On Saturday, August 5, 2023 at 8:14:00 PM UTC-4, NOT jdyöung wrote:
by Jürgen Graf
A brilliant author and historian
English historian David Irving has several admirable qualities:
He is a tireless researcher who has spent thousands of hours in the archives.
He is an excellent historian of the Second World War. Some of his
books, such as Hitler’s War and Churchill’s War, will be read as long
as there will be people who are interested in this dark and dramatic
period of history.
He is a master of the English language, both as a writer and as an
orator.
In the sixties and the early seventies, Irving’s brilliance was widely recognized. While many establishment historians disliked the young
maverick, few of them denied his talent. He was so good that the media begrudgingly forgave him for what was perceived as covert sympathies
for Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Even in Germany, he was
repeatedly invited to television discussions where he impressed the
public with his historical knowledge and his fluency in the German
language.
With regard to the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” Irving accepted the official version as a matter of course; he never wrote a
book or even an article about the subject.
“Hitler’s War”
During his work on Hitler’s War, David Irving studied a significant
number of German war-time documents. With growing amazement he
realized that none of these countless documents proved that Hitler had ordered the extermination of the Jews. More amazing was the fact that
the documents contained no evidence that Hitler was even aware of a
plan to exterminate Europe’s Jews.
At that time, Irving must have been aware that there were researchers
who disputed the official version of the Jews' fate during World War
Two. Arthur Butz’s The Hoax of the Twentieth Century had come out in
1976, a year before Hitler’s War. It seems unlikely that Irving was
not aware of this book and its thesis. At any rate, Irving failed to
draw the only logical conclusion from the total lack of documentary
evidence for the “Holocaust,” and concluded instead that the extermination of the Jews had been ordered and organized by the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler without Hitler’s knowing. In Hitler’s War, Irving wrote:
“By 1942, the massacre machinery was gathering momentum – of such refinement and devilish ingenuity that from Himmler down to the
ex-lawyers who ran the extermination camps perhaps only seventy men
were aware of the truth.“[1]
To this wildly implausible thesis, Robert Faurisson raised the
following objection:
“Borrowing a comparison from David Irving, I can certainly believe
that Menachem Begin could have been unaware of the massacre of the
Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon at the time it was taking place.
Over a period of several hours, several hundred civilians were
massacred. I do not know when Begin learned of the massacre, but I do
know that, like everybody else in the world, he learned about it very quickly. If, however, instead of several hundred men, women and
children being massacred in a few hours, we are considering the
massacre of millions of men, women and children over a period of three
or four years in the very heart of Europe, by which miracle could that heinous crime have been hidden from Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and
Roosevelt, as well as Germany and all of Europe, except for perhaps
only seventy men!”[2]
Today, in 2009, this argument is as sound as it was in 1983!
The Leuchter Report
In April 1988, during the second Zündel trial in Toronto, David Irving learned that an American execution technologist, Fred Leuchter, who
had been contacted by Ernst Zündel’s advisor Robert Faurisson, had
flown to Poland with a small group of helpers in order to examine the alleged homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz I, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. Upon his return, Leuchter had written a report in which he concluded that these rooms could not have been used as gas chambers
for technical reasons. More importantly, Leuchter and his team had
taken samples from the walls inside the alleged gas chambers of
Auschwitz I and Birkenau where, according to official historiography,
huge numbers of Jews had been killed with Hydrogen Cyanide gas (Zyklon
B). The samples were subsequently analyzed in an American laboratory.
The tests revealed either no detection of traces of cyanide or
extremely low levels, while a control sample taken from Delousing
Facility No. 1 at Birkenau contained an exceedingly high percentage of cyanide.[3]
The Leuchter report confirmed what David Irving must have suspected:
The Auschwitz gas chamber story was a hoax. Irving now believed that
the Holocaust story would collapse in the near future, and he decided
to jump on the revisionist bandwagon. He, David Irving, whose genius
the narrow-minded court historians stubbornly refused to acknowledge,
would put them all to shame; he would be the first prominent historian
to pillory the Auschwitz fraud. Towards the end of the Zündel trial,
Irving appeared as a witness for the defense. He endorsed the Leuchter report, which he called a “shattering document.” In 1988 and 1989, he made several speeches disputing the existence of homicidal gas
chambers at Auschwitz: one of these speeches, which he delivered on
Austrian soil in 1989, would lead to his arrest and incarceration in
Austria sixteen years later.
