THE SIX MILLION: THE DOCUMENTARY 'EVIDENCE'
B.H. Cramer
DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
From the foregoing it would seem certain that the figure of six million
murdered Jews amounts to nothing more than a vague compromise between
several quite baseless estimates; there is not a shred of documentary
evidence for it that is trustworthy. Occasionally, writers narrow it down to
give a disarming appearance of authenticity. Lord Russell of Liverpool, for
example, in his The Scourge of the Swastika (London, 1954) claimed that "not
less than five million" Jews died in German concentration camps, having
satisfied himself that he was somewhere between those who estimated 6
million and those who preferred 4 million. But, he admitted, "the real
number will never be known." If so, it is difficult to know how he could
have asserted "not less than five million." The Joint Distribution Committee
favours 5,012,000, but the Jewish "expert" Reitlinger suggests a novel
figure of 4,192,200 "missing Jews" of whom an estimated one third died of
natural causes. This would reduce the number deliberately "exterminated" to
2,796,000. However, Dr. M. Perlzweig, the New York delegate to a World
Jewish Congress press conference held at Geneva in 1948 stated: "The price
of the downfall of National Socialism and Fascism is the fact that seven
million Jews lost their lives thanks to cruel Anti-Semitism." In the Press
and elsewhere, the figure is often casually lifted to eight million or
sometimes even nine million. As we have proved in the previous chapter, none
of these figures are in the remotest degree plausible, indeed, they are
ridiculous.
FANTASTIC EXAGGERATIONS
So far as is known, the first accusation against the Germans of the mass
murder of Jews in war-time Europe was made by the Polish Jew Rafael Lemkin
in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published in New York in 1943.
Somewhat coincidentally, Lemkin was later to draw up the U.N. Genocide
Convention, which seeks to outlaw "racialism". His book claimed that the
Nazis had destroyed millions of Jews, perhaps as many as six millions. This,
by 1943, would have been remarkable indeed, since the action was allegedly
started only in the summer of 1942. At such a rate, the entire world Jewish
population would have been exterminated by 1945. After the war, propaganda
estimates spiralled to heights even more fantastic. Kurt Gerstein, an
anti-Nazi who claimed to have infiltrated the S.S., told the French
interrogator Raymond Cartier that he knew that no less than forty million
concentration camp internees had been gassed. In his first signed memorandum
of April 26th, 1945, he reduced the figure to 25 million, but even this was
too bizarre for French Intelligence and in his second memorandum, signed at
Rottweil on May 4th, 1945, he brought the figure closer to the six million
preferred at the Nuremberg Trials. Gerstein's sister was congenitally insane
and died by euthenasia, which may well suggest a streak of mental
instability in Gerstein himself. He had, in fact, been convicted in 1936 of
sending eccentric mail through the post. After his two "confessions" he
hanged himself at Cherche Midi prison in Paris. Gerstein alleged that during
the war he passed on information concerning the murder of Jews to the
Swedish Government through a German baron but for some inexplicable reason
his report was "filed away and forgotten". He also claimed that in August
1942 he informed the Papal nuncio in Berlin about the whole "extermination
programme", but the reverend person merely told him to "Get out." The
Gerstein statements abound with claims to have witnessed the most gigantic
mass executions (twelve thousand in a single day at Belzec), while the
second memorandum describes a visit by Hitler to a concentration camp in
Poland on June 6th, 1942 which is known never to have taken place.
Gerstein's fantastic exaggerations have done little but discredit the whole
notion of mass extermination. Indeed, Evangelical Bishop Wilhelm Dibelius of
Berlin denounced his memoranda as "Untrustworthy" (H. Rothfels,
"Augenzeugenbericht zu den Massenvergasungen" in Vierteljahrshefte für
Zeitgeschichte, April 1953). It is an incredible fact, however, that in
spite of this denunciation, the German Government in 1955 issued an edition
of the second Gerstein memorandum for distribution in German chools
(Dokumentation zur Massenvergasung, Bonn, 1955). In it they stated that
Dibelius placed his special confidence in Gerstein and that the memoranda
were "valid beyond any doubt." This is a striking example of the way in
which the baseless charge of genocide by the Nazis is perpetuated in
Germany, and directed especially to the youth.
