XPost: talk.politics.guns, alt.politics.democrats.d, alt.politics.republicans XPost: or.politics, talk.politics.misc
On Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:33:46 -0400, Auric Hellman
<
adhellman1@gmail.com> wrote:
New 'Official' Changes in the Auschwitz Story
By Mark Weber
Since the end of World War II, authoritative claims about the character
and scope of killings at the Auschwitz concentration camp have changed >drastically. One particularly striking change concerns the various
"official" estimates of the number of victims -- a number that since
1945 has been steadily declining.
Today, more than half a century after the end of the war, the process of >"establishment" revisionism still continues. It finds recent expression
in a lengthy article, "The Number of Auschwitz Victims," published in
the May 2002 issue of the scholarly German journal Osteuropa, issued by
the prestigious Society for Eastern European Studies. The article is
written by Fritjof Meyer, a respected foreign policy analyst, author of >several books, and managing editor of Germany's foremost weekly news
magazine Der Spiegel. / 1
Drastic Reductions
The Auschwitz camp complex, located in what is now south-central Poland,
was set up by German authorities in 1940. Large numbers of Jews were
deported there between 1942 and mid-1944. The main camp, or Stammlager,
was known as Auschwitz I. Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, is regarded as the
main extermination center.
At the postwar International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (1945-1946),
the victorious Allied powers charged that the Germans exterminated four >million people at Auschwitz. This figure, which was given in a report >produced by a Soviet government commission, was uncritically accepted
for many years, and often appeared in major American newspapers and >magazines. / 2
Other figures, both higher and lower, were sometimes also claimed during
the decades after the end of World War II. / 3
One of the most widely read books on the German wartime camp system is a >detailed study written shortly after the end of the war by former
Buchenwald inmate Eugen Kogon. This much-praised work, published in the >United States under the title The Theory and Practice of Hell, reports
that at Auschwitz alone there were "at least 3,500,000 victims, probably >4,500,000." / 4
The 1955 French documentary film "Night and Fog," which is still widely
shown in France, and has been seen by many in the United States, claims
that nine million people lost their lives in Auschwitz. / 5
In his Osteuropa article, Meyer writes that Gerald Reitlinger, a
prominent Jewish specialist of this subject, estimated in his 1953 book
The Final Solution, that a total of one million people perished in
Auschwitz, of whom as many as 750,000 were murdered by gas. / 6
Until 1989, notes Meyer, it was forbidden in eastern Europe to dispute
the official finding that four million were killed at Auschwitz. At the >Auschwitz State Museum, staff members who expressed doubts about this
figure were threatened with disciplinary measures. In 1989 Israeli
Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer said that it is time to finally
acknowledge that the familiar four million figure is a deliberate myth.
/7 In July 1990 the Auschwitz State Museum, a Polish government agency,
along with Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Center, announced that
altogether perhaps one million people (both Jews and non-Jews) died at >Auschwitz. / 8
Franciszek Piper, director of the Auschwitz State Museum, in an essay >published in a semi-official 1994 American anthology, put the number of >Auschwitz victims at 1.1 million. / 9 More or less consistent with that, >prominent American newspapers in recent months have been telling readers
that "more than a million" Jews lost their lives at Auschwitz. / 10
In a book published in 1994, the French anti-revisionist writer
Jean-Claude Pressac estimated 631,000 to 711,000 deaths at Auschwitz, of >which 470,000 to 550,000 were from gassing. / 11
In his recent Osteuropa article, Fritjof Meyer presents a further
revision downwards. He writes: "These considerations are the basis for
the conclusion here that in Auschwitz half a million people were
murdered, about 356,000 of them with gas." Similarly, Meyer ends his
article by concluding that 510,000 lost their lives in Auschwitz, of
whom 356,000 "probably" were killed by gas.
The Höss 'Confessions'
For decades key evidence cited for mass killings at Auschwitz has been
the postwar testimony of Rudolf Höss, who was commandant of the camp
from May 1940 until December 1943, and again between May and July 1944.