Irving’s hope that the Leuchter report would lead to the immediate collapse of the Auschwitz gas chamber story did not materialize.
Irving was viciously smeared by the media; his books disappeared from
the bookshops; he sustained huge financial losses and ultimately was
branded a “Holocaust denier.”
David Irving v. Deborah Lipstadt
After a particularly obnoxious representative of the Holocaust lobby, Deborah Lipstadt, had reviled Irving in her book Denying the Holocaust
[4], he sued her for libel. The trial took place in London in early
2000. Although it was unlikely that Irving would win this case, he
could have scored a tremendous moral victory by making mincemeat of
Lipstadt and her experts. It goes without saying that this would have required serious preparation, but Irving, who was insufficiently
acquainted with the “Holocaust” subject, did not deem it necessary to study the revisionist literature before the trial. I vividly remember
my dismay when I read in the Swiss Jewish newspaper Jüdische Rundschau Maccabi that Irving had “admitted the existence of the gas vans”. It
was quite true: confronted with the so-called “Just document”[5] which Lipstadt’s team had presented as documentary proof for the mass murder
of Jews in gas vans, Irving had declared it to be authentic, although
it is a crude forgery teeming with linguistic and technical
absurdities. This fake had been analyzed in detail by two revisionist researchers, the German Ingrid Weckert[6] and the Frenchman Pierre Marais.[7] Since Irving can read both German and French with the
greatest ease, he had no excuse for not being familiar with these exceedingly important studies.
His limited knowledge of the subject forced Irving to make several spectacular, but totally unnecessary concessions to his adversaries.
In his verdict, the judge Charles Gray correctly stated:
“In the course of the trial Irving modified his position: He was
prepared to concede that gassings of human beings had taken place at Auschwitz, but on a limited scale.”[8]
To Irving’s credit, it should be pointed out that he made very
efficient use of Faurisson’s “No holes, no Holocaust” argument. According to the “eyewitness evidence” on which the official version
of the events is based, Leichenkeller (morgue) 1 of Krematorium II at Auschwitz-Birkenau was used as a homicidal gas chamber where,
according to Lipstadt’s expert Robert Jan van Pelt, about 500,000 Jews were murdered in 1943/1944. During the trial, Irving demonstrated that
the openings in the roof of Leichenkeller 1, through which the SS
allegedly dropped pellets of Zyklon B, did not exist, which means that
the alleged crime could not possibly have been perpetrated. In this
point, Irving scored a major triumph. Even the judge Charles Grey, who
was quite hostile to Irving, honestly admitted in his verdict:
“I have to confess that, in common I suspect with most other people, I
had supposed that the evidence of mass extermination of Jews in the
gas chambers at Auschwitz was compelling. I have, however, set aside
this preconception when assessing the evidence adduced by the parties
in this proceeding.”[9]
In jail in Austria
In November 2005, David Irving imprudently visited the once free
Austria where he was promptly arrested for a “Holocaust-denying”
speech he had made in 1989. At his trial, Irving said certain things
for which we have no right to blame him: He wanted to be a free man
again as soon as possible and to be reunited with his family. In his situation, many people would have done the same thing. For his
cooperative attitude, the Austrian kangaroo court sentenced Irving to
three years imprisonment. In December 2006, after serving one third of
his prison term, he was released and allowed to return to England.
David Irving’s trip to Poland
In March 2007, I [received] an e-mail from Irving who informed me that
he was in Poland, where he was visiting the “Aktion Reinhardt camps.” According to German wartime documents the purpose of “Aktion
Reinhardt” was the confiscation of Jewish property. Without a shred of documentary or material evidence, the orthodox historians claim that
the real purpose of this action was the physical liquidation of the
Jews of Eastern Poland and that between 1.5 and 2 million Jews were
killed with carbon monoxide from diesel engines in three camps:
Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Traditional history has it that these
camps were pure extermination centers where all Jews, regardless of
age and health, were gassed upon arrival without registration: only a handful of strong young Jews were temporarily spared because they were needed to keep the camps running.
In his e-mail (which I unfortunately deleted) Irving must have asked
me a question about Belzec because I distinctly remember that in my
reply I asked him if he had read Carlo Mattogno’s book Belzec in Propaganda, Testimonies, Archeological Research, and History.[10] He answered that he would read it later.
