" April 25, 1990; Krzysztof Leski, Ohad Gozani, "Auschwitz death reduced to a million," July 18, 1990 ­ Deutsche Presse-Agentur: June 7, 2001 ­ Deutsche Volkszeitung: Bruno Baum, "Wir funkten aus der Hölle," July 31, 1945 ­ Esquire: "Inside the Bunker," February 2001, pp. 98-140. ­ The article, entitled "Inside the Bunker" ­ Focus: Burkhard Müller-Ullrich, "Die Technik des Massenmordes," no. 17, April 25, 1994, pp. 116ff.; H. 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Baynac, "Faute de documents probants sur les chambres à gaz, les historiens esquivent le débat," Sept. 3, 1996, p. 14 ­ Le Nouvel Observateur: Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "Le Secret partagé," September 21, 1984, p. 80; David Susskind, May 30, 1986, p. 19; Sept. 30, 1993, p. 97. ­ Libération: Annette Lévy-Willard, Laurent Joffrin, Apr. 25, 1985, p. 22; Ferdinand Camon, "Chi- mie/Levi, la mort," April 13, 1987, p. 29 ­ Liberty Bell: Washington DC, Febr. 1988, p. 34 ­ Lietuvos Rytas (Lithuania): Aug. 21, 1996 ­ Life: May 21, 1945; Konrad Heiden, "Why They Confess," June 20, 1949 ­ London Review of Books, Norman Finkelstein, "How the Arab Israeli War of 1967 gave birth to a memo- rial industry," Jan. 6, 2000 ­ Los Angeles Times: Kim Murphy, "Danger in denying Holocaust?," Jan. 7, 2000; Kim Murphy, "Noted Holocaust revisionist Joins Irvine Conclave," Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2000 ­ Merkur: Horst Meier, 12/1996, pp. 1128-1131. ­ Miami Herald: July 7, 1964 ­ Münchner Merkur (Munich): March 26, 1992 ­ neue bildpost: G. Giese, "Der Mann, der den Papst verschleppen sollte," in nine installments, April 21 to June 16, 1974 ­ Neue Kronenzeitung (Vienna): May 10, 1992, p. 2; May 24, 1992, p. 22; Richard Nimmerrichter,"2 Zeilen gegen 283 Seiten," Sonntagszeitung, Feb. 7, 1993, p. 11. ­ Neuen Zürcher Zeitung: Claus Nordbruch, "Die selbsternannten Tugendwächter im Visier," June 12, 1999 ­ Neues Deutschland (Berlin): Dec. 15, 1971; Dec. 21, 1971, Feb. 13, 1980; Feb. 13, 1985 ­ Neues Österreich: June 1, 1963, p. 12 ­ New Republic Jacob Heilbrunn, "Absolving Adolf," Oct. 18, 1999 ­ New York Post: Pat Buchanan, March 17, 1990, p. 26 ­ New York Times: June 11, 1900, p. 7; Jan. 14, 1915, p. 3; May 22, 1916, p. 11; May 23, 1919, p. 12; Aug. 10, 1917; Sept. 29, 1919, p. 7; Oct. 26, 1919, p. 1; Nov. 12, 1919, p. 7; Dec. 3, 1919, p. 19, 24; Apr. 21, 1920, p. 8; May 1, 1920, p. 8; May 2, 1920, p. 1; May 3, 1920, p. 11f; May 5, 1920, p. 9, 19; May 7, 1920; Jan. 9, 1922, p. 19; April 21, 1926; Dec. 4, 1926; Dec. 13, 1942, p. 21; Dec. 20, 1942, p. 23; March 2, 1943, pp. 1, 4; March 10, 1943, p. 12; April 20, 1943, p. 11; Nov. 29, 1943; Dec. 4, 1943; May 1, 1945; March 12, 1947, p. 6; March 13, 1947, p. 17; March 14, 1947, p. 12; March 15, 1947, p. 11; March 18, 1947, p. 4; March 19, 1947, p. 5; March 26, 1947, p. 4; Dec. 14, 1968; January 15, 1992; Sept. 27, 1992; Jan. 7, 1996; Aug. 17, 1997; Nov. 3, 1998. ­ New Yorker, The: "Kosinski's War," Oct. 10, 1994 ­ Newsday (New York): Raul Hilberg, Feb. 23, 1983, p. II/3 ­ Newsweek: Nov. 21, 1994 ­ Northern California Jewish Bulletin: Oct. 16, 1992 ­ Notre Voix, no. 71, April 1944 ­ Novoyi Russkoyi Slovo: Feb. 26 ­ Feb. 29, 1995 ­ Österreichische Journalist: Richard Nimmerrichter, "Die Zuchtrute der Nation, Gaskammern sind kein Tabu,", no. 3, 1992 ­ Ottawa Citizen: Nov. 18, 1998. ­ Ouest-France: Michel de Boüard, August 1-2, 1986 ­ Our Sunday Visitor: "German Atrocities," June 14, 1959, p. 15 ­ Response: "Shocking Revelation: German Firms Produce Zyklon B in Iraq," 12, number 1 (spring 1991), pp. 2ff. ­ Pittsburgh Press: Jan. 26, 1977. ­ Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH): Oct. 1, 1986 ­ Pravda: July 15-19, 1943; Boris Polevoy, "The Factory of Death at Auschwitz," Febr. 2, 1945 ­ Profil (Vienna): Daniel Goldhagen, Sept. 9, 1996, p. 75 ­ Progressive, The: Edward Leroy van Roden, "American Atrocities in Germany," February 1949, pp. 21f. ­ Recht und Wahrheit: Walter Lüftl, "`Damoklesschwert' über dem Haupt eines Gutachters!," Novem- ber/December 1992, p. 8 555 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST ­ Reuter: Erik Kirschbaum, "Jewish leader urges Bonn to pay Holocaust claims," Bonn, Aug. 19, 1997; Bonn, August 20, 1997; "Jewish group rejects offer to Holocaust survivors," Bonn, Aug. 24, 1997; "Jew- ish group to issue list of holocaust fund recipients," New York, Sept. 17, 1997; June 27, 2004 ­ San Francisco Chronicle: Nov. 25, 1978, p. 6 ­ SemitTimes (Dreieich): Abraham Melzer, "Iwan der Schreckliche oder John Demjanjuk, Justizirrtum? Justizskandal!,", special edition, March 1992 ­ Sieg: no. 11/12 (Nov./Dec. 1987), pp. 7-9 ­ Spiegel (Hamburg): no. 42, 1966; no. 28, 1987; Ernest Skalski, "Ich empfinde Verlegenheit," 30/1990, p. 111; 40/1993, p. 151; A. Bolaffi, "Der herbeigeredete Feind," Der Spiegel no. 51/1992, pp. 28f.; "Mörde- rische Augen," no. 31, Aug. 2, 1993, pp. 103ff.; no. 19/1995; Bruno Schirra, "Die Erinnerung der Täter," 40/1998, pp. 90ff.; Nov. 30, 1998; no. 35/2000, p. 17. ­ St. Petersburg Times: "Miracles still coming out of Holocaust," Oct. 30, 1992 ­ State-Times (Baton Rouge): "Miracle meeting as `dead' sister is discovered," Nov. 24, 1978 ­ stern (Hamburg): March 5, 1992, pp. 198ff. ­ Stuttgarter Zeitung: Dec. 28, 1994 ­ Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich): AFP, "Österreicher bestreitet Holocaust,", March 13, 1992, p. 10; "Rück- tritt nach Zweifel an Holocaust," March 14, 1992; Harald Eggebrecht, "Die Sprache des Unfaßbaren," April 29, 1994; Arthur Brauner, May 6, 1995; "Archive der Erinnerung," July 3, 1995; Sept. 14, 2003. ­ Sunday Telegraph: September 24, 1989 ­ Sunday Times, The (Perth): Catherine Madden, Jim Kelly, "Holocaust man's claims queried," Oct. 31, 2004 ­ Tageszeitung: Ronald Dworkin, May 17, 1995; Oct. 19, 2001, p. 11; May 17, 2005, p. 11 ­ Time magazine: Adam Zagorin, Michael Duff, "Inside the Interrogation of Detainee 063," June 20, 2005, pp. 26-33 ­ Times (London): Jan. 12, 2000, p. 3 ­ Unabhängige Nachrichten: 7 (1977) pp. 9f.; Unabhängigen Nachrichten, no. 11 (1986), p. 11 ­ VSD: "Ce que je n'ai pas dit dans Shoah," Interview mit Jean-Pierre Chabrol, July 9, 1987 ­ Washington Post: "College Ads and the Holocaust," Dec. 21, 1991, A18 ­ Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, The: Richard H. Curtiss, June/July 1997, pp. 37, 62 ­ Washington Times: "Infectious Nationalism," Sept. 5, 1991, p. G4 ­ Welt am Sonntag: Nov. 17, 1996; Jan. 30, 2005, p. 2. ­ Welt, Die: Peter Philipps, "Quo vadis, BGH?," March 16, 1994, p. 6; Rudolf Wassermann, "Die Justiz hat Klarheit," April 28, 1994, p. 4 ­ Weltwoche: no. 35, Aug. 27, 1998, pp. 46f. ­ Wochenpresse/Wirtschaftswoche: Reichmann, "Die Nazisprüche des Walter Lüftl," no. 11, 1992 ­ Zeit, Die: Martin Broszat, Aug. 19, 1960; Till Bastian, "Die Auschwitz-Lügen," no. 39, Sept. 18, 1992, p. 104; Till Bastian,"Der `Leuchter-Report,'" no. 40, Sept. 25, 1992, p. 90; Karl-Heinz Janßen, "Die Ratten- fänger," Die Zeit, Dec. 31, 1993, p. 51; Horst Meier, Sept. 15, 1995 ­ Zéro: Interview with Michel Folco, April 1987, p. 57 ­ Zur Zeit (Vienna): no. 9/1998 (Febr. 27, 1998) Movies and TV ­ ABC, "This Week with David Brinkley," Sunday, Dec. 8, 1991. ­ ABC, March 15, 2003 ­ ARD, "Monitor,"April 8, 1992, 21:00 hrs. ­ BBC News, May 12, 2005 ­ Chronos-Film, Berlin-Kleinmachnow: "KL Sachsenhausen." ­ CNN, "Illinois suspends death penalty," Jan. 13, 2000 ­ CODOH, "David Cole Interviews Dr. Franciszek Piper, Director, Auschwitz State Museum," VHS Video, distributed by, P.O. Box 439016, San Diego, CA 92143, USA ­ Discovery Channel, "Spontaneous Human Combustion," Nov. 3, 2004, 20:00 EST ­ Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., Errol Morris, (VHS: Universal Studios 2001; DVD: Lions Gate Home Entertainment, 2003) ­ Nuit et Brouillard, black/white movie, 32 min ­ PBS, "Auschwitz. Inside the Nazi State," Jan. 18 ­ Feb. 5, 2005 ­ Shoah, Claude Lanzmann, 9 hrs ­ Spiegel-TV, RTL-Plus, July 15, 1990, 21:45 ­ Tagesschau, Feb. 2, 2005, 20:00 hrs ­ Ukrainian TV, Kiev, Dec. 6, 1991 556 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Court Cases ­ Amsgericht Frankfurt, May 3, 1979, ref. Js 12 828/78 919 Ls ­ Amtsgericht Bremen, ref. 19 AR 1851/61 ­ Amtsgericht Tübingen, ref. 4 Gs 1085/97 ­ Amtsgericht Tübingen, ref. 4 Gs 937/02, of Aug. 21, 2002 ­ Amtsgericht Tübingen, verdict of June 15, 1996, ref. 4 Gs 173/95 ­ Bench Division, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, David John Cawdell Irving vs. (1) Penguin Books Limited, (2) Deborah E. Lipstadt, ref. 1996 I. no. 113 ­ BGH, Ref. 1 StG 193/93 ­ BGH, Ref. 1 StR 18/96 ­ BGH, ref. 1 StR 193/93 ­ BGH, ref. 1 StR 502/99 ­ BGH, ref. 5 StR 485/01 ­ BGH, ref. BvR 824/90 ­ BGH, ref. StR 280/67. ­ BVerfG, ref. 1 BvR 824/90, June 9, 1992 ­ BVerfG, ref. 1BvR 408f./83 ­ BVerfG, ref. 2BrR 367/92 ­ BVerfG, verdict of March 15, 1994, Ref. 1StR 179/93. ­ Jerusalem District Court, Criminal Case no. 373/86, Verdict against Ivan (John) Demjanjuk. ­ Landesgericht für Strafsachen, Dept. 26b, Vienna, criminal case Gerd Honsik, ref. 20e Vr 14184 and Hv 5720/90 ­ Landesgericht für Strafsachen, Vienna, criminal case against Fritz Ertl & Walter Dejaco ref. 20 Vr 3806/64 ­ Landgericht Mannheim, verdict of June 22, 1994, ref. (6) 5 KLs 2/92 ­ Landgericht Munich 1, 10th civil court, ref.: 10-0 409/58), judgment of Dec. 13, 1958 ­ Landgericht Nürnberg, ref. 6 Ns 341 Js 31951/92 ­ Landgericht Schweinfurt, ref. 1 Kls 8 Js 10453/92 ­ Landgericht Stuttgart, ref. no. 6Js8818/98 ­ Oberlandesgericht Celle, ref. 3 Sc 88/93 ­ Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf, ref. 2 Ss 155/91 ­ 52/91 III ­ Queen versus Zündel, Toronto, Ontario, Kanada, January 11, 1985 ­ Verwaltungsgericht Baden-Württemberg, ref. IX 1496/79, March 18, 1981 557 Index of Names Individuals only. Entries in footnotes as italics. --A-- Bailer-Galanda, Brigitte: 79, Berenstein, Tatiana: 292 Abbé Pierre: see Grouès, 220, 278 Berg, Friedrich P.: 228, 234, Henri Baldwin: 387 266, 279, 280, 283, 304, Adam, Uwe Dietrich: 275 Balfour, Arthur James: 26 440, 471, 472 Adenauer, Konrad: 404 Balint, Lea: 425 Berg, Isai Davidovich: 304 Adler, Hans G.: 436 Ball, John C.: 138, 203, 206, Bermejo, Benito: 426 Agde, Günter: 71 216, 217, 236, 237, 284, Bernfus, Erich: 266 Ahnert, Horst: 198 288, 290, 319, 432 Bernstein, Eduard: 163 Allard, Jean-Paul: 498 Baranow, Anastasija: 331 Berousek, Cecilie: 331 Allen, Andrew: 299 Barbie, Klaus: 351 Bestic, Alan: 120, 451 Alloush, Ibrahim: 501 Bardaczow, Nikita: 331 Bezwinska, Jadwiga: 375, Amouyal, Barbara: 109 Bardèche, Maurice: 64, 380 441, 443 App, Austin J.: 153 Barford, Paul: 248 Bieberstein, Johannes Arad, Yitzhak: 51, 104, 275, Barnes, Harry Elmer: 153 Rogalla von: 34 276, 277, 287, 292, 468, Baron, Salo W.: 109 Bielfeld, Harold: 196 469 Bartoszewicz, Henryk: 479 Billig, Joseph: 337 Arendt, Hannah: 19, 51, 382 Bastian, Till: 91 Bily, Henry: 427, 428 Aretz, Emil: 493 Bauer, Fritz: 410, 415 Birn, Ruth Bettina: 158 Arndt, Ino: 275, 292 Bauer, Max: 415 Bischoff, Karl: 222, 259, 260, Aroneanu, Eugène: 120 Bauer, Yehuda: 51, 82, 97, 269, 486 Arp, Halton: 491 120, 122, 169, 196, 337, Bjorklund, David F.: 349 Aschenauer, Rudolf: 19, 385, 338, 379 Blaha, Franz: 74 387, 391, 396 Baum, Bruno: 171, 362, 363, Blake, Richard: 48 Aschenbrenner, Jupp: 384 364, 365, 367, 464 Blech, Benjamin: 26 Ascione, Marc: 177 Baumann, Hermann: 119 Blobel, Paul: 226, 444 Ashley, George: 498 Baynac, Jacques: 149, 150 Bloch, Rolf: 43 Auerbach, Hellmuth: 67 Beaulieu, Jean-Francois: 371 Blumental, Nachman: 297 Auerbach, Rachel: 275, 468, Becher, Kurt: 379, 380 Boberach, Heinz: 259 469 Bednarek, Emil: 481 Bock, Ludwig: 414, 416 Augstein, Rudolf: 133 Beethoven, Ludwig van: 475 Böck, Richard: 367, 436, Aumeier, Hans: 378, 379, Behbehani, Dr.: 58 446, 447, 448, 449 481 Behr, Emil: 367, 368, 479 Boger, Wilhelm: 353, 354, Ayaß, Wolfgang: 316 Behringer, Wolfgang: 413 355, 360, 365, 366, 367, Aynat, Enrique: 36, 150, 264, Beisel, Daniel: 53 374, 375, 466, 480, 481, 362, 363, 370, 450 Beitz, Berthold: 324 482, 484 Belgion, Montgomery: 384 Bohlinger, Roland: 123, 125 --B-- Bello, Martin: 332 Böing: 95 Bach-Zelewski, Erich von Below, Nicolaus von: 379 Boisdefeu, Jean-Marie: 249 dem: 380 Belser, Regina: 529 Bolaffi, A.: 401 Bäcker, Knud: 363 Ben Essa, Soa: 58 Bonhoeffer, Emmi: 411, 435 Backes, Uwe: 94, 143, 178, Bendel, Charles S.: 439 Bonwetsch, Bernd: 321 325 Bender, Rolf: 193 Borbouse, Jean-Marie: 499 Bacque, James: 258, 386 Benz, Wolfgang: 32, 33, 34, Bossi, Rolf: 517 Bader, K.S.: 412 35, 36, 37, 38, 67, 220, Botz, Gerhard: 432 Baer, Richard: 205 275, 436, 487 Boüard, Michel de: 174, 182 Bahners, Patrick: 402, 488, Berben, Paul: 74 Bradbury, Ray: 509 489 Berenbaum, Michael: 10, Brauner, Arthur: 135 Bailer, Josef: 240, 278, 488 120, 232, 264, 428 Brech, Martin: 385 558 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Brechtken, Magnus: 194 Christ, Jesus: 131, 188 Deleiter, Erich: 266 Brednich, Rolf Wilhelm: 434 Christie, Douglas: 368 Demjanjuk, John: 103, 104, Breiden, Hugo: 483 Christophersen, Thies: 80 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, Breitman, Richard: 51, 82 Chróciewicz, T.: 292 110, 111, 144, 349, 350, Brennecke, Gerhard: 393 Clarke, Bernhard: 383 351, 385, 406, 416, 466, Brenner, Alexander: 159 Claude Lanzmann: 51, 151, 467 Brewer, George: 112 179, 370, 371, 372, 431 Desjardin, Daniel D.: 253 Breymesser, Hermann: 266 Clay, Lucius D: 100, 396 Deuerlein, E.: 194 Brinkley, David: 108 Cobden, John: 349 Diamant, David: 297 Broad, Pery S.: 375, 376, Cole, David: 112, 257, 474, Diamond, Denis: 92 377, 378, 444, 445, 446 475, 499 Dibowski, Wilhelm: 485, 486 Bronfman, Edgar: 158 Colombo, Guiseppe: 288 Dineen, Tana: 349 Broszat, Martin: 27, 66, 174, Conan, Eric: 145, 147, 256 Dirnfeld, Israel: 332 185, 195, 310, 410, 432, Connolly, Cyril: 309 Distel, Barbara: 72, 78 443, 444, 476, 477 Constantine, Roman Diwald, Hellmut: 11, 51, 132, Brougham, Bernard: 425, 426 Emperor: 518, 519 133, 183, 503, 504 Browning, Christopher: 85 Corino, Karl: 144 Dlugoborski, Wáclaw: 118 Brugioni, Dino A.: 215, 216, Countess, Robert H.: 10, 22, Doessekker, Bruno: 424, 425, 217, 218 157, 350, 478 428 Brüll, Johanna Sara: 332 Courtois, Stéphane: 304 Domarus, Max: 338, 339 Brunner, Manfred: 53 Crowell, Samuel: 267, 273, Donahue, Phil: 112 Bruno, Giordano: 46 274 Donat, Alexander: 51, 104, Bruun, Ernst: 370 Cyrankiewicz, Jozef: 362 275, 276, 288, 467, 468, Bubis, Ignaz: 53 Czardybon, Bernard: 120 469 Bubnov, Andrey: 163 Czarkowski, Ryszard: 275, Dornberg, John: 318 Buchanan, Patrick: 103, 104, 287 Doyle, James M.: 349 108, 109, 279 Czech, Danuta: 207, 226, Dragan, Miroslaw: 109, 306, Buchheim, Hans: 410 250, 251, 375, 428, 437, 323 Bühler, Dr.: 341 441, 443 Dreher, Eudard: 53 Burba, Manfred: 275 Czernin, Rudolf Graf: 151, Dreßen, Willi: 287 Burg, Josef G.: 112, 420 152 Dreyfus, Alfred: 103 Burgess, F.: 279 Czesany, Maximilian: 311 Duff, Michael: 389 Burhoff, Detlef: 513 Duni-Wascowicz, Krystof: --D-- Buriansky, Marie: 331 369 Bush, George: 29, 58, 103 Daluege, Kurt: 196 Duprat, François: 495, 496 Bush, George W.: 502 Damon, James: 529 Dusek, Peter: 432 Butler, Rupert: 383, 384 Daniel, Josef: 332 Dwork, Deborah: 146, 202, Butz, Arthur R.: 21, 80, 81, Danilchenko, Ignat: 105 425 82, 85, 86, 152, 153, 155, Darwin, Charles: 491 Dworkin, Ronald: 53 260, 380, 425, 518 Davidson, Jonathan R.T.: 422 --E-- Davis, Moshe: 82 --C-- Dawidowicz, Lucy S.: 20, 32, Ebel, Konrad: 58 Caignet, Michel: 498 51, 120, 174, 299, 305 Eckermann, Erik: 283 Camon, Ferdinand: 429 Dawidowski, Roman: 246, Edginton, J.A.G.: 279 Campbell, Terence W.: 349 247, 267 Eggebrecht, Harald: 145 Caroll, E.J.: 396 Dayan, Shmuel: 404 Ehrenburg, Ilya: 20, 