Since the end of the war, his statements of March and April 1946, and
his testimony in April 1946 as a witness at the main Nuremberg trial,
have been widely cited in numerous history books, newspapers, and
magazine articles. / 12 In those statements, and in that testimony, he >declared that three million died at Auschwitz, of whom two and a half
million were killed "there by gassing and burning." / 13
In a detailed 1985 essay, Prof. Robert Faurisson established that the
Höss "confession" is a false document that was extracted under torture.
/ 14 Fritjof Meyer, echoing arguments and points made 17 years earlier
by Faurisson, writes that Höss' "confession" was wrung out of him after >"three days of sleep deprivation, torture, beatings after every answer,
being held naked, and forcibly intoxicated," and, finally, with the use
of a whip.
Martin Broszat's Deceit
In his Osteuropa article, Meyer refers to the deceit of Martin Broszat,
one of Germany's most prominent postwar historians. From 1972 until his
death in 1989 Broszat was deputy director, and then director of
Germany's semi-official Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.
"The unreliability of Höss' million-large figures," writes Meyer, "is so >serious that Martin Broszat simply left out some of them in the
publication of the Höss papers that he edited."
Specifically, Meyer notes, Broszat deleted from Höss' "memoir"
statements about millions of non-existent Jews who were scheduled for >extermination, including "about four million Jews from Romania," as well
as "an estimated two and a half million Jews from Bulgaria." In fact,
Meyer writes, in 1940 there were only about 342,000 Jews in Romania >altogether, and the total number of Jews in Bulgaria, according to more
or less reliable estimates, was between 48,000 and some 63,000. Höss had >exaggerated the actual number of Jews in Romania by more than ten times,
and in Bulgaria by about 50 times.
So far, anyway, no public outcry has arisen against Dr. Broszat, who >consciously falsified an important historical document, or against the >prestigious scholarly institute he directed. Similarly, no one has yet >apologized for this deception -- or even demanded that an apology be made.
Downplaying the Birkenau 'Kremas'
For decades it has been authoritatively claimed that mass killings of
Jews were carried out at Auschwitz -- above all, by poison gas in >semi-underground cellars adjacent to the Birkenau crematory structures >(Kremas). This has been the view, for example, of Robert Jan van Pelt, a >Jewish scholar who is regarded as an authority on Auschwitz and who was
a key witness against British historian David Irving in the
headline-making Irving-Lipstadt trial of January-March 2000. In his
testimony in the trial, van Pelt referred to Krema II at Birkenau as
"the most lethal building of Auschwitz," the place where "more people
lost their lives than any other place on this planet. Five hundred
thousand people were killed." / 15
In his Osteuropa article, Meyer discounts the importance of these
"lethal buildings." In a significant revision of the familiar Auschwitz >story, he shifts the focus of gassings from Birkenau Kremas II and III
to two "farm houses" or "bunkers," which were also known as the "white
house and the "red house." Meyer writes: "The actual genocide that was >carried out probably took place mostly in the two reconstructed farm
houses outside of the camp; the foundations of the first, the 'White
House' or 'Bunker I,' were recently discovered."
Meyer unhelpfully does not explain what he means here by "probably" and >"mostly."
Unsystematic Mass Killings?
Meyer also calls into question another important aspect of the familiar >extermination story. According to the "standard" story, in the summer of
1941 or, at the latest, in the summer of 1942, Hitler ordered the
systematic extermination of all the Jews of Europe under German control.
In keeping with that, SS chief Heinrich Himmler supposedly ordered
Commandant Höss to carry out systematic killings of Jews at Auschwitz,
which was to serve as a central killing center. Only employable Jews who >could be "worked to death" were to be temporarily spared.