In addition to Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, Irving also visited
Auschwitz and Majdanek. Apparently he did not visit the sixth alleged “extermination camp,” Chelmno (Kulmhof). On his website[11], he published an account of his trip to Poland which struck me by its superficiality and its vagueness. It was impossible to deduce from
this account whether Irving believed that homicidal gassings had taken
place at Auschwitz and Majdanek. As far as the three “Aktion
Reinhardt” camps were concerned, he seemed to endorse the
“extermination camp” version; on the other hand, he spoke of the “alleged gas chambers” of these camps. In other words: He avoided
making clear and unequivocal statements.
My questions to David Irving and his reply
In March 2009, I learned that David Irving had given advice to a
fellow “Holocaust denier,” Bishop Richard Williamson, and I received a message from an irate French lady who castigated Irving’s statements
about Treblinka. On 2 April, I sent Irving a message, asking him the following four questions:
Did he believe that a mass murder of Jews had taken place at
Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec?
If he believed that such a mass murder had indeed been committed, what
was his evidence?
In this case, how was the massacre carried out?
Had he, David Irving, read Carlo Mattogno’s book about Belzec and the
book Treblinka: Extermination camp or transit camp?[12], written by
Carlo Mattogno and me?
On the very same day, I received the following reply from David
Irving:
“1. Ich bin der Auffassung, dass in besagten drei Lagern Massenvernichtungen stattgefunden haben (“durch Gas” lässt sich nicht beweisen, ist ja sehr umstritten).
2. Beweismaterial:
Bekannter Briefwechsel Wolff/Ganzenmüller betr. Malkinia/Treblinka. Himmlers Anordnung, in Treblinka nichts auffindbar zurückzulassen, anschliessend einen Bauernhof darüber entstehen zu lassen [...]. Persönliche Befragung zweier Zeugen... betr. Belzec, falls Echtheit nachweisbar.
Höfle-Decode vom Januar 1943 und in Zusammenhang damit der
Korherr-Bericht.
3. Für das Jahr 1942: Das Höfle-Dokument spricht von 1'274’166.
Für 1942 und 1943 haben wir aus Himmler-Akten die Beuteziffer
Reinhardt – Schmuck, Uhren, Münzen. Daraus lässt sich ungefähr eine Ziffer für das Ergebnis für 1943 zusammenreimen bzw. hochrechnen, und
zwar mehr als 1 Million – Himmler spricht dem Mufti gegenüber von „3 Millionen“.
[1. In my opinion, a mass extermination took place in the
aforementioned three camps (it cannot be proved that it was carried
out by means of gas; as you know, this is highly controversial).
2. Evidence:
The well-known correspondence between Wolff and Ganzenmüller
concerning Malkinia/Treblinka.
Himmler’s order not to leave any traces at Treblinka and later to
build a farmhouse there.
Personal interrogation of two witnesses… about Belzec, if the
authenticity [of their statements] can be proved.
The decoded Höfle radio message from January 1943 and in this
connection the Korherr report.
3. For 1942: The Höfle document mentions a figure of 1,274,166. For
1942 and 1943, Himmler’s documents reveal the extent of the Reinhardt
loot – jewels, watches, coins. Based on this information, it is
possible to guess or to calculate an approximate figure for 1943, to
wit more than one million. To the Mufti Himmler speaks of “three million”.]
The case of the missing answer to the fourth question
While David Irving gave clear answers to my first three questions, he
did not care to answer the forth one: Had he read Treblinka – Extermination Camp or Transit Camp?, written by Carlo Mattogno and me,
and Mattogno’s book about Belzec? At the time of Irving’s journey to Poland, both books had been online for more than three years, and the British historian, who is highly computer-literate, could easily have convinced himself of their value. The bibliography of Treblinka
contains over 200 titles, about two dozen of them in Polish. As many
of these Polish sources are of vital importance, one merit of our book
is to make them accessible to researchers who, like Irving, do not understand the Polish tongue. Furthermore, Treblinka contains numerous references to documents from Russian archives which were never before published in any Western language.
While Belzec is much shorter than Treblinka, its bibliography still comprises 80 titles, 18 of them in the Polish language. The most
important chapter is the third one, where Mattogno analyses the
results of the forensic drillings and excavations which were performed
on the territory of the former camp in the late 1990s.