169 Carter, Jimmy: 106, 406 Deana, Franco: 165, 221 Eibicht, Rolf-Josef: 11, 51, Cavendish-Bentinck, Victor: Deckert, Günter: 402, 489, 132, 503 83, 84, 171 514, 515, 516 Eichmann, Adolf: 19, 63, Chabrol, Jean-Pierre: 372 Degler, Carl: 154 110, 112, 120, 156, 351, Chamberlin, Brewster S.: Dehler, Thomas: 94 380, 382, 403, 420, 428, 430, 431 Dejaco, Walter: 226, 268, 435, 436, 525 Chavez, David, Jr: 73, 74, 75 465 Eifler, Günter: 434 Chiu, David: 58 Delarue, Jacques: 305 Eigruber, August: 384 559 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Eisenhower, Dwight D.: 74, Frank, Otto: 429, 473 Glücks, Richard: 65, 197, 386 Frankel, Max: 26 199, 260 Eiser, Johanna: 332 Frankl, Viktor: 129 Glynn, Martin H.: 56 Eisert, Wolfgang: 392 Franz, Kurt: 410, 423 Göbel, Klaus: 513 Elstner, Reinhold: 505 Franz-Willing, Georg: 405 Goebbels, Josef: 195, 339, Epifanow, Alexander E.: 321 Frei, Norbert: 310, 311 340, 341, 342, 381 Erber, Josef: 375 Freimark, Jakob: 359 Golczewski, Frank: 275 Ernst, Tilman: 432 Frey, Gerhard: 100 Goldberg, Jonathan J.: 502 Ertl, Fritz: 465 Friedman, Arnold: 42, 261, Goldhagen, Daniel J.: 51, Eschwege, Helmut: 314, 315 345, 368, 369 158, 179 Evans, Richard J.: 154 Friedman, Filip: 98, 436 Goldstein, Eleanor: 349 Everett, Willis M.: 387, 390 Friedrich, Jörg: 311 Gorecki, Aleksander: 480 Friedrich, Theodor: 331 Göring, Hermann: 194, 195, --F-- Fries, Jakob: 481 381 Factor, H.: 42 Fritzsche, Hans: 381, 397 Göth, Ammon: 432, 433 Falbe, Jürgen: 227 Froboese, V.: 282 Gozani, Ohad: 116, 117 Fallin, Rich: 373 Froeschmann, Georg: 387 Grabert, Wigbert: 88, 490 Farmer, Kevin: 349 Fuchs, H.H.: 409 Grabitz, Helge: 358, 411, Faurisson, Robert: 74, 79, 80, Fuchs-Heinritz, Werner: 358 416, 418, 420, 423, 436 85, 86, 87, 88, 92, 93, 98, Furet, François: 134 Grabner, Maximilian: 253, 119, 145, 147, 148, 149, 360, 374, 377 --G-- 150, 155, 158, 175, 179, Graczek, Marja: 332 182, 210, 248, 254, 368, G., Eugeniusz, witness: 292 Graf, Jürgen: 40, 94, 104, 372, 383, 427, 429, 432, Gaffa, corporal: 326 137, 166, 180, 195, 232, 439, 442, 460, 477, 495, Galilei, Galileo: 46, 442 233, 275, 277, 280, 282, 496, 498, 499, 501 Galinski, Heinz: 119, 420 284, 286, 289, 296, 297, Favez, Jean-Claude: 328 Ganzfried, Daniel: 424 298, 299, 301, 303, 321, Favre, G.: 328 Garaudy, Roger: 147, 148, 324, 328, 370, 427, 435, Fedorenko, Fedor: 105 149, 499 440, 445, 454, 529 Felderer, Ditlieb: 98, 245 Gardner, Henry: 529 Graml, Hermann: 37 Fiebelkorn, Heinz: 283 Gärtner, Michael: 206, 224, Grande, Gerhard: 205 Finkelstein: 104 258 Gray, Charles: 267, 269 Finkelstein, Norman G.: 43, Gaßner, Ludwig: 77, 283 Greil, Lothar: 385 158, 161, 162, 163, 174, Gaus, Friedrich: 380 Grieb, Conrad: see Berg, 425, 426 Gauss, Ernst: 13, 122, 138, Friedrich Paul Fischer, Heinz: 9 141, 142, 165, 239, 262, Grigorenko, Piotr: 304 Fischer, Horst: 484 310, 427, 490, (= Germar Grimm, Friedrich W.: 361 Fischer, Josef: 401 Rudolf) Grimstad, Bill: 425 Fleischhauer, Ingeborg: 196 Gavigan, Melody: 349 Gringauz, Samuel: 109, 173 Fleming, Gerald: 51, 304 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich: 400 Grobman, Alex: 51, 267 Florstedt, Hermann: 433 Gerhard, Rüdiger: 408, 420 Gröning, Oskar: 357 Floss, Herbert: 469 Gerner, Manfred: 221, 258 Grossmann, Wassili: 275 Folco, Michel: 427 Gerstein, Kurt: 63, 135, 136, Grouès, Henri: 148, 149 Folkerts, Elke: 514, 516 137, 293, 294, 439, 440 Grubach, Paul: 84, 491 Forbes, Monica H.: 398 Gheorge, Jon: 385 Gruchmann, Lothar: 384 Forster, Karl: 412 Gierlich, H.: 408 Gruszczynski, Maria: 332 Forth, Wolfgang: 464 Giese, G.: 412 Grysimienko, Achriem: 331 Foster, J.F.: 203 Gilbert, Joseph H.: 75 Gubala, Wojciech: 238, 240 Foust, Hal: 395 Gilbert, Martin: 51, 82, 273, Guillaume, Pierre: 499 Frank, Anne: 183, 429, 430, 299, 305, 437 Gumz, W.: 203 473 Gilbert, S.: 280 Gutenberg, Johannes: 50 Frank, Hans: 291, 341, 342, Glazar, Richard: 288, 467, Gutman, Israel: 51, 72, 120, 383, 392 469 226, 264, 275, 276, 299, Frank, Max: 331 Gloxhuber, Christian: 464 323, 425, 428 560 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Guttenplan, Don D.: 154, 156 180, 181, 201, 226, 275, Hussein, Saddam: 58 299, 305, 322, 362, 487 Huster, Stefan: 53 --H-- Himmler, Heinrich: 122, 123, Hutten, Ullrich von: 527 Haag, Friedrich E.: 77 196, 197, 198, 222, 260, --I-- Häberle, Wolfgang: 94 262, 307, 337, 338, 342, Hacha, Emil: 337 343, 344, 345, 374, 379, Ibrahim, Dr.: 58 Hafen, Karl: 517 380, 383, 403, 412, 450, Igounet, Valérie: 182, 275 Hahn, Otto: 50 451, 467 Irving, David: 20, 83, 92, Halvorsen, William: 91 Hitler, Adolf: 21, 35, 37, 41, 100, 153, 154, 155, 156, Hankins, Frank H.: 27 44, 47, 48, 49, 58, 69, 88, 157, 158, 165, 195, 247, Hanusiak, Michael: 105, 106 89, 100, 122, 123, 128, 248, 337, 382, 383, 385, Hartmann, Artur: 479 131, 144, 154, 156, 158, 394, 396 Hartmann, Geoffrey: 357 167, 172, 173, 175, 179, Isacovici, Salomón: 425 Harwood, Richard: 92, 98, 188, 194, 195, 196, 197, --J-- 495 198, 200, 201, 239, 275, Haulot, Arthur: 328 304, 322, 336, 337, 338, Jäckel, Eberhard: 86, 122, Hauter, Charles: 64 339, 341, 343, 362, 375, 123, 275, 299, 315 Haverbeck, Werner Georg: 379, 381, 389, 401, 437, Jackson, Robert H.: 394, 395, 183 438, 490, 491 438 Hayes, Peter: 292 Hochhuth, Rolf: 63 Jacobmeyer, Wolfgang: 37 Haynes, John Earl: 387 Hochmuth, Ursel: 70 Jacobs, Steven L.: 425 Heddesheimer, Don: 22, 25, Hoffmann II, Michael A.: Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf: 410 210 369, 370 Jagschitz, Gerhard: 131, 177, Heggelin, Robert: 359 Hoffmann, Heinrich: 455 178 Heide, Hans Rudolf von der: Hoffmann, Joachim: 20, 137, Jakobskötter, Rudolf: 222 385 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, Jansen, Hans: 194 Heiden, Konrad: 381 169, 319, 321, 473 Janßen, Karl-Heinz: 402 Heilbrunn, Jacob: 103 Hoffmann, Josef: 331 Jelinski, Jozefa: 332 Heiman, Ernestine: 331 Hohmann, Martin: 163, 164 Jesse, Eckhard: 89, 90, 94, Heine, Heinrich: 113 Höhne, Heinz: 305, 322, 324 508 Helin, Patrick: 499 Holbus, Jan: 419 Jochmann, Werner: 339 Heller, Henry: 347 Holming, Göran: 380 Joffrin, Laurent: 372 Henkys, Reinhard: 406 Holomek, Johann: 331 Jonasz, Moric: 331 Henschler, Dieter: 464 Holstein, Bernard: see Jordan, Claus: 95, 259, 359 Hepp, Robert: 11, 132, 503, Brougham, Bernard Jörka, judge: 412 504 Hömig, Dieter: 399 Josef Ginsburg: see Burg, Herrmann, Hajo: 475 Honecker, Erich: 362, 363, Josef G. Herrmann, Katharina: 331 506 --K-- Hertz, Joseph H.: 21, 23 Honsik, Gerd: 79, 177 Herzberg, Johann: 331 Horvath, Anna: 331 Kadell, Franz: 170 Herzberger, Oswald J.H: 332 Horvath, Ignaz: 331 Kafka, Franz: 512 Herzog, Roman: 327 Höß, Rudolf: 120, 136, 158, Kahane, Rabbi: 427 Herzogenrath-Amelung, 164, 165, 166, 207, 244, Kalthoff, Jürgen: 78, 227 Günther: 514 246, 247, 378, 382, 383, Kalugin, Oleh: 318 Hess, Rudolf: 336, 384 392, 396, 397, 403, 435, Kameniev, Leo: 163 Hess, Wolf Rüdiger: 384 436, 443, 444, 451, 463, Kaminski, Janusz: 432 Heuschneider, Reinhard: 400 465, 476 Kammler, Hans: 259 Heydrich, Reinhard: 122, Hössler, Franz: 376, 441 Kampe, Norbert: 126 123, 194, 195, 197, 324, Höttl, Wilhelm: 19, 20, 21, Kannengießer, Leopold: 331 341 379, 380, 382 Kant, Immanuel: 527 Heyne, Johannes: 503 Houstek: see Erber, Josef Karlsch, Rainer: 438 Hieß, Joseph: 385 Howard, Michael: 437 Karoly, Juliana: 332 Hilberg, Raul: 32, 51, 63, 81, Howe, Ellic: 170, 220, 361 Karpowicz, Wasilij: 331 109, 120, 134, 137, 169, Humm, Otto: 359 Karski, Jan: 137, 361, 362 561 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Kater, Hermann: 512 Kopanski, Ataullah B.: 473 436, 441, 460, 464, 476, Kauer, Rudolf: 372 Korn, Alfred: 481 477 Kazin, Alfred: 426 Korosec, Ingrid: 187 Laqueur, Walter: 51, 82, 362 Keegstra, James: 499 Korotych, Vitaly: 318 Lasek, Wilhelm: 79 Keeser, E.: 282 Korzec, Michael: 179 Laska, Werner: 385 Kellnberger, Norbert: 412 Kosiek, Rolf: 133 Laski, Apolonia: 