The story of six million Jews exterminated during the war was given final
authority at the Nuremberg Trials by the statement of Dr. Wilhelm Hoettl. He
had been an assistant of Eichmann's, but was in fact a rather strange person
in the service of American Intelligence who had written several books under
the pseudonym of Walter Hagen. Hoettl also worked for Soviet espionage,
collaborating with two Jewish emigrants from Vienna, Perger and Verber, who
acted as U.S. officers during the preliminary inquiries of the Nuremberg
Trials. It is remarkable that the testimony of this highly dubious person
Hoettl is said to constitute the only "proof' regarding the murder of six
million Jews. In his affidavit of November 26th, 1945 he stated, not that he
knew but that Eichmann had "told him" in August 1944 in Budapest that a
total of 6 million Jews had been exterminated. Needless to say, Eichmann
never corroborated this claim at his trial. Hoettl was working as an
American spy during the whole of the latter period of the war, and it is
therefore very odd indeed that he never gave the slightest hint to the
Americans of a policy to murder Jews, even though he worked directly under
Heydrich and Eichmann.
ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE
It should be emphasised straight away that there is not a single document in
existence which proves that the Germans intended to, or carried out, the
deliberate murder of Jews. In Poliakov and Wulf's Das Dritte Reich und die
Juden: Dokumente und Aufsätze (Berlin, 1955), the most that they can
assemble are statements extracted after the war from people like Hoettl,
Ohlendorf and Wisliceny, the latter under torture in a Soviet prison. In the
absence of any evidence, therefore, Poliakov is forced to write: "The three
or four people chiefly involved in drawing up the plan for total
extermination are dead, and no documents survive." This seems very
convenient. Quite obviously, both the plan and the "three or four" people
are nothing but nebulous assumptions on the part of the writer, and are
entirely unprovable. The documents which do survive, of course, make no
mention at all of extermination, so that writers like Poliakov and
Reitlinger again make the convenient assumption that such orders were
generally "verbal". Though lacking any documentary proof, they assume that a
plan to murder Jews must have originated in 1941, coinciding with the attack
on Russia. Phase one of the plan is alleged to have involved the massacre of
Soviet Jews, a claim we shall disprove later. The rest of the programme is
supposed to have begun in March 1942, with the deportation and concentration
of European Jews in the eastern camps of the Polish Government-General, such
as the giant industrial complex at Auschwitz near Cracow. The fantastic and
quite groundless assumption throughout is that transportation to the East,
supervised by Eichmann's department, actually meant immediate extermination
in ovens on arrival. According to Manvell and Frankl (Heinrich Himmler.
London, 1965), the policy of genocide "seems to have been arrived at" after
"secret discussions" between Hitler and Himmler (p. 118), though they fail
to prove it. Reitlinger and Poliakov guess along similar "verbal" lines,
adding that no one else was allowed to be present at these discussions, and
no records were ever kept of them. This is the purest invention, for there
is not a shred of evidence that even suggests such outlandish meetings took
place. William Shirer, in his generally wild and irresponsible book The Rise
and Fall of the Third Reich, is similarly muted on the subject of
documentary proof. He states weakly that Hitler's supposed order for the
murder of Jews "apparently was never committed to paper - at least no copy
of it has yet been unearthed. It was probably given verbally to Goering,
Himmler and Heydrich, who passed it down . . ,"(p. 1148). A typical example
of the kind of "proof' quoted in support of the extermination legend is
given by Manvell and Frankl. They cite a memorandum of 31st July, 1941 sent
by Goering to Heydrich, who headed the Reich Security Head Office and was
Himmler's deputy. Significantly, the memorandum begins: "Supplementing the
task that was assigned to you on 24th January 1939, to solve the Jewish
problem by means of emigration and evacuation in the best possible way
according to present conditions . . ." The supplementary task assigned in
the memorandum is a "total solution (Gesamtlösung) of the Jewish question
within the area of German influence in Europe," which the authors admit
means concentration in the East, and it requests preparations for the
"organisational, financial and material matters" involved. The memorandum
then requests a future plan for the "desired final solution" (Endlösung),
which clearly refers to the ideal and ultimate scheme of emigration and
evacuation mentioned at the beginning of the directive. No mention whatever
is made of murdering people, but Manvell and Frankl assure us that this is
what the memorandum is really about. Again, of course, the "true nature" of
the final as distinct from the total solution "was made known to Heydrich by
Goering verbafly" (ibid, p. 118). The convenience of these "verbal"
directives issuing back and forth is obvious.
THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE
The final details of the plan to exterminate Jews were supposed to have been
made at a conference at Gross Wannsee in Berlin on 20th January, 1942,
presided over by Heydrich (Poliakov, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden, p. 120
ff; Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 95 ff). Officials of all German
Ministries were present, and Müller and Eichmann represented Gestapo Head
Office. Reitlinger and Manvell and Frankl consider tile minutes of this
conference to be their trump card in proving the existence of a genocide
plan, but the truth is that no such plan was even mentioned, and what is
more, they freely admit this. Manvell and Frankl explain it away rather
lamely by saying that "The minutes are shrouded in the form of officialdom
that cloaks the real significance of the words and terminolgoy that are
used" (The Incomparable Crime, London, 1967, p. 46), which really means that
they intend to interpret them in their own way. What Heydrich actually said
was that, as in the memorandum quoted above, he had been commissioned by
Goering to arrange a solution to the Jewish problem. He reviewed the history
of Jewish emigration, stated that the war had rendered the Madagascar
project impractical, and continued: "The emigration programme has been
replaced now by the evacuation of Jews to the east as a further possible
solution, in accordance with the previous authorisation of the Führer."
Here, he explained, their labour was to be utilised. All this is supposed to
be deeply sinister, and pregnant with the hidden meaning that the Jews were
to be exterminated, though Prof. Paul Rassinier, a Frenchman interned at
Buchenwald who has done sterling work in refuting the myth of the Six
Million, explains that it means precisely what it says, i.e. the
concentration of the Jews for labour in the immense eastern ghetto of the
Polish Government-General. "There they were to wait until the end of the
war, for the re-opening of international discussions which would decide
their future. This decision was finally reached at the interministerial
Berlin-Wannsee conference . . ." (Rassinier, Le Véritable Proces Eichmann,
p. 20). Manvell and Frankl, however, remain undaunted by the complete lack
of reference to extermination. At the Wannsee conference, they write,
"Direct references to killing were avoided, Heydrich favouring the term
"Arbeitseinsatz im Osten" (labour assignment in the East)" (Heinrich
Himmler, p. 209). Why we should not accept labour assignment in the East to
mean labour assignment in the East is not explained. According to Reitlinger
and others, innumerable directives actually specifying extermination then
passed between Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann and commandant Hoess in the
subsequent months of 1942, but of course, "none have survived".
TWISTED WORDS AND GROUNDLESS ASSUMPTIONS
The complete lack of documentary evidence to support the existence of an
extermination plan has led to the habit of re-interpreting the documents
that do survive. For example, it is held that a document concerning
deportation is not about deportation at all, but a cunning way of talking
about extermination. Manvell and Frankl state that "various terms were used
to camouflage genocide. These included "Aussiedlung"(desettlement) and
"Abbeförderung" (removal)" (ibid, p. 265). Thus, as we have seen already,
words are no longer assumed to mean what they say if they prove too
inconvenient. This kind of thing is taken to the most incredible extremes,
such as their interpretation of Heydrich's directive for labour assignment
in the East. Another example is a reference to Himmler's order for sending
deportees to the East, "that is, having them killed" (ibid, p. 251).
Reitlinger, equally at a loss for evidence, does exactly the same, declaring
that from the "circumlocutionary" words of the Wannsee conference it is
obvious that "the slow murder of an entire race was intended" (ibid, p. 98).
A review of the documentary situation is important, because it reveals the
edifice of guesswork and baseless assumptions upon which the extermination
legend is built. The Germans had an extraordinary propensity for recording
everything on paper in the most careful detail, yet among the thousands of
captured documents of the S.D. and Gestapo, the records of the Reich
Security Head Office, the files of Himmler's headquarters and Hitler's own
war directives there is not a single order for the extermination of Jews or
anyone else. It will be seen later that this has, in fact, been admitted by
the World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation at Tel-Aviv. Attempts
to find "veiled allusions" to genocide in speeches like that of Himmler's to
his S.S. Obergruppenführers at Posen in 1943 are likewise quite hopeless.
Nuremberg statements extracted after the war, invariably under duress, are
examined in the following chapter.
RJ11
B.H. Cramer <ben_a...@beltingyids.com> wrote:
(snip "Holocaust revisionism" drivel)
Deal with the facts, doper.
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp.py?camps//bergen-belsen/images/belsen01.jpg
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp.py?camps//bergen-belsen/images/belsen02.jpg
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp.py?camps//ohrdruf/images/ohrdruf-02.jpg
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp.py?camps//nordhausen/images/nordhausen-01.jpg
http://isurvived.org/Pictures_iSurvived-4/dachau-corpses.GIF
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp.py?camps//buchenwald/images/buchenwald01.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1673471.stm
Mass graves found at Nazi camp
Researchers have discovered seven mass graves at the Sobibor Nazi
death camp in north-eastern Poland.
The research team, which began its government-sponsored investigation
in the summer, said the graves -- the largest of which is about half
the size of a football pitch -- contain charred remains.
</quote>
RJ.