If David Irving did not consider it necessary to read these two books,
this shows he is not in the least interested in what really happened
at Treblinka and Belzec. Of course, it is quite possible that he has
indeed read them, but is reluctant to admit this, because otherwise he
would be forced to respond to the revisionist arguments, especially
the technical ones.
David Irving’s evidence for the mass murder of Jews at the three
Reinhardt camps
In his answer to my questions, David Irving mentioned seven reasons
for his belief that the three Reinhardt camps had been extermination centers. Five of these reasons are based on documents, the remaining
two on hearsay. We will examine the documents first.
- “The well known correspondence between Wolff and Ganzenmüller concerning Malkinia/Treblinka.”
On July 28, 1942, Albert Ganzenmüller, Secretary of State in the Reichsverkehrsministerium (Imperial Ministry of Transport), stated in
a letter to SS-Gruppenführer Karl Wolff: “Since July 22, a train with 5000 Jews makes a daily trip from Warsaw to Treblinka via Malkinia, in addition to a train with 5000 Jews traveling twice a week from
Pryemysl to Belzec.”[13] On August 13, Wolff replied: “I have noted
with especial pleasure that a train with 5000 members of the chosen
people has already been running for 14 days to Treblinka every day,
and we are thus in a position to carry out this movement of population
in an accelerated tempo.”[14] Neither Ganzenmüller nor Wolff stated
that the Jews were being killed at Treblinka; Wolff spoke of a
“movement of population” which clearly shows that he regarded
Treblinka as a transit camp.
- “Himmler’s order not to leave any traces at Treblinka and later to build a farmhouse there.”
As I do not know this order, I asked David Irving to send me a copy.
On April 9, he answered that he would do so later. Since I have yet to receive the document, I am unable to comment on it. However I am
absolutely sure that it does not contain any reference to mass murder,
for if this were the case, it would be quoted in every traditional
study of the Holocaust.
- “The decoded Höfle radio message from January 1943 and in this connection the Korherr report.”
In his well-known 1943 report,[15] Richard Korherr wrote that by the
end of 1942 1,274,166 Jews had been moved through the camps in the
General Gouvernement. The Höfle radio message[16] confirms Korherr’s figure of 1,274,166 and specifies that 24,733 of the deportees had
been sent to L. (Lublin/Majdanek), 434,508 to B. (Belzec), 101,370 to
S. (Sobibor) and 713,355 to T. (Treblinka). Neither of the two
documents states that the deportees were killed.
- “For 1942 and 1943, Himmler’s documents which reveal the extent of
the Reinhardt loot: Jewels, watches, coins.”
The fact that the Germans robbed Jews of their jewels, watches and
coins does not prove that they murdered them.
Thus none of the documents mentioned by Irving provide proof that the Reinhardt camps were extermination centers.
The last two “proofs” belong to the category of hearsay. What the
Mufti of Jerusalem claimed to have heard from Himmler, or what
somebody claimed the Mufti had claimed to have heard from Himmler, has little historical value. Even more preposterous is the reference to
the “personal interrogation of two witnesses about Belzec”. Imagine
the following dialogue:
Hiroshima denier: “I do not believe for a moment that the Americans
really dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945. That’s just silly Japanese atrocity propaganda.”
David Irving: “I think you are wrong. Two years ago, I went to
Hiroshima where I personally interrogated two old Japanese who had
witnessed the bombing as children. If their statements are true, they
prove that the Americans indeed dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.”
If hundreds of thousands of Jews had been murdered at Belzec, we could
do without “eyewitness evidence.” Irving’s argument reminds me of “Belzec expert” Michael Tregenza who wrote about the pyres of Belzec:
“There is much disagreement on the subject of the number of pyres at Belzec. Witnesses from the village state that up to five pyres were in
use, whereas SS personnel spoke of two pyres during the judicial
proceedings in Munich in 1963/1964. Assuming that a minimum of 500,000 corpses were burned on two pyres, one has to assume, for five pyres, a
much higher figure – possibly twice as high – than the 600,000 persons officially assumed so far.”[17]
So Tregenza “proves” the murder of up to 1,200,000 Jews at Belzec by means of gossip he has heard from some old people several decades
after the war!
David Irving’s death toll for the Reinhardt camps
In his standard work about the “Holocaust,” Raul Hilberg claims that 750,000 Jews were murdered at Treblinka, 550,000 at Belzec, and
200.000 at Sobibor[18], which means that according to Hilberg, the
total death toll for the three Reinhardt camps was 1.5 million. This
figure is lower by 900,000 than the one peddled by David Irving (1.274 million for 1942 plus more than a million for 1943 = about 2.4
million).