This story is not accurate, Meyer suggests. Several months after the end
of the war in Europe, he relates, former SS officer Hans Aumeier
testified that in November 1942 Höss received an order from Himmler to
gas all weak, sick or otherwise unemployable Jewish prisoners as a
measure to prevent further spread of disease in the camp. / 16 Aumeier's >testimony, which Meyer accepts as valid, suggests that Jews were killed
at Auschwitz not as part of an comprehensive extermination program >systematically to kill all European Jews, but rather as an exceptional >measure to curb the horrific epidemics that were ravaging the Auschwitz
I and Birkenau camps. / 17
A Dubious Document
Meyer also takes a skeptical look at a document that has been cited for
years as a key piece of evidence for mass killings at Auschwitz: a June
28, 1943, letter from SS officer Karl Bischoff, head of the Auschwitz
camp central construction department, to the WVHA center in Berlin. In
this letter, Bischoff reports that all the crematory ovens in the
Auschwitz main camp and in Birkenau could process as many as 4,756
corpses every 24 hours. This document is cited, for example, in the >semi-official book, Nazi Mass Murder, in a section headed "the Perfected
Gas Chambers at Birkenau." / 18
But as long ago as 1989, the French anti-revisionist researcher
Jean-Claude Pressac expressed doubt about the figures given in this
document. In a detailed book published that year, he expressed the view
that the true cremation figures may perhaps have been one-half or
one-third of those given in the Bischoff letter. / 19 Noting that some
years ago Pressac had characterized this document as "an internal
propaganda lie" of the SS, and that even van Pelt has cut in half the
figures in the Bischoff letter, Meyer writes of the "entirely
permissible doubts about the authenticity of the document."
Meyer also discounts the familiar image of "factory like" crematories at >Birkenau, operating day and night and continually belching smoke. He
points out that these crematories operated only fitfully, and often
broke down. He cites, for example, Birkenau's crematory facility (Krema)
II, which went into operation on March 22, 1943. Cracks in the chimney
were already visible on April 3, and by mid-May the crematory was no
longer operational. Because Birkenau's crematories could not possibly
have "processed" as many corpses as has been claimed, Meyer concludes
that between December 1942 and March 1943 tens of thousands of corpses
were cremated there in the open air.
Meyer does not consider an obvious problem inherent in this claim: If >Birkenau had really been a center for a well-planned, systematic >extermination of hundreds of thousands of Jews, why did the authorities
in charge fail to arrange for the construction of adequate crematory >facilities to process the anticipated numbers of victims? To put it
another way, cremation of tens of thousands of corpses in makeshift
open-air pyres cannot be reconciled with Birkenau's supposed role as a
center where, on the basis of orders from the highest level, a program
of systematic extermination was carried out.
It is largely on the basis of his understanding of cremation capacity in
the camp, and his estimate that a total of perhaps 433,000 corpses were >cremated at Auschwitz (including Birkenau), that Meyer concludes that
some 500,000 people perished there.
Conclusion
Compared to the recently "authoritative" figure of approximately one
million Auschwitz deaths, Meyer has reduced the number of Jewish victims >there by at least 450,000. If he were held to the legal standards that
are routinely applied to revisionist skeptics, he would be prosecuted
for violating Germany's law against "relativizing" or "denying" Jewish >deaths.
Meyer seems vaguely aware of this. In an apparent effort to provide a >"politically correct" justification for his "denial" and "relativizing,"
he pompously writes: "Accordingly, the dimension of the breach of >civilization becomes conceivable and, for the first time, is a
convincing portent for those born afterwards ? This result does not >'relativize' the barbarism, but rather verifies it -- and serves as a
severe warning against a new shattering of civilization."
Meyer's article is subtitled "New Revelations through new archival
findings." In fact, Fritjof Meyer and Osteuropa journal affirm the >decades-old skepticism of the "deniers," embracing even some of the same >"physical" or "forensic" arguments presented for years by revisionists
such as Robert Faurisson. / 20 Meyer unintentionally affirms that the >skeptics were right to reject the "official" story, which -- as his
article shows -- is still changing.