331 Kelly, Jim: 426 Kosinski, Jerzy: 426 Lassalle, Ferdinand: 163 Kempkens, Wolfgang: 262 Koster, Katie de: 112 Laternser, Hans: 355, 403, Kempner, Robert M.W.: 125, Kött, Martin: 158 408, 409, 410, 417, 418, 380, 381 Kotze, Hildegard von: 337 420 Keneally, Thomas: 432 Krakowski, Shmuel: 51, 109, Lautern, Martin: 380, 383, Keren, Daniel: 216, 248, 249, 116, 117, 264 385 250, 251 Kramer, Josef: 80, 308, 384, Lautmann, Rüdiger: 358 Kermisz, Józef: 340 392 Lawrence, W.: 320 Kern, Erich: 66, 381 Krasnow, Iris: 41 Le Pen, Jean Marie: 148 Kersten, Felix: 337 Kraus, Ota: 346, 476 Leckner, Theodor: 53 Kertész, Imre: 428, 429 Krause-Vilmar, Dietfrid: 316 Ledermann, Charles: 297 Ketcham, Katherine: 349 Krausnick, Helmut: 321, 322, Lehner, Dieter: 106, 107, 108 Keyssar, Helene: 318 325, 337 Lenin: 163 Khan, Djinghis: 47 Krege, Richard: 306 Lennard, Philip: 442 Kiever Abend: 138 Kremer, Johann Paul: 440, Lenski, Robert: 476 Kilian, Hans: 359, 360 441, 442, 443 Leski, Krzysztof: 116, 117 Kirschbaum, Erik: 43 Kremer, Tibère: 120 Leuchter, Fred A.: 73, 80, 91, Kladov, Ignatz F.: 305 Kretschmer, Wolfgang: 415, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 109, Klarsfeld, Beate: 95 (=G. Rudolf) 137, 147, 152, 156, 182, Klarsfeld, Serge: 35, 51, 261, Kreutz, Elisabeth: 331 183, 236, 237, 240, 304, 317, 456, 496 Krupp von Bohlen und 487, 488, 489, 494, 496, Klaß: 400 Halbach, Alfred: 396, 437 514, 525 Klee, Ernst: 287, 305 Krzepicki, Abraham: 469 Levi, Primo: 426, 428, 429, Klehr, Harvey: 387 Kues, Johann von: 518 471, 472 Klein, Georg: 370, 371 Kula, Michal: 244, 464, 465 Lévy, Bernard-Henri: 401 Klein, Marc: 473, 474, 475, Kulaszka, Barbara: 85, 93, Lévy-Willard, Annette: 372 477 156 Lewinski, Jakob: 205, 479 Kluge, Dankwart: 19 Kulischer, Eugene: 291 Lichtenstein, Heiner: 406, Knieriem, Alexander von: Kulka, Erich: 346, 476 409, 410, 411, 416, 418, 385, 390, 394, 396 Kunze, Klaus: 401 420, 421, 436 Knobloch, Heinz: 316 Liebehenschel, Arthur: 482 --L-- Knopf, Agnes Sara: 331 Lingens-Reiner, Ella: 436 Koch, Erich: 403, 433 Labedz, Jerzy: 238, 240 Linnas, Karl: 105 Koch, Ilse: 99, 100, 403, 437 Lachout, Emil: 78, 79, 526 Lipstadt, Deborah E.: 51, Koch, Oskar W.: 385, 391 Lachtman, Dennis S.: 281 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, Köchel, Heinrich: 212 Lackner, Karl: 53 158, 248, 424 Koestler, Arthur: 305 Laks, Szymon: 476 Locke, Otto: 482 Kogon, Eugen: 50, 62, 63, Lambrecht, Wolfgang: 78, Loftus, Elizabeth: 348, 349, 66, 67, 74, 87, 200, 220, 227 350, 351, 372, 408, 416 226, 305, 386, 437, 443, Lamker, Hans: 229 Longerich, Peter: 299, 436 462, 480 Lammers, Hans Heinrich: Lorenz, Konrad: 188 Köhler, Horst: 9 197 Lüftl, Walter: 127, 128, 129, Köhler, Manfred: 373, 385, Lang, Franz: see Höß, Rudolf 130, 137, 152, 177, 186, 435, (=Germar Rudolf) Lang, Konrad: 480 187, 193, 220, 226, 246, Kola, Andrzej: 294, 296 Langbein, Hermann: 50, 67, 273, 278, 279, 280 Kommos, Rudolf: 34 362, 363, 364, 365, 367, Lukaszkiewicz, Zdzislaw: Königstein, Anna Sara: 331 376, 405, 406, 407, 410, 275, 285, 289, 290, 299, Konk: 448 416, 417, 419, 421, 435, 467 562 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Luther, Martin: 195, 197, 198 Mayer, Arno J.: 51, 131, 175, Naumann, Bernd: 376, 410, Luther, Martin, religious 176, 189 418, 420 reformer: 519, 527 Mayer, Hein: 321 Naumann, Gert: 328 Lutz, Hermann: 404 Mazal, Henry: 216, 248 Nawratil, Heinz: 473 Luxemburg, Rosa: 163 Mazur, Sigmund: 97, 98 Nayirah: 58 Lyon, Jeff: 437 McCarthy, Jamie: 216, 248 Nellessen, Bernd: 305 McCarthy, Joseph: 387, 388 Neugebauer, Wolfgang: 79, --M-- McChesney, Robert W: 501 220 Mächler, Stefan: 424 Meier, Horst: 53 Neuhäusler, Johannes: 412 Madden, Catherine: 426 Melzer, Abraham: 107 Neumaier, Arnulf: 277, 284, Maedel, Walter: 199 Mendelsohn, John: 444 466 Magenheimer, Heinz: 140 Mendelsohn, Moses: 357 Neumann, Betti: 332 Mägerle, Anton: see Rudolf, Mengele, Josef: 120, 351, Neumann, Robert: 100 Germar 352, 413, 459, 482, 485 Neurath, Konstantin von: 396 Mahler, Gustav: 475 Merrion, David F.: 279 Ney, Johannes P.: 122, 123 Maizière, Wolfgang de: 399 Metz, Zelda: 297 Nicosia, Francis R.: 194 Malina, Peter: 432 Meyer, Brün: 484 Niederreiter, Wilhelm: see Malingre, Virginie: 372 Meyer, Fritjof: 120, 121, 164, Sanning, Walter N. Mann, Thomas: 22 165, 166, 167, 169, 221, Nimmerrichter, Richard: 130, Manstein, Erich von: 325, 224, 500 131 326 Michailow, Alexander: 304 Niznansky, Ladislav: 419 Manvell, Roger: 339 Michel, Henri: 120 Noar, Simha: 476, 477 Marais, Pierre: 304, 429 Milch, Erhard: 381 Nolte, Ernst: 53, 94, 124, Marco, Enric: 426 Mishkoff, Adina: 42 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, Margolina, Sonja: 34 Moeschlin, Sven: 464 137, 142, 145, 153, 165, Markiewicz, Jan: 238, 239, Mohler, Armin: 93, 132 183, 273, 276, 293, 341, 240 Moll, Otto: 460 345, 362, 492, 493, 498 Marsalek, Hans: 65 Moltke, Helmuth J. von: 436 Nordbruch, Claus: 52, 140 Marszalek, Józef: 17, 299 Moorehead, Alan: 309, 384 Nordling, Carl O.: 35 Martin, Sigmund P.: 414 Morgen, Konrad: 98, 360, Novick, Peter: 9, 174 Maser, Werner: 68, 69, 70, 374, 381, 403, 435, 437 Nowak, Hans Jürgen: 206, 72, 124, 167, 168, 169, Morgenthau, Henry: 369, 462 229, 258, 270 170, 171, 172, 173, 361, Morris, Errol: 91, 456 Nutt, David: 422 379, 384, 428, 459 Mosbach, Walter: 484 Nyiszli, Miklos Nyiszli: 120, Mason, Alpheus T.: 394 Mother Theresa: 148 166, 172, 173, 273, 428, Mathieu, Olivier: 499 Müller, Filip: 98, 99, 166, 459, 460 Mattogno, Carlo: 13, 69, 99, 172, 428, 435, 436, 460, --O-- 104, 117, 125, 137, 146, 461, 462, 463, 464, 475, 151, 154, 165, 166, 195, 476, 477 O'Neil, Robin: 292 204, 206, 207, 208, 215, Müller, Heinrich: 321 Obenaus, Herbert: 316 220, 221, 224, 228, 232, Müller, Otward: 327 Ochensberger, Walter: 79 233, 235, 236, 239, 245, Müller-Münch, Ingrid: 421 Ofshe, Richard: 349 246, 247, 248, 249, 253, Müller-Neuglück, H.H.: 280 Ohlendorf, Otto: 397 255, 257, 258, 259, 260, Müller-Ullrich, Burkhard: Oler, Alexandre: 459 267, 274, 275, 277, 280, 144 Olère, David: 437, 456, 457, 282, 284, 285, 286, 289, Münch, Hans: 356, 484 458, 459 290, 291, 293, 294, 295, Munn, James F.: 75 Oppitz, Ulrich-Dieter: 355, 296, 297, 298, 299, 301, Murphy, Kim: 155, 159 408, 409 302, 303, 315, 321, 324, Mußmann, Eike: 509 Orieszenko, Andriej: 332 327, 328, 340, 342, 345, Orlet, Rainer: 513, 514, 515, --N-- 362, 370, 378, 428, 435, 516 440, 454, 465, 489, 493, Nack, Armin: 193 Orwell, George: 240, 509 529 Naujoks, Harry: 69, 70 Oscar, Friedrich: 385, 387, Maurach, Reinhart: 392 Naujoks, Martha: 70 396 563 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ostwald, Walter: 283 135, 144, 145, 147, 149, Rendulic, Lothar: 385 150, 151, 152, 172, 178, Rennicke, Frank: 503 --P-- 182, 202, 208, 220, 223, Rennicke, Ute: 503 Paget, Reginald T.: 325 235, 242, 244, 250, 251, Reuth, Ralf Georg: 339 Palach, Jan: 505 252, 253, 254, 255, 260, Richter, Chaim: 331 Papon, Maurice: 351 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, Rieger, Jürgen: 408, 414, 420 Paskuly, Steven: 226, 382, 270, 273, 275, 292, 294, Riegner, Gerhard: 318 443, 444 297, 299, 303, 304, 312, Rieß, Volker: 287 Pattle, R.E.: 279 313, 315, 346, 370, 375, Rimland, Ingrid: 500 Pauline: 455 428, 429, 451, 452, 455, Roden, Edward Leroy van: Pavlov, Ivan: 48, 519, 525 456, 458, 460, 475, 476 388, 392 Peer, Moshe: 79, 80, 437 Priebke, Erich: 351 Röder, Susanne: 193 Peiper, Joachim: 385, 389 Prinz, Michael: 142 Rodriguez, Manuel: 425 Pelt, Robert J. van: 51, 83, Provan, Charles D.: 216, 248, Roediger, Conrad: 392 84, 85, 146, 154, 202, 247, 249 Rögner, Adolf: 365, 366, 248, 267, 456, 459, 465 Prüfer, Kurt: 454 367, 368, 392, 407, 434, Pemsel, Richard: 322 Przybylski, Peter: 363 449, 464, 465, 466, 479, Pendergrast, Mark: 349 Puntigam, Franz: 77, 266 480, 481 Perry, J.H.: 99 Röhrich, Lutz: 434 --Q-- Petermann, Maria: 331 Röhrig, Hans: 486 