Re: New 'Official' Changes in the Auschwitz Story

[Susan Cohen]

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:14:15 -0400, "Auric Hellman"
<adhe...@volcanomail.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
>
>
> 1.. 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.
>
>
> 2.. 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.
>
>
> 3.. 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.
>
>
> 4.. 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.
>
>
> 5.. "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.
>
>
> 6.. 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.
>
>
> 7.. Y. Bauer, "Fighting the Distortions," The Jerusalem Post (Israel),
>Sept. 22, 1989.
>
>
> 8.. "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.
>
>
> 9.. 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.
>
>
> 10.. 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.
>
>
> 11.. Jean-Claude Pressac, Die Krematorien von Auschwitz: Die Technik des
>Massenmordes(Munich: Piper, 1994), p. 202.
>
>
> 12.. 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.
>
>
> 13.. 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.
>
>
> 14.. 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.
>
>
> 15.. "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).
>
>
> 16.. 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."
>
>
> 17.. 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.
>
>
> 18.. 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.
>
>
> 19.. J.-C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers
>(New York: B. Klarsfeld, 1989), pp. 244, 247.
>
>
> 20.. See, for example, "Faurisson's Three Letters to Le Monde
> (1978-1979)," The Journal of Historical Review, May-June 2000, pp. 40-46.


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