Notes
Fritjof Meyer, "Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz: Neue Erkenntnisse
durch neue Archivfunde," Osteuropa: Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsfragen des >Ostens, 52. Jg. 5/2002, Mai 2002, pp. 631-641. (Osteuropa is published
by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde.) Fritjof Meyer,
managing editor (leitender Redakteur) of Der Spiegel, was born in 1932.
He holds several certifications of expertise: Dipl. DHP,
Dipl.-Politologe, Dipl.-Kameralist. He is the author, for example, of >Weltmacht im Abstieg: der Niedergang der Sowjet-Union (München: C. >Bertelsmann, 1984). A leading German daily has reported on the impact of >Meyer's comment on the impact of, or response to, Meyer's Osteuropa
article. See: Sven Felix Kellerhoff, "Der Fall des angesehenen
Journalisten Fritjof Meyer," Die Welt, August 28, 2002. (This text is
posted on David Irving's web site.) See also: "Auschwitz: Die Wahrheit," >National-Zeitung (Munich), No. 30, July 19, 2002, pp. 1, 5.
Nuremberg document 008-USSR (May 6, 1945). International Military
Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International
Military Tribunal (Nuremberg: 1947-1949; IMT 42-vol. "blue series"),
Vol. 39, pp. 241, 261; C.L. Sulzberger, "Oswiecim Killings Placed at >4,000,000," The New York Times, May 8, 1945, and, The New York Times,
Jan. 31, 1986, p. A4.
Robert Faurisson, "Combien de morts a Auschwitz?," Dec. 18, 1995, in
Écrits Révisionnistes (1999), vol. 4, pp. 1730-1740.
German translation: R. Faurisson, "Wieviele Tote gab es im KL
Auschwitz"?," Viertelsjahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, Sept.
1999 (3. Jg., Heft 3), pp. 268-272. Note also Faurisson's comment on >Auschwitz figures in The Journal of Historical Review, Jan.-Feb. 1995
(Vol. 15, No. 1), p. 24.
Eugen Kogon, The Theory and Practice of Hell (New York: Farrar, Straus,
1950; and, New York: Berkley, 1984 [pb.]), p. 253. The original German >edition was entitled Der SS Staat.
"Night and Fog" ("Nuit et Brouillard") is a film by Alain Resnais >(distributed by Classic Releasing, 1993). Approximately 55 seconds from
the end, as the grounds of Auschwitz are panned, the English subtitle
reads: "Nine million dead haunt this landscape." See also Robert
Faurisson's mentions of this film in The Journal of Historical Review, >Jan.-Feb. 1994, p. 24, and in Écrits Révisionnistes (1999), vol. 4, pp. >1730-1731 (incl. footnote), 1738.
In the second edition of The Final Solution, Gerald Reitlinger estimated
that altogether perhaps 700,000 to 900,000 people (Jews and non-Jews) >perished at Auschwitz. See: G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution: The
Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe (London: Sphere Books, pb.,
1971. 2nd edition), pp. 500-501.
Y. Bauer, "Fighting the Distortions," The Jerusalem Post (Israel), Sept.
22, 1989.
"Auschwitz Deaths Reduced to a Million," The Daily Telegraph (London),
July 17, 1990; "Poland Reduces Auschwitz Death Toll Estimate to 1
Million," The Washington Times, July 17, 1990.
F. Piper, "The Number of Victims," in Y. Gutman and M. Berenbaum, eds., >Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 1994), p. 71. >Recently The Wall Street Journal told readers that at Auschwitz "more
than one million people [were] murdered here, 90 percent of them Jews."
See: "Burden of History: Auschwitz Repairs Force Tough Debate over >Preservation," The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 14, 2002, p. A1. Similarly, >Prof. John K. Roth, in a review of a new book by two prominent Jewish >Holocaust historians, wrote that "more than a million Jews perished" in >Auschwitz-Birkenau, "most of them gassed to death." See: Los Angeles
Times "Book World," Sunday, Sept. 22, 2002, p. 4.