Peters, Gerhard: 150 Quackernack, Walter: 462, Rohwer, Jürgen: 86, 275 Peterson, Agnes F.: 345 466 Röll, Wolfgang: 100 Petrov, Nikita: 34 Roosevelt, Franklin D.: 338, --R-- Pfeifenberger, Werner: 504, 387 505 Rademacher, Franz: 196, 197 Roques, Henri: 440 Pfeiffer, Gerd: 508 Rademacher, Werner: 127, Rose, Alma: 475 Phelps, Reginald H.: 194 224, 229, 270, 273, 346 Roseman, Mark: 126 Philipp, Karl: 313 Raisky, Adam: 297 Rosen, Abbot A.: 82 Philipps, Peter: 402 Rajca, Czeslaw: 17, 299 Rosenberg, Elisabeth: 331 Picker, Henry: 197, 198, 337 Rajzman, Samuel: 275 Rosenberg, Eliyahu (Eliahu, Pietrowicz, Anton: 332 Rami, Ahmed: 499 Elias): 285, 466, 467 Pinson, Koppel S.: 109 Rammstedt, Ottheim: 358 Rosenberg, Walter: see Vrba, Pinter, Stephen F.: 79 Ramuz, Henri: 184 Rudolf Pintsch, Karlheinz: 384 Ranke, Kurt: 434 Rosenthal, Abe M.: 26 Piper, Franciszek: 120, 166, Rassinier, Paul: 61, 62, 63, Rosenthal, Maryla: 353, 354, 206, 253, 257, 474 64, 66, 70, 152, 327, 420, 355, 356, 479 Plantin, Jean: 100, 498 428, 476, 477, 493, 525 Rosenzweig, Luc: 120 Pohl, Oswald: 198, 199, 262, Ratier, Emmanuel: 495, 496 Ross, Jeffrey: 115 383 Rauschenbach, Gerhard: 385 Ross, Thomas: 58 Pohl, Wilhelm: 332 Rauschning, Hermann: 144 Rostalski, Jadwiga: 331 Poirier, Robert: 215 Raven, Greg: 112, 156 Rothenfels, Hans: 439 Polevoy, Boris: 210 Reagan, Ronald: 103 Rotholz, Louis Israel: 332 Poliakov, Léon: 51, 120, 125, Redeker, Robert: 151, 179 Rozek, Edward J.: 84 169 Reder, Rudolf: 292, 437, 440 Rückerl, Adalbert: 67, 275, Pollak, Josef: 332 Regitz, Manfred: 227 286, 292, 305, 307, 352, Ponsonby, Arthur: 84, 96 Reichman, Yechiel: 468 355, 387, 405, 406, 408, Popper, Karl: 140, 141 Reichmann: 127 409, 410, 411, 421, 435, Porter, Carlos W.: 73, 439, Reinecke, Günther: 403 436 529 Reinke-Nobbe, H.: 515 Rudenko, Roman A.: 297 Porter, John: 58 Reitlinger, Gerald: 51, 74, Rudolf, Germar: 13, 14, 16, Posner, Gerald L.: 352 120, 164, 169, 226, 264, 20, 33, 40, 43, 44, 52, 53, Posner, Vladimir: 318 276, 324, 443, 475, 477 74, 80, 93, 94, 95, 99, 127, Prager, Reinhold: 331 Remer, Otto Ernst: 513 132, 134, 137, 141, 142, Pressac, Jean-Claude: 120, Renard, Jean-Paul: 62 144, 146, 150, 151, 152, 564 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST 154, 155, 159, 166, 182, Schönke, Adolf: 53 Smith, Bradley F.: 345 183, 184, 205, 217, 228, Schöttl, Vinzenz: 205 Smith, Bradley R.: 111, 112, 229, 230, 233, 235, 236, Schreiber, Walter: 273 114 237, 239, 240, 241, 245, Schrenck-Notzing, Caspar Sniegoski, Stephen J.: 29 259, 267, 279, 306, 312, von: 405, 410 Sojka, Berta Sara: 332 318, 321, 322, 342, 347, Schröder, Gerhard: 9 Sokolnikov, Grigori: 163 353, 356, 365, 367, 374, Schröder, Horst: 53 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander: 34, 377, 379, 385, 415, 427, Schröder, Sibylle: 321 384 446, 454, 487, 488, 492, Schüle, Erwin: 485 Sommer, Luzie Sara: 331 494, 501, 502, 506, 510, Schulz, Gerhard: 321 Song, Caroline: 350 512, 514, 517, 520, 529 Schwab, Jürgen: 52 Sorel, Claude-Marie: see Rullmann, Hans Peter: 103, Schwartz, Thomas A.: 392 Lanzmann, Claude 105, 106, 107, 285, 466 Schwarz, Solomon M.: 322 Spakow, Tatjana: 332 Rummel, Werner: 464 Schwela, Siegfried: 477 Spanic, Eli: 42 Rushton, Colin: 273 Schwensen, Klaus: 79 Spann, Gustav: 79 Rüter, Christiaan F.: 409 Schwertfeger, Reinhold: 67, Spanner, Rudolf: 97, 468 Ruzicka, Marie: 331 169, (=Germar Rudolf) Speer, Albert: 198, 438 Scrinzi, Otto: 505 Speiser, Ignaz: 476 --S-- Segev, Tom: 404 Spielberg, Steven: 357, 433 Sabah, Emir Al: 58 Sehn, Jan: 240 Spielberger, Walter J: 282 Sack, John: 157, 158, 434 Seidler, Franz W.: 61, 321, Spindler, Blondina J: 331 Sadowska, Rajzla: 482, 483 322 Springer, Elisa: 80 Sagel-Grande, Irene: 409, Seifert, Karl-Heinz: 399 Springer, Hildegard: 397 443 Sereny, Gitta: 275, 287 Springer, Markus: 428 Salm, Karl: 94 Servatius, Robert: 19, 382, Stäglich, Wilhelm: 86, 88, Salomon, Moritz: 480 420 89, 90, 94, 152, 165, 215, Sandkühler, Thomas: 324 Serynek, Beatrix: 332 408, 477, 490, 503 Sanford, George: 170 Setkiewicz, Piotr: 473 Stalin, Joseph: 20, 33, 34, 35, Sanning, Walter N.: 32, 33, Shadek, Michael: 105, 107 43, 48, 49, 69, 71, 72, 138, 34, 38, 43, 86, (= Wilhelm Shapiro, Shelly: 96 139, 163, 167, 169, 171, Niederreiter) Shavit, Ari: 29 196, 246, 297, 304, 305, Sauckel, Fritz: 380 Shawcross, Hartley: 64 318, 322, 323, 364, 392, Schachner, Nathan: 25 Sheftel, Yoram: 108 394, 473, 490, 506, 512 Schäuble, Wolfgang: 53, 54 Sher, Eran: 281 Stefaniak, Wiktoria: 332 Scheffler, Wolfgang: 88, 90, Shermer, Michael: 267, 337, Stein, Rudolf: 332 275, 292, 297, 299, 410, 351 Steinbach, Peter: 411 411 Shorrock, Judy: 426 Steinberg, family: 41 Scheidl, Franz J.: 408 Shulevitz, Judith: 424 Steiner, Franz: 11 Schillinger, Josef: 462 Siedlecka, Johanna: 426 Steiner, Jean-François: 466, Schimmelpfennig, Anton: 78 Siegert, Karl: 322 468, 469 Schindler, Oskar: 432 Siering, F.: 515 Stiles, John: 58 Schirmer, Gerhart: 70, 71, 72 Simonov, Constantin: 16 Stimely, Keith: 384 Schirmer-Vowinckel, Ilse: Simpson, Gordon: 388, 392 Stöcker, Hans A: 53 324 Sinclair, K.: 279 Stone, Harlan Fiske: 394, 395 Schirra, Bruno: 356 Singer, Melissa: 426 Stopnicki, Michal: 332 Schkomarovsky, Ester S: 331 Sinoviev, Grigori: 163 Strauss, Arnold: 331 Schlee, Emil: 183, 398 Sivaloganathan, S.: 282 Strauss, Capt.: 77 Schloss, Eva: 473 Skalski, Ernest: 116, 117, Strauss, Wolfgang: 34 Schmidt, Hans: 498 169, 361 Streicher, Julius: 383, 384, Schnabel, Raimund: 16 Skowron, T.: see Dragan, 396 Schneck, Kreszentia: 331 Miroslaw Strempel, Herbert von: 381 Schneider, Egon: 192 Smirnov, Andrei A.: 69, 97, Stretch, H.: 279 Schoeps, Julius H.: 299, 357 169, 297 Strojny, Jozefa: 331 Schönhuber, Franz: 204 Smith, Arthur L.: 99, 100 Stromberger, Wilhelm: 260 565 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST Strukow, Praskowja: 331 Vidal-Naquet, Pierre: 51, 86, 429, 488 Struminsky, V.: 42 177, 427, 443 Wells, Gary L.: 349 Stülpnagel: 483 Vogt, Arthur Vogt: 94, 513 Wendig, Heinrich: 144 Subrt, Nepomucena: 332 Vohryzek, Leopold: 331 Wennerstrum, Charles F.: Suchomel, Franz: 371 Voss, Hermann: 461 395 Sulzberger, Arthur: 26, 114 Vrba, Rudolf: 120, 172, 368, Werkmeister, H.: 280 Susskind, David: 120 369, 370, 371, 372, 449, Werner, Dr., BKA: 107 Süßmuth, Rita: 317 450, 451 Werner, Martin: 78, 227 Suzman, Arthur: 92 Werner, Steffen: 195, 297 --W-- Szende, Stefan: 291, 436 Werth, Mattias: 58 Szewczyk, Zdzislaw: 332 Wagner, Emilie Sara: 332 Wesolowski, Malgorzata: Szrojt, Eugeniusz: 292 Wagner, Erich: 100 331 Szubrow, Tatjana: 332 Wahls, Hans: 123 Wetzler, Alfred: 172, 449, Waitz, Karl: 332 450 --T-- Walendy, Udo: 19, 100, 101, Whitney, Glade: 491 Tauber, Henryk: 244, 435, 105, 123, 288, 304, 310, Wickoff, Jack: 327 445, 451, 452, 454, 455, 312, 316, 383, 439, 467, Widmann, Richard: 112, 158, 456, 458, 459 476, 477, 494 201, 264 Thilo, Heinz: 441 Walker, Mark: 438 Wienold, Hans: 358 Thion, Serge: 86, 144, 179, Walser, Martin: 162, 163 Wiernik, Jankiel (Yankiel): 425 Walter, Bernhard: 420 467 Thomsen, Hans: 381 Walus, Frank: 105 Wiesel, Elie: 137, 158, 180, Tiedemann, Herbert: 138, Wandres, Thomas: 53 426, 427, 428, 429, 435, 318 Ware, John: 352 469, 470, 471, 472, 473 Tiemann, Ralf: 385, 387 Wassermann, Rudolf: 402 Wiesenthal, Simon: 28, 51, Töben, Fredrick: 500, 529 Watt, Donald: 425 65, 66, 98, 162, 185, 317, Toland, John: 381 Weber, Dr.: 240 411, 435, 436 Tolstoy, Leo Nikolayevich: Weber, Hauptsturmführer: Wilde, Oscar: 123 108 463 Wilhelm, Hans-Heinrich: Traficant, James V.: 108 Weber, Helmut: 230 178, 321, 322, 324, 325 Tregenza, Michael: 292, 440 Weber, Jürgen: 411 Wilkomirski, Binjamin: see Treue, Wilhelm: 336 Weber, Mark: 34, 65, 80, 91, Doessekker, Bruno Trombley, Stephen: 91 95, 98, 104, 112, 229, 262, Willcox, David: 499 Tröndle, Herbert: 53 309, 310, 381, 424, 496 Willenberg, Samuel: 469 Trotzky, Leo: 163 Weber, Obersturmführer: 