Consider the following:
Hilberg’s figure of 550,000 Belzec victims is impossible because
according to the Höfle document (which was not yet known in 1985 when Hilberg published the second and “definitive” edition of his book) 434,508 Jews were deported to Belzec until December 31, 1942. Since everybody agrees Belzec was closed at the end of 1942, no deportations
to this camp can have occurred in 1943.
In view of this fact, the total death toll for this camp cannot
possibly have exceeded 434,508, even if every single Jew deported to
Belzec was killed there (as both Hilberg and Irving assume).
If Irving is right, and if 2.4 million Jews were indeed exterminated
at the three Reinhardt camps, but “only” 434,508 of them at Belzec,
the remaining 1,965,492 victims must have been murdered at Treblinka
and Sobibor. This would mean that Hilberg’s combined figure for these
two camps (750,000 + 200,000 = 950,000) is too low by more than one
million!
The case of the missing murder weapon
In his reply to my questions, David Irving stated that it is not
proven that the (alleged) extermination at the Reinhardt camps was
carried out by means of gas. Since Irving did not mention any
alternative killing method (e.g. shooting), this implies that the
murder weapon is unknown.
We know exactly how the victims died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: They
were killed by the explosion of the atomic bombs, or later succumbed
to radioactivity. We know exactly how the victims died in Dresden:
They were burned alive, or suffocated under the debris of their
houses. We know exactly how the victims died at Katyn: They were shot
by Stalin’s henchmen. We know exactly how the victims died at Eisenhower’s Rhine meadow camps: They were deliberately starved to
death.
According to David Irving, 2.4 million people were murdered at the
three Reinhardt camps – far more than in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Katyn and the Rhine meadow camps combined. But we do not know how they
were killed!
Let us sum up: David Irving is unable to produce any documentary
evidence for the alleged mass murder at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.
He implicitly admits that there is not a single trustworthy witness.
But if there are no documents and no trustworthy witnesses, what
evidence are his claims based upon?
Does he claim that there is forensic evidence, i.e. huge amounts of
human remains found at the site of the three Reinhardt camps? No, he
does not. He does not even mention the Kola report which, according to
the orthodox historians, proves that Belzec was an extermination camp.
(We will discuss this report later.)
The diesel gas chamber story
According the official Holocaust literature, the (alleged) mass
murders at Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec were carried out with diesel exhaust. But as engineer Friedrich Berg has shown in his carefully researched article “Diesel Gas Chambers: Ideal for Torture, Absurd for Murder”[19], diesel engines are an extremely poor murder weapon
because they put out very low quantities of CO, but contain a high percentage of oxygen. Any gasoline engine would be infinitely more
suitable for mass murder than a diesel. Berg’s arguments were so
iron-clad that the Holocaust lobby made no attempt to refute them. In Debating the Holocaust Thomas Dalton states:
“The [diesel engine] topic is almost completely avoided by every anti-revisionist writer. […] This is a strong implicit admission that traditionalism has no reply to Berg and the revisionists. [...] Most recently the bloggers have attempted to address this issue. After
admitting that ‘it is simply not feasible to use diesel engines for gassings… when one has access to petrol engines’, Romanov[20] claims that the diesel issue is ‘irrelevant’ because, in his view, anyone who claimed that the gassing engine was a diesel was simply mistaken. He
argues that the ‘most knowledgeable’ witnesses mentioned gasoline, but he can cite only two: Fuchs (for Sobibor only), and Reder, who said
the exhaust gas was sent into the open air!”[21]
Let me add that the argument of anti-revisionist blogger S. Romanov
(“The diesel issue is irrelevant”) reveals the queer mindset of this individual: There is neither documentary nor material evidence for the “Aktion Reinhardt” holocaust, and there are no trustworthy witnesses either (for what credit can be given to witnesses who “were simply mistaken” as to the murder weapon?), but nonetheless the Aktion
Reinhardt holocaust is a proven and indisputable fact! In other words:
The pillars on which the edifice once rested are gone, but the edifice
is still standing, or rather hovering in the air! A major miracle!