Jean-Claude Pressac, Die Krematorien von Auschwitz: Die Technik des >Massenmordes (Munich: Piper, 1994), p. 202.
Höss' testimony is described as "crucial" and of "critical importance"
in Y. Gutman, M. Berenbaum, eds., Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp >(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, with the US Holocaust Memorial >Museum, Washington, DC, 1994), p. 29.
Höss statement, March 14 (or 15), 1946. Nuremberg document NO-1210
(749-D); Höss statement, April 5, 1946. Nuremberg document 3868-PS
(Exhibit USA-819). International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major
War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg: >1947-1949; IMT 42-vol. "blue series"), Vol. 33, pp. 275-279. This latter
Höss statement, including its figures of Auschwitz deaths, was quoted by
the Nuremberg Tribunal in its final judgment. See IMT "blue series,"
Vol. 1, pp. 251-252.
Robert Faurisson, "How the British Obtained the Confessions of Rudolf
Höss," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87 (Vol. 7, No. 4),
pp. 389-403. (http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v07/v07p389_Faurisson.html) The
original French text was first published in Annales d'Histoire
Revisionniste (Paris), No. 1, spring 1987, pp. 137-152. It was also
reprinted in: R. Faurisson, Écrits Révisionnistes (1999), vol. 2, pp. >657-669.
"David Irving's Final Address in the London Libel Trial," The Journal of >Historical Review, March-April 2000 (Vol. 19, No. 2), pp. 37-38.
Together with Deborah Dwork, Robert Jan van Pelt is author of Auschwitz:
1270 to Today (New York: Norton, 1996), and, most recently, also with >Dwork,Holocaust: A History (New York: Norton, 2002).
Source cited by Meyer (in note No. 8 of his Osteuropa article): CIA
Special Collections, Reference Coll., Box 3; Bericht von BB-175 über
Aumeiers Vernehmung im Gefängnis Akerhus, Norwegen, vom 29.10.1945.
See also the report on the interrogation of Kurt Aumeier of August 10,
1945, posted on David Irving's web site >(http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Aumeier/100845.html). Source cited by
Irving: National Archives (Washington, DC), RG.319 - IRR - XE.003245
Hans Aumeier. According to this report, Aumeier stated that in November
1942, he was told in strictest confidence of an order from Berlin "that
all Jewish prisoners who were infirm, sick or incapable of work were to
be gassed in order to prevent further spreading of diseases."
On epidemics at Auschwitz, see: Y. Gutman and M. Berenbaum, eds.,
Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 1994), pp.
27, 214, 328, 381, 388. See also: M. Weber, "High Frequency Delousing >Facilities at Auschwitz," The Journal of Historical Review, May-June
1999 (Vol. 18, No. 3), pp. 4-12, esp. pp. 2-8.
Eugen Kogon, and H. Langbein, A. Rückerl, and others, Nazi Mass Murder:
A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
Univ. Press, 1994), p. 157. Original German edition:
Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas (Frankfurt: S.
Fischer, 1986), p. 219.
This document is also cited, and reproduced in facsimile, in a six-page >article in Der Spiegel, No. 40/ 1993, Oct. 4, 1993, pp. 151, 156. More >recently, Prof. John K. Roth, in a review of a new book by D. Dwork and
R. J. van Pelt, wrote that the four crematory structures at Birkenau,
which "included eight gas chambers, 46 ovens and the capacity to dispose
of 4,416 corpses a day." This calculation is from the June 28, 1943,
Bischoff letter (4,756 minus 340 for the crematory in the Auschwitz I
main camp). Los Angeles Times "Book World," Sunday, Sept. 22, 2002, p. 4. >J.-C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers
(New York: B. Klarsfeld, 1989), pp. 244, 247.
See, for example, "Faurisson's Three Letters to Le Monde (1978-1979),"
The Journal of Historical Review, May-June 2000, pp. 40-46.
We can only hope that it is not too late to have this incorporated
into every school's curriculum. Children deserve to know the truth.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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