463 Willner, Max: 485 Trzcinska, Beata: 240 Weber, public prosecutor: Wilton, Robert: 34 Tucholsky, Kurt: 505 365, 407 Wirth, Christian: 440 Turnau, R.: 282 Webster, Hutton: 11 Wirth, Wolfgang: 464 Tyas, Stephen: 295 Weckert, Ingrid: 194, 304, Wise, Stephen: 25 306, 328 Wisliceny, Dieter: 19, 20, --U-- Wegner, Werner: 94, 488 382 Udovenko, Genadi: 318 Weise, Gottfried: 408, 419 Wistrich, Robert S.: 381 Ukraiski, Eustachy: 292 Weiss, Adolf: 263 With, Hans de: 402 Ullmann, Nicolas: 498 Weiß, Eva: 331 Witte, Peter: 295 Utley, Freda: 386, 391, 398 Weiss, Howard: 424, 425 Wittgenstein, Ludwig: 186, Weiss, Martin Gottfried: 73 187 --V-- Weiss, Moritz: 331 Wittmann, Rebecca Valentin, Erwin: 483, 484 Weiß, Waltraud: 263 Elizabeth: 354 Valla, Lorenzo: 518, 519 Weissmandel, Dov: 20 Witzsch, Hans-Jürgen: 240, Vaupel: 376 Weizmann, Chaim: 22 503 Vehlewald, Hans-Jörg: 357 Weizsäcker, Richard von: Wojak, Irmtrud: 292 Veil, Simone: 175 309, 401 Wojtczak, Stanislaw: 275, Verall, Richard: see Welkewitz, Chana Sara: 331 289, 290 Harwood, Richard Wellers, Georges: 51, 120, Wolff: 95 566 GERMAR RUDOLF, LECTURES ON THE HOLOCAUST --Z-- Wolff, Karl: 412, 413 Zitelmann, Rainer: 94, 142, Wolski, Marek: 317 Zabeki, Franciszek: 275 143 Wormser, Olga: 120 Zagolkin, Nikifor: 331 Zohar, Joseph: 422 Wowereit, Klaus: 159 Zagorin, Adam: 389 Zornig, Rudi: 414, 505, (= Wulf, Joseph: 125 Zajdel, Ida: 177 Germar Rudolf) Wüstinger, Emil: 150 Zaverdinos, Costas: 325 Zündel, Ernst: 42, 50, 85, 92, Wyatt, Lee B.: 381 Zayas, Alfred M. de: 207, 156, 261, 345, 368, 369, 321, 473 370, 476, 477, 498, 499, --X-- Zegolkin, Domna: 331 500 Xanten, Wulf von: 195 Zentner, Christian: 296 Zuroff, Efraim: 51, 324, 351, Ziereis, Franz: 65 352 --Y-- Zimmerman, John C.: 166, Yahil, Leni: 318, 319 259 Yeager, Chuck: 308 Zimmermann, Günter: 230 Zimmermann, Michael: 327 Germar Rudolf, Lectures on the Holocaust. Controversial Issues Cross Examined Since 1992, German scholar Germar Rudolf is giving lectures to various audi- ences worldwide. His topic: the Holocaust in the light of new findings. Even though Rudolf presents nothing short of full-fledged Holocaust revisionism, his arguments fall on fertile soil, because they are presented in a very sensitive and scholarly way. This book is the literary version of Rudolf's lectures, enriched with the most recent finding of historiography. The book's style is unique: It is a dialogue between the lecturer, who introduces the most important arguments and counter arguments of Holocaust Revisionism, and the reactions of the audience: supportive, skeptical, and also hostile questions. The Lectures read like an exciting real-life exchange between persons of various points of view. The usual moral, political, and pseudoscientific arguments against revisionism are all addressed and refuted. This book is a compendium of Frequently Asked Questions on the Holo- caust. With more than 1,300 references to sources, this easy-to-understand book is the best introduction into this taboo topic both for unfamiliar with the topic and for those wanting to know more. 568 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index: $30.- Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry With this book , A. R. Butz, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sci- ence, was the first (and so far the only) writer to treat the entire Holocaust complex from the Revisionist perspective, in a precise scientific manner. This book exhibits the overwhelming force of historical and logical arguments which Revisionism had accumulated by the middle of the 70s. It was the first book published in the US which won for Revisionism the academic dignity to which it is entitled. It continues to be a major revisionist reference work, frequently cited by prominent personalities. This new edition comes with several supplements adding new information gathered by the author over the last 25 years. Because of its prestige, no library can forbear offering The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, and no historian of modern times can ignore it. A `must read' for every Revisionist and every newcomer to the issue who wants to thoroughly learn about revisionist arguments. 506 pp. pb., 6"×9" pb, b/w ill., bibl., index: $25.- Germar Rudolf (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust. The Growing Critique of `Truth' and `Memory' "There is at present no other single volume that so provides a serious reader with a broad understanding of the contemporary state of historical issues that influential people would rather not have examined." --Prof. Dr. A. R. Butz, Evanston, IL "Read this book and you will know where revisionism is today.... revisionism has done away with the exterminationist case." --Andrew Gray, The Barnes Review Dissecting the Holocaust applies state-of-the-art scientific technique and classic methods of detection to investigate the alleged murder of millions of Jews by Germans during World War II. In 22 contributions of each ca. 30 pages, the 17 authors dissect generally accepted paradigms of the `Holocaust'. It reads as exciting as a crime novel: so many lies, forgeries, and deceptions by politicians, historians and scientists. This is the intellectual adventure of the 21st century. Be part of it! 2nd, revised paperback edition! 616 pp. pb, 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index: $30.- Ingrid Weckert, Jewish Emigration from the Third Reich Current historical writings about the Third Reich paint a bleak picture regarding its treatment of Jews. Sometimes Jewish emigration is wrongly depicted as if the Jews had to sneak over the German borders, leaving all their possessions behind. The truth is that the emigration was welcomed and supported by the German authorities, and frequently occurred under a constantly increasing pressure. Weckert's booklet eluci- dates the emigration process in law and policy, thereby augmenting the traditionally received picture of Jewish emigration from Germany. 72 pp. pb., 6"×9", index: $8.- Send orders to: Castle Hill Publishers, PO Box 257768, Chicago, IL 60625; +1-877-789-0229; www.vho.org Don Heddesheimer, The First Holocaust. Jewish Fund Raising Campaigns With Holocaust Claims During And After World War One Six million Jews in Europe threatened with a holocaust: this allegation was spread by sources like The New York Times ­ but the year was 1919! Don Heddesheimer's compact but substantive First Holocaust documents post-WWI propaganda that claimed East European Jewry was on the brink of annihilation (regularly invoking the talismanic six million figure); it details how that propaganda was used to agitate for minority rights for Jews in Poland, and for Bolshevism in Russia. It demonstrates how Jewish fundraising operations in America raised vast sums in the name of feeding Polish and Russian Jews, then funneled much of the money to Zionist and Communist "constructive undertakings." The First Holocaust, is a valuable study of American Jewish institutional opera- tions at a fateful juncture in Jewish and European history, an incisive examination of a cunningly contrived campaign of atrocity and extermination propaganda, two decades before the alleged WWII Holocaust ­ and an indispensable addition to every revisionist's library. 144 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index, $9.95 C. Mattogno, J. Graf, Treblinka. Extermination Camp or Transit Camp? Holocaust historians alleged that at Treblinka in East Poland, between 700,000 and 3,000,000 persons were murdered in 1942 and 1943. The weapons used were alleged to have been stationary and/or mobile gas chambers, poison gases of both fast acting and slow acting varieties, unslaked lime, superheated steam, electricity, diesel exhaust fumes, etc. Holocaust historians alleged that bodies were piled as high as multistoried buildings and burned without a trace, using little or no fuel. Graf and Mattogno have now analyzed the origins, logic and technical feasibility of the official version of Treblinka. On the basis of numerous documents they reveal Treblinka's true identity: it was a transit camp. Even longtime Revisionism buffs will find a lot that is new in this book, while Graf's animated style guarantees a pleasant reading experience. The original testimony of witnesses enlivens the reader, as does the skill with which the authors expose the absurdities of Holocaust historiography. 