David Irving is certainly aware of the absurdity of the diesel gas
chamber story. At the 1983 revisionist conference, which Irving
attended, Friedrich Berg presented a paper which already contained
nearly all the arguments adduced in his 2003 article[22]. Irving, who delivered his speech on the same day as Berg, stated:
“I must say that I have been deeply impressed by Mr. Friedrich Berg’s lecture earlier this afternoon. I have found a great deal in his
lecture which was greatly impressive.”[23]
So as early as in 1983, Irving knew that the diesel exhaust story is untenable. That is why he is now compelled to state that it is
unproven that the (alleged) mass murder was carried out by gas, and
that this issue is “highly controversial.”
The evolution of the extermination legend
Almost immediately after the three Reinhardt camps had been put into operation, Jewish and Polish groups started spreading fantastic rumors
about mass killings in these camps. The knowledge of these stories is
of vital importance for an understanding of how the currently dominant historical version of these camps came about and what level of
credibility can be ascribed to it.
Let us begin with Belzec. According to the self-styled “eyewitness”
Jan Karski, Jews were exterminated at Belzec by means of quicklime in trains[24]. However, most “witnesses” mentioned killing by
electricity. On July 10, 1942, the Polish government in exile in
London received the following report:
“According to information from a German who is employed there, the
place of execution is at Belzec, near the station. […] Once
discharged, the men go into a barrack on the right, the women into one
on the left, to undress, supposedly for taking a bath. Then the groups
go together into a third barrack with an electric plate, where the
execution occurs.”[25]
In a book published in Stockholm in 1944 and translated into English a
year later, the Hungarian Jew Stefan Szende described how million of
Jews had been killed at Belzec by electricity in “the underground
premises of the execution building”:
“When trainloads of naked Jews arrived they were herded into a great
hall capable of holding several thousand people. This hall had no
windows and its flooring was of metal. Once the Jews were all inside,
the floor of this hall sank like a lift into a great tank of water
which lay below it until the Jews were up to their waists in water.
Then a powerful electric current was sent into the metal flooring and
within a few seconds all the Jews, thousands at a time, were
dead.”[26]
In its official report on the German crimes in Poland, presented by
the Soviets at the Nuremberg trial, the Polish government wrote the following about Belzec:
“In the early months of 1942, reports came in that in this camp,
special installations for the mass execution of Jews were being built.
Under the pretext that they were being taken to a bath, they were
undressed completely and pushed into the building. A strong electric
current passed through the floor of this building.”[27]
The horror stories about Sobibor were quite different. While the
Jewish witness Zelda Metz claimed that at this camp the Jews were “asphyxiated with chlorine”[28], the Soviet witness Alexander
Pechersky depicted the alleged mass murder in the following way:
“As soon as they all have entered, the doors are closed with a heavy thump. A heavy black substance comes down in swirls from openings in
the ceiling. One hears frantic screams, but not for very long because
they change to gasping suffocating breaths and convulsions.”[29]
The case of Treblinka is even more instructive. While some of the
earlier witnesses indeed mentioned gas chambers, none of them claimed
that the murder weapon was a diesel engine. On August 17, 1942, the
Polish underground newspaper Informacja biezaca told of a mobile gas
chamber which moved along the mass graves.[30] Three weeks later, on September 8, the same paper described the alleged gassings as follows:
The victims were exposed to a gas with retarded effect, whereupon they
left the gas chambers, walked to the mass graves, fainted and fell
into the graves.[31] However, the main killing method depicted by the witnesses was hot steam. On November 15, 1942, the Resistance Movement
of the Warsaw Ghetto published a long report in which it stated that
between late July and early November, two million Jews had been
exterminated at Treblinka in steam chambers.[32]
In August 1944, the Red Army conquered the area around Treblinka, and
a Soviet commission questioned former inmates of the camp. What murder weapon would it opt for – gas or steam? As a matter of fact, it chose neither, but claimed in its report that three million people had been
killed at Treblinka by pumping the air out of the execution
chambers![33] In September 1944, a professional atrocity propaganda
monger, Wassili Grossman, honored Treblinka with his visit. In his
pamphlet The Hell of Treblinka Grossman confirmed the figure of three million victims; as he could not know which of the three killing
methods (steam, gas and pumping the air out of the chambers) would
finally prevail, he prudently mentioned all of them in his
booklet.[34]
At the Nuremberg trial, Germany’s accusers chose the steam version. On December 14, 1945, the Polish government issued a document which was
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