370 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index, $25.- C. Mattogno, Be ec in Propaganda, Testimonies, Archeological Research, and History Witnesses report that at least 600,000, if not as many as three million Jews were murdered in the Be ec camp, located in eastern Poland, between 1941 and 1942. Various murder weapons are claimed to have been used: diesel gas chambers; unslaked lime in trains; high voltage; vacuum chambers. According to witnesses, the corpses were incinerated on huge pyres without leaving any traces. For those who know the stories about Treblinka, this all sounds too familiar. The author therefore restricted this study to the aspects, which are different and new compared to Treblinka, but otherwise refers the reader to his Treblinka book. The development of the official image portrait of Be ec is explained and subjected to a thorough critique. In contrast to Treblinka, forensic drillings and excavations were performed in the late 1990s in Be ec, the results of which are explained and critically reviewed. These findings, together with the absurd claims by `witnesses,' refute the thesis of an extermination camp. 138 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index: $15.- J. Graf, C. Mattogno, Concentration Camp Majdanek Little research had been directed toward the concentration camp Majdanek in central Poland, even though it is claimed that up to a million Jews were murdered there. The only information available is discredited Polish Communists propaganda. This glaring research gap has finally been filled. After exhaustive research of primary sources, Mattogno and Graf created a monumental study which expertly dissects and repudiates the myth of homicidal gas chambers at Majdanek. They also investigated the legendary mass executions of Jews in tank trenches ("Operation Harvest Festival") critically and prove them groundless. The authors' investigations lead to unambiguous conclusions about the camp which are radically different from the official theses. Again they have produced a standard and methodical investigative work which authentic historiography can not ignore. 2nd ed., 320 pp pb., 6"×9", b/w & color ill., bibl., index, $25.- Send orders to: Castle Hill Publishers, PO Box 257768, Chicago, IL 60625; +1-877-789-0229; www.vho.org G. Rudolf, C. Mattogno, Auschwitz Lies. Legends, Lies, and Prejudices of Media and Scholars on the Holocaust "French biochemist G. Wellers exposed the Leuchter Report as fallacious" ­ he exposed only his own grotesque incompetence. "Polish researcher Prof. J. Markie- wicz proved with analysis that Zyklon B was used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz" ­ Markiewicz fabricated his results. "Chemist Dr. Richard Green showed that the revisionists' chemical arguments are flawed" ­ Green actually had to admit that the revisionists are right. "Prof. Zimmerman proved that the crematories in Auschwitz could cremate all victims of the claimed mass murder." ­ as an accountant, Zimmer- man proved only his lack of knowledge. "Profs. M. Shermer and A. Grobman refuted the entire array of revisionist arguments" ­ they merely covered a tiny fraction of revisionist arguments, and botched their attempt at refutation. "Keren, McCarthy, and Mazal found the `Holes of Death' proving the existence of the Auschwitz gas chambers" ­ they twisted evidence to support their case and suppressed facts refuting it. These and other untruths are treated in this book and exposed for what they really are: political lies created to ostracize dissident historians and to keep the entire western world in merciless Holocaust servitude. ca. 400 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index: $25.- F. Leuchter, R. Faurisson, G. Rudolf, The Leuchter Reports. Critical Edition Between 1988 and 1991, American expert on execution technologies Fred Leuchter wrote four expert reports addressing the question whether or not the Third Reich oper- ated homicidal gas chambers. The first report on Auschwitz and Majdanek became world famous. Based on chemical analysis of wall samples and on various technical arguments, Leuchter concluded that the locations investigated "could not have then been, or now, be utilized or seriously considered to function as execution gas cham- bers." In subsequent years, this first Leuchter Report was the target of much criticism, some of it justified. This edition republishes the unaltered text of all four reports and accompanies the first one with critical notes and research updates, backing up and supporting those of Leuchter's claims that are correct, and correcting those that are inaccurate or false. 227 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., $20.- G. Rudolf (ed.), Auschwitz: Plain Facts. A Response to Jean-Claude Pressac French pharmacist Jean-Claude Pressac tried to refute revisionists with their own technical methods. For this he was praised by the mainstream, and they proclaimed victory over the revisionists. Pressac's works are subjected to a detailed critique in Auschwitz: Plain Facts. Although Pressac deserves credit for having made accessible many hitherto unknown documents, he neither adhered to scientific nor to formal standards when interpreting documents: He made claims that he either could not prove or which contradict the facts; documents do not state what he claims they do; he exhibits massive technical incompetence, and he ignores important arguments. Auschwitz: Plain Facts is a must read for all those who want to argue against the lies and half truth of established historiography. ca. 200 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index: $20.- Carlo Mattogno, Germar Rudolf, Auschwitz: The Case against Insanity. A Response to Robert J. van Pelt (fall 2005) The gas chambers changed the whole meaning of architecture; Auschwitz is the holiest of the holy; the Holocaust is not a historical, but merely a "moral certainty;" if we remove Auschwitz from the historical picture, we end up in a nut house. These are typical statements by a scholar who has lost his mind: Robert Jan van Pelt. In 2000, he appeared as an expert witness in the trail of British historian David Irving against Jewish theologian Deborah Lipstadt. In his book The Case for Auschwitz, based on his testimony, van Pelt claimed that he finally proved the existence of homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz. The Case against Insanity exposes van Pelt's insane approach to logic and evidence, when the Holocaust is involved, is exposed. His meticulously ca. 180 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index: $16.- Send orders to: Castle Hill Publishers, PO Box 257768, Chicago, IL 60625; +1-877-789-0229; www.vho.org Jürgen Graf, The Giant with Feet of Clay. Raul Hilbergs major work "The Destruction of European Jewry" is generally consid- ered the standard work on the Holocaust. The critical reader might ask: what evidence does Hilberg provide to back his thesis that there was a German plan to exterminate Jews, to be carried out in the legendary gas chambers? And what evidence supports his estimate of 5.1 million Jewish victims? Jürgen Graf applies the methods of critical analysis to Hilberg's evidence and examines the results in the light of Revisionist historiography. The results of Graf's critical analysis are devastating for Hilberg. Graf's Giant With Feet of Clay is the first comprehensive and systematic examination of the leading spokesperson for the orthodox version of the Jewish fate during the Third Reich. 128 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index, $9.95 Germar Rudolf, The Rudolf Report. Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the `Gas Chambers' of Auschwitz In 1988, Fred Leuchter, American expert for execution technologies, investigated the alleged gas chambers of Auchwitz and Majdanek and concluded that they could not have functioned as claimed. Ever since, Leuchter's claims have been massively criticized. In 1993, Rudolf, a researcher from a prestigious German Max-Planck-Insti- tute, published a thorough forensic study about the alleged gas chambers of Auschwitz, which irons out the deficiencies and discrepancies of the Leuchter Report. The Rudolf Report is the first English edition of this sensational scientific work. It analyzes all existing evidence on the Auschwitz gas chambers. The conclusions are quite clear: The alleged gas chambers of Auschwitz could not have existed. In the appendix, Rudolf describes his unique persecution. 455 pp. A5, b/w & color ill., bibl., index; pb: $30.-; hardcover: $45.- Carlo Mattogno, Special Treatment in Auschwitz. Origin and Meaning of a Term When appearing in German wartime documents, terms like "special treatment," "spe- cial action," and others have been interpreted as code words that signify the killing of inmates. While certainly the term "special treatment" in many such documents meant execution, the term need not always have had that meaning in German records. In this book, C. Mattogno has provided the most thorough study of this textual problem to date. Publishing and interpreting numerous such documents about Auschwitz ­ many of them hitherto unknown ­ Mattogno is able to show that, while "special" had many different meanings in these documents, not a single one meant "execution." This important study demonstrates that the habitual practice of deciphering an alleged "code language" by assigning homicidal meaning to completely harmless documents is no longer tenable 151 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index, $15.- Carlo Mattogno, The Bunkers of Auschwitz. Black Propaganda versus History The so-called "Bunkers" at Auschwitz are claimed to have been the first homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz specifically errected for this purpose in early 1942. With help of original German wartime files, this study shows that these "Bunkers" never existed. It also shows how the rumors of these alleged gas chambers evolved as black propaganda created by resistance groups within the camp. The third part shows how this black propaganda was transformed into `reality' by historians. The final chapter, dedicated to the material tests (aerial photography and archeological research) confirms the publicity character of the rumors about the "Bunkers." 264 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index: $20.- Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: The Central Construction Office Based upon mostly unpublished German wartime documents form Moscow archives, this study describes the history, organization, tasks, and procedures of the Central Contruction Office of the Waffen-SS and Police Auschwitz. This office, which was responsible for the planning and construction of the Auschwitz camp complex. An indispensible study designed to prevent Holocaust historians from misinterpreting Auschwitz documents. 182 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., glossary: $18.- Send orders to: Castle Hill Publishers, PO Box 257768, Chicago, IL 60625; +1-877-789-0229; www.vho.org Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: The First Gassing. Rumor and Reality The first gassing of human beings in Auschwitz is claimed to have occurred on Sept. 3, 1941, in a basement room. The accounts reporting it are the archetypes for all later gassing accounts. This study analzses all available sources about this alleged event. It shows that these sources contradict each other in location, date, preparations, victims, etc., rendering it impossible to extract a consistent story. Original wartime documents inflict a final blow to the tale of the first homicidal gassing. ca. 180 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index: $16.- Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: Krematorium I and the Alleged Homicidal Gassings The morgue of Krematorium I in Auschwitz is claimed to have been the first homicidal gas chamber in that camp. This study thoroughly investigates all accessible statements by witnesses and analyzes hundreds of wartime documents in order to accurately write a history of that building. Mattogno proves that its morgue was never used as a homicidal gas chamber. ca. 180 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index: $18.- C. Mattogno, Auschwitz: Open Air Incineration Hundreds of thousands of corpses of murder victims are claimed to have been incinerated in deep ditches in Auschwitz. This book examines the testimonies and establishes whether these claims were technically possible. Using air photo evidence, physical evidence as well as wartime documents, the author shows that these claims are untrue. ca. 120 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w ill., bibl., index: $12.- Jürgen Graf, Carlo Mattogno, Concentration Camp Stutthof and its Function in National Socialist Jewish Policy The concentration camp at Stutthof near Danzig in western Prussia is another camp which had never been scientifically investigated by Western historians. Officially sanctioned Polish authors long maintained that in 1944, Stutthof was converted to an "auxiliary extermination camp" with the mission of carrying out the lurid, so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem." Now, Jürgen Graf and Carlo Mattogno have subjected this concept of Stutthoff to rigorous critical investigation based on Polish literature and documents from various archives. It shows that that extermination claims are in contradiction to reliable sources. Again they have produced a standard and methodical investigative work which authentic historiography can not ignore. 2nd ed., 128 pp. pb., 6"×9", b/w & color ill., bibl., index, $15.- R.H. Countess, Ch. Lindtner, G. Rudolf (eds.), Exactitude. Festschrift for Robert Faurisson to his 75th Birthday 75 years before this book was published, R. Faurisson was born, prob- ably the most courageous intellectual of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. With bravery and steadfastness, he challenged historical and political fraud, deception, and deceit by exposuring their lies and hoaxes. His method of analytical exactitude in historiography have become famous. This Festschrift is dedicated to him in his struggles. It contains a collection of arti- cles by several authors addressing various issues of scientific revisionism in general, Holocaust revisionism in particular, and biographic sketches of Robert Faurisson's scholarship over the decades. 140 pp. pb., 6"×9", ill., biographies: $15.- Upcoming Books (working titles): ­ Franz W. Seidler: Crimes Against the Wehrmacht (vol. 1 & 2). Collection of documents and testimonies about crimes committed against members and units of the German Wehrmacht during WWII. ­ Walter Post: The Defamed Wehrmacht. Collection of evidence proving that the German Wehrmacht was probably the most righteous army of WWII, always trying to keep a high standard of honor. ­ Carlo Mattogno: Healthcare in Auschwitz. A documentary study on the vast efforts of the SS to keep their prisoners alive and healthy. Send orders to: Castle Hill Publishers, PO Box 257768, Chicago, IL 60625; +1-877-789-0229; www.vho.org